Description
Book SynopsisThe ways in which women have historically authorized themselves to write on war has blurred conventionally gendered lines, intertwining the personal with the political. Women on War in Spain’s Long Nineteenth Century explores, through feminist lenses, the cultural representations of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish women’s texts on war.
Reshaping the current knowledge and understanding of key female authors in Spain’s fin de siècle, this book examines works by notable writers including Rosario de Acuña, Blanca de los Rios, Concepción Arenal, and Carmen de Burgos as they engage with the War of Independence, the Third Carlist War, Spain’s colonial wars, and World War I. The selected works foreground how women’s representations of war can challenge masculine conceptualizations of public and domestic spheres. Christine Arkinstall analyses the works’ overarching themes and symbols, such as honour, blood,
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: From behind the Lines to Writing War’s Texts: Redrawing the Boundaries of War and Gender 1. Love of Nation and Women’s Citizenship in Rosario de Acuña’s Amor a la patria (1877) 2. Gender, Casticismo, and Imperial Nations in Spain’s fin de siècle: Blanca de los Ríos’s Sangre española (1899) 3. Charity, Patria, and Painting War’s Pain: Concepción Arenal’s Writings, 1869–79 4. The Monstrosity of War and Justpeace: Concepción Arenal’s Cuadros de la guerra and Ensayo sobre el Derecho de Gentes 5. Getting Intimate with Empire: Fin-de-Siècle Women Writing a Psychology of the Disaster 6. Disordering the Imperial Home: Blanca de los Ríos’s La niña de Sanabria (1907) 7. Purity of Blood in the National Family? Spain’s War in Morocco in Carmen de Burgos’s En la guerra (Episodios de Melilla) (1909) 8. Between Feminist Aspirations and Pacifist Ideals: Burgos’s Essays on World War I and Women in War 9. Denouncing War’s Broken Syntax: Burgos’s World War I Novellas Conclusion: Transforming Moral Maps, Then and Now Notes References Index
