©2015 Mia Lynn Romano ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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2015 Mia Lynn Romano ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EXCESSIVE FEMININITY AS RESISTANCE IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY MEXICAN NARRATIVE AND VISUAL ART by MIA LYNN ROMANO A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Spanish written under the direction of Professor Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION EXCESSIVE FEMININITY AS RESISTANCE IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY MEXICAN NARRATIVE AND VISUAL ART By MIA LYNN ROMANO Dissertation Director: Professor Ben. Sifuentes Jáuregui In this dissertation I study the different ways that women are represented as “feminine,” or the different ways of being a “woman” in Mexico. I situate this study in questions of how womanhood is depicted in contemporary Mexican fiction and art, how the female body is used in such fluid representations of womanhood, and how gendered performance through the body helps define a woman’s identity. The unifying thread is that of women who enact femininity that goes against the traditional archetype of passive motherhood found in la Guadalupe and la Chingada: they avoid becoming mothers; seek sexual pleasure; avoid maternal, care-taking relationships with men; and enact alternative production rather than reproduction through their bodies. The corpus includes canonical and recent literature by female authors, fiction written by men, letters, corridos, poems, photographs, calendar cromos, paintings, drawings, letters, and lithographs, spanning materials from 1903 to 2004. The first two chapters explore the women of the Mexican Revolution in a female counter-archive in photographs and calendar cromos prints and corrido ballads and novels written by women, such as Cartucho by Nellie Campobello ii and Hasta no verte, Jesús mío by Elena Poniatowska. In the third chapter I deconstruct the submissive figure of the mujer abnegada through feminist re-readings of the novels Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela by Elena Poniatowska and Demasiado amor by Sara Sefchovich and the protagonists’ journeys of resisting selflessness and motherhood. Beyond a rejection of the maternal abnegada, in the fourth chapter I look at women who enact sexuality without maternity through suffering and bleeding in the paintings of Frida Kahlo and the novels Santa by Federico Gamboa and Duerme by Carmen Boullosa. In contrast to sexuality without maternity, the final chapter examines beauty, body image, and female sexual desire in Señorita México by Enrique Serna and Vapor by Julieta García González and how the protagonists resist male desire directed at them and enact their own. The thesis creates a counter-archive of womanhood that moves women’s bodies beyond the limits of traditional spaces for women, and contributes to constructions of womanhood in and outside of Mexico. iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the many people who helped make this dissertation a reality. I thank my thesis committee for their endless support, motivation, and guidance in completing this project: Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Marcy Schwartz, and Margo Persin. I thank the other graduate students in the Spanish Department who either acted as motivators or sounding-boards; Elena Valdez, Kelly Lovejoy, Vaughn Anderson, Cristóbal Cardemil Krause, Soledad Chacón, Elizabeth Moe, Mac Wilson, Darío Stern, Sebastián Patrón, Ben Arenger, Molly Palmer, Patricia González, Irma Sánchez de Palma, Mónica Ríos, and Angelica Montoya. I thank the various members of Rutgers faculty and administration that have helped me further my research: Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Barbara Bender, Stephen Bishop, Rosy Ruiz, Elena Lahr-Vivaz, Jorge Marcone, Camilla Stevens, Karen Bishop, Jennifer Austin, Carlos Narváez, Yeon-Soo Kim, Phillip Rothwell, José Camacho, Liliana Sánchez, Jennifer Flaherty, and Marisa Orsogna. Thanks to the members of the GAIA grant on Transnational Feminisms with whom I collaborated on new approaches to studying gender: Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Carlos Decena, Enmanuel Martínez, Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Rían Lozano, Helena López, Ricardo Azamar, Gerardo Mejía, and Yecid Calderón. A portion of my fifth chapter was workshopped at the Tepoztlán Institute during the summer of 2013 and I thank those who gave me feedback on the project, especially Stephany Slaughter and Billy Johnson-González. I also thank the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate School for their funds to perform research for this dissertation in Mexico City during the summer of 2010. I thank the students in my “Latin American Feminisms” course at Rutgers- Newark where I coined the term “Diego’s iv Inferno” through our discussions of Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela. I also thank my fellow faculty at Bard High School Early College who always pushed me to finish the dissertation. I thank my undergraduate Spanish professors who encouraged me to pursue graduate studies and continue to support me: Margarita Sánchez and Katica Urbanc. I thank my friends for supporting me on this journey: Lisa Berberian, Natalie Fischer, Katie Affleck, Jeff and Mishka Norquist, Eric and Meghan Daucher, Kelly Lovejoy, Vaughn Anderson, Elizabeth Cronin, Christina DiChino, Emily Marcello, and Michael Yost. I thank Kellen Myers for his love and laughter, and am grateful for Oliver and Louise’s affection. Lastly I wish to thank my family for supporting me through my graduate work across the country and on my path to completing this dissertation: to Mom, Dad, Alyse, Gramma, and Grampa. v Table of Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………………….……… ii Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………….. vi List of Illustrations ………………………………………………………………… viii Introduction ………………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter 1. The Invisible and Sexualized Women of the Mexican Revolution in Photographs and Cromos ………………………………………………. 28 Rebozos and Cartridge Sashes: The Casasola Archive ………………… 36 Calendar Art: Sexualized Nationality and Mythified Femininity ……… 50 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………. 64 Chapter 2. The Bravery and Authority of the Women of the Mexican Revolution in Corridos and Novels …………………………………………………... 67 Corridos: “Eran todas muy bonitas y de muchos pantalones” ………... 71 Mexican Women Writers: “Ojos hechos grandes con revolución” ……. 81 Conclusions …………………………………………………………… 110 Chapter 3. The Epistolary Spirals to Reject la Mujer Abnegada …………………. 113 Quiela’s Journey through Diego’s Inferno …………………………….. 117 Down with Love: The Journey to Become a Sex Worker ……………... 134 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………. 153 Chapter 4. Sexuality without Maternity: Wound(ed) Wombs and Feminine (Re)production ………………………………………………………… 159 The Prostitute: The Shattered and Diseased Womb …………………… 161 The Painter: (Re)production of Suffering and Pleasure Through Art …. 175 The Cross-Dresser: Reproduction through Gender Transgressions …… 194 Conclusions …………………………………………………………… 210 vi Chapter 5. Resisting the Male Gaze and Male Pleasure: Female Body Image, Desire, and Sexual Pleasure …………………………………………… 213 The Forbidden Desires of a Beauty Queen ……………………………. 217 The Bodily Pleasures of an Obese Beauty ……………………….……. 240 Conclusions …………………………………………………………… 262 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 266 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….. 272 Illustrations ………………………………………………………………………… 285 vii List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Fig. 1. Jerónimo Hernández. Soldadera or food seller, Mexico City. 1912. Inv. #5760. Fondo Casasola, SINAFO- Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Pachuca, México. ..………………..……………………….. 37 Fig. 2. Casasola, 1914. Inv. #292490. Fondo Casasola, SINAFO-Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Pachuca, México. ……………………………. 39 Fig. 3. Casasola, ca1915. Inv. #186449. Fondo Casasola, SINAFO- Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Pachuca, México. ………..………… 41 Fig. 4. Casasola, 1910. Inv. #68115. Fondo Casasola, SINAFO-Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Pachuca, México. ............................................. 42 Fig. 5. Casasola. ca1915. Inv. #63944. Fondo Casasola, SINAFO-Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Pachuca, México. ……………………………. 46 Fig. 6. Ángel Martín. La Adelita. Reproduced from the popular calendars published anually in Mexico by Calendarios y Propaganda, S.A. …. 52 Fig. 7. Eugène Delacroix. La Liberté guidant le peuple. 1830. Oil on canvas. Musée du Louvre. Paris, France. ……………….............… 53 Fig. 8. Antonio Gómez R. Las Soldaderas. 1938. Pysa-Lito-Leosa. ….…. 55 Fig. 9. Humberto Limón. Untitled. Oil on canvas. ...................................... 57 Fig. 10. Antonio Gómez R. Amor guerrillero. 1946. Galas de México. ..…. 58 Fig. 11. Alberto Carmona. Adelita. 1953. Oil on canvas. Collection Museo Soumaya. Mexico City, México. ………………………………….. 60 Fig. 12. José Guadalupe Posada. 161. La calavera revolucionaria. Broadside, 1911, full sheet, zinc etching. Denver Art Museum, New World Department. ………………………………………………… 63 Chapter 4 Fig. 13. Kahlo, Frida. Henry Ford Hospital. 1932. Oil on sheet metal. Collection Museo Dolores Olmeda, Xichimilco, México. ………… 180 Fig. 14. Kahlo, Frida. Frida y el aborto. 1932. Lithograph. Collection Museo Dolores Olmeda, Xichimilco, México. ……………………. 182 viii Fig. 15. Kahlo, Frida. Las dos Fridas. 1939. Oil on canvas. Collection Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. …………………………… 183 Fig. 16.