Victoria Kent alias Madame Duval Reconstructing the Figure of an Exiled Politician in Two Contemporary Spanish Dramas

Abstract

Victoria Kent became famous in Spain in the 1930s for her role in the debate on women's suffrage. She was the first woman lawyer to be admitted to the Bar Association in Madrid in 1924 and became a member of Parliament representing the Radical Socialist Party in 1931. Her memory is preserved in two contemporary Spanish dramas (J. López Mozo: Las raíces cortadas; M. A. Morales Montoro: La verdadera identidad de Madame Duval), that reconstruct the figure and the career of the politician from her years in Madrid, through her exile in Paris, to her settlement in New York and her affair with Louise Crane. These plays are part of the theatre of memory (teatro de la memoria) movement within Spanish contemporary drama, which aims to process two of the most significant traumas of the 20th century in Spain: the Civil War and the dictatorship. Fully agreeing with Juan Mayorga’s statement, “Theatre is the art of memory”, this paper seeks to explore – through the mentioned dramas – issues such as historical memory, female identity and the acceptance of otherness.