El silencio habla cuando las palabras no pueden: Sobre el abuso psicológico en Algún amor que no mate de Dulce Chacón

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this dissertation is to study the way in which Algún amor que no mate by Dulce Chacón constructs the story of psychological abuse to create the novel’s authentic effect. In this work, we will compare the events in the novel with the strategies of psychological abuse that Álvaro Rodríguez-Carballeira et al. suggest. In addition, we will explore a theory put forward by Elaine J. Lawless that discusses the issue of narrative ruptures in the accounts of real victims of domestic violence. Indeed, we will investigate the hypothesis that the novel’s protagonist, Prudencia, conveys the magnitude of the abuse she has suffered via the events that are not explicitly stated in the text, that is, through the gaps in her story. The narrative structure of Algún amor que no mate is complex, and in order to analyse the plot it is important to understand and identify the multitude of narrative voices that exist in the novel, something we will explore with the help of Lucía I. Llorente’s research on this same topic. However, some aspects of Llorente’s work, notably her description of the narrators, are problematic and we seek to provide an alternative interpretation. In the end, we reach the conclusion that most strategies of psychological abuse are present in the work and that the gaps in the story serve to accentuate the protagonist's suffering, which confirms our hypothesis and at the same time highlights two factors that contribute to the authentic effect of the novel.