Cambridge Spain: Chap. 8 (19th Century Spanish Women Writers)

-         Reawakening of Spanish literature in 19^th century with realist movement (notable authors such as Pérez Galdós)

-         Feminine literature forms and female authors have often been ignored in favor of masculine forms and male authors – anxiety over female legitimacy (think Domna Stanton, anxiety of authorship [right?] – Rosa’s class)

-         Feminist movement in assessment of Spanish literature

o   Effort to recover “lost” female writings – Concepción Arenal, Carolina Coronado, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Angela Grassi, Rosalía de Castro, etc.

o   More refined critical evaluation of women’s writing (reassessment of formerly ignored or unappreciated themes/trends)

o   Investigation of the politics of canon formation (why are/were women consistently excluded?)

o   Use of criticism from non-Spanish areas in relation to female Spanish literature (think: Gilbert and Gubar)

o   Idea of women as a separate class, distinct from men (comparison with British Victorian women)

-         Idea that Spanish women writers constructed their narratives of female victimization and self-sacrifice on unchallenged differences of class, race, and ethnicity. These women writers were perhaps blind to their class bias or racism… they focused on themselves and their struggles as women. (examples from Comps list: Gómez de Avellaneda – Sab, Pardo Bazán – Pazos de Ulloa)

-         Avellaneda – Sab

o   Heralded as the first Hispanic anti-slavery novel (but still not a true abolitionist text)

o   Idea of the danger for women within the domestic sphere (family home)

o   Anti-marriage theme (which is infrequent or usually disguised until the latter decades of the nineteenth century) – association of marriage and female subjugation

o   Message that domestic bliss is rarely achieved or only attainable through great personal sacrifice

o   Idea that reward for suffering feminine “slavery” can only come in next life

o   Recognition of inextricable relationship between a woman’s marketability and her dowry

o   Metaphor of slavery – transcends from the only actual slave (Sab) to apply also to the metaphorical (female) slavery of Carlota and Teresa

o   Avellaneda addresses slavery, but the issue of slavery  is secondary to that of women in the novel (a slave can buy his freedom, while a woman can only be freed by death)

(These are only notes on the first half of chapter)