Women’s Representations from Radical Naturalism to the New Woman Response

The cosmopolitan turn of the twentieth century saw, among many modernizing changes, the feminist “first wave” that opened space for women to wear trousers, smoke, drive, ride bicycles, repair their vehicles, vote, and develop careers. Naturalist writers like the early feminist Emilia Pardo Bazán had developed social critiques in a pessimistic key, highlighting the ways misfortune or rebellion doomed women characters to exile and marked them for death. Pardo Bazán herself, however, and some of the other writers José F. Rojas studies here, also produced another kind of tale, in which the non-conforming woman is no longer relegated to hospital or brothel but strides down modern boulevards unvanquished. This intriguing study invites us to reread Pardo Bazán and Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, Federico Gamboa, and more, paying attention to their critical essays and other lesser-known work as well as the major novels. These observations and analyses are still current in many ways, and the agility of these writers is still to be admired.

Dr. Leslie Bary

Dep of Moden Laguages,

University of Louisiana at Lafayette