Drawing on feminist psychoanalysis and Greek mythology, La madre muerta explores how matricide and unconscious matricidal fantasies have been portrayed in Spanish narrative, drama, and film. The book examines individual and social perceptions regarding gendered subjectivity, the operation of power relations, gender violence, and the economies of desire. It provides a comparative study of different theoretical approaches to matricide and a close reading of five films, three novels, and two plays. This study attempts to unveil the mechanisms by which the matricidal myth has been introduced and continues operative in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish literature and film. Gomez claims that the absence of a positive symbolic mediation with the maternal body is detrimental for the configuration of gendered identities.