Copyright by Nancy LaGreca 2004 Feminism and Identity in Three Spanish American Novels, 1887-1903 by Nancy Anne LaGreca, B.A., M.A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2004 The dissertation Committee for Nancy Anne LaGreca certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation Feminism and Identity in Three Spanish-American Novels, 1887-1903 Committee: Naomi Lindstrom, Supervisor Katherine Arens Enrique Fierro Virginia Higginbotham Benigno Trigo Alexandra Wettlaufer Dedication I dedicate this work to Anne, Roy, and Josephine LaGreca Acknowledgements It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the professors, colleagues, and friends who have supported this project. I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation of and admiration for the members of my dissertation committee who, as a group and as individuals, have made this an exceptional experience. First I owe a great deal to the scholarly expertise and attention of my advisor, Naomi Lindstrom. Her rigorous standards for research, writing, and analysis, help with editing, and consistent encouragement have left their mark on this manuscript and on my development as a scholar. I thank her for being an excellent role model and mentor throughout my graduate career. I am indebted to Katie Arens for sharing with me her acute knowledge of theory and for her recommendations for placing my work in dialogue with an interdisciplinary women’s studies community. Her timely and detailed comments on each chapter of this manuscript in the early stages of its development laid a solid foundation for the revisions and expansion of my analyses. Benigno Trigo’s course lectures at the University of Texas at Austin on Ana Roqué’s novel Luz y sombra and Manuel Zeno Gandía’s La charca were instrumental to my readings of medical discourse and essentialized femininity in chapter six. I thank Virginia Higginbotham and Enrique Fierro for encouraging my interest in Hispanic women authors early on in my graduate career and for their recommendations for extending the scope of this manuscript. I am grateful v to Alexandra Wettlaufer for incorporating a substantial number of women authors into her courses on nineteenth century and turn of the century French literature, thereby adding to my knowledge of the French influences that were felt in Latin America during that period. Several professors outside of my committee deserve recognition for their support. I thank Lisa Moore and Lynn Wilkinson for imbuing my work with the spirit of feminism and I would like to thank Cesar Salgado for generously agreeing to assist me with the segment in this study on Puerto Rican history. I have been fortunate to have a supportive and intellectually engaging group of colleagues who have given me feedback and lended an ear throughout the process of writing. I am happy to have this chance to express my appreciation to Madgiel Castillo, Kimberly Hamlin, Taran Johnston, Belinda Mora, Lito Porto, Anna Pyeatt, Miguel Santana, Juan Carlos Ubilluz, Janie Zackin, and Beth Zeiss. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude, love, and respect to my parents Anne and Roy LaGreca for their unfaltering moral and financial support, and for their confidence in me. I thank my siblings, especially my brother Chaz, and Jack Eure III for their love and encouragement. Last but not least, I would like to thank my earliest feminist role models, my aunt Josephine LaGreca and my late aunt Rose LaGreca for showing me how women have always managed to succeed outside of society’s prescribed roles. vi Feminism and Identity in Three Spanish American Novels, 1887-1903 Publication No._____________ Nancy Anne LaGreca, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2004 Supervisor: Naomi Lindstrom In this study I focus on the novels La hija del bandido by Refugio Barragán (Mexico, 1887), Blanca Sol by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (Peru, 1888), and Luz y sombra by Ana Roqué (Puerto Rico, 1903) to show how the narratives encoded alternative models for womanhood in the post-independence era, when the hegemonic norm was that of the domestic Angel of the House. I examine the social, historical, and legal burdens faced by women of the bourgeoisie (in regard to education, dress, mores, marriage, and property), to then analyze how authors represent these struggles symbolically. My socio-historical research is based in part on field work at the Biblioteca Nacional and Centro de vii Documentación Sobre la Mujer (Lima), and the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (Havana). I have dedicated two chapters to each novel. In the first, I detail the historical frame as outlined above. The second chapter highlights the authors’ symbolic attempts to forge models of subjectivity that portray women empowered by agency (i.e., who act publicly rather than domestically, who travel unchaperoned, who refuse to marry, etc.). While I reference diverse theorists according to the focus of each narrative (Laura Otis, Victor Turner, and Judith Butler, among others), my conclusions draw heavily on post-Freudian theories of identity of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. In the case of Barragán, I read the female heroine’s rebellion against her father as an unresolved Oedipal drama that allows her to attain freedom by perpetuating the liminal (threshold) mode, rather than enter prescribed heterosexual adulthood. Cabello’s novel exposes the falsity of the Mary/Eve dichotomy in order to broaden models of womanhood. Finally, Roqué’s narrative defends female sexual pleasure by using medical discourse—at a time when masculinist rhetoric employed it to essentialize and objectify women. This exploration adds to scholarship on early Spanish-American feminism by viewing it in regard to personal identity, agency, and public participation, rather than focusing on how women’s fiction fits into a nation-building agenda. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS IX INTRODUCTION 1 Toward a Nineteenth-Century Spanish-American Feminism...............1 The Authors and Their Texts ..............................................................6 A Central Image: the Angel of the House ......................................... 10 From Text to Alternative Images of Female Identity: Definition of Terms and Theoretical Framework........................................... 15 Obstacles to the Reading of Nineteenth Century Female Identity...... 21 Chapter Foci..................................................................................... 25 Notes to Introduction........................................................................ 29 SECTION I: MEXICO Chapter One. Women’s Imagined Roles during the Porfiriato (1876-1911): Domestic Seclusion and Early Feminist Reactions ............................................. 32 Brief Overview of the Porfirian Era.................................................. 37 Women’s Roles in Mid-late Nineteenth-Century Mexico.................. 41 Feminism in Mexico, mid-1800s to early 1900s................................ 54 Antifeminism I: The Catholic Discourse of Moreno and Elizalde ..... 58 Antifeminism II: Positivist Rhetoric, or Redefining Progress for Women.................................................................................... 63 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 78 Notes to Chapter One ....................................................................... 79 ix Chapter Two. Coming of Age(ncy): Refugio Barragán de Toscano's La hija del bandido (1887) .................................................................................... 81 Barragán and her novel: Disruptions of Power and Marginal Perspective .............................................................................. 84 Psychoanalytic Theories of Adult Heterosexuality............................ 93 Fictional Liminality.......................................................................... 99 María’s Entry into the Liminoid: Reconnection with the Mother .... 105 Feminine Agency for an Era of Progress: Public Engagement and Travel .................................................................................... 111 The Other Side of Agency: Equalizing Standards ........................... 120 Conclusion: the Perpetuation of Liminality..................................... 123 Notes to Chapter Two..................................................................... 126 SECTION II: PERU Chapter Three. Women in Peru: National and Private Struggles for Independence 1817-1888 ....................................................................................................... 129 Women’s Agency in the Independence Era..................................... 131 Tightening the Moral Noose in the Republican Era: the Angel of the House............................................................................... 138 The Struggle against the Angel Status Quo: Liberal Reform, Women’s Education, and Literary Battles .............................. 148 The Intellectual Climate of the 1880s: Naturalism and Positivism... 160 Cabello de Carbonera’s Intellectual Strategy .................................. 168 Notes to Chapter Three................................................................... 170 Chapter Four. Complicating the Angelic Model:Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera’s Blanca Sol (1888) ...........................................................................................