Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

9

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2012

First Page

107

Last Page

125

Abstract

Agar Eva Infanzón Canel (1857-1932), a Spanish woman who took the penname of Eva Canel for her professional literary activities, married actor and author Eloy Perillán Buxó at the precocious age of 14 and, after being exiled from Spain for his subversive writing, traveled the theater circuit with him through the Americas. Wherever she stayed for some prolonged period she established cultural magazines, the texts of which she often wrote entirely herself. After her husband’s death in 1889, she earned her living by giving conferences wherever she traveled, and by writing, being one of the first Hispanic women professional journalists. These writings relate mainly to the political and feminist questions of the day and appeared in prestigious venues in Spain and all over the Spanish-American continent—both topics, as Kenmogne and Hooper have indicated, being very daring for a woman of the era. As she was “[a]mante de la tradición por encima de todo” (Simón Palmer 299), one of the first paradoxes of this fascinating figure is the fact that, as Kessel Schwartz has pointed out, she strongly defended the traditional subservient role of women, but lived and worked outside of this role herself (211). Canel also published volumes of short stories, several novels (using the style and stereotypes of romantic sentimentalism “para fustigar los vicios sociales,” says Jean Kenmogne 57), and plays—some of which were performed in Havana, and again although they seem to be an apparent “defence of Spain’s continued spiritual dominance…[they also reveal] a more critical view of the colonial legacy,” says Hooper (9). She also wrote several volumes of travel writing (see Caballer), including a collaborative work on her experiences as (Spanish) war correspondent and secretary of the Spanish Red Cross during the Cuban-Spanish-American war of 1895-1898, in which she strongly supported Spain’s position. She left Cuba in 1898 but returned in 1914 to remain there until her death, always in difficult financial straits. Eva Canel’s omission from serious critical study is compounded by the fact that she lived in many different places and wrote under several different pseudonyms; thus, she has not been recognized as any “national” writer—a circumstance that is hugely ironic, as she was a lifelong, proud Spanish nationalist and conservative monarchist.1 However, given her many “firsts,” her very diverse publications and controversial opinions, it is clear that her work merits more study.

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