Full Description
Late nineteenth-century Spanish fiction is populated by adulteresses, prostitutes, seduced women, and emasculated men - indicating an almost obsessive interest in gender deviance. In Marginal Subjects, Akiko Tsuchiya shows how the figure of the deviant woman-and her counterpart, the feminized man - revealed the ambivalence of literary writers towards new methods of social control in Restoration Spain.
Focusing on works by major realist authors such as Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán, and Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), as well as popular novelists like Eduardo López Bago, Marginal Subjects argues that these archetypes were used to channel collective anxieties about sexuality, class, race, and nation. Tsuchiya also draws on medical and anthropological texts and illustrated periodicals to locate literary works within larger cultural debates. Marginal Subjects is a riveting exploration of why realist and naturalist narratives were so invested in representing gender deviance in fin-de-siècle Spain.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Credits
Notes on the Translations
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Discourses on Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Spain
The Deviant Female Body Under Surveillance: GaldÓs's La desheredada
"Las Micaelas por fuera y por dentro": Discipline and Resistance in Fortunata y Jacinta
Consuming Subjects: Female Reading and Deviant Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Spain
Gender Trouble and the Crisis of Masculinity in the fin-de-siglo: ClarÍn's Su Único hijo and Pardo BazÁn's Memorias de un solterÓn
Gender, Orientalism, and the Performance of National Identity in Pardo BazÁn's InsolaciÓn
Taming the Prostitute's Body: Desire, Knowledge, and the Naturalist Gaze in LÓpez Bago's La prostituta series
Female Subjectivity and Agency in Matilde Cherner's MarÍa Magdalena
Conclusion
Works Cited
