Reina Barreto

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

3

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2006

First Page

1

Last Page

10

Abstract

The colonial and slave society that was Cuba of the early nineteenth century is the setting for Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s first novel, Sab.1 Published in Madrid in 1841, this novel represents Avellaneda’s literary struggle against the injustices of slavery and the oppressive treatment of women within the patriarchal Romantic framework of the early 1800s. Avellaneda’s novel draws a parallel between women and slaves: “Como los esclavos, ellas arrastran pacientemente su cadena y bajan la cabeza bajo el yugo de las leyes humanas” (Gómez de Avellaneda 194). Catherine Davies states that Sab “is the only feminist-abolitionist novel published by a woman in nineteenth-century Spain or its slaveholding colony Cuba” (1). The fact that Sab was banned in Cuba demonstrates not only how problematic this female-authored anti-slavery text was, but also how carefully and compromisingly it had to be constructed.2 By way of an analysis of the novel’s protagonist and three main female characters (Carlota, Teresa, and Martina) and their subversion of traditional, binary representations of race, gender, and class, I examine the underlying tension that exists in the text between subversion and the thwarting of subversion.

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