Uneven Modernities, Uneven Masculinities: Manliness and the Galician Hinterland in the Novels of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1882-1896) by Zachary Thomas Erwin Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Stephanie Sieburth, Supervisor ___________________________ Margaret Greer ___________________________ Richard Rosa ___________________________ Joyce Tolliver Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 i v ABSTRACT Uneven Modernities, Uneven Masculinities: Manliness and the Galician Hinterland in the Novels of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1882-1896) by Zachary Thomas Erwin Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Stephanie Sieburth, Supervisor ___________________________ Margaret Greer ___________________________ Richard Rosa ___________________________ Joyce Tolliver An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 Copyright by Zachary Thomas Erwin 2010 Abstract The late-nineteenth-century realist canon in Spain is filled with male characters who are physically weak, effeminate, ineffectual, infantilized, or impotent, and, thus, decidedly “unmanly,” which indicates a collective societal anxiety about masculinity in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that this anxiety about masculinity stems from another societal worry about Spain’s backwardness with respect to its more modern European neighbors and the uneven rate of modernization with its own borders. I explore these issues in four novels by Galician-born realist author Emilia Pardo Bazán: La Tribuna (1882), Los Pazos de Ulloa (1886), La Madre Naturaleza (1887), and Memorias de un solterón (1896). I analyze these texts in light of historical and theoretical work on post-Enlightenment masculinity by scholars, such as George Mosse, John Tosh, Christopher Forth, and R. W. Connell. In the first chapter, I trace the development of the post-Enlightenment, Western, model of manliness, a primarily urban, bourgeois phenomenon, which privileged rational intellect and individual hard work. I then compare the pace and extent of modernization in Spain and England to show how Spain lacked the material conditions that would allow most Spanish men to embody modern masculinity in the late nineteenth century. For the remaining chapters, I turn my attention to Los Pazos de Ulloa, La Madre Naturaleza, and Memorias de un solterón. Each of these novels shows, in different ways, how the modern masculine ideal coexists and conflicts with other pre-Enlightenment models of manliness—based on aristocratic leisure, military prowess, or brute force. I argue that iv the problems faced by the male characters in these novels are a direct result of this clash of masculinities, which in turn reflects Spain’s economic stagnation in the nineteenth century. In Chapter II, I show how the refusal of the rural, Galician aristocracy to embrace certain hallmarks of the modern masculine ideal, such as hard work and Enlightenment thought, leads to a destabilization of feudal hierarchies in Los Pazos de Ulloa. I then argue that this destabilization results in the pervasiveness of violence in the novel. Chapter III focuses on La Madre Naturaleza. I contend that its narrator recognizes that change must come to rural Galicia and, thus, makes a gesture toward reconciling traditional and modern values, as well as pre-Enlightenment and post- Enlightenment models of masculinity. I then show how this reconciliation ultimately fails because the narrator condemns the social mobility upon which modernization and modern masculinity depend. In Chapter IV, I discuss the importance of marriage and fatherhood to the enactment of modern masculinity in Memorias de un solterón. I then illustrate how, in the Galician provincial capital in which the novel is set, social and economic conditions make life as a bourgeois husband and father undesirable at best, and ruinous at worst. v Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... ix Introduction....................................................................................................................... 1 “Manly” Literature and “Unmanly” Characters ........................................................................ 1 Masculinity Studies and the Spanish Realist Novel .................................................................. 3 Masculinity in Theory ............................................................................................................... 6 Uneven Modernity, Colliding Masculinities, and Pardo Bazán’s Novels............................... 10 I. The Struggle for Modern Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Spain .................... 16 Two “Typical” Men................................................................................................................. 16 Post-Enlightenment Gender Difference and the Modern Masculine Stereotype .................... 23 Unmanly Men, Unmanly Nation ............................................................................................. 28 Modern Bourgeois Masculinity in England: A Script Enacted Elsewhere ............................. 32 The Persistence of the Old Regime in Spain ........................................................................... 39 The Modern Masculine Ideal and the Anxieties of the Spanish Realist Novel....................... 48 II: The Violence of Competing Masculinities in Los Pazos de Ulloa ......................... 53 Feminine Weakness and Masculine Violence ......................................................................... 53 Violence, Civilization, and the Breakdown of the Social Order ............................................. 60 Los Pazos in Context: Revolution and Inertia ......................................................................... 65 The Galician Rural Economy: Decadence and Resistance to Innovation ............................... 70 “Medieval” Galicia and Gentry Masculinity ........................................................................... 74 Gentry Masculinity and Narratorial Critique........................................................................... 80 The Limioso Estate: A Cautionary Tale .................................................................................. 83 vi Enlightenment Thought and the Mismanagement of Inherited Wealth .................................. 86 Violence, Cacique Masculinity, and the Absence of Power.................................................... 95 Julián Álvarez and the Achievement of “Real” Manhood .................................................... 103 III. The Old, the New, and the Irreconcilable in La Madre Naturaleza.................. 106 One Setting, Two Worlds ...................................................................................................... 106 Nature and Culture, Naturalism and Romanticism................................................................ 112 Caught Between the Old Spain and the New ........................................................................ 117 Mental Disorders and Collective Anxieties........................................................................... 125 The Soldier, the Scholar, the Dreamer: Competing Masculinities and Feminization ........... 127 The Past that will “Save” the Future ..................................................................................... 132 Class, Manliness, and Narratorial Conservatism................................................................... 134 “Perfect” Masculinity: The Reconciliation of the Old and the New? ................................... 143 IV: Competing Masculinities and Escapism in Memorias de un solterón............... 151 Memorias that are not Memoirs and the “Confirmed” Bachelor that Marries ...................... 151 Feíta and Mauro: La mujer nueva and the “New, Bourgeois Man”? .................................... 154 Egotism and Economics; Fashion, Feminization, and Freedom ........................................... 159 Money and Marriage ............................................................................................................. 166 Reading the Romance: Courtship and Literature as Escape.................................................. 169 Benicio Neira: Financial Troubles and the Crossing of Class Lines..................................... 172 Ramón Sobrado and Modern Masculinity............................................................................. 186 The Mauro-Feíta-Ramón Love Triangle: Manliness as Competition ................................... 190 Writing the Romance: The Narrative Shift and Neira’s Manly Act...................................... 192 A Spurious Victory for the Modern Masculine Ideal ............................................................ 196 vii Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 199 Masculinity, Uneven Modernization, and Hard Work .........................................................