Gender and Nation in the Spanish Modernist Novel

1: Women and the Soul of Spain

 CHAPTER 1 WomenandtheSoulofSpain eory and reality diverged sharply over women’s place in the Spanish national landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century. e maleauthored theory of the nature of Spain, which often allied women with the Krausist-inspired transcendental notion of an eternal Spanish tradition or Spanish national soul, clashed with the reality of women’s increasingly immanent and concrete role in a rapidly changing national public life. e end-of-the-century identity crisis, brought on by an increasing awareness of Spain’s backwardness compared to the rest of Europe and the loss of the remnant of empire in , prompted a search for what José Antonio Maravall () calls “españolidad.” Some believed that if only its essential nature were identified, Spain could be set on an authentic and unerring course for the future. is chapter looks at several turn-of-the-century narratives—Miguel de Unamuno’s Paz en la guerra (), María Martínez Sierra’s Tú eres la paz (), José Martínez Ruiz’s (Azorín’s) El alma castellana () and Castilla ()—that dramatize the search for Spain’s eternal soul, intrahistoria, or tradición eterna. Intrahistorical time is a complex concept that collapses present and past. In the first chapter of En torno al casticismo (published as journal articles in  and as a book in ), Unamuno posits an eternal tradition that informs the present; thus, the present always carries the past within it: “Pero si hay un presente histórico, es por haber una tradición del presente, porque la tradición es la sustancia de la historia” (, ). Present historical events are but waves on the vast permanent intrahistorical sea: Las olas de la Historia, con su rumor y su espuma, que reverbera al sol, ruedan sobre un mar continuo, hondo inmensamente más hondo que la JohnsonFinalPages 10/8/03, 11:19 AM 31  Gender and Nation in the Spanish Modernist Novel capa que ondula sobre un mar silencioso y a cuyo último fondo nunca llega el sol. Todo lo que cuentan a diario los periódicos, la historia toda del presente momento histórico, no es sino la superficie del mar, una superficie que se hiela y cristaliza en los libros y registros, y una vez cristalizada así, una capa dura, no mayor con respecto a la vida intra-histórica que esta pobre corteza en que vivimos con relación al inmenso foco ardiente que lleva dentro. () [e waves of history, with their sound and foam that reverberate beneath the sun, roll over a continuous, deep sea, immensely deeper than the layer that undulates on top of a silent sea whose depth the sun never reaches. All that newspapers daily report, all history of the present moment, is nothing more than the surface of the sea, a surface that freezes over and crystallizes in books and registries, and once so crystallized, forms a hard layer, no more important with respect to intrahistoric life than the relation of the poor rind in which we live to the immense burning center it carries within.] Although theoretically intrahistoria is not specifically female, by removing it from the urban newspaper-worthy events that we associate with men and aligning it with rural labors in which women traditionally played a significant role, Unamuno opens it up to a female and domestic dimension . Other adjectives and metaphors in this key passage similarly imbue his concept of intrahistoria with a feminine cast: “La oscura y silenciosa labor cotidiana y eterna, esa labor que, como la de las madréporas suboce ánicas, echa las bases sobre que se alzan los islotes de la historia” () [the dark and silent daily and eternal work, this labor that, like that of the suboceanic madrepores, establishes the bases upon which the islands of history rise]. As we see in a passage quoted later, Unamuno also allies farm labor with women. Unamuno was a master of insinuating metaphor (here the sea image , which from ancient times has been associated with women and the maternal), and the silence typically associated with women is ubiquitous in the depictions of intrahistorical life: Sobre el silencio augusto . . . se apoya y vive el sonido; sobre la inmensa Humanidad silenciosa se levantan los que meten bulla en la Historia. Esa JohnsonFinalPages 10/8/03, 11:19 AM 32 Women and the Soul of Spain  vida intra-histórica, silenciosa y continua como el fondo mismo del mar, es...