ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I classify both Inés’ culinary evolution and La Pasionaria’s political and amorous trajectories as what Dana Heller terms the “feminised quest romance,” a spatial and developmental trajectory in which the female protagonist acquires self-knowledge. Both women undertake involuntary exilic journeys that effect both positive and negative transformations in their professional and amorous lives, garnering wisdom and experience, but also becoming embittered, as is the case with La Pasionaria. In this chapter, I aver that culinary acts of consumption and preparation enable the consolidation as well as the transcending of schismatic class, gender and ideological barriers through the dual and often contradictory functions of the kitchen spaces in which the protagonist develops. I critically examine the treatment of cooking, which reveals the densely layered and deeply entrenched role it plays in the building of intersectional identities related to nation, exile, nostalgia and gender. This analysis seeks to analyse the gendered implications of marginal figures´ attempts to flourish, to obtain eudaimonia, through domesticity and entrepreneurship in exile.
