Constructing Spanish Womanhood. Female Identity in Modern Spain (review)

298 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies to have the performances of The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria cancelled because of his dissatisfaction with Marsillach's direction . Marsillach does not hesitate to express negative opinions about the talent and/ or personal intergrity of a number of wellknown figures from Spanish theater. One especially interesting item discussed in the book is the impact of the visit of The Living Theater on Spanish theater. Yet anecdote often receives more emphasis than indepth analysis, and the absence of an index is a frustrating liability. Marsillach's memoirs end with an account ofthe diagnosis and treatment ofthe prostate cancer with which he has lived for the past few years. He shows great courage in sharing many intimate details of his life, even when they are not entirely flattering. Despite some undeniable limitations which cause this reader to wonder about how much more this work could have provided, all professionals interested in the past half century of Spanish theater should be grateful to Adolfo Marsillach for presenting this account of his life in the theater. Peter L. Podol Lock Haven University Constructing Spanish Womanhood. Femcde Identity in Modern Spain State University of New York Press, 1999 Edited by Victoria Lorée Enders and Pamela Beth Radcliff Constructing Spanish Womanhood is divided into three sections, each of which examines a different aspect ofthe construction of female identity. The first section, entitled "Sociocultural Models: Prescribing Female Identities," explores the institutionalization of the separate spheres model of gender identity that consigned women, regardless of their class or status, to a purely domestic role. In the most important essay ofthe volume, Mary Nash analyzes the representation of women in the media, charting the modernization of gender roles, tracing the transformation of discourse on women from a moral to a more scientific basis in modern medicine at the turn ofthe century. Aurora Morcillo, MarÃ-a Escudero and Clotilde Puértolas each examine the official support of separate ideological spheres embodied in the cultural institutions ofthe Franco dictatorship. In this section they study the role and perception of women in the Spanish university system, the treatment of gender in primary school textbooks and the relationship between Navarrese national identity and gender in the context of that region's popular San FermÃ-n festival. In contrast to these overall static visions of prescribed behavior, the other two sections, "Work Identities" and "Political Identities" elaborate the more fluid, contested boundaries of the lives of Spanish women. "Work Identities" goes far towards a redefinition of women's work. The tendency to equate work with wage work outside the home has reduced the tasks of many females, in the minds of historians in the past, to nonwork and subordinated their identities as workers to that of their other important identities as wives and mothers. Rosa Capel focuses on the identity of the cigarreras, female employees in the tobacco industry whom Capel suggests were successful in self-structuring their roles as female workers. DJ. O'Connor looks at the public identity of the cigarette makeis outside the workplace, especially through the eyes of middle-class observers in the press, popu- Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 299 lar literature and theater. Tim Rees and Heidi Kelly address the problem of women's work in rural society and chronicle the amazing variety of women's roles and jobs that have escaped standard historical classification . The last section, "Political Identities," shifts the focus to politics. Like work, politics has almost always been viewed as an exclusively masculine realm. The fact that women everywhere were denied political citizenship for most of the modern period formalized their exclusion from politics— especially in Spain, where this lack of access to public decision-making processes lasted until 1976 (with the brief exception ofthe Second Republic from 1931 to 1936). The essays in this section argue, however, that even the assumption that politics is gendered and male should be reconsidered and they provide specific examples of how issues defined as private sphere concerns invaded the political realm in ways that diluted the supposed boundary between the two. Sarah White explores the relationship between concepts of liberty, honor, and order as they relate...