This paper analyzes the influence of postmodernism in Paloma Díaz-Mas's feminist approach through two short stories, "The World According to Valdés," and "In Search of a Portrait." The political situation after Franco's death embraced democracy which allowed writers to pay more attention to intellectual concerns. Women writers steered the radical positions of the 1970s toward a more philosophical and intellectual analysis of reality and artistic expression during the eighties. In these two

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... stories, Díaz-Mas addresses women's issues by questioning the scope of modernist and humanist views. She criticizes the modernist concept of unity (text/identity) pointing out the discrimination that this unity creates in art, through the distinction between high art/mass culture; and in the individual, through the distinction between feminine/masculine and high/low. Even though Díaz-Mas's main characters in the two stories are women, she does not solely focus on defending them, but she contrasts present and past to parody the causes which produce discrimination in the social and artistic processes. There has been an increase of postmodemist characteristics in the narrative fiction by women writers in Spain since 1975, and at the same time a change in the feminist attitude of these writers has been expressed through their literary works. I believe this change has a correlation with the democratic development which occurred in Spain after Franco's death, and with the influence of postmodernist ideas. The democratic process created an ambiance of freedom that allowed writers to redirect their social and political attention toward aesthetic interests.' However, the democratic process did not fulfill all expectations, and different political events in right wing and left wing political parties frustrated people's hopes, spreading disappointment among them (Subirats 207-09). In spite of this situation, intellectual and artistic expressions from the left carried on the initial euphoria and happiness which led to "La Movida" during the 1980s.2 During this decade, intellectuals from the left adopted an hedonistic individualism, which masked the pessimism resulting from the successive failures of the new democracy (Subirats 212). Some artists and women writers identified with the ideology of the left and focused their work on the aesthetic and literary aspects of their text along other European postmodernists (Oleza 40). Literary works by women in Spain after 1975 clearly show that these au-1