The effects of precariousness in the neoliberal city: the mental disorder in A working woman (2014) by Elvira Navarro

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the relationship between the characters of Susana and Elisa in the novel A working woman (2014), by the Spanish writer Elvira Navarro, from the development of a mental disorder: in Susana from witnessing a shooting that provokes her a psychotic episode, and in Elisa due to precarious working conditions. The time and space of the novel will be relevant, since the neoliberal city that Madrid becomes during the final years of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st will be the framework in which the novel is inserted. It is in this place and time that precariousness (Berlant, Barbier) will show itself as a direct effect of what capitalism will do to large metropolises like Madrid. Navarro's novel shows features of daily life in the center of the city in contrast to peripheral areas that also suffer negative effects of capitalism, such as social segregation and gentrification (Ruth Glass, Eva García).