Fictions of the Feminine in the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Press by Lou Charnon-Deutsch (review)

have changed over time. William McCarthy addresses the subject ofreconstructed reception in his essay on Anna Letitia Barbauld, a poet whose place in the Romantic canon seemed assured at her death in 1825. McCarthy posits that Barbauld's works essentially dropped out ofsight due to the "vicissitudes ofclass and gender politics not unknown to historians: the fate of middle-class liberalism , changes in the stance of'serious' writers toward the middle-class public, contested ideas of'woman' and 'her place'" (167). Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt are noted for their fine historical research in recovering and repositioning texts associated with feminist scholarship. Not surprisingly then, the collection ofessays they have assembled in Romanticism andWomen Poets: Openingthe Doors ofReception, along with the rigorous scholarship ofthe individual authors themselves, is important in (re)opening the doors of reception and enabling many of these gifted women poets to take their rightful places in a predominantly patriarchal Romantic canon that has remained relatively unchanged for most oftwo centuries. Their title's paraphrase of William Blake is certainly well-chosen in that the cleansing effects ofthis book on preconceived notions ofRomantic women poets exposes the infinite possibilities that exist behind these formerly closed doors ofreception, % Lou Charnon-Deutsch. Fictions ofthe Feminine in the NineteenthCentury Spanish Press. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. 307p. Margaret Van Epp Salazar University of Idaho Fictions ofthe Feminine in the Nineteenth-CenturySpanish Press, by Lou CharnonDeutsch , is a book that definitely "entrapor los ojos" [delights the eye]. Containing 192 reproductions of illustrations taken from nineteenth-century Spanish weekly illustrated magazines, especially La Ilustración EspañoUy Americana, La Ilustración Artística, La Ilustración Ibérica, Madrid Cómico, and BUnco y Negro, Fictions ofthe Feminine is a book that any student ofnineteenth-century Spanish culture, and indeed, oftwentieth-century Spanish culture, would want to have in his or her personal library. At the same time, FictionsoftheFeminine is an in-depth analysis ofthe production ofthe feminine ideal in the Spanish magazine industry of the nineteenth century. Divided into six chapters,"The Naturalization of Feminine Nature," "Family Values," "The Queen's Body," "The Economy of the Image, The Imaging of the Economy," "Exoticism and the Sexual Politics of Difference," and "Death BeIM + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2000 comes Her," Charnon-Deutsch's work explores a wide range oftypes ofimages to illustrate her thesis: that image making as a concrete social practice was used to confirm sexual, racial, and ethnic differences fostered by the emerging bourgeois ideology. Terming the overall ideological field of the illustrated magazines as "masculinist," the text explores the dynamics of visual response and its possible role in gender ideology and relationships in the high-quality graphic images contained in them. It would be difficult to contest the general interpretations and conclusions of this study. Charnon-Deutsch uses textual quotations from the captions and text related to the images to clarify and problematize what otherwise might appear to be innocent images, showing the chauvinistic nature oftheir use. Her analyses also take into account the manner in which the images were displayed within the magazine, and the juxtaposition of images on the same page. Nevertheless, and as Charnon-Deutsch recognizes, interpretation ofimages is subjective and often arbitrary, and at times her reading ofcertain images is controversial . One might wonder if specific interpretations were superimposed on images instead of emerging from them. For example, in the interpretation of F. Eisenhut, "Botín de Guerra" [War Booty], which depicts a captive woman being examined by a sultan widi all his entourage looking at her, the position of the woman's body is seen byCharnon-Deutsch to be determined by a desire to give "a better perspective (for the male reader) from which to judge ... [her] charms..." (203). I find the interpretation surprising, because the defiance and strength of the woman depicted are what most impress me. In the section on family values, one might question specific interpretations of some ofthe images, even as the general theory being put forward holds. Her observation that "to a casual eye, it mayseem that there was no such thing as a desirable mother," in reference to the illustration for M. Fernández...