The Censorship of a Closeted Spain: The Case of Elena Fortún (1886–1952)

Abstract

This article focuses on how self-censorship and state censorship have shaped the literary legacy of the Spanish author of children’s books, Elena Fortún. The homosexual closet is presented as a key concept for understanding the impact of censorship on the work of a lesbian writer such as Fortún who has contributed to various narratives of Spanish femininity over the course of almost a century. The first of these is the narrative of gender dissidence during the Second Republic (1931–1939); followed by the narrative of the wife and mother belonging to the Franco Regime (1939–1975); and finally the LGBTQ inclusiveness of the new millennium in Spain (2005–2022). The works included in the analysis are varied, spanning from Fortún’s children’s books to her correspondence and finally two posthumously published novels. This reading of Fortún’s texts reveals how censorship works as a controlling gaze that not only operates from the outside, but is also internalized in the individual, maintaining the doors of the homosexual closet closed from the inside.