Leslie Kaiura

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

9

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2012

First Page

17

Last Page

33

Abstract

According to Lou Charnon-Deutsch, the Spanish domestic novel began in earnest with the works of Fernán Caballero (1796–1877), many of which were written as early as the 1830s but were not published until the late 1840s and 1850s (19). Helen Waite Papashvily, one of the pioneering critics of the domestic novel in the United States, defines such novels as tales of “contemporary domestic life, ostensibly sentimental in tone and with few exceptions almost always written by women for women” (xv). As a group, these novels tend to conform to the gender paradigms of their day, although critics such as Elaine Showalter have argued that they often contain veiled, subversive plots that record women’s discontent and their longings for power and revenge. Caballero is one of few women included in nineteenth-century Spain’s canon, but in spite of literary production that would have been considered “unwomanly” by her contemporaries, we must ask whether or not she participates in this type of veiled subversion by offering women possibilities for agency and independence within her work. Does she subtly undermine traditional ideology, or does she simply reproduce gender ideals such as the “angel in the house,” which exalted women as guardians of morality even as it confined them to a life of abnegation and obedience?1

Download

Share

COinS