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9. Emilia Pardo Bazán, Reproduction, and Change
- University of Washington Press
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230 c h a p t e r n i n e Emilia Pardo Bazán, Reproduction, and Change Inconsistencies, contradictions, complete unknowns, choice, and the change born from indeterminate “nicks of time” between every action—sexual selection is hardly as algorithmic as Darwinian evolutionism has more broadly been described.1 In fact, the most “dangerous idea” is to forget these unresolved qualities in the face of sexual politics during the decades following The Descent in Spain and elsewhere. The preceding chapters thus stand as something of a prologue to the writings of Emilia Pardo Bazán for the ways they foreground what her position on the matter of female choice has to say about the stakes of the theory in its historical context. Many of her works could, no doubt, be introduced here, given the particular relevance of each to the facets of sexual selection discussed up to this point. Insolación (1889), for example, situates two suitors , Gabriel Pardo and Diego Pacheco, in a complex triangle framed by the desires of a female protagonist, Asís Taboada, whose selection scaffolds a tale of curious conquest with racial and nationalist undertones. Likewise, for those who know Dulce Dueño (1911), this late novel is sure to bring to mind my exploration of mysticism and confession in the novels of Armando Palacio Valdés from chapter 8. With no shortage of attention to her own role in the courtship power dynamic, Lina Mascareñas narrates her rejection of three potential mates whose ideological embodiments both allegorize and catalyze her ultimate renunciation of the external world. Finally institutionalized and having given herself in body and mind to her divine lover, Dulce Dueño, she finds certain peace (“And I am happy. I am where Emilia Pardo Bazán, Reproduction, and Change 231 He wants me to be”) in a resolution that disquiets our reading in equal measure.2 This depth is but one reason why I make a point in the introduction of describing Pardo Bazán, who was a vocal proponent of women’s rights, as the bookend to my thinking on sexual selection. She is the only woman writer here included, and her visible engagement with Darwin and issues of social justice alike brings a culminating perspective to this study. Darwin emphasized “Duty!” (The Descent, 1:70), but he overlooked the costs involved in the reproductive practices he sought to understand. Men and women do not share an equal burden at the various stages of parental investment, and Pardo Bazán brought attention to this imbalance as amplified in the cultural context of “maternal sacrifice” and community welfare. These are problematic corollaries to Darwin’s theory that must be taken into account. Moreover, it is also the case that today questions about Pardo Bazán’s fiction elicit questions about her feminism. The issue is less about the degree to which her novels conform to her theoretical writings on naturalism in favor of what her life and politics say about the movement for women’s emancipation at the end of the nineteenth century.3 Still, matters of genre remain integral to readings of alternative models for Spanish womanhood in Pardo Bazán, that is, of models that break with the traditional role of the domestic angel. In the 1890s, Pardo Bazán published two novels, Doña Milagros (1894) and Memorias de un solterón (1896), as complementary pieces in a series titled Adán y Eva (Ciclo), and together they capture the tensions that went along with being a woman writer intent upon reform in a culture where any literata was perceived as a threat to the status quo of male dominance.4 To clarify, as a Spanish woman writer Pardo Bazán is singular for her novelistic consideration of Darwin’s science during this particular period. Hence, in many respects the matters of genre that still matter most for readings of Pardo Bazán have to do with misgivings about the perceived influence of “evolutionary determinism ” on her realism as it circumscribes female agency in a society defined by sexual inequalities. Consequently, these novels, for their lack of closure on feminist issues, also have a lot to reveal about Darwin’s theory. Doña Milagros tells the story of an incompetent father, Benicio Neira, and the demise of a household that collapses under the weight of his loveless marriage to Ilda, who dies from the reproductive toll of eighteen pregnancies, twelve surviving offspring, and a deep resentment...