Histories, Cultures, and National Identities: Women Writing Spain, 1877-1984 (review)

In Histories, Cultures, and National Identities: Women Writing Spain, 1877-1984, Christine Arkinstall examines the literary contributions to cultural thought and nation-building of three women authors from Spain: Rosario de Acuña (1850-1923), Ángela Figuera (1902-84), and Rosa Chacel (1898-1984). This analysis aims to show how these writers, whose work has not figured as prominently as that of their male counterparts in critical studies of Spanish literature, played a role in the shaping of liberal thought and the concept of nation in Spain. Her study shows how these writers both advocated for and critiqued the liberal project.

Arkinstall begins by detailing the historical, political, and literary contexts for each author, clearly outlining the trajectory of liberal thought in Spain since the mid-nineteenth century, and positioning each author's work within this framework, providing a thorough understanding of how sociopolitical and cultural factors informed their texts. The authors considered in this book represent various literary styles, genres, and periods, offering a more complete understanding of the contributions of women writers to contemporary Spanish literature.

Part 1, entitled "Representing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Rosario de Acuña and the Liberal Debate," analyzes three plays written by Acuña, namely Amor á la patria (1877), Tribunales de venganza (1880), and El Padre Juan (1891). Arkinstall looks at how each play addresses the idea of the Spanish nation, advocating for certain aspects of the liberal agenda and critiquing others. This section delves into the characters and their motivations, as representative of the elements of liberal thought essential to Acuña's envisioning of Spain as nation. Although Arkinstall demonstrates how Acuña's plays affirmed many of the liberal ideals of the time, this examination also finds that Acuña was highly critical of liberalism's continued gender bias, the role of the clergy in some liberal factions, and the negative effects of a new economic individualism.

In part 2, "The Spanish Civil War and Franco Dictatorship: History as Trauma and Wound in Ángela Figuera's Poetic Work," Arkinstall considers the connection between Figuera's poetry and liberal thought in Spain, during the years of the Franco dictatorship. This section looks at several of Figuera's poems, mainly from the collections Belleza cruel (1958) and Toco la tierra: Letanías (1962). Basing much of her analysis in trauma theory, Arkinstall shows how the poet subverts the official discourse that portrayed Spanish history as a continuum of conservative ideals that erased a liberal history. Figuera imbues Catholic iconography and motifs with new meanings, exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty of the dictatorship and the difficult conditions imposed on its people. Arkinstall reads Figuera's work as an expression of trauma, searching for protection from further suffering and hoping to find resolution to psychic damage. This analysis highlights the role of memory, as these poems remind the reader of past wounds and keep the exiled and dead alive in the collective memory. Additionally, Arkinstall shows how the poems challenge the masculine articulation of religious and political discourse of the dictatorship. In this section of her study, Arkinstall shows how Figuera contributed an alternate vision of Spanish identity, disrupting hegemonic discourses and offering new meanings to established conceptualizations.

Part 3, "Recovering Cultural History in Post-Franco Spain: Rosa Chacel's Novels of Memory," looks at the first two novels of Chacel's trilogy, Barrio de Maravillas (1976) and Acrópolis (1984). Arkinstall reads Chacel's novels as a recuperation of the Spanish modernist movements of the past, beginning a new history of the artistic project that was abruptly interrupted by civil war and dictatorship. This section highlights Chacel's importance to the creation of a new identity in post-Franco Spain. Applying Pierre Nora's concept of lieu de mémoire, or a place of memory, Arkinstall explores the novels' recuperation and establishment of a generation, in which history and memory combine to reveal the significance of the modernist...