Laws Contra Natura. Subterfuges of Realism in Bodoque by Mercedes Formica

This essay will analyze Bodoque, a short novel by Mercedes Formica (1913-2002), one of the least recognizable voices in the literary panorama of postwar Spain in spite of the notable success she enjoyed in her time. Bodoque is one of the first works in Formica's literary trajectory, and its themes are quite singular with respect to other works from the decades of the forties and fifties. Behind the appearance of telling a simple story, Bodoque hides a highly subversive subtext which reveals the writer's acute sense who, as the lawyer that she was, sets as her main objective to denounce injustices in the legal system without alerting or annoying the censors and, as a writer, is aware of the strategies that language places at her disposal with which to weave a complex text with serious implications.