Feminization of the Woods in Tana French’s In the Woods and Dolores Redondo’s El Guardián Invisible

Abstract

The article studies the narrative means of feminizing the image of the woods in two novels, In the Woods by Tana French and El Guardián Invisible by Dolores Redondo. The main approach employed is feminist literary criticism. One of the key concepts is Michel Foucault´s heterotopia. The methodology of analysis involves comparing plot building devices, important motifs, and spatial poetics of the woods in the novels under study. It was revealed that these novels manifest important similarities from the point of view of depicting the woods as femininity-related heterotopia and link its symbolism with the national mythologies of the two cultures, Irish and Basque-Navarran.