Mujer pública y vida privada: del arte eunuco a la novela lupanaria (review)

Numerous studies have noted the abundance of prostitutes in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century fiction and literature in both, Europe in general, and Spain in particular. Like its predecessors, Mujer pública attempts to account for the ubiquity of these "mujeres infames," situating them at the crosshairs between the discourses on public and private morality, male sexuality, and health. Fernández pins the increase in "literatura lupanaria" to the correlating interest in the themes of private and social health, eugenics, and the weakening of the institution of matrimony along with the economic and social bonds that supported it (47).

Mujer pública charts the evolution of fiction about prostitutes over the course of nearly one hundred years. Fernández not only dates the growth of a 'novela lupanaria española' to the 1870 publication of Francisco de Sales Mayo's La chula and Enrique Rodríguez-Solís's Las extraviadas (1880), as well as the "decisive" publications of Zola's Nana and La desheredada in 1881, but she also draws attention to the earlier and too-often overlooked María, o la hija de un jornalero by Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco, and the intrusion by the narrative voice into private, domestic spaces. Ayguals's María trilogy is presented as an early example of the literary trope of parallel worlds divided by private and public morality in novels about national history, a framework that served as the basic structure for Galdós's Fortunata y Jacinta forty years later.

The first half of Mujer pública follows the well-tread path into the culture of nineteenth-century Spain, which is the topic of public and private spheres, and the tenuous line that divides them, especially as regards women. Even more than an examination of the transgressions of the public eye into private life, however, Mujer pública offers a cultural study of the depiction of prostitution in fiction and theater through a thick contextualization of the political, social and moral anxieties that surrounded it. Eight chapters develop this topic in a variety of directions. For example, the chapter "Mujer pública y vida privada" builds upon the excellent work of Isabel Burdiel on Queen Isabel II, positing the figure of the Monarch as principal feminine referent in nineteenth-century Spanish public life (27). Fernández argues that Isabel II embodied the contradictions (and transgressions) of her century as she came of age publicly as a woman reigning over a kingdom that was often described in familial terms, while her personal (private) life was discussed publicly—both as an affair of the state and as base gossip. Fernández's reading of Antonio Flores's articles "Los escaparates" presents it as an ingenious example of the theatricality of the royal family's private life within the frame of the quintessential structure of capitalism, and the point of departure for prostitutes such as the fictional Rosalía de Bringas: the shop window. In the dramatically titled chapter "La venganza del angel caído," Fernández analyzes the contemporary fears regarding syphilis and the corresponding gender wars, wherein men feared that prostitutes would avenge not only themselves, but rather all women against all men, particularly those that raped or dishonored them. In addition to what it reveals about a potentially collective male guilt, this chapter provides new insight into the way some women historically may have seen their role in terms of sex and gender beyond that of domestic angel. The chapter entitled "El arte eunuco frente a la literatura tísica" traces a convincing evolution of the "novela prostibular," although its analyses of the literature remain rather superficial, and are swarming with provocative claims. For example, Fernández proposes that the art of writing about prostitutes actually changed literary language, as authors like Galdós, forced to maintain a realist perspective without recourse to offensive terms, opened new discursive avenues. The relationship between the naturalist novel...