Gies 1 María Rosa Gálvez de Cabrera, La familia a la moda (1805), and the Multiple Anxieties of Late Nineteenth-Century Spain David T. Gies University of Virginia When Benito Pérez Galdós put the following declaration into the mouth of Juanito Santa Cruz in his masterwork Fortunata y Jacinta (1886) he was merely echoing —with a new middle-class economic twist, of course— what had been for centuries the dominant masculinist opinion toward women. "El marido piensa en sus negocios, la mujer en las cosas de la casa," proclaimed El Delfín (518). While early in the eighteenth century Benito Jerónimo Feijoo had challenged the prevailing view that women were relatively useless objects, advancement toward equality of the sexes was nonetheless a slow, if deliberate, phenomenon. The Spanish nineteenth century was rife with debates about the status of women (see Jagoe; Johnson and Zubiaurre; Sánchez Llama), and those debates frequently wrapped themselves in and around discussions of other social issues. Anxiety about gender (a woman's place as "ángel del hogar" [see Aldaraca]) provoked heated controversies concerning women's education, women's role in the family, women's rights, women's place in society, women's access to economic security, and women's (putative) physical limitations. As Catherine Jagoe explains: Se había debatido el papel de la mujer en muchas épocas anteriores, pero quizás nunca con tanto ahínco como en el siglo diecinueve. El concepto 'mujer' fue obsesivamente discutido. Sobre todo a partir de 1840, se publicaron innumerables tratados, artículos, monografías, antologías y discursos describiendo la naturaleza de la mujer y prescribiendo su papel en la sociedad. ("La misión de la mujer" 23) 1 1 Anna Caballé echoes this thought: "La supuesta ineptitud femenina para acceder a la Cultura —y no como meras aficionadas— apenas si había sido impugnada, durante siglos, por algunas valientes mujeres [...] que ya reclamaron su deseo de conocer el mundo desde una cl ave que les fuera propia. Pero fu e en el siglo XIX cuando esa aspiración rompería los diques de la servidumbre intelectual y alzaría, poderosa, su propia voz" (13).
Transcript
Gies 1
María Rosa Gálvez de Cabrera, La familia a la moda (1805), and the
Multiple Anxieties of Late Nineteenth-Century Spain
David T. Gies University of Virginia
When Benito Pérez Galdós put the following declaration into the mouth of Juanito Santa
Cruz in his masterwork Fortunata y Jacinta (1886) he was merely echoing —with a new
middle-class economic twist, of course— what had been for centuries the dominant
masculinist opinion toward women. "El marido piensa en sus negocios, la mujer en las
cosas de la casa," proclaimed El Delfín (518). While early in the eighteenth century
Benito Jerónimo Feijoo had challenged the prevailing view that women were relatively
useless objects, advancement toward equality of the sexes was nonetheless a slow, if
deliberate, phenomenon. The Spanish nineteenth century was rife with debates about the
status of women (see Jagoe; Johnson and Zubiaurre; Sánchez Llama), and those debates
frequently wrapped themselves in and around discussions of other social issues. Anxiety
about gender (a woman's place as "ángel del hogar" [see Aldaraca]) provoked heated
controversies concerning women's education, women's role in the family, women's rights,
women's place in society, women's access to economic security , and women's (putative)
physical limitations. As Catherine Jagoe explains:
Se había debatido el papel de la mujer en muchas épocas anterio res, pero quizás nunca con tanto ahínco como en el siglo diecinueve. El concepto 'mujer' fue obsesivamente discutido. Sobre todo a partir de 1840, se publicaron innumerables tratados, artículos, monografías, antologías y discursos des cribiendo la naturaleza de la mujer y prescribiendo su papel en la sociedad. ("La misión de la mujer" 23)1
1 Anna Caballé echoes this thought: "La supuesta ineptitud femenina para acceder a la Cultura —y no como meras aficionadas— apenas si había sido impugnada, durante siglos, por algunas valientes mujeres [...] que ya reclamaron su deseo de conocer el mundo desde una cl ave que les fuera propia. Pero fue en el siglo XIX cuando esa aspiración rompería los diques de la servidumbre intelectual y alzaría, poderosa, su propia voz" (13).
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Dozens of men and women entered the debate, and voiced their views in novels,
newspaper articles, essays, medical tracts, and psychology books. It is in the theater,
however, where one finds some of the most immediate, perceptive, subtle, and
entertaining commentary on "the woman question." Julia Bordiga Grinstein has identified
more than twenty women dramatists from the eighteenth century ("Panorama"), and other
scholars have uncovered dozens of women dramatists in the nineteenth century, most of
whom —with the exception of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda— have been
underappreciated and understudied (Simón Palmer, Hormigón, Gies). As Susan
Kirkpatrick has aptly noted, the theater "was the arena of a much-repeated aesthetic
representation of the paradigm of gender difference that would govern both political and
literary discourse for the rest of the century" (243).
One can hardly make feminist claims for pre-feminist times,2 but it is undeniable
that numerous women, by the mere fact of writing and publishing in a male-dominated
world, can be viewed as important voices, however understated or unassuming they
might be, in the growing debate. Women dramatists not only challenged many of the
most egregious limitations and "rules" concerning their place in society, but also
provoked strong (read: misogynistic) responses from their male counterparts. Women
did not speak with one voice, of course, and consequently they weighed in on all sides of
the clamorous discussions, from the most rigorous support of the status quo to the most
riotous denunciation of it.
In addition, it was not merely the "woman question" that preoccupied Spanish
intellectuals during the second half of the century. The rise of nationalism, the concern
(obsession) for money and social status, the values of the growing middle class, the role
of education, and the fear of gambling also dominated discourse of all types (see Cruz).
In many ways, these concerns were connected, tied together in the minds of writers and
thinkers who struggled to understand the country, not as it was, but as it was becoming.
At the forefront of those discussions is a dramatist from the earliest years of the
century, M aría Rosa Gálvez de Cabrera. Gálvez is often considered to be a last-gasp
2 Daniel Whitaker does point out, however, that Gálvez writes with "una voz femenina que hoy quizás clasi ficaríamos de feminista" ("La mujer ilustrada" 1551). He likewis e notes that she managed to "criticar más el status quo femenino de su propio periodo que vari as dramaturgas de la posguerra en pleno siglo XX" (1558).
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writer of Enlightened and Neoclassical works (her Obras dramáticas were published in
1804, and she died in 1806).3 Indeed, several of her seventeen works for the theater
situate themselves in open dialogue with Neoclassical plays. One such example is the
thematic overlap between Leandro Fernández de Moratín's famous comedy La comedia
nueva and her Los figurones literarios (Whitaker "Los figurones"), and there are clear
synchronicities between M oratín's El sí de las niñas and La familia a la moda. Yet in
many ways Gálvez, rather than (or, in addition to) being an echo of the past, can be
considered to be a prescient thinker who anticipated many of the themes and concerns of
the later nineteenth century. Her well-known La familia a la moda (1805), often viewed
as a straight-forward comedy of manners ("una comedia de costumbres contemporáneas,"
in the words of René Andioc ["Introducción" 20], becomes —when read through the
prism of gender, economy, social mobility, and class— something more than that.
Indeed, it becomes a complex and subtle mediation on many of the issues that would
inform, infuriate, and puzzle Spanish society for the next two hundred years. Juan
Antonio Hormigón suggests how Gálvez anticipates at least one aspect of those anxieties
(the corrupt nature of excessive gambling):
Sin embargo, en [esta comedia] encontramos un tema que no dejará de tener descendencia durante todo el siglo XIX. Algunas novelas de Galdós parecen simples desarrollos de esta comedia. Y eso por no hablar de El jugador [The Gambler] de Dostoievski o El jardín de los cerezos [The Cherry Orchard ] de Chejov. No se trata de señalar in fluencias (sin duda no las hubo) sino de mostrar que María Rosa Galvez supo enunciar una de las grandes preocupaciones del siglo que empieza. (500)
It is therefore not an exaggeration to claim that Gálvez anticipates many of the most
important themes of late nineteenth-century Spain: the superficiality of the middle class,
the economic anxiety and obsession with money, the issue of gambling, and the role of
women in a society structured and controlled mostly by men. What I would like to do
here is lay out some of the details as revealed in La familia a la moda and then provide a
few examples from later plays that pick up on the topics Gálvez addresses in her comedy.
Gálvez grew up in a world that valued women as nurturing mothers, obedient
daughters, sacrificial partners, or wives dominated by the social desires and economic
interests of their husbands (see Kish, Bolufer, López Cordón, Palacios Fernández), yet 3 See, for example, the excellent studies by Grinstein (La rosa trágica), Lewis, Rudat, and Whitaker.
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her comedy subtly pushes back against such inherited stereotypes. The plot is simple:
Doña Guiomar, widowed sister of Don Canuto de Pimpleas, comes to M adrid from her
native Asturias in order to determine whether or not to leave her substantial inheritance to
the children of her bother and his Frenchified wife, M adama. The niece and nephew,
Inés and Faustino, are evaluated for their suitability , educations, and future prospects.
Gálvez was known to be the writer of strong women (we think of Isabel in La
delirante, Florinda, Blanca de Rossi, Zinda, or Safo), and a determined woman herself.
When her own marriage failed, she even went so far as to ask for a separation from her
husband: "No poco valor debió de mostrar, siendo mujer, para pedir la separación
matrimonial...." (Andioc, "Introducción" 11).4 She chaffed at the inherent sexism of her
day, anticipating the possibly negative response she would receive as she attempted to
stage her plays. In the foreword to her tragedy Alí-Bek she wrote, with a combination of
defensive and offensive arguments, "La novedad de ser esta composición obra de una
señora española, la del asunto mismo, [...] dan a la autora fundadas esperanzas de que la
crítica de este drama será juiciosa y urbana" (cited in Andioc, "Introducción" 19). Sure
enough, the anonymous reviewer of the play in the Madrid newspaper Memorial
Literario (November 1801) claimed that science and other intellectual pursuits demanded
"talentos superiores, estudios profundos y trabajos continuos" (Andioc, "Introducción"
20) talents which, presumably, a woman dramatist lacked. La familia a la moda itself was
initially rejected by the censors when it was sent in for approval in 1804.
It should be no surprise, then, that Guiomar presents herself as a strong-willed,
confident protagonist. In the opening sequence of La familia a la moda the servants
Teresa and Pablo are already complaining that she is shaking them out of their stupor too
early ("¿Aquí, que reina la moda / con imperio soberano, por Doña Guiomar temprano / a
un lacayo se incomoda? / Mira, no más que las nueve / son, y me hace levantar..."
[116]).5 Guiomar knows her personal value, the worth of her estate (she has more than a
million reales [141]), and her social status. She enters the scene "ricamente vestida" but
"a lo antiguo" (119) signaling both the traditional nature of her values and her acquisitive
4 Jones adds some interesting details to her biography. 5 All references to the Andioc edition (2001). Another good modern edition is that of Fernando Doménech, who points out that "La familia a la moda [...] dista mucho de ser una comedia de inocente crítica doméstica, una pura diversión" (40).
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power. She is discrete, moral, frank, sure of herself, and intelligent. Yet her Madrid
relatives consider her to be crude (a "tosca figura" [165]) and uncultured, simply because
she hails from Asturias.
Guiomar quietly resists the metaphorical entrapment of women when she
expresses a desire to "liberate" Inés from the convent cell in which she has been educated
("la he querido libertar, / que encerrada no ha de estar / sin votos ni vocación" (182).6
The dilemma of this Inés anticipates that of a more famous Inés from Zorrilla's 1844 Don
Juan Tenorio, who likewise finds herself trapped behind convent walls ("Pobre garza
enjaulada" in Zorrilla's phrase, a familiar trope throughout the nineteenth century). And
Inés is merely a commodity to her parents, a means of upward mobility (Doña Irene in
Moratín's El sí de las niñas expresses similar ambitions); as Canuto says to Guiomar,
"Aunque quiere meter monja / mi esposa a mi hija Inés, / si se la das al Marqués, / me
harás una gran lisonja" (148).
The commodification of women intensifies later in the drama when Faustino,
wishing to display his modern qualities by dancing a "contradanza inglesa," grabs as his
partner not a woman, but a chair:
CANUTO: No sé si me acordaré de cuánto fue aquella puesta de la sota que aún la debo. FAUSTINO (bailando con una silla): Lan, larán... Esta que llevo mi pareja manifiesta. ¡Gran salida! (197)7
(A similar event reoccurs in José María Gutiérrez de Alba's 1851 misogynist comedy,
Una mujer literata). Faustino is rude not only to Guiomar, but to his mother as well; he
only obeys masculine authority in the play. For him, "El diablo son las mujeres" (162).
Such casual disdain for women reflects not the author's view, but rather the 6 Emphasis added. Andioc points readers to the law of 1776 (Novísima Recopilación, Lib. X, tít. II, ley IX) which seemed to empower young people to be able to avoid fo rced marriage, a law that was scaled back on 10 April 1803 (Novísima Recopilación, Lib. X, tít. II, ley XVIII) by declaring that the head of the family was not obliged to "dar la razón ni explicar la causa de su resistencia o diseño." As Andioc notes, "Doña Guiomar conoce pues la ley, sustituyendo incluso a los padres para hacerla respetar como manda, idealmente, la justicia" (175). 7 Andioc identifies a possible precedent for this scene in Juan Antonio Zamácola's 1976 satire, Elementos de la ciencia contradanzaria para que los Currutacos, Pirracas y Madamitas del Nuevo Cuño puedan aprender por principios a bailar las contradanzas por sí solo o con las sillas de su casa (78).
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uncomfortable and well-documented reality of Gálvez's day. Gálvez subtly undercuts
Faustino's authority in other ways as well. For example, in this play it is he who is the
gossiper, a role normally ascribed to women, and he is revealed to be ill-mannered when
he immediately addresses his aunt in an overly-familiar fashion ("tú"), and with no
salutation of respect: "Adiós, Guiomar, bien venida; / dame un abrazo al instante" [123]).
Guiomar takes note of his insolence, and asks the servant girl, "¿...qué pillo es éste / que
así me habla y se propasa?" (123-124). With dripping irony, she notes, "Es preciso
confesar, / por lo que llego a mirar, / que tengo un lindo sobrino" (124). Later on,
Faustino calls her "stingy" ("roñosa") and hits her up for money ("Tía, ¿me das dos
pesetas / que estoy debiendo al cochero?" [177]), to which she responds, "La deuda es tan
decorosa / como aturdido el deudor" (177). In fact, all the men in the work come under
Gálvez's gendered scrutiny. Canuto is a clueless gambler and his son Faustino a self-
centered, gossipy cad. The Marqués is not only poor (not necessarily a negative quality ,
of course, except when he aspires to the hand of Inés), but also a pathological liar. When
he enters the scene, he is depicted as "muy afectado, sin hacer caso de Guiomar" (146).
That is, for him (as a representative of Spanish nobility), women are invisible. Guiomar
misses nothing, and takes note: "Yo puse tu vista en duda, / pues me vio y no me saluda.
/ ¡Qué cortés!" (147). Trapachino, the singing instructor, is vain and superficial; when he
comes on stage, he also treats Guiomar rudely ("¿quién es esta anciana?" [169]), and
when he refuses to lend his arm to accompany her outside, she takes refuge in the
company of her niece ("Inés, dame el brazo a mí, / que, pues este caballero / no me lo
ofrece, yo quiero / ir agrarrada de ti" (212).
The family 's mistreatment of Guiomar continues, and she expresses indignation
that her lazy brother Canuto did not even bother to roust himself from bed to greet her
when she arrived the previous evening. What is more, he complains that she dragged him
out of bed too early —at noon (!), when he is accustomed to rising at 2:00 PM (137).
The comedy deals with more than gender issues. Gálvez also taps into a national
anxiety about the place of Spain in the European landscape, drawing on the late-
eighteenth-century trope of "us" (Spain) vs. "them" (France). The conflict between
traditional Spanish dress and foreign fashions has been well documented (see Haidt and
Zanardi), and Gálvez captures aspects of the debate by pitting Guiomar (who, being from
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the north, is described as "de la escuela antigua" and makes her appearance on stage
"ricamente vestida," as we have seen) against M adama (slave to French fashion who
greets her guest with the astoundingly rude comment, "¡Jesús, qué poco elegante / estás, y
qué mal vestida" [152]). Guiomar, confident in her provincial ways, responds: "Mujer,
pues allá en Laredo / por muy petimetra paso" (153). The national-vs-foreign dichotomy
is maintained in the dress of Trapachino as well, who is described as "vestido
ridículamente a la italiana" (149). Even M adama's servant, Teresa, is contaminated by
this phony foreignness, and opens the play "vestida a la francesa ridículamente" (115).
Such debates were not about fashion at all, of course, but rather about values, ideology,
and the future.
The tension between "lo español" and "lo francés" permeates the play. Even the
servant speaks French (but she is a stubborn, poorly-educated, presumptuous and prideful
character), and M adama's main objection to Carlos, one of her daughter Inés's suitors, is
—simply, but tellingly— that he does not speak French. M adama herself is a vain
shopaholic and a poor housekeeper. She sleeps late (the same moral failing demonstrated
by Josefa in Gutiérrez de Alba's Una mujer literata), thereby shirking her household
duties. She is far from completing the "mission" of being an "ideal woman," as explained
by Jagoe: "Para desempeñar bien su misión, la mujer ideal se levantaba temprano,
presentaba siempre un aspecto limpio, agradable y risueño, y supervisaba atentamente
todas las tareas de las criadas" ("La misión" 33). She surrounds herself with associations
with culture (Trapachino, the Italianized voice instructor) and with nobility (the
Marqués), but both male characters are depicted in equally negative terms. "Lo francés,"
therefore, is connected viscerally to what is disorganized, mean-spirited, and devoid of
depth.
Canuto gambles. Teresa tips the audience off to his vice in the opening sequence
of the play:
TERESA: Por las noches mi señor hasta la una no viene, porque en jugar se entretiene al tresillo o mediator. Estos son juegos de honor cuando es a peseta el tanto. (121)
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While he returned years before from America a rich man, he has frittered away his
fortune and now finds himself in dire straits. When his sister confronts him with the
question, "¿Y es también ser indulgente / arruinarse por jugar?" (143) his response is
dismissive. In fact, one of his main concerns is that if Guiomar does not help them out
financially , he will be deprived of his joy of gambling:
CANUTO: Pero, mujer, nuestro estado considera: si Guiomar no lo alivia, de jugar para siempre estoy privado. (242-243)
The issues seen above in La familia a la moda anticipate a number of themes that
dramatists from the later part of the nineteenth century would return to for analysis and
commentary. I turn first to the issue of money and gambling.
In 1829, Spain had one bank; in 1865 more than 58 such institutions existed. Yet
by 1874, financial crisis and economic uncertainty had reduced that number to less than
two dozen (Tortella 17). The Stock Market, which opened on 20 October 1831, fueled
speculation on a national level, and was often viewed as an extension of individual
incontinence. Families incapable of controlling their personal economies (whether
through gambling on the part of the man, or excessive spending on the part of the
woman) were seen as metaphors for broader political and social problems. By mid-
century, lives were marked by greed, fueled by a rapidly-growing economy, newly
promulgated laws concerning the banking industry, the ability of a larger segment of the
population to invest in new industry (and new schemes), and the ever present danger of
losing it all to undisciplined gambling (whether through gaming or through the newly
created Stock Market). Canuto exemplifies a trend that will be played out in works by —
among many others— the duque de Rivas (Tanto vales cuanto tienes, 1827), Antonio Gil
y Zárate (Don Trifón, o todo por el dinero, 1841), Cipriano López-Salgado (¡El dinero!,
1849), M iguel Pastorfido (La fortuna en las narices, 1856; more business with
inheritance), Ángel M aría Dacarrete (Poderoso caballero es don Dinero, 1857), Manuel
Angelon (La Bolsa, 1858), Juan Alonso y Eguilaz (Una herencia completa, 1858),
Francisco Botella (La mujer de medio siglo, 1858), Antonio García Huerta (La Bolsa y el
bolsillo, 1859), Antonio Alcalde Valladares (Quiero dinero, 1860), Víctor Caballero y
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Valero (Lo que pueden dos millones 1866), and María de Soto y Sáez (La esperanza,
1890). Galdós, of course, institutionalizes the obsession for money and material things in
several of his novels, most notably Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-1887), the Torquemada
series (1889-1895), and Misericordia (1897).8
Several of these plays might provide examples of how Gálvez tapped into
growing anxiety over money, gender, and class that would be revisited later in the
century. The first decade of the Stock M arket saw challenges (debt from the Carlist War)
and opportunities (financing as the railways developed; see Jover and Gómez-Ferrer). In
Gil y Zarate's Don Trifón (1841) the eponymous character gets rich by playing the
market:
Luego con la Bolsa, Los bienes de la nación, Las contratas, las ... En fin, Con su maña y su primor Se ha formado una rentita De casi medio millón. (Act I: Scene 1)
His penchant for taking risk in the market is reflected in his personal life; he confesses,
"M e pillaron en el juego" (Act I: Scene 1). Yet as a gambler, he plans to manipulate the
Stock Market, provoke a governmental crisis, and profit from the fluctuations in stock
prices. Gambling as a personal vice and playing the market are seen not only as
analogous activities, but also as markers of class differences. At the very beginning of
the play, Carlos points to the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the luxury
enjoyed by the capitalist classes and the deprivations of poverty: he comments wryly on
"este lujo, esas alfombras, / tanta lámpara y reló" (Act I: Scene 1). Carlos, the poet,
represents aesthetic values, while Trifón embodies the material, and this conflict is one of
the central axes of Gil y Zárate's play. Trifón speaks almost exclusively of "mucho de
millones, de la Bolsa, del cupón" (Act I: Scene 1), and as a burgeoning nineteenth-
century capitalist, is haughtily proud of that discourse: "Yo, amigo, solo soy ducho / En
ganar dinero mucho" (Act I: Scene 1). As Trifón sees it, and as will be amply played out
8 Richard Young reminds us of the thematic prevalence of money in realist novels in general (185).
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over the course of the nineteenth century, wealth begets power, and power then begets
additional wealth.
Si ser diputado anhelo, Es que a mi negocio miro, Y mi comercio y mi giro Tomará entonces más vuelo: Hallaré del ministerio Siempre abierta la mampara, Suavizándose la cara Del portero adjusto y serio: Podré optar a la cosecha De la mies ministerial Y si sé votar ... tal cual, Tendré una suerte desecha. (Act I: Scene 1).
We note that all of the above observations and quotes are from the very first scene in the
play, where Gil unequivocally sets up his major concerns.
Trifón, like Canuto, has a rich sister who presumably has to be humored and dealt
with. These wealthy women unhinge the men, who then plot, scheme, and prevaricate in
order to return to their view of the natural order, that is, the controlling patriarchy. One
of Leonor's other suitors (she is Trifón's daughter), Livorno, notes the real value of
money for him: "... aun a la más fea cara / El oro la hace divina" (Act III: Scene 1).
Trifón, of course, rejects Carlos in favor of Livorno, simply because poetry is bad
business: "¡Buen negocio! La poesía / no tiene en la Bolsa curso. / ¿Quieres que haga
bancarrota? / Versos no, dinero busco" (Act III: Scene 4). Finally , Trifón gets to the crux
of the matter (as though his position were not already painfully obvious to all concerned):
money is the only thing that matters in today 's world:
Hago bien; Que es hoy el poder del mundo. El gobierna los estados; Y así el artesano oscuro, Como el monarca más grande, Todos le ofrecen su culto. Jóvenes, viejos, mugeres, Nobles, plebeyos, no hay uno Que no se afane por él, O le ponga ceño adjusto. Hasta en virtudes y hazañas El dinero se halla oculto. ¿Estudian? Es por dinero;
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Buscan dinero en los triunfos; Dinero el aúlico pide, Y ansia dinero el tribuno; Por dinero es uno víctima, Y por dinero verdugo. Allá en Asia es discreción Lo que en Europa es absurdo; Pero en Asia y en Europa El dinero es santo y justo. Españoles y franceses, Tártaros, chinos y turcos, Tratándose de dinero, Tienen todos igual gusto, Y en amarlo, aunque enemigos, Nunca discrepan ni un punto. Ni clima, ni religión En esto ejercen su influjo: ¿Es usted hombre? pues basta; El dinero es su Dios único; Y desde el bueno hasta el malo, Desde el sabio hasta el más rudo, Podrá no creer en Dios; Pero en el oro, es seguro. (Act III: Scene 4).
Where Quevedo famously mocked Don Dinero ("Poderoso caballero es don Dinero"), the
new capitalist class openly —and unapologetically— worships him. Trifón's goal of
becoming an elected official is realized, and he immediately seizes on a campaign to
enrich himself even further by manipulating contracts and favoring entities that will help
him "redond[ear] mi caudal" (Act IV: Scene 4). The plot takes a twist, and Trifón loses
his money as the markets crash, but not before he reveals himself (once more?) to be a
self-centered, egotistical capitalist whose only interest is his personal financial wellbeing.
Even the country gets pitched over for his own economic gain: "¡La patria! ¡La patria! Y,
¿qué / Me importa la patria a mí?" (Act IV: Scene 5). Trifón IS the Spanish capitalist
class, and knows it: "La patria soy yo" (Act IV: Scene 5), but he is chastened in the end
when his wife demands:
A tí, Trifón, te aconsejo No juegues más a la Bolsa; No publiques más folletos, Renuncia de diputado El cargo. (Act IV: Scene 12)
Gálvez, Rivas, and Gil y Zárate captured the zeitgeist of the age and set the stage (as it
were) for dozens of similar plays that attempt to reveal, discuss, criticize, and instruct
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their audiences on one of the central issues of the Spanish nineteenth century. These
authors detected the shift early in the century. (Clemencia Larra is still complaining of
such wastrel ways in 1878 in her play, Vicio y virtud, in which M argarita complains that
her husband's gambling has cost them their savings and their house.) As Spain grappled
with the increase in industrial output and the instability of its financial systems, rapid
growth and the creation of new institutions challenged the country 's ability to understand
fully what was happening. "Entre 1850 y 1865 aproximadamente se acumulan tales
progresos materiales, tales invenciones técnicas, que la vida social se modifica en quince
años más de lo que lo había hecho en muchos siglos" (Jover and Gómez Ferrer, "La
difícil modernización" 128). Soon, Galdós would be writing these "agentes de Bolsa"
into novels such as Fortunata y Jacinta, La de Bringas, the Torquemada series, and El
caballero encantado.
The "woman question" likewise preoccupied mid-to-late nineteenth century
Spain, and, just as Gálvez had anticipated, it became the central topic for dozens of plays
written by men and women. Just as some women dramatists (not all, by any means)
wrote to claim rights for their sex (independence, control, a sense of social equality),
some male dramatists (not all) reacted negatively to this developing sense of gendered
entitlement. Catherine Jagoe, Alda Blanco, and Cristina Enriquez de Salamanca provide
ample documentation of the debates on education, child-rearing, genetic composition,
legal status, medical properties, and psychological (in)stability of women (La mujer en
los discursos de género). I have written elsewhere about these issues in women's
dramaturgy (and the male reaction against them), so here I will limit my examples to just
a few that are connected to Gálvez's play.
At first glance, Gálvez seems to present a typical eighteenth-century comedy of
manners, with little suggestion that she would challenge gender stereotypes. In the
dramatis personae listed at the very beginning of the play, each of the female characters is
defined exclusively in her relationship to Don Canuto, as if she were his property:
Madama is "su esposa," Guiomar is "su cuñada", Inés is "hija de" and Teresa is his
"criada." Inés seems to be the obedient daughter, while Guiomar appears to be the brash
interloper who will, in time, receive her comeuppance and be sent packing back to
Asturias. But Gálvez refuses to play to such audience expectations. She seems more
Gies 13
concerned with Guiomar's moral authority , heritage, and financial status. As a widow,
she controls her own fortune and as a "provincial" she is pitted against her putatively
more sophisticated relatives of the capital city .9 She sees clearly what degenerates they
are, that this "familia a la moda," is a superficial, frivolous, poorly educated,
disrespectful, and greedy group. Guiomar ignores their rudeness, and rebuffs their
attempts to manipulate her. She possesses testamentary evidence that her fortune is hers
to dispose of legally; her money will be employed for useful and socially beneficial
purposes (education, an appropriate marriage for Inés). What is more, she possesses the
"word," that is, the final words of the play that bring it all to a peaceful conclusion. Such
strength of character and full agency in the "play" of her life distances her from the
"santa" "misión de la mujer" that Ángela Grassi would postulate in 1857.
Similar fault lines develop in plays written by such women as Josefina García
Balmaseda and Rosario de Acuña, both of whom challenged the status quo image of the
"mujer abnegada" or "ángel de la casa." García Balmaseda takes on the issue in Un
pájaro en el garlito (1871), where her strong-willed protagonist Rosario finds herself
stranded at an inn in Ávila on her way to Salamanca (where she has some legal business
to attend to). She is fiercely independent and misandrist (man-hating) because of her
unfortunate experiences as a married woman (she is now a widow):
Han jurado guerra a mi independencia y por eso hallan ridículo cuanto deseo. Bien se conoce que no han sufrido como yo la tiranía de un marido viejo, rico, achacoso, y con celos por añadidura. ¡Oh! ¡qué hermosa es la libertad! (6)
Her brother wants to marry her off again, which she sees as a form of "slavery" (7); she
merely wants to be left alone: "¡Ay! ¡hombres, hombres! Dios os dé la gloria para
dejarnos a nosotras disfrutar las dulzuras de la tierra" (7). She is, of course, much more
9 Widows held special status in the Spanish world. As Amaia Nausia Pimoulier states, since the sixteenth century "tanto legisladores, como moralistas y eclesiásticos centraron su atención en estas mujeres en no pocas ocasiones. Sin un hombre a su lado que las controlase su libertad resultaba, si no peligrosa, preocupante, ¿quién salvaguardaría su honra y castidad? No mentía al afirmar que hallaban a mil que juzgasen sus vidas, pero no es del todo cierto que no encontraran a nadie que remediase sus penas. De hecho los legisladores, conscientes de que sin un marido a su lado las viudas quedaban en una situación vulnerable, dotaron a la figura de la viuda de ciertas ventajas o privilegios que abarcaban desde el ámbito laboral, al proces al o hereditario [...] es un grupo bien delimitado que defiende sus derechos, propiedades y privilegios" (233, 235). The issue comes up over and over again in nineteenth-centu ry Spanish plays. In her play Después de Dios (1889) Rosa de Eguilaz y Renert goes so far as to claim that widowhood was a "don divino" because it accorded the woman a measure of free will to act that other women lacked (12).
Gies 14
shrill and determined than any of Gálvez's protagonists, yet she is also the natural
evolution of the independent Guiomar and the (one hopes) independently educated Inés.
Yet in a surprising (perhaps not so surprising) twist, Rosario falls in love with the
Alberto, whom she met at the inn (he is a fr iend of her brother) and ends up rejecting her
declared independence in order to marry him. Her original view of married life as a type
of enslavement pivots into an acceptance (in fact, a request) for precisely that enslaved
status:
¡Ay! ¡No más independencia! Tu esclava prometo ser, que por algo a la mujer la hizo esclava la experiencia. Yo llevaré con paciencia tu tiranía y rigor; ya no me causa temor, y con placer infinito, voy a dar en el garlito que me preparó el amor. (22)
It seems as though the protagonist capitulates to the status quo, and that García
Balmaseda intends to confirm the subservient role of married women. But, then again, do
her ideas really change? The insertion of the idea that "la experiencia" of being a woman
has made her a slave, and that she is now in a "garlito" (a "trap") undercuts with delicious
irony the putative message of the play. One assumes that the audience understood clearly
the subversive nature of such a message.
But the "slave" charge was taken very seriously by one of the most determined of
the women dramatists, Rosario de Acuña de la Iglesia, whose simple yet corrosive
observation in a letter from 1885 —"mi condición de mujer (es decir, esclava)" (cited in
Álvarez Lázaro 340)— resonated loudly by the end of the century.10 Several years earlier
she went so far as to demand: "Nosotras no debemos esperar nada sino de nosotras
mismas" ("Consecuencias" 95). Acuña penned plays with progressive (ie, anticlerical,
anticapitalist) themes, refusing to accept that women were by definition inferior to men. 10 She goes on: "¡Feliz si allá en los siglos que vendrán, las mujeres, elevadas 'a compañeras de los hombres racionalistas', se acuerdan de las que, haciendo de antemano el sacri ficio de sí mismas, empuñaron la bandera de su personalidad en medio de una sociedad que las considera como mercancí a o botín, y defendieron con la altivez del filósofo, la abnegación del mártir, y la voluntad del héroe sus derechos de 'mitad humana' dispuestas a morir antes que a renunciar a la libertad!" (Álvarez Lázaro 340).
Gies 15
She chaffed at being called a "poetisa de fibra viril" (in a review of her poems published
by Peregrín García Cadena [cited in Pascual Lavilla 132]) and responded in a poem
called "¡Poetisa!" with "no me cuadra / tal palabra, / no la quiero...." When Tribunales de
venganza (1880) was staged at the Teatro Español, Acuña became only the second
woman dramatist to present a play in that theater (Gómez de Avellaneda preceded her,
the same dramatist who had also been dismissed as a "manly" writer). In Tribunales the
heroine Andrea first proclaims "tengo tan libre me albedrío" (37), then assures her lover
Sorolla that "no soy hembra asustadiza" (76) before showing up with the necessary
papers to pardon him from execution (she fails to arrive on time, however, and
subsequently reverts to a trope often seen in earlier melodramas: the crazed woman).
Here, in contrast to Gálvez's model woman who controls the written word (Guiomar's last
will and testament), Acuña's protagonist cannot overcome the social forces that weigh her
down, and in spite of her efforts, she is defeated. Such concerns resonated not only in the
theater of the period, but also in its popular fiction. Susan Kirkpatrick references Alicia
Andreu's work by stating that
Spanish fiction from the 1850s to the 1870s seemed to promise women that through submission in this world and ardent, unwavering faith in the next, they could act as agents of national moral regeneration. This message, echoed in sermons, conduct books, and pedagogical texts, served the interests of the Church, an institution that had suffered considerably under liberal reforms and attempted to combat the anticlericalism of many Spanish men by intensifying the piety of their mothers and wives." (248)
One of the other issues that burbled up frequently in nineteenth-century theater, as we
have noted, was the conflict between "lo español" and "lo francés." Ever since Masson
de M orvillers' ill-conceived attacks on Spanish dignity in 178211 and the long battles
against Napoleon's aggressive imperialism, Spain suffered from an inferiority complex of
sorts vis à vis its northern neighbor. France and All Things French were typically viewed
in contradictory ways. Did France represent a model of high culture or a model of
frivolity and superficiality? Was it an ally or an enemy? Did it offer fresh ways to
negotiate the political tensions of the new century or did it hold too fast to outmoded
ancien règime experiences? Was it beneficial or prejudicial to Spain's development?
11 "Mais que doit-on à l'Espagne? Et depuis deux siècles, depuis quatre, depuis dix, qu'a-t-elle fair pour l'Europe?" (I: 565). For more on this, see my "Francofilia y francofobia."
Gies 16
Such questions could not be answered, of course, but they could be (and were) addressed
in multiple venues, the theater among them. Gálvez identified those tensions, and
worked them into La familia a la moda. We have seen how she dismisses Canuto's wife
"M adama" as a superficial snob, but she undercuts foreign authority in more subtle ways.
When Trapachino learns that Guiomar is a rich widow, his attitude changes (from
dismissing her as an "anciana" he grovels and insures her that "tendré el honor / de ser
vuestro servidor" (169). What a hypocrite. Soon thereafter, while speaking with
Faustino, he complains of having to "Ver a una vieja asquerosa / mascar, haciéndola
plato, / sufrir su maldito flato" (176). At one point, she confronts Trapachino directly ,
pitting her "montañés" lineage against his putatively superior Italianness.
TRAPACHINO: Si acaso por altivez os burláis de mi fineza, sabed que no la merezco, pues más de lo que parezco soy en cuanto a la nobleza. GUIOMAR: Será así si me igualáis, que es montañés mi linaje. (233) ... Este bribón me divierte porque piensa que me engaña. (245)
These foreign sophisticates-versus-the-naive-locals tropes are picked up in the 1830s and
1840s by authors such as Larra, Zorrilla, Eusebio Asquerino, and Manuel Bretón de los
Herreros. The latter dramatist has one of his characters distinguish France from the
French government: "Mas la Francia no es lo mismo / que el gobierno de la Francia" (Un
francés en Cartagena, 1843), but still it is Spanish nationalism that wins the day. The
differences between Spain and France are simply too great to be reconciled: "Vuestros
genios son opuestos [...] hermanos sean / el español y el francés, / mas cada uno en su
casa." Several women dramatists return to this paradigm after 1854 —Enriqueta Lozano
de Vilchez in María o la abnegación, Rosario de Acuña in Amor a la patria (1876), and
Josefa María Farnés in Elena de Villiers (1884), among— each of them presenting views
anticipated by Gálvez decades earlier.
Space limitations prohibit further elaboration (hundreds of examples could be
adduced) but I hope it is clear that many of the most problematic concerns of the latter
half of the Spanish nineteenth century swirling around money, gender, class, and
Gies 17
nationality can be detected in M aría Rosa Gálvez de Cabrera's early ground-breaking
comedy, La familia a la moda (1805).
WORKS CITED
Acuña, Rosario de. "Consecuencias de la degeneración femenina." Las Dominicales del
Libre Pensamiento (25 April 1888). Reproduced in Johnson and Zubiaurre,
Antología, 93-102.
___. Tribunales de venganza. Drama trágico-historico en dos actos y epílogo, original y
en verso. M adrid: Hijos de A. Gullón, 1880.
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Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1991.
——. "The M edical Construction of the Feminine Subject in Nineteenth-Century Spain."
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Literary Criticism. Ed. Hernán Vidal. M inneapolis: Institute for the Study of
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Álvarez Lázaro, Pedro F. Masonería y librepensamiento en la España de la
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de Salamanca, 2001. 7-101.
——. Teatro y sociedad en el Madrid del siglo XVIII. 2nd. ed. M adrid: Castalia, 1988.
Bolufer Peruga, M ónica. Mujeres e I lustración: La construcción de la feminidad en la
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Caballé, Anna. El feminismo en España. La lenta conquista de un derecho. Madrid:
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Cepeda Gómez, Paloma. "La situación jurídica de la mujer en España durante el Antiguo
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Cruz, Jesús. The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain. Baton
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Doménech, Fernando. "Estudio preliminar." In Gálvez, M aría Rosa de. Safo, Zinda, La
familia a la moda. Ed. Fernando Doménech. Madrid: Publicaciones de la
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Eguilaz y Renart, Rosa de. Después de Dios. Proverbio en un acto y en verso. Madrid:
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——. Safo, Zinda, La familia a la moda. Ed. Fernando Doménech. Madrid:
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