War-focused life-writing and the study of the female subject in a period where war had the potential to destabilise traditional women's roles and identities remains an under researched topic. This thesis focuses on how the self-representation of the lives of right wing women were discursively constructed and reflexively represented in relation to large scale political, social and economic contexts. It supports Passmore's view that by deconstructing the traditional binary position in which right-wing women found themselves, they 'are no longer seen simply as such as victims or victimisers, but as both simultaneously. This thesis draws upon the life-writing of four women who belonged to Franco's elite regime: Maria Rosa Urraca Pastor, Regina García, Pilar Millán Astray and Pilar Primo de Rivera and explores the (re)construction and reflexive representations of the self. It shows how they not only struggled to identify with one collective group, but adopted and shifted between different collective identities. It demonstrates how womanhood and motherhood were created, recreated, redefined and modified to become a politicised and patriotic idea of woman. It shows how these four women reconstructed a new (female) identity by adapting their femaleness and their expected role as women in order to achieve acceptance within the Francoist movement. This thesis shows the need to rethink the right-wing meaning of womanhood, motherhood, and female agency in contemporary scholarship.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Classical Languages and Literatures, March 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

by Antonia Teresa Pérz-Franco / Original physical format: Typescript. / Ph. D.--Florida State University--2001 / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-275) / Text in Spanish with an abstract in English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed March 31, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-283). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1997. / Text in Spanish with abstracts in English and Spanish. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 434-462).