The female universe in the early prose of Samuel Beckett: to autonomy and the globalization of literature

In the present essay we will analyse More Pricks than Kicks and Dream of Fair to Middling Women by Samuel Beckett, focusing on the construction of the female characters. Taking into account some statements regarding the author's misogyny and his characterization of women as hostile subjects (Brienza, Kim), we will try to detach ourselves from this in order to approach the female universe presented in the stories from the author's desire to become a cosmopolite and transnational writer (Casanova, Even-Zohar). In this way, we will examine the women of Belacqua Shuah's life as those elements that take the male character to cross borders and blur the limits of language, of genre, of nations, and of national traditions. Adriana Ottolenghi, Winnie, Alba, Ruby, Lucy, Thelma, and Smeraldina are all representatives of this displaced female gender, as Ireland is Europe's margin, the producer of a minor literature. Nevertheless, Beckett's constant gesture is to remove himself from this Irish tradition, which he does not carry out by denying it or erasing it from his work, but opening it to other possibilities, such as these women constituting themselves as heterogeneous, diverse, and demolishers of borders.