Babel Afial nº23 by Babel AFIAL

COMITÉ EDITORIAL Cristina Larkin Galiñanes (Universidad de Vigo) Jorge Juan Figueroa Dorrego (Universidad de Vigo) Beatriz Figueroa Revilla (Universidad de Vigo)

COMITÉ DE REDACCIÓN Antonio Ballesteros González (UNED Madrid) Alexander Bergs (Universidade de Osnabrück) Carlos Buján López (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Marta Cerezo Moreno (UNED Madrid) José Luis Chamosa González (Universidade de León) Juan Antonio Cutillas Espinosa (Universidade de Murcia) Mª Ángeles de la Concha Muñoz (UNED Madrid) María José Domínguez Vázquez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Francisco Garrudo Carabias (Universidade de Sevilla) Constante González Groba (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Manuel González Piñeiro (Universidade de Vigo) Pedro Guardia Masó (Universidade de Barcelona) Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy (Universidade de Murcia) Mª José López Couso (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Ramón López Ortega (Universidade de Extremadura) Manuel Maldonado Alemán (Universidade de Sevilla) Félix Martín Gutiérrez (Universidade Complutense de Madrid) Meike Meliss (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Manuel Míguez Ben (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson (Universidade Autónoma de Barcelona) Victor Mollet Schroder (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Rafael Monroy Casas (Universidade de Murcia) Marita Nadal Blasco (Universidade de Zaragoza) Manuela Palacios González (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) Javier Pérez Guerra (Universidade de Vigo) Margarete Rubik (Universidade de Viena) Veljka Ruzicka Kenfel (Universidade de Vigo) Eduardo Varela Bravo (Universidade de Vigo) BABEL-AFIAL Nº 23; Ano 2014 EDITA Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo Campus de Vigo 36310 VIGO, España IMPRIME Oficode, S.L. ISSN 1132 - 7332 DEP. LEGAL PO - 603 - 02 © Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo, 2014

Índice Artículos Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en Wide Sargasso Sea de Jean Rhys

Mª Teresa González Mínguez Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: On How Female Creativity Combats Madness and Domestic Oppression

Amaia Ibarraran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los estereotipos?

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

Alfred Markey Raising the Green Curtain: Sean O’Faolain, Edward Said and the Defence of the Public Intellectual

101

Verónica Membrive Pérez Echoes of Walter Starkie’s Voice from The Road To Santiago in Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way

121

Irene López Rodríguez Reinforcing the Domestic Role of Women through the Woman as Chicken Metaphor. A Diachronic Study

137

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

ASPECTOS CLAVES Y MODERNIDAD DE LA CULTURA SENTIMENTAL DEL SIGLO XVIII* Fernando Barreiro García. IES Blanco Amor. Ourense fernandobarreiro@edu.xunta.es We would like to draw attention to some characteristics of the eighteenth century sentimental culture, which will be observed by means of its literary production, seen in an inclusive way that has its starting point in a work of the French classical age, Lettres portugaises, and reaches its high period in the 60s and 70s of the eighteenth century, when the works of Sterne, Goethe and Marmontel, among others, were published. Such characteristics, which are noticed as sharing an obvious relevance for the comtemporary period, would be: the interest for privacy and private spaces; the presence of a novelistic subculture, formed by women and young people who use this literary form to assert themselves and resist the least satisfying aspects of the hegemonic culture; the role of enlightened science (medicine, physiology, moral philosophy) and its new dualistic and materialistic trends in the creation of new concepts used in literature; and the importance of the issue of benevolence and its relationship with the wider notion of justice. Key Words: privacy, novel, subculture, materialism, benevolence, justice. Nos proponemos llamar la atención sobre algunas características de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII que serán observadas a través de su producción literaria narrativa, vista en un sentido amplio e inclusivo desde sus orígenes en una obra del clasicismo francés, Lettres portugaises hasta su momento de máximo desarrollo en los años sesenta y setenta del siglo XVIII, cuando se *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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publican las obras de Sterne, Goethe, Marmontel y otros autores. Tales características, en las que descubrimos como rasgo común su relevancia para nuestra época serían: el interés por la intimidad y los espacios privados; la presencia de una subcultura de la novela, formada por mujeres y jóvenes, que utiliza esta forma literaria para afirmarse y resistir aquellos aspectos de la cultura hegemónica menos satisfactorios; el papel de la ciencia ilustrada (medicina, fisiología, filosofía moral) y sus nuevas corrientes dualistas y materialistas en la creación de conceptos usados en la literatura; y la importancia del tema de la benevolencia y su relación con la virtud más amplia de la justicia. Palabras clave: sentimentalismo, privacidad, novela, subcultura, materialismo, benevolencia, justicia. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN El movimiento denominado “Sensibility” ocupa una posición central en el ámbito de la Ilustración británica y se incorpora a la historia social y cultural europea a partir aproximadamente del segundo tercio del siglo XVIII. Podemos considerarlo un concepto transversal y polivalente, en tanto que es tanto una moda social como una tendencia literaria, y, si este segundo aspecto se expresa a través de la novela, el teatro y las publicaciones periódicas, su presencia en la sociedad supone también un considerable impacto en la mentalidad y la cultura de los países centrales de la Europa ilustrada. El uso de los términos asociados al sentimentalismo, que, como veremos, provienen del campo de la fisiología, la medicina y la filosofía moral, no se restringe ni al lenguaje familiar y la novela, ni al de los filósofos, ni a una determinada disciplina científica, sino que está presente en todos estos contextos. En la novela, se suele considerar que el período sentimental se extiende desde la década de los cuarenta, en la que se publican las obras de Richardson, hasta finales de los ochenta y principios de los noventa, momento en que este género, como tendencia dominante en la narrativa inglesa, es sustituida por otras formas, como la narrativa gótica e histórica.

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

Consideramos de interés dirigir la atención hacia los aspectos claves de la cultura sentimental centrándonos en la novela, un género que en este período se aleja de formas idealistas y aristocratizantes (en el ámbito anglosajón se habla de romance en lugar de novel cuando éstas predominan) y se sitúa en la centralidad de la cultura europea. Esta es la temática del clásico The Rise of the Novel de Ian Watt, que ve la novela como la obra propia de una clase media inclinada hacia el realismo en lo literario y el empirismo en lo filosófico. Pero es concretamente el género sentimental, el más identificado con lo novelesco en las décadas centrales del siglo, el que mejor refleja ciertos fenómenos propios de un momento de desarrollo rápido científico, económico y social. Junto a la privacidad burguesa y los principios de la tendencia europea hacia la laicización, presente en la Ilustración materialista, el sentimentalismo da protagonismo a las figuras secundarias de la sociedad patriarcal: las mujeres y los hijos. La subcultura juvenil y femenina es la manera de esos sujetos de asumir esa experiencia. Los paralelismos entre la época actual y el siglo XVIII, a los que nos referiremos en los apartados siguientes y en las conclusiones, permiten adoptar el término “subcultura” a este momento histórico sin caer en el anacronismo. Con una visión amplia e inclusiva del sentimentalismo, que preste atención a sus orígenes lejanos en la literatura del clasicismo francés (especialmente en sus manifestaciones femeninas como la novela amorosa epistolar y la crónica escandalosa) dirigiremos la mirada hacia tres hitos de la literatura europea, separados por un espacio de un siglo aproximadamente y relacionados por la tradición crítica con la literatura sentimental: Lettres portugaises traduites en Français, de Sieur de Guilleragues (1669), Pamela, de Samuel Richardson (1740) y Die Leiden des jungen Werthers de Goethe (1774). El primero y más destacado de los puntos comunes que descubrimos en ellas es la primacía de un espacio privado de personas particulares al que accedemos por el carácter total o parcialmente epistolar de los relatos. 2. PRIVACIDAD Como consecuencia de la epistolaridad y de que las cartas que configuran el relato sean de naturaleza personal y a menudo íntima y

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confesional, el lector se encuentra en una posición de voyeur, con un acceso especial a la vida interior de los personajes, especialmente la rica y poderosa intimidad del personaje central, que sólo en el último caso es explícitamente ficcional.1 La privacidad espiada corresponde en los tres casos (incluso, aunque de modo más discutible, en Pamela) a la de un sujeto enamorado y protagonista de una trama amorosa. El tópico erótico es, sin embargo, objeto de una contextualización social e histórica distinta y la primera gran diferencia está en el género de ese sujeto enamorado. El amor femenino de una monja en un convento católico es, frente a los otros casos, aun más íntima y confidencial, en tanto que obligada al secreto por la ruptura del tabú social y religioso que su amor supone. Werther se encuentra ante una dificultad no menor en la realización de su amor, aunque los obstáculos sean de otro tipo, relacionados con su situación social inadaptada y el compromiso previo de su amada. En el primer caso el lenguaje pertenece al momento del clasicismo francés, donde la temática amatoria es tratada de manera convencional según los tópicos de la tradición del petrarquismo y el neoplatonismo, mientras que en Werther el amor es una expresión de rebeldía juvenil en el contexto prerromántico del movimiento cultural alemán conocido como Sturm und Drang. Por su parte, en Pamela la mayor parte de la historia se desarrolla según un esquema de trama de seducción, con la vivencia amorosa como trasfondo que sólo se explicita en el final feliz. Estamos ante todo ante un conflicto sexual y social, en el que la posición dominante es la de un amo que no puede rebajarse a amar a una sirviente, mientras que ésta no puede permitirse expresar su atracción hacia él (ni siquiera en la privacidad de las cartas) hasta que el amor tome la forma honesta de una propuesta de matrimonio. La interioridad de Pamela expresada en las cartas tiene precisamente el papel de desencadenante o catalizador en el cambio en la posición de Mr. B... (que las roba y las lee) al hacerle descubrir a Pamela como persona y no simplemente como objeto sexual.2 La experiencia voyeurística de Mr B. es ese momento corresponde a una experiencia similar en el lector, y en mayor medida si tenemos en cuenta que a éste se le exhorta a creer pensar que no está ante una novela sino ante una historia auténtica. Ya en The Rise of the Novel (1957) Ian Watt destaca como rasgos diferenciadores del género el realismo formal y la privacidad de la historia que se narra, que es la de una persona particular, frente al

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

protagonismo de príncipes o grandes personajes propio de los romances del siglo XVI y XVII. También géneros de estos siglos, como la picaresca y la novela cortesana, podían tener como protagonistas personajes pertenecientes a clases medias o bajas pero el predominio de las técnicas epistolar y memorística que alcanza sus mejor expresión con Richardson (a partir de ciertos géneros del XVII francés como la crónica escandalosa, las pseudomemorias o la novela amorosa epistolar de la que son una muestra las propias Lettres portugaises) le dan una nueva dimensión a esta explotación literaria de lo privado. La técnica conocida como writing to the moment (consistente en fijar el momento de escritura de las cartas y el del acontecimiento narrado como muy cercanos) y el realismo de detalle, habitualmente ejemplificado en la descripción que Pamela hace de su ajuar de sirvienta y de los regalos de sus señores, corresponde a un similar detallismo en el análisis de su angustia de mujer perseguida y de su obsesión por la virtud. Esta técnica y su relación con la experiencia voyeurística del lector es el equivalente de ciertas formas contemporáneas de menoscabo y destrucción de la intimidad a través de la tecnología. La narrativa de la interioridad de una persona cualquiera encuentra su público en las clases medias o incluso bajas en las naciones que han avanzado más en la alfabetización, sobre todo en Gran Bretaña. Este público es también mayoritariamente joven y femenino. 3. SUBCULTURA JUVENIL Y FEMENINA La época de la cultura sentimental es también la de la novela de educación, entendiendo por tal un subgénero del género novelístico que trataría de la formación de los jóvenes, pero también de la “novela como educación”, si se considera el destacado (si bien a menudo polémico) papel de estas lecturas en el aprendizaje y socialización de los jóvenes de ambos sexos.3 El mercado de la novela es mayoritariamente joven y femenino y por tanto la mujer joven es el lector ideal, implícito en la temática y planteamiento de los relatos. A menudo las novelas de la segunda mitad del dieciocho, especialmente en el caso del mercado anglosajón, son obra de mujeres jóvenes, protagonizadas por heroínas jóvenes y destinadas a un público de

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lectoras jóvenes. La lista de autoras en diferentes variantes novelísticas (entre las que se podría distinguir la sentimental, la gótica y la novela realista de cortejo, siempre teniendo en cuenta el frecuente entrecruzamiento de estas categorías) es muy amplia e incluiría a Charlotte Lennox, Fanny Burney y Ann Radcliffe, entre las más conocidas. Pero también los jóvenes sensibles y poco prácticos como Werther son aficionados a las novelas. La escena narrada en el libro primero de Werther en que el protagonista y su amada Carlota se descubren su afición por el género y discuten sus lecturas favoritas es reveladora de un entusiasmo y una complicidad propia de los miembros de una subcultura contestataria. Carlota afirma: Wie ich jünger war, sagte sie, liebte ich nichts so sehr als die Romanen. Weis Gott wie wohl mir’s war, mich so Sonntags in ein Eckgen zu sezzen, und mit ganzem Herzen an dem Glücke und Unstern einer Miß Jenny Theil zu nehmen. Ich läugne auch nicht, daß die Art noch einige Reize für mich hat. (Goethe 2004: 23) En este pasaje Carlota tiene que disculparse de su afición por las novelas atribuyéndola al tiempo en el que “era más joven”, cuando en realidad es todavía muy joven. Cuando Werther se solidariza con esa afición, la tía de la joven lo mira con sarcasmo, pero a él no le importa: Ich bemühte mich, meine Bewegungen über diese Worte zu verbergen. Das gieng freilich nicht weit, denn da ich sie mit solcher Wahrheit im Vorbeygehn vom Landpriester von Wakefield, vom *)— reden hörte, kam ich eben ausser mich und sagte ihr alles was ich mußte, und bemerkte erst nach einiger Zeit, da Lotte das Gespräch an die andern wendete, daß diese die Zeit über mit offnen Augen, als säßen sie nicht da, da gesessen hatten. Die Baase sah mich mehr als einmal mit einem spöttischen Näsgen an, daran mir aber nichts gelegen war. (Goethe 2004: 23) En este texto se observa perfectamente cómo la afición de los jóvenes es mirada con malos ojos por los adultos. La oposición entre la

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

novela y el paternalismo del mundo adulto, cuya postura ideológica y discursiva está mejor representada en el mapa genérico por el libro de conducta, se articula doblemente. Por un lado la novela es el producto fetiche del mercado de la cultura juvenil y femenina. El simple hecho de la afición al género y a ciertos autores tiene un valor simbólico de sana complicidad y de pertenencia a una cultura de resistencia que puede extenderse más allá de las capitales o las metrópolis, en todo el ámbito lingüístico de los grandes estados-naciones y superando incluso la barrera de la lengua. Gracias a las traducciones, novelas como Pamela y Werther se convierten en best-sellers europeos y son apreciadas por lectores que desconocen el inglés y el alemán. Por otra parte el contenido de las novelas puede reflejar estos valores ‘subversivos’ en las principales variantes narrativas de la novela dieciochesca. Las caracterizadas como “novelas de cortejo” plantean la posibilidad de aprovechar los resquicios que la sociedad patriarcal dejaría para el ejercicio de un cierto grado de poder femenino. Según Katherine Sobba Green el momento privilegiado para tal ejercicio es precisamente el del cortejo: Thematically, it probed, from a woman’s point of view, the emotional difficulties of moving towards affective individuation and companionate marriage despite the aggressive effects of female role definition. In this sense, the novel of courtship appropriated domestic fiction to feminist purposes. By creating a feminized space—that is, by centering its story in the brief period of autonomy between a young woman’s coming to age and her marriage—this subgenre fostered heightened awareness of sexual politics within the gendered arena of language, especially with regard to defining male and female spheres of action. (Green 1991: 2-3) El papel de la novela como forma de manifestación de una cultura de resistencia juvenil y femenina aparece más claro si se la contrasta con el papel del libro de conducta. En Pride and Prejudice, de Jane Austen, existe una célebre escena en la que Mr. Collins, el clérigo pedante y primo de las hermanas protagonistas lee o intenta leer uno de los más famosos libros de este tipo—los Sermones de James

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Fordyce—ante un auditorio que se muestra entre aburrido y sarcástico. Lo cierto es que novela y libro de conducta pueden verse como géneros competidores si se tiene en cuenta que ampos aspiran a un papel en la función social de formación del carácter de los jóvenes, una función ideológica central, ya que afecta al futuro de la sociedad a través de la reproducción de sus relaciones estructurales.4 Utilizamos como referencia de libro de conducta esta obra de Fordyce además de la obra de James Gregory A Father’s Legacy, específicamente destinado a las mujeres jóvenes, pues se trata de los consejos y direcciones que un padre cercano a la muerte deja como herencia a sus hijas adolescentes. En ellos observamos un previsible papel central de la temática del amor y el matrimonio, con una serie de puntos relacionados con ella: el pudor y el silencio femenino, los entretenimientos adecuados, el peligro de seducción y la autoridad paterna en la decisión fundamental que marca la vida futura de la joven, la aceptación de un pretendiente o la elección entre varios. Ya que la mujer no puede tomar la iniciativa, el aceptar o rechazar las ofertas de matrimonio que se le presentan es el ejercicio posible del grado moderado de poder que le concede la sociedad. Gregory formula la tesis propia del género y de la posición propia de la sociedad adulta (razonable pero prosaica) de que el matrimonio por amor es improbable, es decir, es cosa de la novela y el teatro. Aunque un mensaje de este tipo, que concibe el matrimonio como compañerismo y sociabilidad, se encuentra de hecho a menudo en las novelas (y en boca de personajes que pueden verse como portavoces de la posición autorial), la tradición de fondo del género es romántica, en el sentido de conectarla con la historia literaria de raigambre idealista para la cual el amor es todopoderoso y debe triunfar. Las posiciones sobrias antirrománticas, así como las cínicas, desencantadas o libertinas aparecen en la novela como consecuencia del carácter dialógico del género, pero en contra de su carácter esencial. También considera Gregory improbable el “amor a primera vista”, que es una manifestación del amor romántico en las novelas y uno de cuyos ejemplos más célebres es precisamente el encuentro de Werther y Carlota: “Love is very seldom produced at first sight” (Gregory 1808:123). Las advertencias de Gregory se centran en dos

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

puntos tradicionalmente relacionados: el poder embriagador de la literatura que describe el amor novelesco y el peligro de seducción: The effects of love among men are diversified by their different tempers. An artful man may counterfeit every one of them so easily as to impose on a young girl of an open, generous and feeling heart, if she is not extremely on her guard. The finest parts in such a girl may not prove sufficiently for her security. (Gregory 1808: 94) ...but shun, as you would do the most fatal poison all the species of reading and conversation which warms the imagination which engages and softens the heart, and raises the taste above the level of common life. (Gregory 1808: 127) Un repaso de las cinco partes de la obra de Gregory y de los títulos de los quince sermones de Fordyce permite comprobar que los temas tratados en ambos libros no son diferentes. En Gregory serían 1la religión, 2- la conducta y comportamiento 3- las diversiones y 4amistad, amor y matrimonio; en Fordyce los sermones tratan de la importancia del sexo femenino (I), la modestia en el vestir (II), la reserva femenina (III), la virtud femenina (IV-VIII), la piedad femenina (IX-XI), las buenas obras (XII) y la mansedumbre femenina (XIII-XIV). Pero pese a la repetición temática los mismos títulos dejan observar una mayor tendencia en Fordyce a una “mojigatería” que representa un tipo de virtud femenina más antigua, que insiste más en la modestia o el pudor y no tanto en la delicadeza moral y la virtud del corazón, temas más propios del sentimentalismo. Por ejemplo, en el primer sermón sobre la virtud se dedica el mayor espacio a la advertencia contra la coquetería, que es en realidad no solo una advertencia a las jóvenes para que no caigan en ella sino también a los jóvenes sobre los peligros de las coquetas, que son retratadas con los negros colores de la mujer libertina: Flee, my sons these destructive Syrens. They smile, only to tempt; and they tempt in order to devour. Once indeed they shone in many of my sweetest charms.

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These are no more. They have forgotten to blush; their foreheads are hardened into shamelessness. Their eyes, formerly soft, virtuous, and downcast; those very eyes that effused the soul of innocence, have learnt to stare and roll with unbounded wantonness, to dart nothing but unholy fire. Their hands are the hands of Harpies. Their feet go down to death, and their steps take hold on hell. (Fordyce 1766: 101) Esta imagen de la mujer libertina se contrasta con la de la mujer joven dulce e inocente, que en este discurso es el único tipo femenino aceptable. Estas palabras se dirigen de nuevo a los jóvenes: Behold these smiling innocents, whom I have graced with my fairest gifts, and committed to your protection? Behold them with love and respects; treat them with tenderness and honour. They are timid and want to be defended. They are frail; O (sic) do not take advantage of their weakness. Let their fears and blushes endear them. (Fordyce 1766: 99) Se advierte a las mujeres contra el libertinaje masculino y a los hombres contra la coquetería femenina. El término delicacy es usado, pero aparecen más frecuentemente modesty, shamefacedness y bashfulness, propios de un énfasis paternalista en la anulación de la mujer. La posición que representa Fordyce ve con especial antipatía la comedia y la narrativa que se basa en una intriga, ejemplificada en Pamela, de seducción cómica y reforma del libertino, dado que rechaza la idea muy extendida de que un libertino reformado es el mejor marido (Fordyce 1766: 134). Por contra, ve con mayor simpatía la trama de Clarissa, donde Richardson evita la tentadora posibilidad de un final feliz con la reforma del libertino Lovelace. En un contexto en el que la posición es, tal como se podía esperar, crítica y admonitoria frente a la novela y el teatro en general, con Clarissa se hace una justa excepción, calificando al personaje como el más elevado ejemplo de excelencia femenina propuesto jamás ante los lectores. (Fordyce 1766: 147-148). Las diferencias del libro de conducta de Fordyce y Gregory no son en todo caso sino las de un matiz más moderno, liberal y favorable

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a la mujer en el segundo. La brevedad de este y la simplicidad de ambos nos permite observar su aspecto retórico. El mismo discurso que se expresaría en una novela a través de la forma narrativa aparece aquí de manera directamente retórica, como interpelación a un “vosotras” que no se limita evidentemente a las destinatarias primeras de la obra, las hijas del autor, sino, por el mismo hecho de la publicación, a todas las mujeres jóvenes. Precisamente “interpelación” es el concepto que Althusser utiliza para referirse a la acción de la ideología sobre el individuo. La ideología de la sociedad adulta utiliza este instrumento, el libro de conducta, como marco de un discurso educativo y formativo específicamente dirigido a un sector muy concreto, las mujeres jóvenes de clase media, que es también central en el mercado de la novela. A propósito del género didáctico en general, afirma Hunter: “From the first novels project what is to be expected of women, in reading and in values. That place had been outlined in Guides and other didactic kinds before it was presumed, then extended in novels” (Hunter 1990: 272). Las guías didácticas dirigidas a otros públicos (por ejemplo hombres jóvenes, sirvientes o artesanos) se ocupan de la novela en la medida que tales sectores sociales son también consumidores de novelas.5 El sistema educativo destinado a las clases dirigentes, que en Gran Bretaña es el de las public schools, aparece separado del mundo de las novelas y se centra en otros contenidos, la formación en lenguas clásicas y en valores aristocráticos, que están por encima de la cultura popular que representan tanto novelas como libros de conducta. De modo análogo en la cultura contemporánea la lucha ideológica es doble: por una parte se centra en el terreno de los medios audiovisuales y por otra en el control de un sistema educativo que al parecer se concibe como instrumento de adoctrinamiento y futura hegemonía. 4. MATERIALISMO El aspecto introspectivo de la cultura sentimental se sostiene en un psicologismo que es propio de la filosofía de la Ilustración: Hume, Helvetius, Condillac y la escuela del sentido moral británico representada por Shaftesbury y por los escoceses Hutcheson y Adam Smith. El análisis psicológico presente en las biografías espirituales del

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ámbito protestante, o en la literatura clasicista francesa de tema amoroso son precedentes de la narrativa autorreflexiva, epistolar o memorialística posterior, claramente diferenciados del análisis de tipos sociales y literarios propios del sentimentalismo, que se realizarán ya sobre la base de una filosofía sensualista y materialista. Tales tipos están marcados por la “delicadeza”. Sin embargo, siendo ésta una cualidad tradicionalmente asignada a la mujer, lo realmente novedoso e incluso revolucionario en la cultura sentimental es el hombre sentimental, man of feeling, que da titulo a la famosa novela de Henry Mackenzie de 1771. El hombre sentimental es, según Sheriff, el aspecto ‘humorístico’ en la ética de la narrativa sentimental, entendiendo ese término como referido a los humores del discurso médico antiguo. Frente al aspecto trágico de la cultura sentimental, el desamor de la monja portuguesa y el amor imposible de Werther, personajes como Yorick, presente en las dos novelas de Lawrence Sterne o Matthew Bramble, en The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker de Tobias Smollett (1771) manifiestan un aspecto cómico, extravagante y a veces notablemente feminizado del hombre del sentimentalismo. Jesse Van Sant ve una relación más clara entre la novela sentimental, la psicología y la medicina y fisiología moderna: This organic sensitivity is the physiological basis for a sensationist epistemology and a psychology of sympathy. Thus, analysis of mental operations and description of psychological experience often use terms also found in contemporary medical writings, terms that convey a variety of complex relationships. (Van Sant 1993: 1-2) En la narrativa sentimental está presente el discurso médico, en el estado de la cuestión del conocimiento del cuerpo humano en el siglo XVIII. Así, vemos tanto la persistencia del esquema general de la medicina antigua, en la teoría de los humores, como conceptos y terminología que apuntan a los descubrimientos de la ciencia moderna. Se pueden dar dos ejemplos de esto último: la definición de las enfermedades que afectan al hombre y la mujer sentimental (la melancolía, la hipocondría y la histeria) parte del conocimiento del sistema nervioso, que avanza en el siglo por las investigaciones de Thomas Willis y sus continuadores en el XVIII, Robert Whytt o

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

Albrecht Von Haller. La obra de estos hombres de ciencia y la de divulgadores como George Cheyne, desarrolla los conceptos de irritabilidad y sensibilidad, que establecen las vías naturales de percepción y comunicación en los organismos animal y humano (especialmente desarrollados en los tipos sentimentales, que son superdotados nerviosos) que se complementará con la simpatía social que permite superar el límite del organismo y establecer una comunicación supraindividual de los sentimientos sociales más valorados: la compasión y la benevolencia. El concepto de sympathy pasa de la fisiología, como concepto de coordinación en el organismo individual, a la sociología, como coordinación en el organismo social. Obviamente, esta psicología y esta ética desarrollada a partir de principios empiristas y de unos modestos avances de la ciencia médica es altamente especulativa, pero sus elucubraciones pueden parecer menos desencaminadas si se relacionan con los descubrimientos recientes sobre las neuronas espejo y su papel en la sociabilidad, afectividad y moralidad humana.6 Otro concepto importante de la medicina del XVIII es el de los espíritus animales, que se relaciona con el descubrimiento de los espermatozoides y de ciertos microorganismos por el desarrollo de la óptica y los microscopios en el siglo XVII. Van Sant (1993: 83-97) habla de la relevancia y papel central de la vista y el tacto tanto desde el punto de vista epistemológico, según los razonamientos de Locke o Condillac, como del científico, cuando el funcionamiento de estos sentidos se explica especulativamente por la acción de los espíritus animales y los nervios. La confluencia del arte médico tradicional y los descubrimientos de la nueva ciencia conduce a un naturalismo que puede presentar dos formas, una más moderada y la otra más radical. La primera concibe la relación mente-cuerpo sobre la base naturalista de la nueva ciencia, pero también de la filosofía dualista cartesiana; las enfermedades del espíritu se naturalizan y se pueden convertir en objetos culturales asociados a la civilización, como sucede en Cheyne.7 El nuevo ámbito psico-físico se separa del espiritual, cuyo espacio se reduce por una secularización progresiva en el ámbito cultural protestante, donde la separación cartesiana mente-cuerpo se ve reflejada en la autonomía del saber filosófico y científico respecto al teológico. Las enfermedades nerviosas o mentales dejan de ser espirituales y de pertenecer al ámbito de la teología, por lo que las

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clases ilustradas superan la obsesión secular con la brujería y la posesión demoníaca. La tendencia radical, en cambio, se inclina a un monismo materialista. Esta posición es más propia del ateísmo filosófico (La Mettrie, D’Holbach, Diderot) que surge en Francia, el país ilustrado por excelencia del ámbito católico. Los países donde se desarrolla la novela dieciochesca más destacadamente, Francia e Inglaterra, ejemplifican esta dualidad: en Francia los tipos de novela más destacados (con la excepción del sentimentalismo rococó de Marivaux) se relacionan con la Ilustración radical. Es el caso de la novela galante de Crebillon Fils o Pinot Duclos o de las diatribas ateas y libertinas, además de pornográficas, de los autores anónimos, Boyer d’Argens, Mirabeau o Sade; en Gran Bretaña, en cambio, la novela puede ser objeto de cierto reproche moral, pero no es un escándalo, sino parte de las corrientes culturales mayoritarias y muy a menudo instrumento de la prédica de la virtud. Pero el hecho de que no sea doctrinariamente materialista no impide su estrecha conexión (al menos en el caso de la novela sentimental) con la filosofía y con los discursos de la nueva ciencia médica o fisiológica. Para concretar, podemos citar las conexiones entre la filosofía empirista de Locke y la novela de Fielding y Sterne, entre los escoceses Hume y Smith y el novelista también escocés Henry Mackenzie, entre Diderot y el propio Sterne o entre Cheyne y Richardson. El primero de estos casos es tratado por Iser en su obra clásica de la teoría de la recepción que presta atención a la filosofía empirista como “campo referencial” en la novela de Fielding (Iser 1985: 128). La conexión de Mackenzie con la filosofía moral escocesa se centra en la importancia concedida a la benevolencia y el concepto de sympathy. El fisiólogo Robert Whytt habla de sympathy como principio de coordinación del poder perceptivo del cuerpo en los actos reflejos: “The sentience of the soul was fundamental to his [Whytt’s] notion of bodily coordination by means o sympathy, the irreductible perceptive power of the body” (Porter 1999: 251). Si en fisiología se aplica al campo de los organismos animales o humanos, puede ser extendido por los filósofos Hume y Smith a las relaciones entre sujetos sociales. A través del principio de sympathy las ideas que nos formamos de las pasiones de los demás se convierten en nosotros mismos en pasiones,

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

debido a la doble relación entre impresiones e ideas. De esta manera llegamos a sentir lo mismo, o al menos algo cualitativamente similar aunque en menor grado, a lo que sienten los demás en determinadas situaciones y de ahí el carácter “contagioso” de las pasiones humanas que explica tantos hechos sociales e incluso el funcionamiento de la sociedad en general. La compasión y la benevolencia son, vistas de esta manera, una reacción de un tipo de pasiones benéficas y propias de la vida social, que, aunque menos poderosas que las pasiones egoístas, pueden contrarrestar en cierta medida a éstas, lo que constituye un fundamento naturalista de la virtud. Sin embargo, el hecho mismo de naturalizar la virtud, o un cierto tipo de virtud relacionada con la compasión y la benevolencia— y por tanto opuesta en cierto modo a la virtus romana exaltada por los neoestoicos y Rousseau o a la virtud guerrera de los pueblos bárbaros— no constituye obviamente un hecho natural sino un hecho histórico y cultural de primera importancia en la Europa de esta época. Es el núcleo temático de la novela inglesa de los años sesenta a los noventa, una forma cultural de gran importancia, al tiempo que impulsa una época de reformismo social y acciones humanitarias que se refleja en el auge de la secta metodista, en el movimiento abolicionista o en los movimientos por la humanización de las prisiones. En Inglaterra Lawrence Sterne es el novelista más célebre en colocar la benevolencia en el centro temático de su obra y, al mismo tiempo, relacionarla con la constitución orgánica del individuo. Podemos reseñar varios momentos de A Sentimental Journey en los que Yorick reflexiona sobre esa temática. El encuentro con el monje franciscano (Sterne 1997: 29-32) donde su reacción cuando éste le pide dinero es arrogante y despectiva, pero se arrepiente inmediatamente después; las observaciones sobre la relación entre el enamoramiento y la benevolencia, en las que afirma que su estado continuo de pasión amorosa le lleva a ser benevolente y solo puede cometer una acción mezquina en los “interregnos” entre un amor y el siguiente (Sterne 1997: 57); por último la reflexión tras el encuentro con la fille de chambre, donde se afirma la gran dificultad de separar la compasión, el amor y el deseo, es decir la naturaleza orgánica de unos buenos sentimientos que el idealismo tradicional, platónico y cristiano, asigna al espíritu y separa radicalmente de la carne: “If Nature has so

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wove her web of kindness that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece, must the whole web be rent in drawing them out ?—Whip me such stoics, great governor of nature!” (Sterne 1997:118). Fuera de Inglaterra, Marmontel es el literato francés más cercano a estas corrientes. En uno de sus relatos vemos como la simpatía social, concebida de esta forma materialista, es el principio de una armonía social en una construcción de cierto carácter utópico, por su desaforado optimismo. El narrador afirma salir a pasear por el campo para disfrutar precisamente el placer de la benevolencia: “... une fois je goûtais si bon marché le plaisir de la bienfaisance” (Marmontel 1822: 147). El espectáculo que le sale al encuentro es el de unos cuerpos regidos por un movimiento armónico establecido por la providencia, las almas concebidas (como los atomistas antiguos y contra el platonismo) como sensibilidad y energía en la materia. Los individuos que trabajan se ven como átomos sociales. La interrelación humana es racional y al tiempo dictada por una providencia deísta que actúa a través de leyes de atracción y coordinación. Aunque no aparece aquí el término, esto es la simpatía: J’etais dans une village, chez une femme aimable, singulièrement belle, quoique sur son declin, et dont la politesse unie et naturelle était comme un animant pour la societé. C’était là qu’en nous reposant, nous nous donnions le spectable mobile et varié d’une route continuellement animée. Cette circulation rapide de mouvements, tous dirigés par un intêret propre vers un but general d’utilité commune, cet exchange perpetuel de travaux et des bons offices, nous faisaient admirer, dans l’organization de l’ordre social le merveilleux ouvrage de la necessité. Quelle industrieuse engrenure entre les roues innombrables qui componait cette machine immense! Quel noeud invisible les unissait? Quel ressort les animait toutes, et les faisait agir? Un seul, le besoin reciproque. Il en est du spectacle moral de la nature comme du spectacle physique; l’étonnement y suit pourtant la meditation. Dans celui-ci une feuille, un brin

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

d´herbe, devient un prodigue quand on y pense, dans l’autre, un laboureur à la charrue, un marinier sur son tillac, un charretier ménant a la ville les productions de la campagne, est un homme étonnant, lorsqu’on le considère comme un des pièces essentielles du mecanisme social, et que dans ce systeme on voit tous les agents de la subsistence commune reunis, accordés et mis en mouvement par la même loi, l’attraction. (Marmontel 1822: 147-148) Este tipo de digresión puede considerarse profundamente utópica pero contrasta con las utopías oscuras y desengañadas de Voltaire en Candide, el ilustrado antisentimental más pesimista. También Voltaire representa un momento previo al discurso racista. Su utopía satírica de los orejones apunta a una identidad profunda entre la cultura europea y las primitivas, por los valores y vicios de una naturaleza humana universal, pero Voltaire enfatiza sobre todo la presencia de la superstición y la barbarie que entre los orejones existe en la misma medida que entre las naciones, alemanes, portugueses y españoles, con los que Cándido ha tenido trato previamente. La benevolencia, concepto central de la cultura sentimental, se relaciona por una parte con el conocimiento médico y fisiológico de la época que proporciona todo un lenguaje y un arsenal de conceptos que explican a partir de su constitución orgánica las acciones de los héroes y heroínas sentimentales. Por otro lado, la benevolencia tiene un aspecto político que concierne a otro concepto colindante, el de justicia, que también es objeto de reflexión en la filosofía y la novela. 5. BENEVOLENCIA Y JUSTICIA Las novelas y relatos sentimentales se mueven en un espectro de opiniones que oscilan entre la exaltación emocional de una ética natural de las pasiones y una tendencia racional al control, que pretenderá limitar el papel de las emociones, promover la moderación y el sentido común en la temática amorosa y matrimonial y construir un tipo adecuado de justicia. En filosofía moral, dentro de una escuela general de una ética de base naturalista y psicológica, se puede oponer

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la tendencia más próxima a una valoración de las emociones morales y estéticas, representada por Shaftesbury y Hutcheson, al pesimismo de Hume y la moderación de Adam Smith. Aunque ambas posiciones comparten la base empirista y fundan la moral en la psicología, se diferencian por el papel que otorgan respectivamente a la benevolencia y a la justicia en los fundamentos de la filosofía moral. Como expresa Sheriff, a propósito de las novelas de Henry Mackenzie: But Mackenzie writes after David Hume, who was a personal friend of Mackenzie’s. Hume, in A Treatise of Human Nature, recognizes that man has the natural motives of benevolence and self-interest, but can find no basis for much of morality except custom. Though man does have a sense of virtue, it, like his ideas about physical reality, is conditioned by social standards and customs. Therefore morality has its basis not in nature, but in social justice, customs and opinions. (Sheriff 1982: 85) La novela y la cultura sentimental en general priman la benevolencia frente al concepto de justicia abstracta, más central en la formas de filosofía moral que siguen una tradición de pensamiento ético procedente de la antigüedad, desde Aristóteles a los estoicos. Hume dedica un amplio espacio en A Treatise of Human Nature a la justicia y la explica en el contexto de un psicologismo escéptico en cierta medida, que, al igual que el pensamiento de Adam Smith, pretende evitar el entusiasmo, una característica tanto de la cultura popular expresada en las novelas sentimentales como de las sectas protestantes que renuevan el panorama religioso en el ámbito anglicano y luterano.8 El sentimentalismo, en cambio, generalmente apela al concepto de justicia de manera más entusiasta y universal, a partir de la compasión y la solidaridad con el sufrimiento ajeno. Es por tanto una justicia que no se debe tan solo a los ciudadanos de las naciones europeas que son el ámbito cultural de este tipo de literatura, sino también a los débiles y oprimidos del mundo. Los inicios del feminismo burgués se sitúan en este período, que es por ello de gran interés para los estudios feministas contemporáneos. Janet Todd se

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

ocupa de ello en su breve introducción a la cultura sentimental (1986: 17-21) y Markman Ellis (1996: 160-189) se centra en el tema de la prostitución estudiando la institución de las Magdalenas, prostitutas arrepentidas. Barker-Benfield (1992: 215-286), Van Sant (1993: 1644) y de nuevo Ellis (1996: 87-127) han estudiado esta relación entre el sentimentalismo y los movimientos sociales destinados a paliar el sufrimiento de los desfavorecidos, entre ellos el movimiento abolicionista. En este contexto se puede situar la obra del africano Ignatius Sancho, músico, pintor y autor de una correspondencia en la línea de la obra de Sterne, con el que tuvo contacto personal. El tema de la manumisión de esclavos está presente en novelas sentimentales como Eusebio de Pedro Montengón, Sir George Ellison, de Sarah Scott y Julia de Roubigné de Henry Mackenzie.9 Este autor trata el tema de la justicia entre o con los pueblos no europeos en otros momentos de su obra, refiriéndose, además del caso de los negros del Caribe, tanto a los indios de las colonias o el territorio norteamericano como a los nativos de las Indias Orientales. Mientras que en su segunda novela The Man of the World incluye un relato entre los indios cherokees, en un tono elogioso hacia su cultura según el tópico del buen salvaje, la primera y más célebre The Man of Feeling incluye un episodio en La India, narrado por Edwards un viejo soldado británico que ha sido castigado por ayudar a un prisionero indio. Cuando Edwards relata a Harley, el hombre sentimental protagonista de la narración, esta historia, Harley contesta con un discurso marcado por un precoz y sorprendente anticolonialismo: “Edwards” said he “I have a proper regard for the prosperity of my country: every native of it appropriates to himself some share of the power, or the fame, which, as a nation, it acquires, but I cannot throw off the man so much, as to rejoice at our conquests in India: I cannot think of their possession, without being led to enquire, by what right they possess them. They came there as traders, bartering the commodities they brought for others which their purchasers could spare; and however great their profits were, they were then equitable. But what title have the subjects of another kingdom to establish an empire in India? to give laws to a country where the inhabitants received them on the terms of

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friendly commerce? ... The fame of conquest, barbarous as it is, is but a secondary consideration: there are certain stations in wealth to which the warriors of the East aspire. It is there indeed where the wishes of their friends assign them eminence, where the question of their country is pointed at their return. When shall I see a commander return from India in the pride of honourable poverty?—You describe the victories they have gained; they are sullied by the cause in which they fought: you enumerate the spoils of these victories; they are covered with the blood of the vanquished!”. (Mackenzie I: 189-191) Esta reflexión toca varios puntos sensibles relacionados con la benevolencia y la justicia: la ilegitimidad política y jurídica básica de la ocupación colonial por parte de unos británicos que se habían introducido en La India como comerciantes y se convierten en ocupantes y tiranos, la crueldad de los métodos de conquista (the blood of the vanquished) y, sobre todo, la corrupción económica de la administración militar británica. Los generales no vuelven a Europa pobres sino con los despojos de una victoria manchados por la sangre de los nativos. El origen de este anticolonialismo es, evidentemente, más fruto de una pura efusión emocional que de una madura o compleja reflexión política, pero aun así es sorprendente su actualidad en la época de los estudios poscoloniales, cuando tras más de medio siglo de independencia política, los países de esta zona del mundo (así como los de procedencia del comercio esclavista) siguen arrastrando las desventajas de su situación periférica y de la larga etapa colonial que se inicia en la época que aquí tratamos. Mackenzie procede tanto a una idealización antisentimental de los cherokees, al identificarlos con los héroes estoicos de la antigüedad, como de una identificación sentimental con los nativos de las Indias Orientales a través de la historia del viejo militar Edwards y el prisionero indio.

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

6. CONCLUSIONES El período comprendido entre 1714, el final de las largas guerras de Luís XIV, y 1789, el inicio de la revolución francesa, podría ser comparado al que se extiende entre el final de la primera guerra mundial y la oleada revolucionaria del 68, que afectó tanto al mundo capitalista como al comunista soviético. Si el primero es seguido por las guerras napoleónicas y la reacción político-social, el segundo fue seguido por la consolidación del capitalismo de acumulación global y la cultura posmoderna. Ese ‘pequeño siglo XVIII’ está marcado por el avance del capitalismo mercantil y preindustrial en el contexto de la expansión europea y el primer colonialismo. Pero los cambios rápidos y decisivos que hemos relacionado con la cultura sentimental fueron aquellos que afectaron al conocimiento científico y a la sociedad. Estos significaron un primer embate (desde luego no definitivo) contra las iglesias y la sociedad patriarcal a cargo de la filosofía empirista, del materialismo de la Ilustración radical y de una subcultura juvenil y femenina que, menos visible en los ámbitos más prestigiosos de la cultura oficial de su tiempo, encuentra e la novela una forma adecuada de expresarse. Reconocemos también un paralelismo entre la época sentimental y la nuestra en la preponderancia efectiva de la benevolencia sobre la justicia como actitud ante los conflictos y sus víctimas, y en el tratamiento de los pobres, débiles y desfavorecidos. En el siglo XVIII la posición subordinada de ciertas clases estancadas o regresivas (clérigos como Yorick o hidalgos como Hardyl en la novela española Eusebio o Harley en The Man of Feeling) y su derrota histórica, las hace más proclives a una actitud melancólica y a la construcción de una cultura como la del sentimentalismo, que se complace constantemente en el placer-dolor de las escenas lacrimógenas que llenan la literatura de esta época. En la sociedad las instituciones benéficas, religiosas o laicas, cobran gran importancia y el mercado literario está marcado por la subcultura de la compasión. En nuestra época, a pesar de poderosas y profundas reflexiones sobre la justicia, desde el liberalismo de Rawls hasta el neocomunismo de Zizek, el socorro y la labor de paliar el sufrimiento (tanto en la periferia del centro como en la propia periferia y las zonas de conflicto) se deja a las instituciones de la benevolencia, ante la ruina y progresiva impotencia

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de los estados. Pero un concepto nuevo de justicia se abro paso y en ambos casos, el siglo XVIII y nuestra época, se caracteriza por la aspiración a la universalidad El reavivamiento de conflictos en todo el mundo, la movilización social omnipresente anuncia el renacimiento de un concepto de justicia global, en un proceso similar al que desembocó en 1789, en un jacobinismo que fue en cierta medida, por su estética y su discurso basados en el ideal estoico y la virtud antigua, la antítesis del sentimentalismo, pero que es una respuesta a los mismos temas de injusticia y sufrimiento que daban lugar a las respuestas sentimentales. La revolución dio lugar a una declaración universal de los derechos humanos, recogiendo el sentimiento de fraternidad universal que inspira los relatos sentimentales. NOTAS Las Lettres portugaises fueron interpretadas en la época de su publicación y hasta tiempos muy recientes como la correspondencia auténtica de la monja portuguesa Mariana de Alcoforado. No es simplemente una interpretación ingenua de la masa de lectores sino también la conclusión de críticos y eruditos como se expone en el artículo de Fréderic Deloffre y Jacques Rougeot (1967). Pamela se encuentra en una posición distinta pero de la lectura del prólogo de Richardson se deduce la importancia de que el lector creyese si no en la literalidad de la correspondencia, si al menos en la autenticidad del relato narrado. 2 Se trata de una seducción con final feliz, ya que el libertino amo de Pamela es reformado por la virtud inquebrantable de la joven, se enamora y se casa con ella. Sobre la significación social e ideológica de este tipo de trama ver la obra de Nancy Armstrong (1987) que argumenta la creación de un poder doméstico burgués y femenino, en relación con el sentimentalismo y la novela de esta época. 3 En el siglo XVIII se percibe un aumento de interés por la temática educativa en autores influidos por Rousseau, como Henry Brooke en Inglaterra, autor de The Fool of Quality (1765-70) y Pedro Montengón en España, autor de Eusebio (1786-88). En estas obras se tratan asuntos específicamente educativos, sobre 1

Fernando Barreiro García Aspectos claves y modernidad de la cultura sentimental del siglo XVIII

la formación de niños y jóvenes. La formación del carácter, en un sentido más amplio, es centro de interés de toda la novela del XVIII, en relación con el género posterior conocido como Bildungsroman. 4 Según Althusser, en Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (2005) el sistema educativo y cultural se encarga de la perpetuación de la ideología y a través de ésta de las relaciones de producción en la sociedad. 5 Sobre las guías didácticas para diferentes grupos, ver Hunter “Directions of Didacticism: The Guide Tradition” (Hunter 1990: 248-273). 6 La obra del neurólogo V. S. Ramachandran The Tell-Tale Brain dedica un capítulo a las llamadas “neuronas espejo”, “The Neurons That Shaped Civilization” (2012: 122-137). Estas neuronas parecen haber jugado un papel fundamental en la cultura humana a través del lenguaje, la imitación y la empatía. El proceso que describe Ramachandran, respecto a la comprensión de sentimientos ajenos y la imitación, corresponde a las reacciones psicológicas que los autores del siglo XVIII describen con el término sympathy. El protagonismo de la neurología en la filosofía y la ciencia contemporánea repite el impulso del reduccionismo materialista en la relación alma/mente-cerebro de Diderot y el médico filósofo La Mettrie. 7 Amigo de Richardson y autor del exitoso The English Malady. Las ideas de Cheyne le dan ‘glamour’ a la enfermedad nerviosa, al establecer su correlación con varias ideas ya prestigiosas: con las clases superiores, con las personas de talento y con las naciones europeas más avanzadas. Dentro de éstas, con la nación más avanzada, la inglesa, de ahí el título de la obra. 8 Las sectas y tendencias revivalistas tardías del protestantismo, los cuáqueros, baptistas y metodistas en Gran Bretaña y el pietismo en Alemania tienen una relación compleja con la cultura sentimental y las tendencias filantrópicas y progresistas del XVIII. Todas favorecen el abolicionismo y la humanización pero el metodismo de John Wesley, muy poderoso a finales del XVIII y principios del XIX, apenas puede ser calificado de socialmente progresista. Su relación con la novela sentimental es, sin embargo, clara y la novela de Brooke, The Fool of Quality es una obra de referencia del movimiento. En 1781 el propio Wesley la

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adapta y edita para usarla en su labor de proselitización. En Eusebio se trata de la historia de la manumisión de Ali Tagul (Montengón 1988: 885-891) por parte de el protagonista cuando este recibe en herencia la hacienda y esclavos. En Sir George Ellison de Sarah Scott (1996: 14-19) Sir George, otro propietario benévolo, no puede llevar a cabo la manumisión, porque los esclavos pertenecen a su esposa, pero organiza la hacienda con el máximo de humanidad. En Julia de Roubigné de Henry Mackenzie (1808: III 209) se narra la relación de Yambu, un esclavo heroico y Savillon, el propietario humanitario que lo libera para reorganizar la plantación sobre el principio del trabajo libre.

OBRAS CITADAS Althusser, L. 2005 Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Consultado el 13 de julio de 2013. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ ideology.htm Armstrong, N. 1987 Desire and Domestic Fiction. Oxford: Oxford U P. Austen, J.1972 Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Tony Tanner. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Barker-Benfield, G. 1992 The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th Century Britain. Chicago: Chicago U P. Brooke, H.1839 The Fool of Quality, or the History of Henry, Earl of Moreland. 2 vols. Cincinnati: U P James. Cheyne, G.1990 The English Malady. Fascimile edition edited by Roy Porter. 1671 or 2-1743. Londres: Routledge. Deloffre, F. y Rougeot, J. 1967 “Les lettres portugaises, miracle d’amour ou miracle de culture”. Consultado el 11 de julio de 2013. En http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ caief_0571-5865_1968_num_20_1_896 Ellis, M. 1996 The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge U P. Fordyce, J. 1766 Sermons to Young Women. 2 vols. Londres: D. Payne. Guilleragues, S. 1983 “Lettres portugaises”. Lettres portugaises, lettres peruviennes et autres romans d’amour par lettres. Ed. Bernard Bray et Isabelle Landy-Houillon. París: Flammarion. 59-98.

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Goethe, J. W. 2004 Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Sämtliche Dichtungen. Düsseldorff, Zürich: Winkler & Artemis Verlag. Green, K. S. 1991 The Courtship Novel (1740-1820): A Feminized Genre. Lexington: Kentucky U P. Gregory, J.1808 A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters. Londres: Wood and Innes. Hume, D. 1972 A Treatise of Human Nature: Ed. Páll S. Ardall. Londres: Fontana, Collins. Hunter, J.P. 1990 Before Novels. Nueva York: W W Norton. Iser, W. 1985 L’acte de lecture. Theorie de l’effect esthetique. Bruselas: Pierre Mardaga. Mackenzie, H.1808 Works of Henry Mackenzie. 8 vols. Edimburgo: A. Constable. Marmontel, J.F. 1822 Choix des plus jolis contes moraux. 2 vols. París: Libraire de la Cour. Montengón, P. 1988 Eusebio. Ed. Fernando García Lara. Madrid: Cátedra. Porter, R.1999 The Greatest Benefit of Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity. Nueva York: W. W. Norton. Ramachandran V. S. 2012 The Tell-Tale Brain. A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. Nueva York: W W Norton. Richardson, S.1980 Pamela. Ed. Peter Sabor with an Introduction by Margaret A. Doody. Londres: Penguin Classics. Scott, S.1996 The History of Sir George Ellison. Ed. Betty Rizzo. Lexington: U P of Kentucky. Sheriff, J.K. 1982 The Good-Natured Man: The Evolution of a Moral Idea. Alabama: University of Alabama Press. Smollett, T. 1984 The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. Oxford: Oxford UP Sterne, L. 1997 A Sentimental Journey, ed. A. Alvarez. London: Penguin Books. Todd, J. 1986 Sensibility: An Introduction. Londres: Methuen. Van Sant, J. 1993 18th Century Sensibility and the Novel: Senses in Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge U P. Voltaire 1970 Candide. París: Larousse Watt, I.1957 The Rise of the Novel. Londres: Hogarth Press.

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

INTERSECCIONES ENTRE LA MUJER, LA ECOCRÍTICA Y EL POSTCOLONIALISMO EN WIDE SARGASSO SEA DE JEAN RHYS* Francisco José Cortés Vieco Universidad Complutense de Madrid francort@filol.ucm.es Ecocriticism and its natural branches with ethnic and feminine implications enable contemporary rereadings of the classics and other forgotten texts stemming from the outskirts of the Western world and women’s pen. Between reverence and irreverence to the Empire’s ideology and the English literary Establishment, Creole writer Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea illustrates the reevaluation of the Caribbean landscapes in the second half of the 20th century, in line with the exploitation, marginalization and oppression of the mad wife and black people in hands of a British landowner. Extracted from the riotous context of the West Indies in the 19th century and Charlotte Brontë’s fiction Jane Eyre, Rhys’ narrative eventually leads to a compelling, but equivocal, textual resolution between fight and flight. Key words: ecocriticism, ecofeminism, postcolonialism, nature, gender, race, violence. La ecocrítica y sus ramificaciones naturales con temáticas femeninas y étnicas sugieren relecturas modernas de textos clásicos y otros olvidados oriundos de la periferia del mundo occidental y de la pluma de la mujer. Entre reverencia e irreverencia a la ideología imperialista y el canon literario anglonorteamericano, la novela Wide Sargasso Sea de Jean Rhys ilustra la reevaluación del entorno paisajístico caribeño en el siglo XX, en sintonía con la explotación, la marginación y la opresión de la enajenada esposa criolla y de la población *

Fecha de recepción: Febrero 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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de color en manos de un terrateniente inglés. Extraída del convulso contexto decimonónico de las Antillas Occidentales y de la ficción victoriana de Charlotte Brontë, esta obra de Rhys desembocará en una cautivadora y equívoca resolución textual entre combate y evasión. Palabras clave: ecocrítica, ecofeminismo, postcolonialismo, naturaleza, género, raza, violencia. A lo largo de su dilatada historia, la ideología patriarcal de Occidente ha impuesto dogmas hegemónicos, verdades absolutas y ordenaciones jerárquicas de sus habitantes según delimitadas oposiciones binarias: cultura y naturaleza, masculinidad y feminidad, mente y cuerpo, ciencia y arte, blanco y negro, propietario y propiedad, continencia sexual y erotismo, racionalidad y locura. La confluencia de disciplinas académicas distintas en investigaciones conjuntas que conciben la literatura como expresión catalizadora de posicionamientos sociales y culturales antitéticos o en conflicto se amamanta de la tradicional afiliación –erróneamente congénita– entre mujer, naturaleza y colonizado situados en coordenadas espaciales comunes –segundo en numeración ordinal y secundario–, todos con valencias de signo negativo frente a la positividad y protagonismo textual del hombre, la civilización y el conquistador europeo. La ecocrítica se define como “el estudio de las relaciones entre el ser humano y la naturaleza en las letras, el cine y otras expresiones culturales, que rápidamente se ha convertido en disciplina fundamental de la teoría literaria desde los años noventa” (Bracke & Corporaal, 2010: 79). Desde su origen en los setenta, ha alcanzado una gran sofisticación al evaluar y reevaluar, entre otros, el teatro de Shakespeare, los versos de poetas románticos ingleses, o el trascendentalismo de Emerson y Thoreau. Rechazará visiones ideales, utópicas y pastorales en retroalimentación con las emociones del autor o autora y las de sus lectores. En cambio, se focalizará en estribaciones desmitificadoras del saqueo, devastación y caos del planeta Tierra. Tras décadas, el análisis crítico y empático de pinceladas líricas y narrativas que dibujan el medioambiente se ha despojado de iniciales enfoques

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

monolíticos gracias a declinaciones naturales en ecopostcolonialismo y ecofeminismo, que abrazan los efectos sinérgicos de la interdisciplinaridad y el tratamiento de cuestiones de cadente actualidad: las intersecciones entre la explotación de la naturaleza, la desigualdad entre ambos sexos y diversas etnias. Por un lado, el ecopostcolonialismo se centra en elementos no humanos que pasan desapercibidos en obras canónicas, así como en relatos del asentamiento de pobladores, la conservación del paisaje, desastres ecológicos y la inequidad en la distribución de la riqueza del medio rural en obras más actuales (Vadde, 2011: 565). Asimismo, la práctica de oponer la cultura a la naturaleza, o el individuo al animal, propicia la emergencia discursiva de los privilegios del imperialista frente a la desposesión del invadido (2011: 565). Por otro, el ecofeminismo es “una corriente que conecta ecologistas y feministas al crear una ideología sedimentada en la injusticia relativa a cuestiones de género, raza y clase social en sintonía con la explotación y degradación natural” (Sturgeon, 1997: 3). De hecho, la conjunción entre estas aproximaciones críticas enriquece, sustancialmente, la investigación literaria más reciente. El ensayo de Annia Loomba Colonialism/ Postcolonialism es pionero al indagar en la rivalidad entre la supremacía del Yo europeo y el periférico otro extranjero, siendo crucial para el triunfo de las empresas colonizadoras del primero sobre el cuerpo y los recursos naturales del segundo la complicidad estética y cultural del lenguaje, la literatura y el arte. Loomba defenderá estos postulados mediante las crónicas de viajes de los descubridores españoles y europeos en la Indias Occidentales. El abrazo solidario del postcolonialismo a la temática de género y la ecocrítica se ilustraría con el grabado América (Imagen 1) del artista flamenco Jan Van der Straet, quien en 1600 dibujó al navegante florentino Amerigo Vespucci en la alegoría del descubrimiento de una América, con forma de mujer desnuda y sentada en un paraje campestre frente al mar. Esta imagen antropomórfica del Nuevo Mundo sugiere que el hombre ofrece la civilización a una mujer foránea y voluptuosa, que encarna una naturaleza virgen y bella, pero en estado salvaje. Anexionará su cuerpo a la sexualidad, tradicionalmente entrelazada con el pecado y el tabú por culpa de credos morales y eclesiásticos. Asimismo, este grabado esconde lecturas más subversivas del consenso feminista y ecológico:

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el rapaz conquistador europeo desea violar a la joven americana para su utilitario asentamiento humano y seminal sobre los nuevos dominios corporales y terrestres conquistados. De hecho, la crítica literaria que estudia el entorno físico sustenta su ética medioambiental en “otorgar a las especies y al paisaje un valor intrínseco”, en vez de tasar la utilidad que puedan proporcionarle al hombre (Cudworth, 1995: 19). Más allá de las analogías entre Europa-Hombre-Humanidad y América-MujerNaturaleza, la explotación erótica de la mujer y otra de carácter comercial respecto a las materias primas del ecosistema – especialmente de exóticas tierras lejanas– en manos de la ideología patriarcal y eurocéntrica, ha orbitado en los últimos siglos en torno a la obtención de mayor rendimiento y rentabilidad de los mismos para su nuevo propietario masculino e imperialista, en detrimento de la conservación del patrimonio natural y la equiparación de los derechos sociopolíticos entre ambos sexos.

Imagen 1: América (1600), Jan Van der Straet Arte y literatura han sido pioneros en el usufructo estético de las interconexiones entre la mujer –racial/étnica o conciudadana– y la naturaleza como paradigma geográfico de la transgresión sexual de sus heroínas en frondosos entornos boscosos, así como de su muerte voluntaria en aguas marítimas y fluviales. De hecho, la naturaleza se configura como espacio engañoso y peligroso, no consanguínea con estas mártires pictóricas y literarias. Desde Shakespeare, leyendas artúricas, la poesía victoriana o la pintura prerrafaelita, la misoginia,

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

discriminación e invisibilidad sufridas por la mujer en Occidente se hermanará a la opresión de pobladores autóctonos del Nuevo Mundo, así como al expolio de sus recursos naturales, reflejado en el discurso oficial y artístico. Asimismo, el cuerpo femenino reencarnado en flora y fauna es una constante narrativa del patriarcado, que instrumentaliza con impunidad el espécimen femenino al categorizarlo como ser desconocido, animalesco e infrahumano. Si bien estudiaremos las mutaciones de una mujer en selva y ave gracias a la novela escogida, citaremos que la ficción decimonónica equipara a gráciles criaturas femeninas con plantas y jardines. Escritoras como Jane Austen – obedientes con el canon androcéntrico– acudirán al lenguaje floral sin violar el decoro para abordar el desarrollo físico y disponibilidad erótica de las jóvenes casaderas para el disfrute del hombre. Pero las alianzas semánticas entre mujer y naturaleza son igualmente proclives a la subversión. Ellen Moers sostiene que novelistas del siglo XIX, como George Eliot y Emily Brontë, emplearon el concepto de “paisaje femenino” para expresar sus deseos sexuales sin levantar sospechas ni desafiar el puritanismo victoriano (1980: 257). Sus heroínas hallarán sensaciones erógenas en su contacto con el mundo natural, frente a carcelarios espacios domésticos y uterinos. Ecos sáficos y clitorocentristas resuenan incluso en el análisis crítico de la poesía de Emily Dickinson y Christina Rossetti, que insinúa corrientes matrilineales y sororales con acercamiento a un jardín secreto benigno y solidario. A continuación exploraremos las interrelaciones literarias entre la mujer, el ecosistema y la explotación europea del Caribe, codiciado por su riqueza ecológica, sexualizado por su voluptuoso atractivo, sometido por el hombre blanco, y demonizado por su distanciamiento geográfico respecto a doctrinas teológicas y sociales de la metrópoli. La obra elegida es Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) de la autora antillana Jean Rhys (1890-1979), que encuadramos en dos culturas y tiempos históricos distintos: el diegético situado en las Antillas Occidentales en la época victoriana, y el de su composición: Inglaterra en los años sesenta del siglo XX, una década vital para el activismo feminista, la concienciación medioambiental y la lucha contra el racismo. Nuestra postura crítica sugiere la fluidez textual del género de las voces narradoras en la novela, entre el hombre que defiende discursos hegemónicos del patriarcado y la mujer que los subvierte parcialmente

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al abanderar otros que se mueven en las arenas movedizas de la hibridez lingüística. Por un lado, Rhys crea una polifonía que refuerza analogías simbólicas e identitarias de los objetos expuestos por imperativo masculino: la mujer, la naturaleza y el continente americano. Pero por otro, la trascripción narrativa de su denuncia contra las misóginas y exterminadoras estructuras de poder del imperio británico es porosa. Nuestro enfoque reflejará la tangencia entre su docilidad reverencial y tácticas femeninas de guerrilla bajo el foco de la ecocrítica y sus ramificaciones feministas y postcolonialistas. De padre galés y madre criolla1, Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, con el nom de plume Jean Rhys, nació en la isla caribeña de Dominica. La cruel historia de esta posesión de ultramar, en sucesivas manos españolas, francesas e inglesas, estuvo condicionada por la confluencia de tres religiones –católica, protestante y animista–, la masacre de sus indígenas y su territorio, así como la explotación económica de plantaciones, que denigró a esclavos africanos hasta mediados del siglo XIX. Esta herencia cultural forjó la cosmogonía binaria de la autora: blanco/negro, amo/esclavo, virgen/prostituta, niña buena/niña mala (Moran, 2007: 110). Aunque asoció a la población de color con el sexo, la suciedad y la propensión a ser azotados, empatizó al sentirse identificada con ella (2007: 105). Pero no sólo las tensiones raciales por el empobrecimiento de los colonos tras la abolición de la esclavitud y la usurpación de sus tierras condicionarán Wide Sargasso Sea, sino que la sensación interiorizada –como mujer y antillana– de incomprensión y desprecio trasatlántico mutuo entre metrópoli y colonia, es también un corrosivo sustrato narrativo que intoxica todas sus obras. La azarosa vida de Jean Rhys será la génesis de su creación artística. Tras desembarcar sin familia directa en Londres con dieciséis años, realizará una tournée por Europa como corista y maniquí, sufriendo el rechazo por ser inmigrante, amores tormentosos, matrimonios fracasados, la insolvencia económica, la dependencia emocional del hombre, el ostracismo como escritora, la adicción al alcohol, el trauma del aborto y la muerte de su bebé. A su vez, recordará en sus diarios el abuso sexual y psíquico causado por un rico terrateniente inglés, casado y de avanzada edad, con quien mantuvo una relación sadomasoquista durante su adolescencia en Dominica (Savory, 2007: 4). Su estética de tortura sexual, perpetrada por sus villanos novelados contra sus débiles víctimas femeninas, reproducirá esta violación del invasor masculino y

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

colonialista contra ella: una niña vulnerable e indefensa que asimilará toda la culpa y se odiará a sí misma. Sus novelas de entreguerras Quartet (1929), Voyage in the Dark (1934) y Good Morning, Midgnight (1939) son piezas contiguas que recomponen la anatomía emocional y corporal de una única mujer en diversos episodios de su experiencia adulta, mientras en Wide Sargasso Sea regresará a su niñez y reescribirá un mito de las Indias Occidentales distorsionado por el canon literario de la madre Inglaterra. Rhys, caribeña y cosmopolita, se encuadraría formalmente en fluido tránsito entre la autobiografía y la ficción, la literatura colonial y la postcolonial, el modernismo y la postmodernidad, tradiciones europeas y el emprendimiento americano, siempre con reminiscencias del género gótico. De depurada complejidad estructural, esta obra no sólo supone su exitosa resurrección para crítica y público, sino que también es pionera en la literatura postcolonial al retirar el inmaculado velo de novia de la novela de Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847), mostrando al lector su rostro viciado: la ideología imperialista y patriarcal de la era victoriana, eurocéntrica y racista, escondida bajo el halo romántico de la narrativa, y reproducida por su creadora mediante el personaje de Bertha Mason2, la primera y caribeña esposa de Rochester3, transfigurada en la loca del ático4, encarcelada en la mansión de Thornfield Hall. Prevalecerá la indignación de Jean Rhys como autora antillana despojada de identidad en la hostil metrópoli por el distorsionado e insolidario retrato brontëano de enajenación y monstruosidad, que lapida a mujeres como ella –sin atributos ni voz–, y las sume en la oscuridad. Para ofrecer la visión periférica de la víctima amordazada, otorgará la palabra a Bertha, quien renace en Antoinette Cosway, y brinda su versión extraoficial en Wide Sargasso Sea, precuela de Jane Eyre. La mujer será expoliada, esclavizada y enjaulada por el colonialista texto inglés de Brontë, que describe a su personaje secundario y criollo como bestia salvaje. Esta inferencia de su carácter infrahumano y diabólico la aproximaría de facto a la matriz genética de su degradación: las tierras antillanas. Mientras que Jane Eyre es huérfana pero halla el cálido abrazo protector de la naturaleza, la cual propicia que avance segura en su arduo peregrinaje vital, Antoinette mantiene una relación conflictiva y equívoca con ésta: desde el refugio para una niña solitaria hasta la incitación a la caída sexual de la mujer, desde el deleite hedonista con su marido hasta la nostalgia patógena en

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una celda pétrea allende los mares. Las alianzas congénitas por imperativo androcéntrico entre ella y su autóctona ubicación geográfica –las Antillas Occidentales– serán negativas, esquemáticas y clónicas al homologar las perniciosas tentaciones de exuberantes islas caribeñas con la belleza voluptuosa y el erotismo del cuerpo femenino, proclive a la depravación según estos mismos credos misóginos. Antoinette será una selva densa que hay que arrasar para garantizar el asentamiento masculino y su acceso a la riqueza territorial, mientras que, a posteriori, la virginal y asexualizada Jane encarna la agricultura y el jardín, domésticos y aclimatados hábitats que complacen los deseos de Rochester como esposa y madre. Exploraremos tres vértices de una misma violencia ejercida por el hombre, el patriarcado y el clásico relato inglés contra la mujer, la naturaleza y etnias africanas: la marginación, explotación y opresión en la estructura triádica de la novela. Ambientada en Jamaica tras abolirse la esclavitud en el siglo XIX, la primera parte de la novela contiene elementos autobiográficos de la niñez de Rhys, no sólo plasmados en su descripción del calipso caribeño, propenso al sexo con flores perfumadas, vegetación húmeda, calor tropical y aguas prístinas, sino además en la precaria situación socio-económica y el peligro para la integridad física de una familia ficticia –los Cosway–, al estallar conflictos raciales y desmembrarse los latifundios de plantaciones de los terratenientes europeos, que creará un nuevo estrato de población blanca empobrecida, sin fortuna ni tierras, abandonados a su suerte por la metrópoli inglesa. Hija de un británico y una criolla, Antoinette narrará capítulos decisivos de su infancia y juventud en primera persona: su amistad con compañeras de juegos y su sirvienta de color Christophine, la negligencia de su madre Annette relativa a su hacienda Coulibri y su descendencia después de enviudar, y su ulterior boda con un rico colono inglés –Mr. Mason– para recuperar la afluencia financiera y la protección masculina. Varios episodios juveniles dolorosos serán un déjà vu para Antoinette. Anticiparán su futuro modus vivendi de humillación y masoquismo, que prepara la asunción de su próximo rol de objeto de transacción sexual y esclava conyugal. Tras bañarse en un arroyo, regresará a su casa y se presentará ante los invitados de su madre con el vestido sucio y harapiento de su amiga de color –Tia–, que le robó

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

el suyo. Este incidente es indicativo del amplio calado del conflicto racial. En consonancia, los negros denigran a los Cosway con insultos como “white niggers” o “cucarachas” por su pobreza. Frente a la indiferencia de su madre desnaturalizada y la hostilidad del entorno humano, el paisaje caribeño nutrirá las carencias afectivas de la niña con cobijo y amparo: “There is a tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from strangers” (Rhys, 1966: 12). Abducida por el animismo de Christophine, Antoinette creerá que la naturaleza posee cualidades antropomórficas. Buscará su mimetismo con ella, lo cual detecta su deseo de no interactuar con la civilización y sí transfigurarse en materia inerte para no sufrir por culpa de desafecto y prejuicios sociales. Coulibri es un jardín domesticado en manos del hombre blanco que permanecerá asilvestrado durante los años de viudedad de Annette y ausencia masculina al estar habitado únicamente por mujeres: ella misma, su hija y Christophine. Pero el estado de aparente decadencia de este edénico paraje camufla una savia feroz, peligrosa y acechante, encarnada por una orquídea que crece sin control con tentáculos fálicos que pueden destruir a la niña, que no se acerca a ella por temor a la infracción sexual: Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible –the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell […]. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was shaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered […]. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it. (Rhys, 1966: 12) Irremediablemente, la propiedad de la tierra pasará de colono a colono: de Mr. Cosway a Mr. Mason, para que no caiga en manos de mujeres y negros, poniendo así en peligro la integridad y la seguridad de toda la familia. De hecho, el odio xenófobo de antiguos esclavos se radicalizará cuando incendian esta finca y provocan la muerte del

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hermano deficiente de Antoinette, así como la locura de su progenitora. Durante el fuego que calcinará Coulibri, Annette intentará salvar a su mascota: un loro, debido a la superstición antillana que sugiere que su quema es portadora de mala suerte. Esta ave encarnaría a la mujer criolla al ser ambos un producto híbrido y de síntesis entre naturaleza y civilización: domesticado y ventrílocuo del lenguaje andro/eurocéntrico, frente al paisaje isleño indómito y cacofónico. Mr. Mason previamente había acortado sus alas para que no pudiera escapar, lo cual le convertirá en un pájaro enjaulado que no podrá escapar con vida y arderá como una tea. Ésta será la última imagen para Antoinette del vergel jamaicano donde creció y un ominoso oráculo de su propio destino como mujer adulta: encarcelamiento y muerte. De hecho, así es precisamente cómo pereció su gemela o predecesora Bertha Mason en Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë: envuelta en llamas y saltando al vacío para huir de la mansión inglesa de su marido Rochester. De vuelta al corpus literario de Jean Rhys, todos sus personajes femeninos saben que están destinadas a sucumbir en un universo gobernado por los hombres, por lo que la autora usa la premonición como elemento narrativo (Díaz Fernández, 1990: 85). La heroína iniciará su pubertad en un convento, un refugio provisional antes de ser vendida por su padrastro al hijo de un caballero inglés de rancio abolengo que, en cambio, carece de fortuna al no ser el primogénito. Rodeada de la inocencia de las novicias y enseñanzas bíblicas sobre el pecado original alejada de la naturaleza, intuirá que Mr. Mason busca un marido para ella. Tendrá la siguiente pesadilla sexual y menárquica, como una profecía que vaticina la desgracia de su próxima vida adulta, regida por el odio conyugal y el enclaustramiento lejos de su isla: I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress. It is white and beautiful and I don’t wish to get it soiled. I follow him, sick with fear but I make no effort to save myself; if anyone were to try to help me, I would refuse. This must happen. Now we have reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees and there is no wind. ‘Here?’ He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He smiles slyly. ‘Not here, not

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

yet?’, he says, and I follow him, weeping. Now I do not try to hold up my dress, it trails in the dirt, my beautiful dress. We are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and the trees are different […] I touch a tree and my arms hold on to it. ‘Here, here’. But I think I will not go any further. The tree sways and jerks as if it is trying to throw me off. (Rhys, 1966: 34) Como símbolo de su próxima desfloración, Antoinette intenta preservar el blanco virginal de su vestido durante el sueño, pero es forzada a seguir los pasos enfurecidos de su despiadado raptor hacia un frondoso bosque sexualizado que, esta vez, no aporta abrigo ni consuelo. Al comprender que está predestinada a la subordinación de género, consentirá que este hombre brutalizado manche de barro la preciada prenda. Para Freud “el masoquismo es femenino y la feminidad es masoquista”, lo cual fija a la mujer como objeto sexual y pasivo proclive al sufrimiento, de forma genética y más allá de mandatos sociales (Millett, 1969: 194). Aterrada, Antoinette se someterá al placer erótico masculino, metaforizado en tronco del erecto árbol fálico que “se menea y sacude”, el cual desvela que la naturaleza es traicionera y recuerda a la orquídea salvaje que la atemorizaba de niña. Esta pesadilla concluirá con su trasplantación a un escenario edificado, desconocido para ella, que anuncia su futuro cautiverio en una jaula de piedra en Inglaterra: el ático de la mansión de quien será su futuro marido. La primera sección de la novela se cierra con el funeral de Annette. Irrumpiendo fugazmente en la segunda parte, Antoinette narrará el súmmum de la degradación social, moral y sexual para una mujer blanca al recordar la ominosa imagen de la que sería la última vez que vio con vida a su bella y displicente madre. Presa, enajenada y alcoholizada, será violada por el hombre negro que la vigilaba por orden de Mr. Mason, mientras que una sirvienta de color observa esta vejación con regocijo. Del trinomio naturaleza, mujer y raza, éste último saldría narrativamente victorioso tras este suceso y las llamas de Coulibri. La lucidez del relato de la heroína es abruptamente interrumpida por Rochester como nuevo narrador de la segunda parte de la novela. Jean Rhys se aliaría con él al sustituir el presunto periodo

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de demencia de la joven con la racional palabra masculina, o ironizaría sobre su supuesta coherencia lingüística al denunciar la carencia de fiabilidad de la versión oficial del patriarcado. Instigado a casarse por Richard, quien ejecutará los planes de su difunto padre Mr. Mason, este inglés narra su luna de miel y la convivencia marital con una misteriosa mujer criolla, reticente al matrimonio, entre Dominica y Jamaica. La autora explorará la incomunicación y los prejuicios recíprocos en la pareja, que degeneran en un choque cultural encarnizado y en relaciones amo-esclava –casi raciales– entre ambos, donde el desheredado coloniza el cuerpo y el patrimonio de una heredera, que defiende la idiosincrasia criolla y a la población de color. Mientras que ella percibe que la metrópoli es un lugar irreal, él piensa que el Caribe pertenece a un universo onírico, fruto de su falta de aclimatación al medio físico. Perturbado por la exuberancia de su esposa –eco de la seductora, pero hostil, naturaleza de la isla–, Rochester transfigura a Antoinette de flor del paraíso en ramera desflorada. Al igual que la mujer es virgen y corruptible, ansía poseer una naturaleza impoluta bajo la legalidad contractual del matrimonio y el resultante usufructo legítimo de la tierra: “It was a beautiful place– wild, untouched, above all untouched with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness. And it kept its secret. I’d find myself thinking, ‘What I see is nothing –I want what it hides – that is not nothing’” (Rhys, 1966: 44), lo cual anuda interrelaciones entre la ruptura del himen y la penetración en territorios naturales antes inviolados. Así, la naturaleza y la mujer se sitúan en un estado fronterizo entre pureza inmaculada y transgresión erótica codiciado por el hombre. En su aventura trasatlántica, Rochester alterna inicialmente la enfermedad febril de su inadaptación al clima caribeño con la delectación en la belleza embriagadora de su nueva esposa y sus dominios terrenales: “I breathed the sweetness of the air. Cloves I could smell and cinnamon, roses and orange bossom. And an intoxicating freshness as if all this had never been breathed before” (Rhys, 1966: 54). Proyecta en Antoinette su propia inhibición puritana y temores ante la erupción del instinto sexual en ambos: “Very soon she was as eager for what’s called loving as I was –more lost and drowned afterwards” (Rhys, 1966: 57). Culpabilizándola de sucumbir juntos en la lujuria, confiesa que no la ama, sino que sólo quiere consumar el coito con ella: “I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

love. I felt... little tenderness for her […] The sight of her dress… made me breathless and savage with desire. When I was exhausted I turned away from her and slept, still without a word or a caress” (1966: 57), pese a haber sido él quien la persuadió al matrimonio con falsas promesas. De hecho, la reacción instintiva de Antoinette, cuando mostró no querer casarse con él, se opone al lenguaje embaucador de Rochester para acceder a la riqueza corporal y territorial de la pobre niña rica. Bataille define el orgasmo como “pequeña muerte” por el escaso consumo de energía durante la cópula, generándose la pérdida completa de la misma al fallecer (2011: 246). Jean Rhys reflejará textualmente que su heroína alcanzará el clímax durante el acto sexual: “‘If I could die. Now, when I am happy… You wouldn’t have to kill me. Say die and I will die. You don’t believe me? Then try, try, say die and watch me die’” (Rhys, 1966: 57). Rochester constata la capacidad multiorgásmica de su esposa: “‘Die then! Die!’ I watched her die many times” (1966: 57). La medicina victoriana consideraba que la ninfomanía era un trastorno mental de tipología femenina (Ingham, 2006: 192). Pero esta parafilia por imperativo patriarcal, que sería implícitamente achacada a Antoinette, podría camuflar la impotencia de su marido para satisfacer su libido o, al menos, que ella encajaría no con el paradigma decimonónico de feminidad asociado a la esposa como ángel del hogar asexual, sino con el apetito sexual de la amante desinhibida. En todo caso, el cuerpo de la mujer es un discurso ideológico y herramienta de autoridad masculina para identificarla como la otra –no inglesa–, mimetizada con el entorno natural, salvaje y maléfico. No es paradójico que el cambio de actitud de Edward Rochester respecto a su cónyuge coincida con su creciente malestar ante una naturaleza y torne en irritación por culpa de su abrumador atractivo: “Everything is too much… Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger” (Rhys, 1966: 42). Más allá de analogías simbólicas, su extranjería frente a Antoinette y a su nueva ubicación geográfica se transforma en beligerancia doble: hacia la mujer y la naturaleza, lo cual evidencia la perturbación cognitiva del inglés, que amalgama las percepciones y emociones experimentadas con una y con otra –ambas silvestres, voluptuosas, oscuras, desconocidas y peligrosas. Este hecho contribuirá a deshumanizar a su cónyuge y a otorgar

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propiedades antropomórficas asociadas al mal a objetos inertes del terreno insular. Los efectos narcóticos de estas dos variables se intensificarán por su miedo paranoico a ser la víctima de la magia vudú de Christophine, sirviéndose ésta de la complicidad selvática, lo cual completaría para él el círculo de la amenaza que se cierne sobre el hombre blanco por la alianza revitalizante entre raza, mujer y medioambiente: “‘I feel very much a stranger here… I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side’” (1966: 62). Esta confusión entre lo natural y lo sobrenatural ayuda a que Rochester rechace aún más su entorno humano y paisajístico. Por lo tanto, su indolencia y los placeres epicúreos de primeros meses darán paso a la angustia y claustrofobia por culpa del aislamiento y la falta de civilización a su alrededor. Rochester acabará odiando a Antoinette al intuir la existencia de sangre negra en el indeterminado cuerpo criollo y al ser contaminado por las calumnias de Daniel Cosway. El vengativo hermanastro mulato e ilegítimo de la joven no sorprenderá a Rochester, sino que ratificará sus apriorismos respecto a su mujer: su predisposición genética a la demencia y la promiscuidad. Sin embargo, será él quien deguste, con certeza narrativa, la fruta no prohibida para el colono: el sexo interracial con la doncella Amélie, a quien igualmente identificará con Antoinette y con la naturaleza por su duplicidad y malignidad innata. Según su mentalidad victoriana, la animalidad femenina emergerá en el curso de una pelea física y verbal entre ambas mujeres, que él deplorará. Mientras, la heroína ama apasionadamente a su marido: “I never wished to live before I knew you. I always thought it would be better if I died” (Rhys, 1966: 56). No obstante, no se sorprenderá de que la desgracia se instale en su vida conyugal al tratarse de una reverberación de su traumático pasado. Para retener el deseo sexual de su marido, recurrirá al vudú de Christophine, quien intentará proteger a su ama de la rapacidad económica del hombre blanco. Pero estas pócimas de amor sólo distanciarán aún más a Rochester de ella. A su vez, la conjunción hereditaria de alcoholismo por vía paterna y demencia por vía materna confluirán con la constatación de la infidelidad de su esposo y el asedio de rumores malignos sobre su honor para enloquecer a la heroína. Será vital para cerrar su cuadro clínico de trastorno nervioso la anulación de su identidad por parte de Rochester al llamarla Bertha, la loca del ático en Jane Eyre. Antoinette experimentará brotes agresivos, pero su esposo amaina este brío para destruirla y apropiarse

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

de sus tierras: “You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing” (Rhys, 1966: 110). Aunque arropada por el ecosistema, rememorará con añoranza su conexión metafísica y corporal con el paraíso jamaicano de su pasado, que es el más preciado recuerdo de su niñez, que antaño aún yacía incólume antes del asalto del colonizador: “All the flowers in the world were in our garden and sometimes when I was thristy I licked raindrops from the Jasmine leaves after a shower” (1966: 84). El silencio verbal de la naturaleza se correlaciona con la ininteligibilidad lingüística in crescendo de la demente quien, por culpa de alcohol y somníferos administrados por Christophine para soportar el rechazo masculino, se transfigurará, según Rochester, en zombi carente de raciocinio, decencia y alma; es decir, en un ser híbrido y deshumanizado entre la vida y la muerte. Éste será su pretexto para brutalizar y hacer pasar por loca a la heroína, en consonancia con su aversión a la naturaleza, o amenaza verde, que se entreteje con su odio hacia la mujer nativa de estas tierras caribeñas: I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its difference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing. (Rhys, 1966:111) El expolio del paisaje femenino y natural culmina cuando Antoinette y la isla sacian el hambre depredadora de quien se ha cansado de sus recursos económicos y humanos. Deseará huir de la contaminación del entorno paisajístico donde el poder femenino se robustece y peligra su autoridad. Para acelerar su debilitamiento y desnutrición, su venganza será arrancar a su esposa de sus raíces: “She said she loved this place. This is the last she’ll see of it” (1966: 107). Si bien la naturaleza antillana saldrá indemne de la explotación pobladora de Rochester con el abandono del terrateniente de sus dominios, la infección de transmisión sexual de su unión con Antoinette

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provoca que la retenga a su lado y la usurpe de su elemento autóctono al ser legalmente su esposa, o la pieza de su patrimonio material más cercana físicamente: “I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad but mine, mine” (1966: 107), aunque lejana mentalmente según su ideología androcéntrica. Sin el veto de Richard, Rochester trasplanta a Antoinette-Bertha a Inglaterra para encerrarla en un cuarto oscuro y siniestro de Thornfield, desde donde ella narrará la tercera y última parte de Wide Sargasso Sea, que refleja que la tragedia humana, del mismo modo que la naturaleza, se rige por fuerzas cíclicas. Foucault afirma que, en el pasado, las mujeres inestables eran tratadas como animales y aprisionadas en celdas bajo los violentos métodos de contención de los manicomios al asociarse las ideas de enajenación mental y bestialidad (2001: 71). Al apresar a la heroína en el ático de su mansión con la vigilancia de una cuidadora, su esposo ejecutará prácticas clínicas y carcelarias de castigo, inmovilización y disciplina propias de esta institución psiquiátrica. El revisionismo de Rhys pone en cuarentena este diagnóstico imperialista y misógino de Rochester. Incluso, socava las convenciones góticas de Charlotte Brontë que retratan a Bertha como endiablado monstruo sexualizado que ataca por culpa de su sed de sangre y vendetta, siendo antagonista con respecto a la virginal y racional Jane Eyre. Movida por la cólera al leer que la igualdad de sexos abanderada por esta heroína no incluye a la mujer antillana, la autora caribeña articula, con empatía, la quebradiza voz de Antoinette como víctima desorientada y aterrorizada por el maltrato masculino. No sabe quién es, dónde está, ni por qué fue secuestrada: “I […] wonder why I have been brought here. For what reason? What is it that I must do? When I first came I thought it would be for a day, a week perhaps. I thought that when I saw him and spoke to him I would be wise as serpents, harmless as doves. ‘I give you all I have freely’, I would say, ‘and I will not trouble you again if you will let me go” (Rhys, 1966: 116), y ruega clemencia a al raptor que le arrebató su nombre y su libertad. El cautiverio, la soledad y el desamor serán los que terminen de lesionar su salud mental, como réplica de la autodestrucción de su madre. Jean Rhys recurre al desdoblamiento esquizoide de AntoinetteBertha causado por la suplantación de su identidad inducida por su agresor y por la pérdida de sus demarcaciones espaciotemporales. Esta fragmentación mental se manifestará mediante la bifurcación de su Yo

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

de narradora hacia un ella en tercera persona durante alucinaciones patógenas: “It was then that I saw her –the ghost. The woman with streaming hair. She was surrounded by a gilt frame but I knew her. I dropped the candle I was carrying and it caught the end of the tablecloth and I saw flames shoot up… There was a wall of fire protecting me” (Rhys, 1966: 123), que preconizan su trágico desenlace. Antoinette actuará y escapará. Materializará el fuego de esta fantasía que evoca el incendio de Coulibri –origen del drama–, destruyendo su prisión actual –Thornfield– y a sí misma. Lenore Walker declara que huir o luchar son las dos opciones ante el maltrato de género y que, cuando la mujer cree que su agresor terminará por asesinarla, puede decidir eliminarse a sí misma como única vía para controlar su propia vida (1984: 413, 137). Inglaterra será una pesadilla de piedra, oscura y fría, frente al recuerdo de luminosidad y calor de su isla nativa. De hecho, los sueños con este enclave de su infancia nutren a la heroína con sensaciones placenteras afines a la protección del útero materno, aunque sean peligrosas al gestar su autodeterminación suicida, ya que esclarecen su dilema existencial sobre cuál es su misión en la metrópoli: “Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do” (Rhys, 1966: 124). Entroncando in medias res con la obra brontëana, Antoinette y Bertha escapan juntas de su cárcel con nocturnidad. Optan así por un equívoco combate. Su insurrección con retorno a la naturaleza diagnostica el masoquismo autodestructivo de dóciles personajes femeninos que aceptan su identificación genética con el entorno físico. Pero la heroína es también inmune a la domesticación prescrita a la mujer por el lavado de cerebro de la palabra inglesa al obstinarse a permanecer en el salvajismo de su prelapsaria demencia. En su celda en tinieblas, la loca del ático activa la conexión metafísica con la naturaleza para que rebroten las flores de los exuberantes jardines jamaicanos, conjura las llamas para que resuciten sus vivos colores y volver así a su soñada isla. Rhys clausura Wide Sargasso Sea en los márgenes textuales con un final abierto, insinuante y acuático que escoge la fuga de su heroína, quien se desliza y fluye por oscuros pasadizos con una vela en sus manos para diluir su confinación y sumergirse en sus orígenes infantiles e intrauterinos: su edénica isla. Con obediencia, la autora parece doblegarse a una Charlotte Brontë, fálica e intimidatoria, que impone desde el trono del canon literario la irreversible resolución narrativa de Bertha en Jane Eyre y de su doble futuro, Antoinette: el suicidio. Rhys no corregiría este fondo

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argumental en el desenlace de su novela, sino sólo su forma estética, a la vez que añade un antecedente simbólico con un significativo impacto en dicha conclusión: la destrucción de Coulibri. Por tanto, el ambiguo final se debatiría entre dos mareas a contracorriente. Primero, la eternización de la opresión imperialista del texto europeo y el hombre inglés sobre la mujer foránea. Y segundo, la emancipación de ésta última respecto a la esclavitud patriarcal y su rebelión mediante la destrucción de la propiedad masculina y el retorno femenino al protector entorno marino y selvático del Caribe. En sintonía, la fantasía in extremis de Antoinette con la naturaleza dentro de la mazmorra: “If you are buried under a flamboyant tree… your soul is lifted up when it flowers” (Rhys, 1966: 120) revelaría su perenne deseo de mímesis con el paisaje y su anuncio de venganza de resurrección o contraataque futuro como ave fénix. Wide Sargasso Sea aglutina una fértil y envenenada conjunción narrativa de factores de género, raza y medioambientales, mediante los cuales Jean Rhys accederá paradójicamente a un canon literario masculino, eurocéntrico y urbano en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Lecturas superficiales no sugerirían proposiciones reivindicativas en su obra hacia la igualdad de derechos entre hombre y mujer, civilización y naturaleza, colonizador y colonizado, metrópoli y posesiones de ultramar. En línea, la autora se plegaría al anacrónico continuismo patriarcal en la marginación, la explotación y la opresión de los segundos elementos de estas categorías dobles que conservarán cualidades negativas. Tampoco aportaría esperanzas hacia el progreso ideológico en materias ecológicas, sexuales y étnicas, ni hacia la desmitificación artística del axioma narrativo entre el expolio de la naturaleza y la subyugación de la mujer. De hecho, emana de nuestra reevaluación crítica de la flora, la fauna y el entorno paisajístico caribeño que Jean Rhys contribuiría, mediante mitos y evidencias textuales en esta novela entre el siglo XIX y el mundo contemporáneo, a perpetuar la consanguinidad ontológica entre naturaleza y mujer, que prueba su aculturación congénita a un androcentrismo con enraizadas relaciones de autoridad y poder masculino. No obstante, al finalizar cada sección de esta obra trinitaria, ofrecería pistas narrativas de evasión, subversión y empoderamiento, emplazados en un futuro cercano o todavía lejano. En la primera, la población de color se amotina contra los descendientes del colono blanco. En la segunda, los recursos

Francisco José Cortés Vieco Intersecciones entre la mujer, la ecocrítica y el postcolonialismo en...

naturales no se confiscan por completo gracias al alejamiento del terrateniente inglés de sus tierras. Y en la tercera, la mujer extranjera toma la autodeterminación –masoquista o libertaria– de huir de su captor y destruir sus propiedades, aunque conlleve su propio desplome orgánico. Wide Sargasso Sea es ya un clásico de la literatura postcolonial, pero su ósmosis con temáticas femeninas y ecológicas aporta enfoques sinérgicos que revelan la comunión protagónica de factores humanos y físicos en la degradación de la mujer, la naturaleza y de otras razas en la narrativa moderna. Igualmente, en el contexto de desigualdad, expropiación y colonización masculina delineado por esta ficción, concluimos que la literatura expone, de forma subliminal, que la paridad, la justicia y la emancipación únicamente se culminan si el respeto a la diversidad étnica, la protección del medioambiente y la autosoberanía femenina caminan juntas de la mano. NOTAS Aunque hoy indique mezcla de razas, el término criollo originalmente denominaba a los nativos del Nuevo Mundo con ascendencia francesa o española, no anglosajona. 2 En “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”, Gayatri C. Spivak explora la relación entre Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë y Wide Sargasso Sea de Jean Rhys, así como sus elementos imperialistas y postcoloniales asociados a temáticas de género. 3 Jean Rhys nunca nombra al héroe de Jane Eyre en su obra, pero sí menciona a otros personajes, como la cuidadora Grace Poole o Richard Mason, lo cual confirma que Edward Rochester es el marido de Antoinette y el narrador de la segunda parte de Wide Sargasso Sea. 4 Este personaje inspirará a Sandra Gilbert y Susan Gubar para redactar The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), obra seminal de la crítica en la literatura femenina anglonorteamericana. 1

OBRAS CITADAS Bataille, G. 2011 L’Érotisme. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

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Bracke, A., & M. Corporaal. 2010 “Ecocriticism and English Studies: An Introduction”. English Studies 91.7: 709-712. Cudworth, E. 2005 Developing Ecofeminist Theory: The Complexity of Difference. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Díaz Fernández, J.R. 1990 “Jean Rhys y Wide Sargasso Sea”. Atlantis 12.1: 77-102. Foucault, M. 2001 Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London & New York: Routledge. Ingham, P. 2006 The Brontës. Oxford: Oxford UP. Loomba, A. 2005 Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London & New York: Routledge. Millett, K. 1969 Sexual Politics. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Moers, E. 1980 Literary Women. London: Women’s Press. Moran, P. 2007 Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and The Aesthetics of Trauma. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rhys, J. 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Angela Smith. London: Penguin. Savory, E. 2007 The Cambridge Introduction to Jean Rhys. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Spivak, G.C. 1985 “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”. Critical Inquiry 12.1: 243-261. Sturgeon, N. 1997 Ecofeminist Natures. New York: Routledge. Vadde, A. 2011 “Cross-Pollination: Ecocriticism, Zoocriticism, Postcolonialism”. Contemporary Literature 52.3: 565-573. Walker, L. 1984 The Battered Woman Syndrome. New York: Springer.

María Teresa González Mínguez Charlott Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: On How Female...

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S ‘THE YELLOW WALLPAPER’: ON HOW FEMALE CREATIVITY COMBATS MADNESS AND DOMESTIC OPPRESSION* María Teresa González Mínguez UNED mtgonzalez@flog.uned.es In the nineteenth century domestic confinement and women’s oppression were often associated with madness. Many women writers have openly written about them from first hand experience. On occasion, madness was a means of escape but also a way to obtain economic freedom and gain independence from patriarchal structures. The purpose of this article on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is twofold: first, to demonstrate that educated women used writing as a means of healing and liberation from patriarchy; and second, to prove that female breakdown was employed in nineteenth-century literature as a way to degrade women both physically and emotionally. The article shows that when writing about madness, women are able to alter convention and tradition and in doing so take control of themselves. Key words: female madness, domestic oppression, creative writing, patriarchal structures, autobiography. En el siglo diecinueve el confinamiento doméstico y la opresión de la mujer estaban frecuentemente asociados con la locura. Muchas mujeres han escrito abiertamente sobre ello desde la propia experiencia personal. En ocasiones, la locura no sólo era un medio de escape sino una manera de conseguir libertad e independencia frente a la estructura patriarcal. La finalidad de este artículo basado en el relato breve de Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” tiene una doble vertiente: primero, demostrar que las *

Fecha de recepción: Abril 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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mujeres cultas utilizaban la escritura como proceso curativo y de liberación, y segundo, probar que la histeria femenina se empleaba en la literatura del siglo diecinueve como forma de degradar a las mujeres física y emocionalmente. El artículo muestra como, al escribir sobre la locura, las mujeres podían tanto alterar convenciones y tradiciones como ejercer control sobre sí mismas. Palabras clave: locura femenina, opresión doméstica, escritura creativa, estructuras patriarcales, autobiografía. “I was born at home”, said the American poet E. E. Cummings. The word home for him represented the idea of privacy. Its principal function was to admit whatever might otherwise remain outside. In Jane Austen’s novels, houses symbolize the people and especially the women who inhabit them. For the English author the house was a realm where married women could enjoy a little sphere of sovereignty and freedom away from their parents’ authority. But what happens when a house is a space of confinement and oppression, as it is for the young woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s autobiographical short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)? Women themselves have often been described or imagined as houses. Even today young girls have an amazing interest in domestic enclosures. The female womb has always been a child’s first and most gratifying house, a source of food and security. For many a woman writer the associations of house and self seem mainly to have strengthened the anxiety about enclosure which she projected into her art. On the one hand, female artists knew that they were enclosing an unknown part of themselves that was, somehow, not themselves. On the other, as they were conditioned to believe that, as a house, they were themselves owned and ought to be inhabited by a man, they may have once again seen themselves as inevitably an object. Also, to the literary woman, “the confinement of pregnancy replicates the confinement of society” (Gilbert and Gubart 1978: 89). All these ingredients –confinement in texts, houses and maternal female bodies– were brought together by Gilman in 1890 in an imposing story of female imprisonment but also of escape. Like Jane Eyre, “The Yellow

María Teresa González Mínguez Charlott Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: On How Female...

Wallpaper” presents a world in which literary women could speak their voiceless anguish. In Gilman’s story, the female protagonist, suffering from a nervous depression, is taken by her husband Dr John to live in a rented colonial mansion in the middle of the country in which she does not feel comfortable. The young woman is persuaded to spend most of her time in a room she does not like with barred windows and, most importantly a peeling, faded yellow wallpaper. The story describes a woman’s journey into madness and how the room and its interior decoration begins to mirror her mental state. Indeed, in the nineteenth century domestic confinement and women’s oppression were often connected with madness. The fact that women were particularly drawn to write about madness is to be seen as one of the most revealing symptoms of rebellion against entrapment. Linda Anderson rightly notes that “feminism has had an almost symbolic relationship with autobiography” (2006: 119). It is interesting to note how many women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton have suffered from mental illness and have openly written about psychological breakdown from first hand experience. Madness was, in some cases, a means of escape, of liberation for themselves. As Elaine Showalter points out in The Female Malady, “madness is the price women artists have to pay for the exercise of their creativity in a male dominated culture” (1979: 4). No doubt, women’s creative writing was also a way to obtain economic freedom and gain independence from the dominant patriarchal structures and, especially, a way to provide women with a voice in a world which spoke a male language. In Anne Mellor’s words, “women writers promoted a social change that extended the values of domesticity into public realm” (1993: 3), providing space for the new female subject to emerge. My contention in this article is two-fold: first, to prove that writing was a process of healing, of emotional release and intellectual stimulation over patriarchal domestic confinement, and, second, to demonstrate that the female breakdown produced as a consequence of female imprisonment was not a positive notion in the literature of the nineteenth century but a way to degrade women. In order to explain

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this, I will explore these themes in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Although her “comfort” is that “the baby is well and happy” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 353) away from that room, the protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an absent and inadequate new mother who causes anxiety and is forced to a child-like state. Many doctors recommended marriage as the cure to hysteria –a young woman’s disease that was virtually synonymous with femininity– but they also spoke of the dangers of motherhood leading to mental breakdown. A large number of women in asylums in the nineteenth century were suffering from what we would now call postnatal depression, as we can read in Gilman’s story. Based on her own experience as a young mother, Gilman demonstrates that motherhood was not a process of emotional release. However, writing was, especially in Gilman’s case, with her own philosophical and social works. The novel was much less problematically a woman’s occupation. Novel writing was bound up with the notion of a private life. Patricia Stubbs argues that this concept was particularly damaging to bourgeois society women confined to a domestic world because it celebrates private experience and relationships as potent sources of human satisfaction (1979: xi-xii). Unfortunately the secluded young, intelligent and eloquent woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was forbidden to write by her husband, a disapproving and paternalistic physician –the conventional nineteenth-century male– who feared that her writing could become a confession, a revelation “of women’s destiny under patriarchy and the want for change” (Amstrong 2006:121). She is often left without the company of other adults for long periods of time in that unfamiliar house, in a sinister room, and generally asked to conform to a norm of feminine behaviour and domesticity which suffocates her. Her husband represents the view of society. As the story progresses, the woman loses her grip on the world outside her room. She appears to be mad. The yellow wallpaper in her creepy room, in that alien environment, becomes somehow symbolic of her madness. For Dr John the “rings” and “things” of the room –a former nursery– are reminiscent of a gymnasium. For his wife they are really the paraphernalia of confinement. In the story, what really drives the narrator mad is the confining of her creative imagination.

María Teresa González Mínguez Charlott Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: On How Female...

Gilman makes the reader be sympathetic toward the woman but, similar to Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre and Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility, she does not in any way sentimentalize the theme of madness in the story. The girl is extremely critical of her husband, who is treating her according to methods by which Silas Weir Mitchell, a famous nerve specialist from Philadelphia, treated Gilman herself for a similar problem. In the field of neurology Weir Mitchell became associated with his introduction of the rest cure, later taken up by the medical world, for nervous diseases, particularly neurasthenia and hysteria. The treatment consisted of isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, electrotherapy and massage. Weir Mitchell’s treatment was also used on Virginia Woolf, who wrote a ferocious satire of it: “you invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six month rests; until a man who went in weighing seven stone six comes weighing twelve” (Lee 1996: 194). Dr John feels that with his wife’s imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like hers is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies and that she ought to use her will and good sense to control the tendency. The cure is worse than the disease because the sick woman’s mental condition deteriorates rapidly. “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 350), she remarks, but literally restricted from creativity and threatened by the children’s gymnastic equipment, she is definitely imprisoned in a house that is not her own. Even more tormenting, however, is the room’s wallpaper –that sulphurous yellow paper, torn off in spots, a threatening element that surrounds the narrator and overwhelms her, as do her husband and the “hereditary estate” (Gilbert and Gubart 1978: 90) in which she is trying to survive. The young woman revises the paper over and over again, projecting her own desire for escape onto her incomprehensible hieroglyphics. At some point, she discovers “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 355). As the narrator sinks more deeply into what society calls madness, the figure imprisoned behind the paper begins to invade and haunt the ancestral

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mansion. The synaesthetic nature of the wallpaper, that is its “yellow smell” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 356) that “creeps over the house” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 357), floods every room with its slight scent of decay. And the figure, which ultimately appears to be a woman, creeps too―through the house, in the house, and out of the house, in the garden, on the long road under the trees and even “as a cloud shadow in a high wind” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 357). The narrator’s self is clearly fragmented between herself and her double, although this time the fragmentation of the self is quite a positive thing because, at the end of the story she uses this double to escape “from her textual/architectural confinement” (Gilbert and Gubart 1978: 91). Dr John is in some small way defeated and clearly fails on his mission of protecting her from danger and temptation. His own wife wants him to faint while she escapes into the open country. Although sad, the scene is beautiful and its beauty lies in the fact that the cloud and the openness of the countryside where the woman flees away are a metaphor of “the progress of nineteenth-century literary women out of the texts defined by patriarchal poetics into the open spaces of their own authority” (Gilbert and Gubart 1978: 91). This metaphoric escape from the walls of the room, the walls of the written text and the patriarchal structures have an equivalent in real life. For Gilman herself, this story was a flight from disease into health. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written between 1890 and 1892. This period was one of the most difficult of Gilman’s life. Following her own nervous breakdown, she went through a series of major changes in her life, including her brave –and for its time scandalous– separation from her husband, a move across America, and a fight to support herself through lecturing and occasional writing. Lizbeth Goodman points out that Gilman’s writing of the story is a “process of catharsis, of emotional release, of healing, of coming to terms with herself and being able to use her knowledge creatively” (1996: 125). No doubt, “The Yellow Wallpaper” helped Gilman to heal. It shows a lot about the value Gilman places on creative freedom and intellectual stimulation over the domestic sphere. For Gilman, the home must not be seen as destructive, “the home is private. Therefore to be in private you must claim to be out of it” (Home 1973: 45). The American socialist writer advocates that the house has not developed in proportion to other institutions and warns of its negative

María Teresa González Mínguez Charlott Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: On How Female...

consequences, above all, for women and children. In the same vein, Janet Wolff insists on the limitations of women’s access to cultural production and their virtual exclusion from public cultural institutions: “Women’s leisure was confined to the home particularly among the middle-class. … Women were not able to frequent pubs, coffee houses, or eating places other than pastry cooks’ and confectioners’ shops. When accompanied by men, however, women might attend the theatre, particularly in the second half of the century when theatres, having excluded the working class by a variety of measures, including the price of tickets, became ‘respectable’” ( 1990: 23). As Elaine Hedges elucidates in her afterword to the newly republished “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1973, Gilman was not opposed to the idea of home. She believed that it tended to produce such qualities, necessary for the development of the human being such as kindness and affection (Home 1973: 55). However, due to economic dependence, women and children were imprisoned and suffocated within individual homes which “protecte[d] the womanliness of women and encourage[d] the manliness of men” (Girouard 1979: 16). The newly-designed downstairs lavatories, billiard, smoking and gun rooms functioned as sacrosanct male domains and members of the gentry redesigned their houses in accordance to the new social arrangements. No doubt, at the end of the story Gilman achieves what she was trying to demonstrate because “The Yellow Wallpaper” closes with “the feeling of loss home” (Jacobus 1996: 137). By the 1830s the economic profit brought by the Industrial Revolution excluded middle-class women from working outside the house, emphasizing the cult of domesticity and the sanctity and purity of family life. The construction of large Victorian houses in suburbs separated the public and the private lives of women. As Janet Wolff notes, “From the 1830s the more prosperous members of the middle class in the major manufacturing cities began to move out of the town centre” (1990: 14). “The move to the suburbs”, she continues, “entailed a clear separation of home and work, and a firm basis for domestic ideology of home as haven, and of women as identified with

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this private sphere” (1990: 15). Women who did continue to work outside the home were just teachers, dressmakers and retailers. Women were excluded from the public world which provided for men a multitude of additional activities such as banks, voluntary societies, political organizations and cultural institutions. Victorian morality supported the idea of the increasingly dominant ethic of the woman’s domestic and subservient role. As Ludmilla J. Jordanova says, “the woman’s power [was] for rule, not for battle, -and her intellect [was] not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision” (qtd. in Wolff 1990: 16). Fortunately, influential writers of the period such as John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle found a strong opponent in John Stuart Mill, who advocated for “women’s proper place and their appropriate education” (qtd. in Wolff 1990: 16). Stuart Mill compared wives to slaves and, similarly, Gilman attacks the idea of the nuclear family: a dominant father, a more or less subservient mother, and an utterly dependent child. The protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” just wants her husband’s company, not a distant man who spends most of his time in his club in town or with his mistress. “My appetite may be better in the evening when you’re here” (“Wallpaper” 1996: 354), she says begging for his affection. The adults in “The Yellow Wallpaper” –Dr John, Jennie, and the protagonist’s own brother–present the mad woman as a sort of monster. A monstrous lunatic she may be, but, she is actually one who finds the clarity to write the story. As Elaine Showalter notes, “madness is the price women artists have to pay for the exercise of their creativity in a male dominated culture” (1979: 4). When literary women write about madness in the nineteenth century, they disturb the meaning of men’s oppressive and censorious writing and alter both convention and tradition because they take control of their own fictional representations. In addition to the way in which they defeat the shame of self-exposure, this is the only positive view of mental illness in literature. Gilman uses this first person narration to present, as Goodman notes, how wrong the masculine version of reason was (1996: 127). In fact, Gilman’s is the voice of reason in all that madness. Gilman saw her experiences as relevant to other women. When “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in The New England Magazine, she sent a copy to Weir Mitchell, whose treatment had kept her from

María Teresa González Mínguez Charlott Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: On How Female...

writing during her own breakdown, aggravating her illness. Years later, she learnt that he had changed his treatment of neurasthenia after reading her story. Delighted to hear that wonderful news, she wrote in her autobiography “I have not lived in vain” (Living 1990: 121). WORKS CITED Amstrong, N. 2006 “What feminism did to novel studies”. The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory. Ed. Ellen Rooney. Cambridge: CUP. Anderson, L. 2006 Creative Writings: A Work with Readings. London: Routledge. Gilbert, S. and Sandra Gubar. 1978 The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. Yale: Yale University Press. Gilman, C. P. 1996 “The Yellow Wallpaper”, in Goodman, Lizbeth (ed.). Literature and Gender. London: Routledge. 348-359. Gilman, C. P. 1973 Home: Its Work and Influence. Illinois: The University of Illinois Press. Gilman, C. P. 1990 The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Girouard, M. 1979 The Victorian Country House. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Goodman, L. ed. 1996 Literature and Gender. London: Routledge. Hedges, E. 1973 Afterword to Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. Oxford: OUP. 37-60. Jacobus, M. 1986 Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism. Massachusetts: Methuen. Lee, H. 1996 Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage. Mellor, A. K. 1993 Romanticism and Gender. New York, London: Routledge. Showalter, E. 1979 The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. London: Virago. Stubbs, P. 1979 Women and Fiction. Feminism and the Novel 1880-1920. Brighton: Harvester Press. Wolff, J. 1990 Feminine Sentences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

LAS FAMILIAS DE GREGORY NAVA: ¿REVISIÓN PERPETUACIÓN DE LOS ESTEREOTIPOS?* # Amaia Ibarraran Bigalondo Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea amaia.ibarraran@ehu.es

Chicano director and screenwriter Gregory Nava’s production, though not extensive, is renowned and has been acclaimed both by critics and the general public. His works My Family (1995) and American Family: A Journey of Dreams (2002) describe the lives of two Mexican-american/chicano families, their dreams and experiences as citizens of the United States, and ultimately, each of their member’s personal lives and dreams. These two productions are the focus of this paper, whose main aim is to observe the way in which Gregory Nava exposes the myth of the Chicano family, observing whether their characters stand as subversions of the stereotypes about Latinos created by the Hollywood industry, or otherwise, maintain the standard and contribute to the stereotypical classification of Latinos and “ lo Latino,” as well as to propose a reflection on such stereotypes. Keywords: Gregory Nava, cinema, Chicano, family, stereotype. La producción cinematográfica de Gregory Nava, director y guionista chicano, aunque no es extensa, es de reconocido prestigio y ha recibido el favor tanto de la crítica como del público en general. Sus trabajos My Family (1995) y American Family: A Journey of Dreams (2002) describen las vidas de dos familias mejicanoamericanas/chicanas, sus sueños, sus experiencias como ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos, y en definitiva, sus viajes vitales personales. Estas dos producciones son el foco de este trabajo, cuyo objetivo fundamental es el de *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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observar el modo en el que Gregory Nava expone y construye el mito de la familia chicana, con la intención de analizar si sus personajes se erigen como subversiones de los estereotipos acerca de los latinos creados por la industria de Hollywood, o por el contrario, mantienen la norma y contribuyen a la clasificación estereotipada de los latinos y “lo latino”, y en su caso, proponer una reflexión acerca de dichos estereotipos y su razón de ser. Palabras clave: Gregory Nava, cine, chicano, familia, estereotipo. La producción cinematográfica de Gregory Nava, director y guionista chicano, aunque no es extensa, es de reconocido prestigio y ha recibido el favor tanto de la crítica como del público en general. El Norte (1983), que escribió junto a la productora Anna Thomas, narra el dramático viaje de dos jóvenes hermanos guatemaltecos que huyen de la violencia de su país hacia los Estados Unidos, y fue nominada en 1984 al Premio de la Academia al mejor guión original. Posteriormente cosechó grandes éxitos, recibió premios y finalmente fue considerada “an American Classic” por lo que se conserva ahora en la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos (escine.yahoo.com). A pesar de que en la filmografía de Nava constan películas con temas y personajes no vinculados al colectivo hispano de Estados Unidos, tales como Why do Fools fall in Love (1998) o A Time of Destiny (1998), podríamos decir que su obra tiene un carácter eminentemente “latino” y este grupo etnocultural se ha convertido en el foco de su atención. Así, películas como Selena (1997) y Frida (2002) narran las vidas de dos mujeres relevantes para la comunidad mejicano/americana. La más reciente Bordertown (2006) expone de forma abierta el drama sin resolver de los feminicidios de Juárez, donde cientos de mujeres que trabajan para las plantas de las grandes multinacionales asentadas en la frontera mejicano-americana, las maquiladoras, son asesinadas y torturadas de manera brutal. Del mismo modo, sus trabajos My Family (1995) y American Family: A Journey of Dreams (2002) describen las vidas de dos familias mejicano-americanas/chicanas, sus sueños, sus experiencias como ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos, y en definitiva, sus viajes vitales personales. Estas dos producciones son el foco de este trabajo,

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

cuyo objetivo fundamental es el de observar el modo en el que Gregory Nava expone y construye el mito de la familia chicana, con la intención de analizar si sus personajes se erigen como subversiones de los estereotipos acerca de los latinos creados por la industria de Hollywood, o por el contrario, mantienen la norma y contribuyen a la clasificación estereotipada de los latinos y “lo latino”, y en su caso, proponer una reflexión acerca de dichos estereotipos y su razón de ser. 1. LA FAMILIA CHICANA, LAS FAMILIAS DE NAVA El cine, del mismo modo que la literatura y otras artes, no es sino una reproducción de la realidad, una construcción de ésta. El cine construye a través de una caracterización particular y ad hoc de los personajes y los escenarios, unas características formales específicas y, un punto de vista personal, y por ende, subjetivo, una interpretación particular e interesada de “lo real”. No obstante, y por sus cualidades narratológicas y de reproducción visual, sonora y sensorial de “lo real”, el espectador, como receptor activo del mensaje cinematográfico, tiende, de modo casi inconsciente, a aceptar como real aquello que ve en la gran pantalla, haciendo así suya la versión de la realidad que le ofrece el mensaje de cuyo proceso de comunicación está participando. El cine, en definitiva, al igual que otras artes, es una herramienta de creación y propagación de ideología, y es en este contexto, que el estudio de la construcción y representación de la institución de la familia por parte de Gregory Nava es de especial interés en este trabajo. Así, suscribimos la idea del historiador Carlos E. Cortés de que (…) the media serve as pervasive, relentless, lifelong educators. This includes not only the nonfictional media, which purport to present facts and analysis, but also the so-called entertainment media, which have a major impact in shaping beliefs, attitudes, values, perceptions, and “knowledge” and in influencing decisions and action. In short, movies teach. The celluloid curriculum teaches about myriad topics, including race, ethnicity, culture and nationality. The degree to which feature films create intercultural perceptions and stereotypes

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can be debated. Beyond debate is the fact that, whether intentionally or not, they contribute to intercultural, interracial, and interethnic understanding and misunderstanding. (75) La comunidad chicana, descendiente directa de los primeros mejicano-americanos, cuyos territorios fueron legalmente ocupados por los Estados Unidos en 1848 tras la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo, es de una clara tradición cristiana. En este sentido, la familia como núcleo de la comunidad, como institución en la que se transmiten y perpetúan las tradiciones y aspectos identitarios del grupo es esencial. De la misma manera, la familia es el espacio en el que los roles familiares (el masculino y el femenino) se establecen y a través del cual se perpetúan y se mantienen entre generaciones. Así, el papel del hombre mejicano/chicano es el del proveedor de bienes económicos, el miembro socialmente activo, que mantiene a la familia con su trabajo fuera del espacio doméstico. Sus valores de coraje, dignidad, honor y buen hacer son esenciales y le proporcionan su estatus de centro del núcleo familiar (Mirandé). La mujer mejicano/americana, por su parte, estereotipada y descrita a través de siglos de literatura, religión y cultura popular como una mujer entregada, dócil, sumisa, y fiel servidora de su familia, encuentra su imagen/espejo en la Virgen de Guadalupe, símbolo de la mujer mejicano-americana. Su imagen estática y dócil, su cabeza ladeada en un gesto de aceptación y sumisión, representan, de este modo, a una mujer entregada y resignada, que acepta su papel y espacio de forma obediente y disciplinada. No obstante, y tras el impacto del Movimiento Feminista en general, y el Movimiento Chicano Feminista en particular, las mujeres chicanas contemporáneas han dotado de un movimiento simbólico (y real) al estereotipo creado a imagen de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Muchas artistas (Yolanda López y Alma López, entre muchas otras), han representado a la Virgen como una mujer de fuerza, una mujer empoderada, dueña de su destino, capaz de transgredir y cruzar fronteras y redefinir los estereotipos válidos hasta el momento. Los dos trabajos de Gregory Nava que nos ocupan en estas líneas, tal y como sus propios títulos indican, tratan acerca de la familia, que se describe como una unidad cuasi-institucional, así como un

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

compendio de individuos con características vitales propias. La primera, My Family (1995) narra la historia de la familia Sánchez, que comienza cuando el padre José Sánchez camina desde Méjico hasta Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Ángeles, cuando “the border was just a line in the dirt” (My Family). Su matrimonio con María será el germen de “la familia”. Juntos criarán a cinco hijos: Paco el escritor y narrador de la historia familiar; Irene, que regenta un restaurante mejicano en Los Ángeles; Nina, que se hará monja para después abandonar la orden y casarse con un ex-clérigo y convertirse en una activista chicana; Guillermo, que tras estudiar abogacía optará por “americanizarse” y hacerse llamar William; Chucho, pachuco asesinado por la policía y el pequeño Jimmy, quien, tras haber presenciado la muerte de su hermano, crece ahogado por el odio y se convertirá en una persona marginada y marginal. Su vida transcurre entre salidas y entradas en prisión y está marcada por una gran lucha interna, así como por la necesidad de comenzar una nueva vida junto a su hijo. Del mismo modo, la serie de la cadena pública PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) American family: A Journey of Dreams (2002), que en cierta manera puede ser considerada como una extensión de la primera película, expone las vidas los miembros de la familia González, que también vive en Los Ángeles, pero que, a diferencia de la primera, arranca ya con una familia originaria de esta ciudad, cuyos padres son ciudadanos norteamericanos y en consecuencia, sus hijos también. Así, el padre es un mejicano-americano orgulloso de su país, quien muestra y expone todo tipo de símbolos de “lo americano” en su casa y en su negocio (una barbería), tales como la bandera norteamericana, una gran pasión por el beisbol, y también, un gran desprecio y desconfianza hacia los inmigrantes “ilegales” mejicanos. La madre, muere en el primer episodio, pero aparece en diversos capítulos en los que el padre la recuerda, y se presenta siempre como una mujer tradicional y sumisa. Vangie, la hija mayor, es una chicana de éxito, con una firma de ropa propia, casada con un anglo y orgullosa de su herencia y tradición; Nina, una abogada comprometida con la causa chicana, muy activa políticamente; Conrado, un médico que decide alistarse en la marina, considerado un héroe por el padre. Esteban, un pandillero recién salido de prisión, que trata de rehacer su vida con su hijo Pablito y con la ayuda de toda su familia. Y por último, Cisco, un joven chicano contemporáneo, de hoy en día, gran conocedor del lenguaje

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tecnológico actual y cuya experiencia acerca de “lo chicano” difiere de la del resto de sus familiares, ya que lo vive de un modo natural y normalizado, y por ende, poco cargado de ideología. Antes de comenzar con el estudio de la representación de la familia en estos dos trabajos de Gregory Nava, sería conveniente hacer una pequeña reflexión acerca de la naturaleza de ambos y de su impacto y repercusión. My Family, se rodó en 1995, fue dirigida por Gregory Nava y escrita por él mismo y Anna Thomas. Su distribución se llevó a cabo a través de American Playhouse, American Zoetrope (de Francis Ford Coppola), Majestic Films International, and Newcomb Productions. Recibió premios en festivales internacionales como el de San Sebastián, un NCLR Bravo Award, y en el Young Artists Awards. Su presupuesto fue de aproximadamente 5.5 millones de dólares y recaudó 11.1 millones de dólares en taquilla. Por su parte American Family; A Journey of Dreams, es parte de un proyecto de PBS (Public Broadcasting Services) y se concibió como una serie acerca de una familia mejicano-americana que iba a ser proyectada en el “primetime.” La serie, dirigida por Gregory Nava, estuvo en pantalla durante dos temporadas, está compuesta por 13 capítulos que Nava denomina “minipeliculas”, durante los años 2002-2004. Es de destacar, además, que la serie está acompañada de una página web en la propia página de la PBS, donde el director, los guionistas, actores, etc., ofrecen sus opiniones y sensaciones acerca de la serie en sí y los eventos que se narra en ella. Del mismo modo, esta página tiene un claro valor y contenido educativo y trata de instruir al público en general acerca de la vida, historia y cultura de la comunidad mejicano-americana. Podríamos así afirmar que el ámbito en el que se han concebido los dos trabajos difiere notablemente, siendo la primera película de un claro carácter comercial, o, en palabras del propio director, es “a film to entertain people, not to teach them” (West 27). La serie de televisión, por su parte, creada por y para la cadena pública, en un principio, y tal y como se describe en su página web es acerca de una familia que, “Like all families, the Gonzalezes are a product of the world around them.” (pbs.org). No obstante, unas líneas más abajo, la página ofrece la posibilidad de “explore Latino identity by joining Ruben Martinez, Otto Santa Ana, and Clara Rodriguez for reflections on What It Means to be Latino. And finally, renowned artist Judith Baca introduces you

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

to murals and their relationship to Latino culture in the Art of the Mural” (pbs.org). En definitiva, a pesar de que el director trata de construir a la familia González como “any american family”, el carácter pedagógico que su propia página web de referencia dota a la producción, es indiscutible. Por otro lado, y a pesar de que ambos trabajos del director chicano exponen la vida de dos familias mejicano-americanas, el foco y la atención de cada una de ellas es diferente. La primera, My Family, expone el proceso de inmigración, adaptación y asimilación de la familia a la cultura y sociedad norteamericana, sus conflictos generacionales, culturales y sociales. Gregory Nava, así, presenta y crea personajes-tipo, con los que trata de exponer la diversidad de situaciones y reacciones al proceso asimilativo que los mejicano-americanos tuvieron que adaptarse tras la firma del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo y la cesión de sus tierras a los Estados Unidos. American Family: A Journey of Dreams (que prescindió del segundo título en su segunda temporada, convirtiéndose en American Family), trata acerca de una familia que nace y surge en el sistema norteamericano, y de su participación activa en la vida social, política y cultural del país, y que nada tiene que ver con lo que el antropólogo Leo R. Chávez denomina “The Latino Threat”, o “people out of place or threat to the nation in which they reside” (42). De este modo, los personajes que Nava construye son, en esencia, reminiscencias de los personajes-tipo de su primer trabajo, pero aparecen desprovistos de la carga que la inmigración y la posterior asimilación y adaptación a la cultura norteamericana ejerce en los anteriores. No obstante, reproduce los modelos y diversas reacciones/acciones de sus personajes ante su identidad mestiza, su cultura anglo-mejicana, su posición social y su identificación como norteamericanos y/o mejicanos. En este sentido, y teniendo en cuenta la definición del profesor de Media Studies y experto académico en cine chicano Charles Ramírez Berg del estereotipo como “a negative generalization used by an in-group (Us) about an out-group (Them)” (15), y partiendo de la base de que, tal y como se observará en las siguientes líneas los personajes que Nava construye no responden a representaciones negativas de “lo mejicano-americano/chicano”, y además están creadas desde dentro del propio grupo, hemos optado por emplear el término “personaje-tipo” para definir lo que cada uno de estos personajes representa en el orden de lo simbólico.

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2. LOS PERSONAJES-TIPO DE LAS FAMILIAS DE NAVA Las familias Sánchez y González son, sin duda alguna, familias norteamericanas. No obstante, la llegada del padre de los Sánchez desde México hasta Los Ángeles, en lo que se consideraba “otro país”, marca definitivamente el desarrollo de las identidades de sus personajes, así como las relaciones que se establecen entre ellos. En este sentido, cada uno de ellos está construido a nivel visual y conceptual, como personajes-tipo que representan las generaciones de los primeros inmigrantes, sus hijos nacidos en los Estados Unidos, así como las diferentes sensibilidades hacia “lo americano” y “lo mejicano”. 2.1. La madre/mujer sumisa/ mujer tradicional María, la madre/mujer sumisa, es un personaje que cobra vida a través de la actuación de Jennifer López durante sus años de juventud y de Jenny Gago en su madurez. María, eje emocional de la familia, retrata los estereotipos más tradicionales y espejo de la Virgen de Guadalupe que se han relacionado con la mujer mejicano/americana. Es una mujer trabajadora, sumisa, complaciente, paciente, ama y centro de su hogar, y quien representa el equilibrio y la cordura en los momentos más conflictivos que se suceden en su familia. La joven María trabaja en el servicio doméstico y José como jardinero, dos oficios que reproducen fielmente los estereotipos (y las realidades en muchas ocasiones) de la ocupación de los mejicano-americanos. Tras conocer a José, contraerán matrimonio y en breve tendrán a su hijo Jesús (Chucho), formando así una simbólica reproducción de la Sagrada Familia. Del mismo modo, Chucho, que será injustamente asesinado por la policía, se convertirá en mártir y símbolo de la injusticia social, en este caso, cometida hacia los jóvenes pachucos como él (jóvenes “pandilleros” de los años 50, que se caracterizan por su vestimenta, el zoot suit, sus coches, y por una clara inadaptación, tanto a la comunidad mejicana como a la norteamericana). María es una mujer religiosa, que profesa una fe ciega a la Virgen de Guadalupe, pero que representa a su vez el carácter híbrido y mestizo de la cultura mejicano/americana en general, y de sus prácticas religiosas y espirituales en particular. Así, cuando es expulsada a Méjico

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

en las deportaciones masivas de mejicano-americanos que se sucedieron a consecuencia de la crisis de los años 30, María acude a casa su tía. La puesta en escena de este espacio trata de construir y exponer el sincretismo religioso al que se hacía mención anteriormente, y en ella se observan imágenes de la Virgen de Guadalupe, así como diferentes hierbas y ornamentos indígenas. Cuando la mujer dice a María que tiene que tener fe en la Virgen, ella afirma que “la virgen quiere que regrese con mi marido y que críe a nuestros hijos con él” (My Family). María, la mujer que es capaz de sufrir lo indecible para volver con los suyos, se embarca en un largo viaje de regreso a pie, cruza el río y casi pierde a su hijo, y vuelve para reconstruir la familia que había dejado atrás. A partir de este momento, María, la madre coraje, se convierte en madre-soporte, madrecompañera, madre-equilibrante, y en suma, en madre y centro emocional de su familia. Del mismo modo, Berta (Sonia Braga), la madre de la familia González protagonista de American Family, a pesar de no tener un papel activo en la vida familiar, está continuamente presente en la memoria de Jess, el padre, (Edward James Olmos) quien la recuerda, respeta y venera como la mujer tradicional y paciente que era, conocedora de su papel en la familia, y fiel a ella hasta su último respiro. Una vez más, Nava construye a la madre tradicional, valedora y transmisora de las tradiciones, costumbres y valores de la comunidad. 2.2. La mujer activa/ mujer política/ mujer contemporánea Constance Marie, actriz que participa en ambos proyectos de Gregory Nava será quien de vida a la mujer activa, símbolo del feminismo chicano y de la lucha de los derechos de la mujer chicana en ambas producciones. Tony, hija “rebelde” de los Sánchez de Mi Family, se presenta en un primer momento que como el orgullo de su madre, ya que opta por servir a los demás y a Dios en una orden religiosa. En palabras del propio Nava, el unirse a una orden se presenta como la única salida para una mujer “de fuerza” en los 50, que no desea reproducir el papel de madre sumisa que, en principio, le aguarda (West 29). Su fervor pronto se dirigirá hacia la vida secular, ya que, conoce a un sacerdote en una misión en Centroamérica, se enamoran y ambos abandonan sus órdenes para servir a la causa de los

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inmigrantes ilegales. Nina es, así, en su caracterización, vestuario, discurso político y acción, se convierte en el personaje-tipo que representa a las mujeres chicanas que tomaron las riendas de sus vidas y lucharon por conseguir sus derechos y en definitiva, por alcanzar mayores cotas de justicia social. Del mismo modo, y caracterizada por la misma actriz, Nina González (American Family) representa, a diferencia de la anterior, a una mujer con estudios. Es abogada y utiliza su conocimiento con el fin de ayudar a los más necesitados, como es el caso de los inmigrantes ilegales, la defensa del barrio, los afectados por los ataques del 11 de Setiembre, etc.Ambos trabajos, a pesar de que presentan a diversos e importantes personajes femeninos, son predominante protagonizados por personajes masculinos, que, a su vez, representan personajes-tipo, o diferentes formas de vivir el sueño americano, y sus identidades personales y colectivas. Entre ellos, podríamos destacar: 2.3. El hombre/ padre de familia tradicional El hombre tradicional, el padre de familia, se convierte en ambas producciones en un elemento esencial de esta institución. Así, José, padre de la familia Sánchez en My Family, es un hombre trabajador, justo, honesto, convencido de que el único modo de ser parte activo de la sociedad norteamericana es el de trabajar duro y respetar las normas. De fuertes convicciones morales, José sufre cuando observa cómo sus hijos van integrándose en la sociedad y la cultura norteamericanas, y dejan de lado su tradición mejicana, que él trata de mantener a través de sus historias, su huerta en la parte trasera de la casa, etc. Del mismo modo, Jess, padre de los González, se erige como centro de la familia. A diferencia del primero, Jess González ha nacido en los Estados Unidos, tiene fuertes convicciones patrióticas pro-norteamericanas, y de algún modo, siente la necesidad de demostrarlas y probarlas a través de banderas, símbolos y una afiliación total con “lo norteamericano”. A pesar de que es conocedor de sus orígenes y se muestra orgulloso de su pasado y herencia, adopta una actitud claramente conservadora en asuntos relacionados con la inmigración ilegal, los derechos de los recién llegados, etc., demostrando así un sentimiento de supremacía que le confiere el hecho de ser ciudadano norteamericano.

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

2.4. El joven inadaptado/ el rebelde Ambos trabajos de Nava, al igual que en otro caso, presentan el personaje-tipo del hijo rebelde, el pandillero que rechaza los valores tradicionales y familiares y, ensimismado por los nuevos valores de la sociedad norteamericana, tales como el consumo y el valor supremo del dinero, se embarca en la vida loca. En el caso de Mi Family, encontramos dos versiones de este inadaptado. En primer lugar, Chucho (Esai Morales), que representa a la figura del pachuco, y en concreto, es empleado por Nava para dar visibilidad al caso de Sleepy Lagoon, acontecimiento histórico provocado por el asesinato de un pachuco en dicho lugar, a raíz de una pelea entre bandas rivales, en el año 1942. Este hecho devino en una detención masiva de pachucos, un juicio de dudosa legitimidad y objetividad, una campaña de los grandes periódicos de Los Ángeles de criminalización de los mejicanoamericanos, y unas fuertes revueltas y peleas entre pachucos y marines, conocidas como los Zoot Suit Riots. Chucho, asesinado sin motivo alguno ni juicio previo por la policía, representa una vergüenza para su padre, un hombre justo, digno y trabajador, cuyos valores difieren notablemente de los de su hijo, que rechaza tanto la tradición mejicana, como la sociedad norteamericana, en la que no encuentra su lugar. El pequeño de la familia, Jimmy, que ve de primera mano el asesinato de su venerado hermano, se convertirá a su vez, y unas décadas después, en un inadaptado, portador de la rabia y la ira que la frustración por las injusticias ante su comunidad le han provocado. Las continuas entradas y salidas de la cárcel de Jimmy provocarán su alejamiento de su hijo, criado por sus padres. En este sentido, la película narra su viaje hacia la adaptación social a través de la reconciliación con su hijo, símbolo de un futuro mejor. Esai Morales es también el actor que da vida a Esteban González en American Family, el pandillero recién salido de la cárcel que, como Jimmy, tiene un hijo a quien recuperar y una vida en la que volver a participar de forma consciente y activa. 2.5. El mejicano-americano “asimilado” Los personajes-tipo que representan a aquellas personas de origen mejicano que adoptan totalmente “lo americano” como suyo,

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se presentan en dos versiones diferentes en los trabajos de Nava. Por un lado, aquellos personajes que asumen de forma natural y orgullosa su ciudadanía norteamericana, pero quienes no reniegan de su herencia cultural, tal y como el propio padre de la serie de PBS American Family, y por otro, los que reniegan de su herencia, y, avergonzados de ella, tratan de obviarla para parecer “ciudadanos norteamericanos de primera”. En el primer grupo se encuentran, además de Jess González, tanto Paco (Edward James Olmos), narrador de la historia familiar y escritor (que necesita otro empleo para subsistir) en My Family, que se enlista en el ejército norteamericano para servir a su país, y Conrado (Yancey Arias), hijo médico de la familia González (American Family), que decide, del mismo modo, servir a su patria trabajando como médico en la guerra de Irak. Ambos personajes son conocedores y defensores de su cultura y tradición mejicana, pero se consideran ciudadanos norteamericanos que deben sus vidas a su país. En el segundo grupo se encuentra Guillermo (Memo), que tras estudiar en la “Law School” y enamorarse de una chica de origen anglosajón, decide que la mejor forma de ejercer como abogado es la de anglofonizar su nombre y hacerse llamar William (Bill) y renegar de su pasado. Así, en una escena en la que la familia de su prometida visita su casa en el barrio, William trata por todos los medios de recalcar que ellos también son norteamericanos. La escena está construida a modo de una parodia para exponer el gran abismo que supuestamente existe entre una familia de clase media alta blanca norteamericana y la de una familia del barrio. La puesta en escena hace hincapié en tópicos como la comida, el ruido, el desorden en la casa, la huerta, etc, que chocan directamente con la supuesta corrección, contención emocional y los buenos modales de la familia norteamericana que los visita. 2.6. El escritor/El narrador/creador Una vez más, y a modo de espejo/continuación de la saga familiar, ambas producciones nos presentan la voz de un narrador que observa y cuenta la vida de la familia, a modo de documento antropológico y elemento de visibilización de una comunidad. Es en este aspecto en el que Nava se ha hecho eco de la contemporaneidad y modernidad en su segundo trabajo y ha reemplazado la figura del escritor chicano (en boga durante los años del movimiento, y cuyo

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

trabajo fue indudable para la consecución de los derechos de la comunidad), por la de un joven chicano totalmente contemporáneo. Cisco, (Parker Torres) representa, así, a un joven de hoy en día, que domina las tecnologías, y de hecho, graba en video a su familia para luego hacer una historia digital de esta (que a su vez se verá reflejada en la excelente y altamente pedagógica página web que acompaña a la serie). Es un “ cyber-punk and aspiring filmmaker, Cisco is the Gonzalez’ youngest son. Aside from his video camera, his adventures as an online artist and storyteller (see “Cisco’s Journal”), Cisco’s only other passion is his girlfriend, Izabel” (pbs.org). Así, su vinculación con “lo mejicano”, “lo chicano” parece secundario para este joven, que ya ha nacido y crecido en una época en la que esta comunidad ha adquirido la visibilidad y la voz de la que carecía anteriormente. Así, Cisco observa a “su familia” y entiende y vive su identidad chicana como algo natural, carente de connotaciones sociopolíticas, y en definitiva, de marca de “otredad”. 3. EL PAPEL DE LOS PERSONAJES-TIPO En definitiva, la descripción general de los personajes construidos por Nava para sus dos trabajos nos lleva a dos conclusiones. La primera, responde a la obvia visibilidad que Nava otorga a la comunidad chicana a través de sus películas. Sin duda alguna, My Family, producida por Coppola y con una gran distribución, constituye, tal y como describe Gary Keller parte del “Hispanic Hollywood”. El impacto de la película tanto en Estados Unidos, con su presentación en el festival de Sundance o en ámbitos internacionales, representan un gran esfuerzo en el proceso de dar voz y visibilidad a la comunidad chicana en este caso, así como de proponer otra visión de la realidad norteamericana. Del mismo modo, el hecho de que American Family, “the first drama series ever to air on broadcast television featuring a Latino cast, and the first original primetime American episodic drama on PBS in decades” (pbs.org), se viera en la franja horaria más importante, así como la existencia de su página web, compuesta por datos acerca de los personajes, la familia, los actores, y diversa información acerca de la comunidad mejicano-americana, es de destacar.

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La segunda conclusión hace referencia a la construcción de los personajes del primer trabajo de Nava, y que se repite en la serie. Todos ellos, son, a mi entender, personajes construidos, caracterizados y creados de forma cuasi-estereotípica. En este sentido, a pesar de que la idea expresada por estudios tales como el de Josef Raab que afirma que “the motivation (or “political imperative”) that unites many Chicanas/os and U.S. Latinos in filmaking is the desire to use cinema in order to combat the long-standing Hollywood stereotypes of the violent, dumb or lazy Latino mano or the alluring, mysterious or treacherous Latina woman” (176), o las propias palabras de Nava, que afirma que “I do think more kinds of images and films need to be made, I really do. I hope that, as the society develops and more films like My Family get made, they will continue to be successful and we will be able to see more images up on the screen that are, as you say, not steretotypic but that are positive, that place us in the society and with our communities, put family in the center of our culture, which it is. Images that allow us to retain our culture-oe which is thousands of years old, with very deep roots, and which has something very beautiful to contribute to the nation”. (West 29) Al observar las características físicas, situacionales y conceptuales de los personajes de estas dos producciones, no podemos pasar por alto que el director, a su vez, inventa y crea otros personajestipo con el fin de demostrar la diversidad de la comunidad hispana, o la chicana en este caso. Llegados a este punto, sería interesante el reflexionar acerca de los motivos que han llevado a Nava a construir estos personajes, con tan claras características definitorias y tan representativos (y repetitivos). La labor de Nava de dotar a esta comunidad de una voz y una posición de sujeto propia es loable. Del mismo modo, su capacidad de crear y mostrar una clara diversidad en la exposición de “lo hispano”, “lo chicano” resulta remarcable y contribuye sin duda alguna a la desestereotipación de la comunidad por medio del cine. Además, Nava logra, a través de la organización cronológica de sus dos trabajos, en los

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

que expone la adaptación de una familia en su primera película y, la participación activa de una familia en la vida política y social de los Estados Unidos en la segunda, exponer la realidad de esta comunidad, en ocasiones estereotipada como una comunidad inmigrante y recién llegada. Sin embargo, la producción en My Family y posterior reproducción en American Family de personajes tan claramente alineados con una posición ideológica, sociológica y cultural, tan obviamente reconocibles como personajes-tipo, nos lleva a preguntarnos sobre la necesidad perenne por parte de las comunidades menos favorecidas socioculturalmente de tener que luchar continuamente por la redescripción de sus valores y realidades. Partiendo de la base de que el propio Nava emplea la institución de la familia como un ente estereotipado a través del cual se ha definido siempre la realidad hispana/chicana, así como los roles que se reproducen en esta, sus personajes carecen de una vida e identidad propias, sino que reproducen modelos tales como el del pandillero, el del inadaptado, el del adaptado, el de la activista, la madre sumisa, etc. ¿Hasta cuándo la necesidad de definirse, redefinirse, inventarse, reinventarse, y en definitiva, justificarse? Ramírez Berg afirma que el único modo de superar la necesidad de crear estereotipos es el del conocimiento acerca del estereotipo en sí, así como del proceso a través del cual es creado (23). En este sentido, la página web que acompaña a American Family es de gran relevancia y aporta el conocimiento objetivo necesario que permite deshacer el estereotipo. Una vez superada la fase de la ruptura del estereotipo con la subsecuente adquisición de conocimiento acerca de éste y de lo que representa (o distorsiona), cabría esperar que la construcción de los personajes, en este caso, de la producción cinematográfica de Nava, fuera más “ligera”, menos cargada de significado. Así, partiendo de las palabras que el propio Ramírez Berg emplea para definir el cine chicano de la Third Wave, que “do(es) not accentuate oppression and resistance; ethnicity in these films exists as one fact o several that shape character’s lives and their personalities. (…) These does not mean that the films are consequentely nonpolitical, devoid of commentary about Otherness, (…) (187), entendemos que los personajes “post-estereotipo” deberían presentarse libres de una carga significativa identitaria tan marcada. El personaje de Cisco, el joven chicano, twittero, blogero y con una identidad que no necesita

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definición etnosocial alguna es, en mi opinión, el símbolo de la superación del estereotipo. Personajes que vivan y representen “lo chicano” y/o “lo americano” como algo personal e intrínseco a ellos mismos, ya que, “lo personal es político” y, en definitiva, lo personal se convierte en global. OBRAS CITADAS American Family: Journey of Dreams. Consultado el 20 de Marzo de 2013. http://www.pbs.org/americanfamily/ Chávez, L. R. 2008 The Latino Threat. Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation. Standford: Standford UP. Cortés, C. 1992 “Who is Maria? What is Juan? Dilemmas of Analyzing the Chicano Image in U.S. Films”, en Noriega, Ch. A., ed. Shot in America. Representation and Resistance. Minneapolis, London: U. of Minnesota P.: 74-91. Es.cine. “Gregory Nava. Biografía”. Consultado el 20 de Marzo de 2013. es.cine.yahoo.com/persona/gregory-nava/ Keller, Gary. 1994 Hispanics and United States Film: An Overview and Handbook. Tempe: Bilingual Review Press. Mirandé, A. 1997 Hombres y Machos. Masculinity and Chicano Culture. Boulder, CO.:Westview Press. Nava, G. 1995 My Family. American Playhouse. Nava, G. 2002-2004. American Family. PBS. Noriega, C. A., ed. 1992 Shot in America. Representation and Resistance. Minneapolis, London: U. of Minnesota P. Raab, J. “Latinos and Otherness: The Films of Gregory Nava”, en Thies, S, y Raab, J. 2009. E PluribusUnum? National andtransnational identities in the Americas/ Identidades nacionalesy transnacionales en las Américas. Tempe: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe: 175-192. Ramírez Berg, C. 2002 Latino Images in Film. Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance. Austin: U of Texas P. West, D. 1995 “Filming the Chicano Family Saga”. Cineaste. Vol. 1 Issue 4: 26-30.

Amaia Ibarran Bigalondo Las familias de Gregory Nava: ¿Revisión o perpetuación de los ...

Este artículo es parte de un proyecto financiado por el Ministro de Economía y Competitividad (código: FFI2011-23598) y el Fondo Europeo Regional (ERDF). Se enmarca en el ámbito del trabajo del grupo de investigación REWEST, del Gobierno Vasco (Grupo Consolidado IT608-13) y la Universidad del País Vasco, UPV/EHU (UFI 11/06).

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

REVERSING THE NATIONAL RODRIGUEZ’S BROWN * Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Universidad de Deusto aitor.ibarrola@deusto.es

MYTH

RICHARD

There is little doubt that the American West has come to be historically associated with certain features that are deeply engraved in the country’s consciousness. Since the very birth of the nation, the West has functioned as a space of freedom and opportunity in which the individual could undergo the kind of selftransformation that was not possible in the more constrained and “Europeanized” context of the Atlantic seaboard. But what would happen if the traditional myth were reversed and we looked at the history of the continent from the opposite end—that is, from the shores of California? How would such myths as the Western Hero and Manifest Destiny be transformed? This is the arduous task that Richard Rodriguez sets for himself in the second half of Brown: a meditation on how the country will need to re-invent itself in the 21st century in terms of movements south-north, and west-east. Key words: American West, Myth and narrative, Brown, Richard Rodriguez, Historical revisionism, Race and sexuality, Identity issues. No cabe duda de que el Oeste americano ha quedado estrechamente ligado a varios de los rasgos identitarios grabados de manera indeleble en la conciencia nacional. Desde el origen mismo del país, el Oeste ha funcionado como un espacio de libertad y oportunidades en el cual cualquiera podía conseguir un tipo de regeneración que no era posible en el contexto más restringido y “europeizado” de la costa Este. Pero, ¿qué ocurriría si diésemos la vuelta al mito tradicional y *

Fecha de recepción: Septiembre 2012

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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contemplásemos la historia del continente desde el lado opuesto, esto es, desde California? ¿Cómo habría que repensar mitos tales como el del Pionero o el Destino Manifiesto por el cambio de perspectiva? Ésta es la ardua tarea que Richard Rodriguez afronta en la segunda mitad de Brown: una meditación sobre cómo su país va a tener que reinventarse en el siglo XXI en base a una movilidad sur-norte y oeste-este. Palabras clave: Oeste americano, Mito y narrativa, Brown, Richard Rodriguez, Revisionismo histórico, Raza y sexualidad, Identidad nacional. Whatever the merits of the Turner thesis, the doctrine that the United States is a continental nation rather than a member with Europe of an Atlantic community has had a formative influence on the American mind and deserves historical treatment in its own right. Henry N. Smith, Virgin Land Go East, young woman! I think we are just now beginning to discern an anti-narrative—the American detective story told from west to east, against manifest destiny, against the early Protestant point of view, against the Knickerbocker Club, old Ivy, the assurances of New England divines. Richard Rodriguez, Brown 1. INTRODUCTION: MYTHS OF OLD AND HIDDEN AGENDAS Most historians and political scientists would agree that the history of the United States of America has been marked from its very inception as a nation by the idea that the westward movement of its population was very much consubstantial with the creation of a singular national character. Some of the Founding Fathers—Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, most notably—were convinced that the expansion and progress of the country were closely connected with

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

the possibilities offered by the western territories. When Jefferson was inaugurated as President in 1801, he already foresaw that the projected scientific exploration that Lewis and Clark would carry out up the Missouri River and over the Rocky Mountains to the mouth of the Columbia would accrue important economic and political benefits for the nation (cf. Smith 1950: 16-17). In fact, Jefferson could well be considered the first on a long list of political and literary “visionaries” who, throughout the best part of the 19th century, viewed the displacement of the American frontier toward the Pacific as the embodiment of a myth that would launch the country into a promising future (see Adams 2008: 39-43). Names such as those of William Gilpin, Daniel Boone, James F. Cooper, Kit Carson, Andrew Jackson, Walt Whitman or Buffalo Bill have remained inextricably linked to the “grand national narrative” that spoke of how the new country was finding its “manifest destiny” in the domination and domestication of lands that up to then had been impaired by darkness and savagery (Johannsen 1997: 7-8). As is well known, many pioneering spirits decided to carve their future away from the more restrictive and highly-hierarchicized order that prevailed in the societies on the Eastern seaboard.2 Yet, despite the conspicuous opportunities offered by the lands west of the Mississippi, there is little doubt that the conquest of the American West was not without the—generally cruel and sinister—underside of an exclusionary and genocidal policy, which was unhindered by the evident “collateral damages.” Kolodny (1984) and Tompkins (1992) have recurrently noted that if anything characterizes the myth of the Far West, it is the absolute lack of attention given to the female experience. According to several scholars, the reason for this blatant erasure and deauthorization needs to be sought in the threat that activities such as domestic rituals, transcendental perspectives, and inward contemplation meant to the outdoor, physical, and masculinist pattern privileged by this myth (see Tompkins 1992: 42-45). Likewise, although there is little doubt that other non-white, non-Protestant groups played a critical role in the history of the American West, the place they have usually occupied in the myth is that of the unfamiliar and uncivilized cultural “Other” who was perceived as an obstacle to the advancement of the “divine” project (cf. Prucha 1995: 315-38). Arnold Krupat (1992) and others have complained that historical accounts of the West have

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been governed up to the last few decades of the 20th century by an oppositional, Manichean binary logic that left all those human categories that were not seen as playing a part in the original script without a voice and, seemingly, no agency.3 As we know, Native Americans were encouraged to sell their tribal lands in unfair treaties and to become “civilized,” which for their communities meant abandoning their nomadic way of life and reorganizing themselves around the nuclear family unit rather than the more extended clans or tribes. Although authors such as Ralph Ellison (1986) and Gerald Vizenor (1993) have long been defending the view that there is an unofficial, “underground history” of the country that recognizes the influence of all those minority groups on the development of a national character, it is still a fact that most accounts of the construction of the country rely on the Jeffersonian blueprint of the “Highway to the Pacific” and John Quincy Adams’ “continentalism”: “The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing our general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs” (qtd. in McDougall: 87). In Brown (2002), his third collection of autobiographical essays, Rodriguez takes issue with these descriptions of the myth of the continent and reflects on their profound influence on the national consciousness: American myth has traditionally been written east to west, describing the elect people’s manifest destiny accruing from Constitution Hall to St. Jo’ to the Brown Palace Hotel to the Golden Gate. Now a classics professor in Oregon rebuts my assertion that California is not the West. His family moved to Anaheim from Queens. They moved west. Simple. The way the East Coast has always imagined its point of view settled the nation. (2002: 170) Despite the colossal efforts of historians such as Howard Zinn (1996) and Paul Johnson (1997) to revise traditional patterns of history-making and to restore forgotten chapters and points of view often unrepresented in the “official records” of the nation, it remains

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

clear that, as Rodriguez argues, it is the East Coast—or European— perspective that still dominates much of the “grand national myth.” In fact, if one wishes to enjoy alternative versions of that primordial ensemble, it always makes sense to make incursions into that narrative from other vantage points.4 To do so, one needs to enter that history from the narrow margins that the overpowering bulldozer of the Establishment left for those who did not easily fit into the widelysanctioned picture of the country (see Weeks 1996: 30-32). My discussion below shows that Richard Rodriguez’s migrant parents, his place of birth, his Catholicism, his homosexuality, and, especially, his great interest in socio-cultural processes that often escape the attention of others, grant him that privileged position. In an article he published back in 1986 in The American Scholar, he argued: The residue of the past is told in a mood, gesture of hands, a tone of voice. A man who knows my family well tells me today that when I write in English he can recognize the sound of my father speaking in Spanish. This is the way Mexico will influence America in the future: American English will be changed by the Mexican immigrant children who put it in their mouths. Optimism will be weighted, in time, by some thicker mood. (1986: 176) Rodriguez’s retrieval of the national myth—or narrative—is definitely burdened by the persistent feeling that what was a path of hope and optimism for most Anglos was much more difficult and tortuous for others who, due to their culture and religion, were not likely to read “Manifest Destiny” and the American frontier in the same light. Hence his decision to reverse the path of the prevailing national narrative, and to highlight the importance of other racial collectives in the formative stages of the country. 2. REVERSING THE PATH OF THE HEGEMONIC NATIONAL MYTH In the first half of Brown, Rodriguez returns to the exploration of the prickly issues of class and ethnic identity that he had already

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dwelled upon in his two earlier collections of personal essays. Like them, this last instalment of the trilogy is far from offering a complaisant representation either of himself or the country in which he lives.5 A self-declared “comic victim of two cultures,” Rodriguez has often maintained that his intention in writing is not to offer convenient examples: “I don’t think we [writers] should make people feel settled. I don’t try to be a gadfly, but I do think the real ideas are troublesome. There should be something about my work that leaves the reader unsettled. I intend that” (London 1997). By using significant doses of penetration, sympathy, and irony, Rodriguez manages to make us question many of the assumptions that we often take for granted when considering American culture and history. He looks into the lives of well-known historical figures—such as Ben Franklin, T.E. Lawrence, Richard Nixon, and William Faulkner—in order to show that allegiances and identities in his country have always been much more complex and multifaceted than they seemed at first glance. What he says about books in the first essay of the collection (“The Triad of Alexis de Tocqueville”) could be applied just as well to many of the authors, thinkers, and politicians that he refers to: How a society orders its bookshelves is as telling as the books a society writes and reads. American bookshelves of the twenty-first century describe fractiousness, reduction, hurt. Books are isolated from one another, like gardenias or peaches, lest they bruise or become bruised, or, worse, consort, confuse. (11) Curiously enough, Rodriguez’s main topic in this book is precisely the advantages of being a person—or a text—that cannot be easily classified as one thing or another and, therefore, produces confusion and perplexity in the beholder. Brown celebrates mixture and amalgamation, the disturbing state of being a multiplicity of things at once, because radically different bloodlines and affiliations converge in the same individual.6 Villalon remarked in a review of Brown that: “This confusion—this ‘browning’—will create opportunities to fashion our own public identity, one that better reflects our private selves, one that will not be deemed ‘inauthentic’” (2002). Although the author is mostly confident about the impact that this “browning” of America is going to have on future generations—since these multifarious

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

individuals will end up being the primary force driving the nation in its pursuit of happiness—, he also shows some concern that this freedom to blend and combine may produce undesirable results. As a matter of fact, he points out that going too far in the opposite direction may prove as dangerous as remaining protected in your own parochial, primordial identity: In a brown future, the most dangerous actor might likely be the cosmopolite, conversant in alternate currents, literatures, computer programs. The cosmopolite may come to hate his brownness, his facility, his indistinction, his mixture; the cosmopolite may yearn for a thorough religion, ideology, or tribe. (xiv) At some points, the reader cannot help hearing Rodriguez addressing quite directly those who have been questioning his apparent lack of commitment to his own ethnic group: “By telling you these things, I do not betray ‘my people.’ I think of the nation entire— all Americans—as my people” (128). However, the author is not so much interested in persuading us that his grasp on past and current realities is the right one but, rather, in showing that we all—himself included—frequently take things at face value, instead of digging into them more deeply (cf. Jefferson 2003). This exercise in cultural penetration seems particularly urgent when the kind of knowledge on which the country has relied in order to build its own identity and to establish its goals proves, upon closer scrutiny, to be afflicted by numberless inaccuracies and contradictions. As Margo Jefferson notes, “Brown is a series of reflections on what should become our national refusal of self-serving pieties. He [Rodriguez] is exploring—and discovering—the hypocrisies and ironies of race as America has insisted on defining it; also the ironies and glories of race as America has ended up living it” (2003). After considering the pitfalls caused by approaching race relations in the U.S. the way sociologists and politicians have done it in the past, Rodriguez moves on to tell us, in the second half of the collection, about the socio-cultural changes that would need to take place for us to be able to read history and myth in a different light. As he sees it, while the United States—given its status as a migration

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nation—may offer the world a highly “syncretic” understanding of culture, according to which an individual is free to turn to different traditions and heritages to give a shape to her/his identity, Americans would do well to learn a more playful notion of race from Latin America and Asia, a notion which would definitely transcend the black-white dichotomy that has burdened their history: The last white freedom in America will be the freedom of the African-American to admit brown. Miscegenation. To speak freely of ancestors, of Indian and Scots and German and plantation owner. To speak the truth of themselves. That is the great advantage I can see for blacks in the rise of the so-called Hispanic. (2002: 142) In order to bring about this radical change of paradigm, Rodriguez proposes nothing less than a complete inversion in how we view the history of the country, beginning on the West Coast and moving toward the Atlantic: “Imagine how California must have appeared to those first Europeans—the Spanish, the English, the Russians—who saw the writing of the continent in reverse, from the perspective of Asia [...]” (185). The reasons for the author’s decision to reverse the path of the traditional national narrative become gradually clear as this different perspective allows him to capture “accidents” and contingencies that would have remained invisible in a more conventional account.7 Moreover, one also notices that his migrant and Californian roots allow him to give a distinct twist to issues that would have received a completely different treatment in the hands of an intellectual living in a less “hybrid and temperate region.” As he explains early in the collection: The most important theme of my writing now is impurity. My mestizo boast: As a queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation, I live up to my sixteenth-century birth.” (35) In a way, it is the convergence of all these racial, religious, and historical lineages in the author that allow—and encourage—

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

Rodriguez to consider U.S. history from a different vantage point. His main assumption is that the “small narratives” of women, Natives, Catholics or Hispanics have been distorted or completely erased by the more official versions of the nation’s past (cf. McDougall, 88-95). Perhaps looking into that past from the viewpoint of the South-West would provide us with a radically different narrative in which those marginal(ized) groups would play a more central role. 3. THE PLACE OF THE AMERICAN WEST IN THE BLUEPRINTS OF THE NATION One of the first questions that repeatedly assail the author in the closing sections of the collection is: where does the American West really begin? He reminds us that in early American literature the West began where the candle lighting a window on the frontier was finally absorbed by darkness. To him, that “small calyx of flame” represented a beacon of the East, and everything beyond it was perceived as unknown and dangerous. Precisely because it is this pseudo-religious imagery that pervades much of the literature of the American frontier in the 19th century, it is difficult to assign it to a particular geographical location. No wonder then that, as Rodriguez admits, the threshold to these territories remains a contested issue: A couple of years ago, at a restaurant in the old train station in Pittsburgh (as coal cars rumbled past our table), my host divulged an unexpected meridian: “Pittsburgh is the gateway to the West.” The same in St. Louis; the same in Kansas City. At a Mexican restaurant in Texas: Dallas is where the East begins; Fort Worth is where the West begins. (171) Rodriguez is all too fond of coming across these contradictory statements that make problematic the dictums of historians and politicians, who always seem to have ready answers for questions concerning the expansion and consolidation of the country. In their eyes, he says, “History has a beginning, a middle, an outcome. Many appendices, many misgivings, many motives have been summarized” (195). As a matter of fact, one can only come to an accurate

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understanding of how the West and the nation as a whole have become what they are today by looking closely into those desires, misgivings, and appendices that are usually bracketed out of conventional history: “To find where the West begins I will need to follow Athene’s Uturned arrow straight through nineteenth-century Wall Street, across the Atlantic to Enlightenment Paris, down the bronzed coast of Western civilization to ancient Greece” (173). Not unlike Michel Foucault (1972) in his archaeologies of madness or sexuality, Rodriguez also travels back to excavate in the discursive practices of Western civilization in order to try to figure out how they have predetermined many of the ideas we hold as irrefutable truths. Thus, for example, the eastern area of the country has always viewed the West Coast as an emblem of innocence and future opportunity. Yet, The price Californians pay for such flattery is that we agree to be seen as people lacking in experience, judgment, and temper. It seems not to have occurred to the East that because the West has a knowledge of the coastline, the Westerner is the elder, the less innocent party in the conversation. (174) No doubt, Rodriguez can get quite aggressive when he realizes that historians have concentrated their efforts on building a narrative of the country that stresses violence and domination (see Slotkin 1992), “vignettes with clean endings, sharp corners, palls of certainty stretched over the toes and noses of soldiers” (195). And this at the expense of what he calls the “brown history of America,” which would also include the mixed feelings, unclear emotions, and illegitimate choices that were just as essential in the progress of the country. “Brown children,” he observes, “are as old as America—oh, much older—to be the daughter of a father is already to be brown. To be the rib-wife of Adam was already to be brown; […] But public admissions of racial impurity are fresh and wonderful to me” (202). However, if historians and politicians are often accused of defacing and manipulating history for their own purposes, the real Nemeses need to be sought among those Puritans of the new age—both in pop culture and academe—who keep trying to purge society and its cultural artefacts of any signs of contamination and ambivalence. Julio Marzán has cogently argued that Rodriguez unleashes his ire against these

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

people because they are still nostalgic for straight lines and for always choosing to be essentially one thing and not another: “Puritanism quickly takes on new meaning, a desire for purity that condemns theatricality or spectacle or, most important here, artifice” (Marzan 2003). The author cannot help suspecting that, as was the case in the 19th century, twenty-first-century children of color may grow up to hate themselves, if they come to prefer the singular rather than the multiple. In fact, he immediately connects the terrorist attacks of September 11 with the atavistic inclination in some human beings to see history developing in a certain direction and the hand of God pushing them in that precise direction: These were men from a world of certainty, some hours distant—a world where men presume to divine, to enforce, to protectively wear the will of God; a world where men wage incessant war against the impurity that lies without [puritans!] and so they mistrust, they wither whatever they touch; they have withered the flower within the carpet they have walked upon. (226-27; square brackets in original) Elisabeth Ferszt has recently compared Rodriguez to Jay Gatsby in the sense that, like Fitzgerald’s hero, he prefers to retain his rebelliousness and romanticism, instead of squandering them on the political and academic “purists” who—like Daisy and Tom—are too happy in their own exclusive club to realize that straight lines and deciduous lineages no longer explain how the world rolls (Ferstz 2008: 444). One advantage of the south-western perspective is, of course, that it has learnt to accept the fact that no matter how high and how thick the barriers you set to the human soul, there will always be motives to cross over them or pull them down. Although there are things that one is told not to do or that one thinks s/he should not do, there is our Nature silently trying to pull us under. This becomes most apparent when cultures and communities come into contact, which was the case in the Far West: “America is fated to recognize itself as intersection—no, nothing so plain as intersection—as coil, pretzel, Gordian knot with a wagging tail” (192). That is what Rodriguez discovers in California, not so much a State where the east-to-west movement of the country came to its culmination, but rather where

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the East, represented by the increasing Asian population, meets the South in the form of the Hispanic immigrants.8 Various conceptions of time and the past, multiple religions, allegedly incompatible value systems need to learn to cohabit in social spaces that have already been profoundly marked by certain narratives. Yet, it is also true that many of the lines drawn by those narratives do no longer seem effective in protecting or separating what they had originally tried to control: We feel surrounded, that’s the thing. Our borders do not hold. National borders do not hold. Ethnic borders. Religious borders. Aesthetic borders, certainly. Sexual borders. Allergenic borders. We live in the “Age of Diversity,” in a city of diversity—I do, anyway—so we see what we do not necessarily choose to see: People listing according to internal weathers. We hear what we do not want to hear: Confessions we refuse to absolve. (213) In a review of Rodriguez’s collection, Anthony Walton has argued that its principal merit is “His compassionate vision of [American] society and its complicated past” (2002). Yet, he also maintains that although the author shows great faith in the possibilities opened up by this (re)discovery of the country from a more syncretic viewpoint, he undercuts himself—and the reader—by promptly admitting just how difficult that brown future will be to manage and articulate. As the quotation above illustrates, while it is true that some of the barriers that have historically separated human groups are falling apart, it is also evident that most people still show some resistance to those changes that are inevitably going to take place. Perhaps the key to success in this transition would be to gain awareness of our own limitations and tribulations in dealing with sociocultural phenomena that would probably have been unthinkable only a few decades ago. 4. HISTORICAL IRONIES AND THE POTENTIAL FOR NEW IDENTITIES Despite the hope and optimism in Rodriguez’s latest “discovery” of his nation, it would be myopic to come to the conclusion that he

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

may fall prey to the kind of naiveté that is sometimes observable in other proponents of cross-fertilizing and hybrid models of culture.9 On the contrary, as has already been noted earlier on, he is deeply conscious of the tensions that could be generated in contemporary Americans— including himself— by this huge pull in different directions. Not only does he recognize that the effects of the collapse of earlier barriers are not always fully satisfactory but, in some instances, they are seen to be further aggravating problems that, theoretically, they should have contributed to solving. For example, when he considers the advantages of the digital revolution and the craze for doing everything on-line in California, he immediately adds that “For the purposes of this book, the digital divide is between the Few and the Many. The Few will continue to disport themselves within their exception, as is their custom [...]” (158), while the Many “sleep in shanties, shit in holes, and grow in number every day.” In the opening pages of the book, Rodriguez describes himself as “skeptical by nature” (xv) and one only needs to examine the unexpected twists that he gives to issues that would seem crystal clear to others to realize that he is rarely uncritical or complaisant—beginning with his own views and assumptions. Thus, when he confesses to the reader his frictions with groups of homosexuals and academics, he cannot help declaring his frustration at the impossibility of conveying in less partisan terms the role that certain aspects of his identity have compelled him to adopt. Still, as he explained to Scott London in an interview, there are aspects of any human existence that are too intricate to be comprehensible to others, and “we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America” (1997). Although Rodriguez feels relatively at ease speaking of the paradoxes and seeming contradictions—like being a Catholic and gay—that he discovers in himself, he can become deeply sarcastic when he comes across suspicious distortions occurring in the gap between other peoples’ intentional utterances and what we see them doing in the real world. According to Rice, this is what we usually understand by irony, which is a figurative trope that focuses our attention on the strategic discontinuities between “intentional acts of representation and the world in which they take place” (2007: 4). Like the “trickster figures” in the Native-American tradition, Rodriguez is extremely ingenious in detecting those instances of human behavior

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that conspicuously subvert the norms of nature or ethics in order to pursue some allegedly superior goals. Evidently, the author’s main purpose in highlighting those apparent incongruities is to demystify various cultural practices and world visions that have become widespread in his area of the country. For example, he refers on some occasions to the so-called environmentalist movement to show that, to a great extent, it originates in the “Weeping Conscience” or sense of guilt that white Americans suffer from after they have very much domesticated or completely destroyed the wilderness of the West: Wisdom and a necessary humility inform the environmental movement, but there is an arrogant selfhatred, too, in the idea that we can create landscapes vacant of human will. In fact protection is human intrusion. The ultimate domestication of Nature is the ability to say: Rage on here, but nowhere else! (178) Although Rodriguez acknowledges the fact that great efforts are being made to try to revive the memories of the Indian as a spiritual preserver of nature and of the virgin lands as a regenerator— and equalizer—of human life, he also contends that these efforts tend to obliterate history in order to legitimize contemporary crusades. As he explains, environmentalists are often seen to turn sympathetic with the “dead Indian” but, curiously, it is because this figure has come “to represent pristine Nature in an argument […] against ‘overpopulation’” (180). Hence the irony he perceives in Ralph Lauren’s building himself a 14,000-acre ranch outside Telluride, Colorado, to go to “whenever he wants to escape the rag trade in New York” (177), or his own habit of going to watch Pocahontas movies in a shopping center where he can conveniently station his car on a wellpaved parking lot and buy some fries (180). The closing essay in Brown (“Peter’s Avocado”) is a brilliant rumination on the vibrant and dangerous possibilities that individualism—especially as experienced in California—offers to most Americans. Rodriguez wonders whether the freedom enjoyed today by people of different class and color will suffice to lead them into a brown future embracing hope and reconciliation. In the author’s opinion, this will be possible only if the different groups first learn to

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

accept that that hard-earned freedom has repeatedly been threatened by the attempts of some to pasteurize and “purify” a history that was not without its ambiguities and illicit emotions. As Rodriguez remarks: The stories in the history book that interested me were stories that seemed to lead off the page: A South Carolina farmer married one of his slaves. The farmer died. The ex-slave inherited her husband’s chairs, horses, rugs, slaves. And then what happened? Did it, in fact, happen? (196; italics in original) Rodriguez is convinced that Americans can come to an understanding of their position in the history of the country only by making those secret connections and admitting some bitter truths about their peoples’ past. It is only when one finally faces the unclear and ambivalent nature of those “scandalous” decisions—which, as he says, have been “missing in plain sight” (197)—that one can hope to (re)discover the true potential of a hemispheric nation in which the boundaries of old are gradually beginning to dissolve. Several reviewers have argued that Rodriguez’s re-vision of American history enhances our understanding of other intellectuals—such as Du Bois, T.S. Eliot or Ellison—who also explored the issue of how true individualism can be achieved only by thinking of oneself as a convergence of frequently contradictory forces (Villalon 2002; Walton 2002). And this is true, incidentally, not only of their ancestors in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when boundaries of race, class, gender, and nation were much more clearly defined, but also in the twenty-first century, when we have developed our own “sacred truths” concerning biology, technology or aesthetic values. Rodriguez provides the example of his friend Franz’s difficulties in understanding his son’s behavior: although Peter is super-scrupulous about the kind of food he ingests and takes great care of his body, he has no problem defacing it with “contaminating” designs: Though Franz can provide an approximate translation of Peter’s behavior, its moment remains inexplicable to him. Despite Peter’s care that his body not be defiled, his body is tattooed. Despite the impulse to live outside time, his mundane impulse to customize

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himself, to paint indelible bracelets on his arm, to embarrass some future version of himself with this illustration. (216) It is these tensions—or ironies—that Rodriguez believes have driven human history and have made the nation a complex—but also rich—crucible of identities. He is not interested in offering easy answers to the kind of contradictions that he sees between the individual aspirations of the people and the social practices they get involved in due to various types of pressure. So, whenever he is asked whether he thinks of himself as a Catholic or a gay—two supposedly irreconcilable terms—, he never favors one category over the other. As he admits, it is “the tension I have come to depend upon. That is what I mean by brown. The answer is that I cannot reconcile” (224). 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS This contribution sets out by providing an analysis of the importance that the myth of the conquest of the American West had in the development of a national consciousness and the self-definition of the U.S. as an “exceptional” country. Weeks and others have argued that the roots of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology need to be sought in several features of the country’s Puritan heritage such as the sense of mission to spread certain institutions and the conviction that God had chosen these people to do this work (Weeks 1996: 61). As a result of this view of the progress of the American frontier, historical accounts—which can be traced back to the “Founding Fathers” of the Republic—have been dominated by the idea that the pioneers were extending the principles of freedom and democracy over the continent. Of course, we know nowadays that the myth of the “divinely favored nation” moving westward to create its new and shining “city on the hill” has been plagued by acts of violence and exclusion that have left whole segments of the population—most notably, minorities and women—as the expendable victims of the enterprise. In the second half of Brown, Mexican-American writer Richard Rodriguez embarks on the ambitious project of reversing that traditional (and mythical) pattern in the design of the history of the

Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz Reversing the National Myth in Richard Rodriguez’s Brown

nation so as to allow his readers to discover some of the forgotten (or hidden) chapters of that history. In order to do so, Rodriguez chooses to look into the lives of some well-known and other less-often extolled national figures from rather oblique perspectives—of the migrant, the dispossessed, the homoerotic, etc.—to reveal aspects of the culture that are rarely discussed. To the highly-polished and pasteurized versions of the national myth, this author opposes an account that seems to be governed by illicit emotions and “accidents” that drive the country in unexpected directions. Often fascinated by the less pure and straight elements in his new “discovery” of America, he contends that the nation would do well to recognize that, although its history is full of optimism and possibilities—deriving mostly from its very diverse character—, there are other less “shining” chapters— mostly related to class, race, and gender divisions—that also need to be borne in mind if a more hopeful future is to be built. Rodriguez has often been described as a polemical writer all too fond of digging into issues that may be unpleasant to different communities—homosexuals, Mexican-Americans, academics, etc.— (Ferszt 2008; Marzan 2003). As we can see in some of the passages from Brown discussed in this article, Rodriguez is especially interested in those instances of human behavior confirming that there is usually a significant gap between the alleged motivations driving his compatriots to support particular policies and then the practices they carry out in their daily lives. He proves to be a master in the use of irony—and even sarcasm—to show the generalized tendency to whitewash a history of the nation that proves invariably deeply “brown.” It should be said, however, that he never shies away from making himself the target of those ironies as his life has been as full of tensions and contradictions as anybody else’s (cf. Jefferson 2003). Like Walt Whitman, though, he has learnt to accept those conflicting elements of his identity as part of his own “brownness.” NOTES 1

A shorter version of this contribution was presented as a keynote lecture in the 8th International Conference on Chicano Literature: “Cruzando las fronteras de la imaginación” held in

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Toledo in May 2012. The research done for the writing of this article is part of a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and the European Regional Development Fund (Code: FF2011/23598). 2 Many of these pioneers were encouraged to move to the Western territories by John L. O’Sullivan’s columns in publications such as the Democratic Review in the mid-1840s. Although O’Sullivan was not a radical “expansionist,” he did believe that it was the Anglo-Saxons’ “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” 3 David Carroll (1987), elaborating on Bakhtin’s and Lyotard’s views, emphasizes the huge complementary (and oppositional) importance of little (or marginal) voices and stories to monologic or grand narratives of any nation (see especially pp. 77-78). 4 Historical revisionism has become a habitual practice in historiography these last few decades as feminists, ethnicminority historians, Marxists, environmentalists, etc. have recognized the urgent need to reinterpret traditional views of cause and effect, decisions, and evidence. Since history is generally written by the winners, it is important to look into the past with a critical eye so as to improve our understanding of it. 5 In Days of Obligation, Rodriguez writes: “In order to show you America I would have to take you out. I would take you to the restaurant—OPEN 24 HOURS—alongside a freeway in the U.S.A. The waitress is a blond or a redhead—not the same color as at her last job. She is divorced. Her eyebrows are jet-black migraines painted on, or relaxed, clownish domes of cinnamon brown. Morning and the bloom of youth are painted on her cheeks. She is at once antimaternal—the kind of woman you’re not supposed to know—and supramaternal, the nurturer of lost boys” (1992: 54-55). 6 This topic comes up in most interviews with the author. He explained to Scott London, for instance, that “Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don’t have any way of describing this secret that has been going on for more than two hundred years. The

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intermarriage of the Indian and the African in America, for example, has been constant and thorough” (London 1997). 7 Rodriguez repeats several times throughout the collection that he is particularly interested in those missing, unrecorded events of American history: “Missing, I suppose, because of the orderly sensibilities of recorders, and then of readers. We cannot record time. Time is capacious, a rose. Such is what Virginia Woolf intuited. Such is what Marcel Proust intuited. These heroes of the imagination objected to history because the center of it was missing” (2002: 197). 8 California resembles, in this sense, the “contact zones” as famously defined by Mary L. Pratt in the early 1990s: “I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (1991: 34). 9 Although Rodriguez refers to José Vasconcelos’ piece La Raza Cósmica (1925) as the “brownest secular essay” advocating “the fusion and mixing of all peoples,” most critics today would think of Gloria Anzaldúa’s book Borderlands / La Frontera (1987) as the work that most clearly exalts the hybrid condition. WORKS CITED Adams, S.P., ed. 2008 The Early American Republic: A Documentary Reader (Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History). Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Anzaldúa, G. 1987 Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Carroll, D. 1987 “Narrative, Heterogeneity, and the Question of the Political: Bakhtin and Lyotard,” in M. Krieger, ed. The Aims of Representation: Subject / Text / History. Stanford: Stanford UP. 69106. Ellison, R. 1986 “Going to the Territory,” in R. Ellison, Going to the Territory. New York: Vintage Books. 120-44. Ferszt, E. 2008 “Richard Rodriguez: Reluctant Romantic.” Early American Literature 43.2 (June): 443-52.

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Foucault, M. 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse of Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Jefferson, M. 2003 “On Writers and Writing; The Color Brown.” The New York Times, 16 February 2003. Accessed November 26, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/books/on-writers-andwriting-the-color-brown.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Johannsen, R.W. 1997 “The Meaning of Manifest Destiny,” in S.W. Haynes and C. Morris, eds. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism. College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP. 7-20. Johnson, P. 1997 A History of the American People. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Kolodny, A. 1984 The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontier, 1630-1860. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P. Krupat, A. 1992 Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, Literature, Criticism. Berkeley: U of California P. London, S. 1997 “A View from the Melting Pot: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez.” The Sun Magazine, August 1997. Accessed November 26, 2010. http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/ rodriguez.html Marzan, J.A. 2003. “The Art of Being Richard Rodriguez.” The Bilingual Review, 27.1 (Jan.-Apr.): 45-64. The Free Library. Accessed 26 November 2010. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+art+of+ being+Richard+Rodriguez.-a0136908114 McDougall, W.A. 1997 Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776. Ashland, OH: Ashland UP. Pratt, M.L. 1991 “Arts of the Contact Zone,” in Profession 91. New York: MLA. 33-40. Prucha, F.P. 1995 The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, 2nd edition. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Rice, L. 2007 Of Irony and Empire: Islam, the West, and the Transcultural Invention of Africa. SUNY Series, Explorations in Postcolonial Studies. Albany, NY: State U of New York. Rodriguez, R. 2002 Brown: The Last Discovery of America. New York and London: Penguin Books. Rodriguez, R. 1992 Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father. New York: Penguin Books. Rodriguez, R. 1986 “Mexico’s Children.” The American Scholar, 55.2 (Spring): 161-77.

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Slotkin, R. 1992 Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in TwentiethCentury America. New York: Atheneum. Smith, H.N. 1950 Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge, MA and London. Harvard UP. Tompkins, J. 1992 West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP. Villalon, O. 2002 “One Color Fits All: Richard Rodriguez Finds the Future in Brown.” San Francisco Gate, 7 April 2002. Accessed November 26, 2010. http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/OneColor-Fits-All-Richard-Rodriguez-finds-the-2855505.php Vizenor, G., ed. 1993 Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series). Norman: U of Oklahoma P. Walton, A. 2002 “Greater than All the Parts.” A review of Brown by Richard Rodriguez. The New York Times, 7 April 2002. Accessed November 26, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/books/ greater-than-all-the-parts.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Weeks, W. E. 1996 Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc. 30-58. Zinn, H. 1996 A People’s History of the United States: 1942-Present. 2nd Edition. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd.

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RAISING THE GREEN CURTAIN: SEAN O’FAOLAIN, EDWARD SAID AND THE DEFENCE OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL* Alfred Markey Universitat Jaume I markey@uji.es This article primarily aims to highlight the importance, in the current context, of revalorizing the figure of the p1ublic intellectual. The current crisis can be interpreted as not only economic but also intellectual and in the light of this I revisit, and suggest as exemplary, Sean O’Faolain and Edward Said. Specifically, a Saidian “close reading” (Said 2004: 62) is undertaken of the public intervention of O’Faolain in relation to a 1950s controversy in Ireland around the issue of Church influence in the public sphere. I read O’Faolain’s polemic “On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association” in dialogue with the ideas on the public intellectual outlined in Said’s Reith Lectures and with the conceptual vocabulary of the Palestinian intellectual, so participating in the broader debate of Ireland in relation to postcolonial critique. Keywords: Public intellectual, Sean O’Faolain, Edward Said, power, secularity. Este artículo tiene como propósito principal destacar la importancia de revalorizar en el contexto actual la figura del intelectual público. La crisis actual se puede interpretar no sólo como de índole económica sino también intelectual, y ante esta realidad pretendo revisitar y así resaltar como ejemplares a Sean O’Faolain y Edward Said. En concreto, se hace una lectura en profundidad, o “close reading” (Said 2004: 62), según el modelo del mismo Said, de la intervención pública de O’Faolain en relación con una controversia surgida en la Irlanda de los años 50 en torno a la influencia de la Iglesia *

Fecha de recepción: Abril 2013

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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en la esfera pública. Partiendo de las ideas sobre el intelectual plasmadas por Said en sus “Reith Lectures”, interpreto la polémica de O’Faolain, “On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association”, en dialogo con el vocabulario conceptual del intelectual palestino, así participando en el más amplio debate de Irlanda con la crítica postcolonial. Palabras clave: Intelectual público, Sean O’Faolain, Edward Said, poder, secularidad. Edward Said, in his signally important series of 1993 BBC Reith lectures, subsequently published as Representations of the Intellectual, offered the following reflection on the role of the intellectual in his penultimate talk, “Speaking Truth to Power”: No one can speak up all the time on all the issues. But, I believe, there is a special duty to address the constituted authorized powers of one’s own society, which are accountable to its citizenry, particularly when those powers are exercised in a manifestly disproportionate and immoral war, or in deliberate programs of discrimination, repression and collective cruelty. (72-3) While Said’s words undoubtedly possess a potent resonance when considered in relation to parts of the world in which conflict and abuse of human rights are an everyday concern, and where even the very notions of “society” and “citizenry” barely achieve pragmatic traction, they are also potentially valuable in the context of the Western world. This is particularly so in view of the manner in which events of recent years have served to seriously compromise the confidence of citizens in the institutions of democracy and in the effective working of a political model whose crisis seems to have assailed the great majority of Western populations by stealth. Said also argues that one of the primary ills afflicting the world is the dominance of a model of professional and technocratic intellectual who is primarily concerned with personal advancement rather than broad social welfare

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and liberty. It can be argued that both phenomena are linked: hegemonic models of intellectual and academic participation -in which “the duty” of the intellectual to be public has been largely lost, subsumed by professional ambition- have decisively contributed to the current crisis which is as much intellectual as economic. In both a spirit of sympathy with Said’s views, and in a conscious attempt to highlight the value of the individual, public intellectual as participant in the public sphere, while also seeking to illuminate our current dilemmas through recourse to examples from other times, in this paper I wish to revisit the Irish intellectual Sean O’Faolain and consider particularly his public participation in relation to the ideas on the intellectual articulated by Said. I will here specifically address O’Faolain’s defence of individual dissenting intellectuals in the context of Ireland in the 1950s and in relation to Catholic Church power at the time. By doing so, and by proposing such a dialogue with Said, I aim to positively appraise O’Faolain not just as an important writer of fiction but as a public intellectual, and draw attention to and so implicitly critique the current absence in Ireland of intellectuals of such characteristics,1 while also aiming to further the fruitful engagement between Ireland and voices from what we can call the postcolonial sphere.2 Said’s voice, in the above quotation, does not, crucially, presume to possess final authority. Throughout his Reith lectures, and indeed throughout his whole life’s work, his tone is often provocative and certainly oppositional but always so in a manner which aims to engage the other and to relate to and, in effect, converse with places, peoples and ideas other than those of the self. Such an attitude is reflected in his constant desire to contest insularity, particularly that tendency to be “completely adrift in self-indulgent subjectivity” resulting from “taking refuge inside a profession or nationality” (1994: 72). Certainly it is problematic to define Said in anti-nationalist terms, as his own activism in favour of Palestinian national independence offers clear testament, and indeed he stresses how the natural position from which most people and most intellectuals engage with “the world” is from within the framework of the nation state and the national community. However, as is apparent in his contention that when the public intellectual speaks out on key issues “the intellectual meaning of a

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situation is arrived at by comparing the known and available facts with a norm, also known and available”, we can see that fundamental to his vocation as an intellectual is the need to make connections beyond the place of belonging, particularly of nation or profession (73). A case in point being his proposal of salutary debate between the specific or national and the universal framework provided, for example, by international charters of human rights in order to establish the realities, the facts, of illiberal and exploitative practices visited on peoples around the globe. This we can consider as reflective of perhaps his overall metier, that of speaking truth to power in order to facilitate societies in which liberty and welfare are given value above notions of loyalty to tribe, caste, class or the privileged cabal. For Said “The goal of speaking the truth is, in so administered a mass society as ours, mainly to project a better state of affairs and one that corresponds more closely to a set of moral principles -peace, reconciliation, abatement of suffering- applied to the known facts” (1994: 73). In turning from the heightened discourse of Said, apparent also in his interventions on Palestine, to the “Dreary Eden” of de Valera’s Ireland in the early decades after independence, it is important to emphasise that the extent of restrictions on liberty exercised by governing elites varies hugely across different sites. Notwithstanding the differences between situations such as Ireland and Palestine, when examined closely a striking similarity in the overall tenor of the public discourse of both of the intellectuals we are here examining, O’Faolain and Said, is apparent. As we now turn to O’Faolain we will reveal a common pattern of a persistent if nuanced and sometimes strained insistence on universal ideas of liberty and justice moulded to local needs, hand in hand with a concern for human welfare and a complex relationship to national identity. Writing in a collection of essays on Ireland’s “lost decade” of the 1950s, Booker prize winner author John Banville recalls an incident from his childhood when what he calls “a mild form of witch-craze” gripped his native county of Wexford (2004: 24). This came about because a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses had arrived in the town, had settled and begun to proselytise, much to the annoyance of the local Catholic clergy. Eventually, one of the priests accompanied by a spirited mob descended on their house, “dragged out the husband and

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beat him up on the pavement, to the encouraging shouts of the mob, while the poor man’s wife looked on” (25). Banville’s sense at the time was that the codes of this society were those of a force which appeared eternal, impregnable and as strong as nature. His perception was that escape could only be achieved by escape from Ireland. Later, by contrast, he came to realise this reality was man-made, and much of the fault for this unchanging stasis lay at the feet of the lack of will of liberal intellectuals and the “triumph of will among reactionary intellectuals, led by the redoubtable corporatist politician and amateur mathematician, Eamon de Valera” (26), whose overriding desire was to control the new nation, including its potential for violence. He explains: The republic which [de Valera] founded with the aid and encouragement of John Charles McQuaid,3 was unique: a demilitarised totalitarian state in which the lives of the citizens were to be controlled not by a system of coercive force and secret policing, but by a kind of applied spiritual paralysis maintained by an unofficial federation between the Catholic clergy, the judiciary and the civil service. Essential to this enterprise in social engineering was the policy of intellectual isolationism which de Valera imposed on the country. And essential to that policy were the book and film censorship boards, which from 1930 onwards virtually sealed the country off from the rest of the world, as well as keeping a foot firmly on the necks of our native writers. (26) This oppression is not an absolute abstract but is, so to speak, a reality on the ground. The foot Banville refers to may be metaphorical but the oppression is not. Just as the specific aggression enacted on the Jehovah’s Witness demonstrated how acts of rebellion would be punished, the intellectual’s resistance to the orthodoxies of the state, and the addressing of public issues meant peril. Banville then turns to highlight Sean O’Faolain as his primary example of an oppositional intellectual that took on the power of the

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corporatist intellectual elite lead by de Valera. He stresses how important O’Faolain’s role was in providing any effective resistance and that he undertook considerable risk with great courage and tenacity, while emphasising also that first “he listened to the sound of the factory siren, he attended to the church’s summoning bell and set his own bell clanging in opposition” (29). In other words, the content of his participation as a liberal intellectual in the public sphere is absolutely contingent on the reality pertaining, the concrete needs of the postcolonial nation at that particular time. As Banville concludes “had he been in Wexford that day in the 1950s when an ignorant priest with a mob behind him beat up a rival religionist Ó Faoláin would, I have no doubt, have stepped forward and defended the man with his fists if necessary” (29). Banville’s imagined vision of O’Faolain stripped to the waist in an utterly practical and humanitarian fight to ensure an individual’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of worship against the authoritarian “applied spiritual paralysis” that characterised the early decades of the Irish Free State is, perhaps, above all a paean to The Bell, the key cultural magazine edited by O’Faolain in the 40s and to which he continued to contribute in the 50s.4 And if we turn to look at The Bell, it becomes immediately apparent just how appropriate Banville’s vision is. Banville focussed particularly on the hegemony of power being exercised by the Catholic Church in the country at the time because he felt the key tensions surrounding the power of the Church were exemplary in revealing the situation of Irish society as a whole and of the prerogatives of intellectuals who had to engage with that society. In a similar manner, a close reading of a specific text relating to the exercise of Church power will afford us an exemplary, representative view of the key characteristics of O’Faolain’s intervention in the public sphere as a public intellectual. I will here examine how O’Faolain engaged with the complex issues surrounding Church power and its influence on individual liberty and minority identity in “On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association.” Although one of O’Faolain’s last contributions to The Bell, it exemplifies the spirit of his intellectual engagement while comprising specifically his own participation in what he terms “a heated controversy” that animated public opinion

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in late 1952 and early 1953 (1953: 517). The controversy arose as a result of the decision of the Papal Nuncio to walk out of a meeting of the International Affairs Association in protest at the opinions of Hubert Butler suggesting the Catholic archbishop, Stepinac, had been deceived by the Quisling, Pavelic, during the German war-time occupation of Yugoslavia.5 O’Faolain’s reaction is to enter the fray in defence of his fellow intellectuals, in defence of free-speech and to take on the ubiquitous power of the Catholic Church at the time in Ireland.6 O’Faolain thus actively and publicly defends the key role of fellow intellectuals in instigating debate and discussion on matters of public concern. Here O’Faolain chooses to come to the defence of the Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocrat, Butler, a member of the same class which elsewhere O’Faolain scathingly refers to as originating from “alien and colonial conquistadors” (1943: 79). The key issue is that, in line with Said’s idea of the public intellectual, loyalties are chosen not in the interest of defending an institution of power, an interest group or an ethnicity, but in consequence with a set of vocationally chosen principles where a humanist concern for personal liberty is paramount. Fascinatingly, O’Faolain, as postcolonial subject, seems to evidence the need to couch his argumentation in favour of individual liberty in a manner designed to avoid totalizing meaning whilst retaining the capacity to exercise universalisms in defence of individuals whose liberty is in real terms being impinged upon as a result of particular, local circumstances. O’Faolain’s use of liberty as a key value is unsteady and troubled, like Said he is cognisant of its flawed pedigree and never completely at “home” with it, primarily given its flawed pedigree as an ideological pretext for colonial expansion, but both are aware of its potential for usage as a provisional conceptual guarantor of individual freedom. O’Faolain’s defence of individual liberty and welfare is varied but it is perhaps especially significant that he should come out so publicly in defence of an Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocrat. In a sense Butler was a non-aligned party in terms of the context within which this particular debate took place. O’Faolain points out that Butler’s participation was in response to a paper read by Peter O’Curry, the editor of The Standard, a publication which, as O’Faolain clarifies, describes itself as “Catholic Ireland’s National Weekly”, with the

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result being that, with regards to the controversy in question, O’Curry was “bound hand and foot” in discussing such a matter (1953: 518). O’Curry’s duty is clearly to the institution which he is serving, the Catholic Church. His intellectual participation is compromised by his loyalty to its values and particularly to the hierarchy that determines the distribution of power within that institution.7 Patently one cannot claim the same of O’Faolain. His intellectual activity is not circumscribed and determined by a professional loyalty or a loyalty to any side in this controversy, or to his community of origin, that which especially at this point in history was being identified with Catholicism and the cult of the Gael.8 Instead, he decides to champion the cause of Butler, so introducing a discordant note that challenges the authority of the powerful Catholic Church in 1940s Ireland. In his “Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay” Reith lecture, Said emphasises that the role of the intellectual should be to resist the excesses of dominant powers in society and particularly to defend the individual whose rights are impinged upon. Said defends some of the ideas proposed by C. Wright Mills in Power, Politics, and People: C. Wright Mills’s main point is the opposition between the mass and the individual. There is an inherent discrepancy between the powers of large organizations, from governments to corporations, and the relative weakness not just of individuals, but of human beings considered to have subaltern status, minorities, small peoples and states, inferior or lesser cultures and races. (17) Some may baulk at a definition of the erstwhile “big people” of the Anglo-Irish masquerading as postcolonial oppressed, but to a considerable degree the position of the Anglo-Irish Butler was now that of the minority whose interests were newly subaltern to those of the dominant Catholic community, the newly hegemonic ruling caste of Irish society which openly discouraged opinions contrary to the dominant value system. It was thus often difficult for this minority to achieve a platform from which to engage with the mainstream. In this context it would appear that Spivak’s question as to whether or not the subaltern could speak is appropriate in the case of Butler who is

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effectively gagged by the all-powerful Catholic Church (Spivak 2010). O’Faolain’s reaction is to address the issue publicly and engage critically with the specific detail of the controversy in question. Said states that: At bottom, the intellectual in my sense of the word, is neither a pacifier nor a consensus-builder, but someone whose whole being is staked on a critical sense, a sense of being unwilling to accept easy formulas, or ready-made clichés, or the smooth, ever-soaccommodating confirmations of what the powerful or conventional have to say, and what they do. Not just passively unwilling, but actively willing to say so in public. (17) However, this attitude of the intellectual also involves what Said calls “a steady realism” that takes account of the need to balance the urge to speak out with the difficulties that arise as a result of the intellectual’s belonging to a particular tradition or nation (17). Similarly, O’Faolain is cognisant of the overwhelming power of the Church at the time and of the need to take into account the loyalties of his audience and so does point out that the lack of tact displayed by the Association, in inviting the Papal Nuncio to such a discussion, was key in precipitating the incident, given that, like other ambassadors, he is bound by protocol to verbally protest or leave the meeting if the state he represents is slighted. An apology from the Association to the Papal Nuncio was not out of place but “they should have apologised for their own gaffes, rather than have made Mr. Butler their whipping boy” (518). O’Faolain then goes on to state the following: “Of course, we all see quite clearly why His Excellency and other Catholics have been deeply moved by the statement that Archbishop Stepinac was duped, Loyalties were involved. The antagonists are not seen as Marshal Tito and Archbishop Stepinac; they are seen as Satan and Christ” (518519). This tendency to reduce the affair to an axis of totalized conflict is seen by O’Faolain as a natural gravitation on the behalf of people towards the pole of the opposition to which they readily identify, that of their religious or ethnic filiation. However, he unequivocally

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subjects this reaction to a critique in which he outlines some of his key beliefs as an intellectual: Loyalty, however -it has been one of the more profound observations of Mr. Graham Greene- is one of the worst possible guides to Truth: wherefore he maintains that it is the duty of writers to be disloyalmeaning that once a writer commits himself irrevocably to any party-line he must, sooner or later, commit a sin against the truth. Which is one reason why politicians, and I suppose Churchmen, are not particularly enamoured of writers, or anybody else who puts Truth before Loyalty. In Russia they bump them off or buy them off. In the West they suffer them uncomfortably. In Ireland we ostracise them. (519) Two things are immediately apparent: O’Faolain clearly manifests an attitude congruent with Said’s dictum “never solidarity before criticism” (1994: 24). Also, the ideas of “Loyalty” and “Truth” in Ireland take on meaning according to local circumstances, and in what is a stunningly clear statement of Ireland’s marginal postcolonial position, he asserts Ireland’s difference to the West. As Said suggests, the outward-looking vision that latches on to a universal standard that may help to prevent abuses against individual liberty must still take account of local conditions. Seemingly, the Papal Nuncio hadn’t taken account of local conditions, perhaps mistaking Ireland for the West. O’Faolain goes on to emphasise the ramifications of risky public participation for intellectuals: Now, may I say that I believe, I certainly hope, that His Excellency the Papal Nuncio had not, up to the incident I am discussing, fully appreciated just how severe the penalties are in this country for people who, like Mr. Butler and Dr. Sheehy-Skeffington, appear to put Truth before Loyalty. It would, at any rate, be entirely understandable that he would not have foreseen the sequels his protest would evoke. In America,

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certainly, had an Archbishop walked out of a public discussion there would have been no such sequel. Indeed the discussion would not have been interrupted. In the Irish Republic it is sufficient for any Churchman to utter a whisper, not only to stop all discussion, but to produce the subsequent fury of the laity against the offender. (519) O’Faolain stresses how the context is so important. In Ireland the Church was all powerful with the result being that the consequences of the Nuncio’s action may in fact have proven radically different to what was intended: “Moreover, the saddest effect of His Excellency’s protest has been one with which he can surely have no sympathy -the throwing of yet another stone on the cairn erected, stone by stone, over the last twenty-five years, on the grave of an adult, informed, intellectual, Catholic conscience” (519-520). This striking image of a metaphorical stoning is consistent with that of an almost totalitarian regime depicted by Banville as discussed earlier, and it becomes clear that under the guise of loyalty to the nation and to the Church, the particular content being “thrown around” was oppressive and restrictive of individual liberty. O’Faolain proposes instead free speech and liberty of discussion which reaches out to the people. His opinion is that “Such a conscience can only live where full liberty of discussion is permitted to the laity, whose fundamental Loyalty to their Church and Faith must otherwise be as useless as the Loyalty of an ignorant, untrained and unarmed army of mercenaries, unfitted to defend the Truth” (520). It does seem significant that the Church should be one of the key targets of O’Faolain’s attacks. Clearly the degree of self-effacing institutional loyalty demanded of the servants of the Church ran counter to the very nature of his intellectual project. In this he fits in with the model outlined by Said in which unthinking faith is particularly conducive to the totalized thinking that tends to precipitate cultural clash rather than dialogue, and, ultimately, was at the heart of the whole colonial adventure as he so thoroughly outlined in Orientalism. In the Reith lectures, Said very explicitly and repeatedly links his model of intellectual to a secular ideal in which religion is a private matter to be respected but resisted in the political sphere:

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In and of itself religious belief is to me both understandable and deeply personal: it is rather when a total dogmatic system in which one side is innocently good, the other irreducibly evil, is substituted for the process, the give-and-take of vital interchange, that the secular intellectual feels the unwelcome and inappropriate encroachment of one realm on another. Politics becomes religious enthusiasm -as is the case today in former Yugoslavia -with results in ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and unending conflict that are horrible to contemplate. (84-85) Uncritical loyalty is what will lead to such extremes. Instead of, as in O’Faolain’s example of Satan and Christ, rendering complex reality into totalized simplicity, for Said the intellectual should resist the simplification and think “of politics in terms of interrelationships or of common histories such as, for instance, the long and complicated dynamic that has bound the Arabs and Muslims to the West and vice versa” (1994: 88-89). Said goes on to clarify his ideas in a manner strikingly suggestive of the overall intellectual vocation or project of O’Faolain: Real intellectual analysis forbids calling one side innocent, the other evil. Indeed the notion of a side is, where cultures are at issue, highly problematic, since most cultures aren’t watertight little packages, all homogenous, and all either good or evil. But if your eye is on your patron, you cannot think as an intellectual, but only as a disciple or acolyte. In the back of your mind there is the thought that you must please, and not displease. (89) When O’Faolain refers to the editor of The Standard, Peter O’Curry, he undramatically but effectively shows how, at bottom, he is an acolyte and compromised by his institutional affiliation: “He could, indeed, be objective, but only on one side of the argument” (518). O’Faolain himself, by contrast, demonstrates how belonging to institutions such as the university or the Church need not preclude critical thinking, and perhaps more than anything this “secular”

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attitude is what defines him as an intellectual. His challenge to totalized thinking is apparent as he states: “For there is not, in fact, an utter chasm between Truth and Loyalty, at least in the domain of religious belief. If there were it would mean that that to which we are Loyal is not the Truth” (520). Ingeniously, in what appears a clear attempt to strategically align himself with his public, to appeal to their sense of faith, O’Faolain then proceeds to depict excess loyalty in concrete specific cases as fundamentally at odds with a core loyalty to the Church in terms of the broad historical framework. He explains: But two conditions are involved: the first is that we will distinguish between an office and a man; the second, that we do not trade in short-term loyalties for those which we believe to be eternal: in other words we do not play politics in the name of religion, or subserve religion to some passing tactical advantage. Churchmen and laymen have done that before now; and the Church has paid dearly for it. (520) Said advocates the separation of Church and politics and here O’Faolain does so too but under the guise of a plea in favour of the long term interests of the Church. He cites the example of the Church’s use of indulgences as a signal case where short-term political concerns were to have a very damaging and corrupting influence, before proposing his key argument: “Would “Loyalty” have demanded before then that Catholics should not discuss such matters, or condemn such practices?” (520). Unquestionably, this encapsulates the essence of O’Faolain’s whole intellectual project. Here he cleverly and strategically uses the pretext of an argument on the issue of loyalty to the Church to propose the primacy of discussion, of what Said calls the process, the give-and-take of vital interchange. The key elements of his argument with regards to the Church are of course relevant to other areas of public life where the participation of the people is defended as a measure against the excessive power of institutions serving an elite hierarchy anxious to reduce popular participation and to demand loyalty to an authoritarian, centralised nexus of power.

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Having forcefully argued in favour of the value of discussion amongst Catholics through highlighting the historical example of the use of indulgences, Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Faolain draws attention to the contemporary case of the persecution of Protestants by the Spanish Cardinal Segura of Seville and the criticism of same by some American Catholics. The principle of free discussion means that: It is equally open to anybody who wishes to do so to praise these same American Catholics for asserting that Catholicism and intolerance are two mutually exclusive things; that the honest individual conscience has rights which must be respected; with all the logical conclusions that follow therefrom, such as that the Church must not coerce others; or that a Censorship, imposed by clerical influence, is to be deplored; or that the Church must not -as Cardinal Segura would- employ the State to enforce its wishes on minorities, or even on majorities; or that the Church and the State has each its own sphere of influence-and, in fact, if any Irish Catholic cares to read that excellent weekly American Catholic laymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paper, The Commonweal, he will find that many intelligent American Catholics lean very much in all those directions. (521) Here Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Faolain pretends a number of things. First he contests the local hegemony of the Catholic Church by availing of examples, both positive and negative, that open up the framework of reference beyond the national sphere. Secondly, he defends the autonomy of the individual within the institution, anchoring this idea of individual liberty to the idea of individual rights. The corollary of the establishment of these rights is the resistance to the authoritarian enforcement of the will of the elite, and the concomitant contesting of the influence of censorship. Through his employment of the American example he illustrates that the idea of the separation of Church and State is not alien to Catholicism per se, so emphasising the contingent particularity of the Irish case, so opening up a space for debate within the Church in defiance of the authority of the Irish hierarchy. If he shows that the Irish version of Catholicism is not equivalent to a universal standard he also points out that the stance of

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the Church with regards to political controversies of the day, such as the famous Browne Scheme, also served to alienate what he terms “our Northern fellow-countrymen” so rendering less feasible the prospect of a united Ireland while placing the Catholic minority north of the border in a position of considerable vulnerability (522). In effect, he presents the possibility that the key tenets of mid-twentieth century Irishness, Catholicism and Nationalism need not be synonymous with the authoritarian version then hegemonic in Ireland. Turning to the specific case of the individuals who in O’Faolain’s words “pursued” Butler and Sheehy-Skeffington, he claims their supposed loyalty to their faith was misplaced, demonstrating how it ran counter to the idea of an informed, intellectual Catholic conscience and so counter to the ultimate interests of their faith. They were unwise, “First: because “feelings” are not enough; one must have concrete proof of the intelligence and worth of this loyalty. Secondly: because everything we observe about us in Ireland proves the contrary -it is an empty, unthinking loyalty which is in the long run of no positive value to any cause” (522). Similarly, Said states “Because you serve a god uncritically, all the devils are always on the other side” (1994: 88) before clarifying: Those gods that always fail demand from the intellectual in the end a kind of absolute certainty and a total, seamless view of reality that recognises only disciples or enemies. What strikes me as much more interesting is how to keep a space in the mind open for doubt and for the part of an alert, skeptical irony (preferably also self-irony). (89) O’Faolain pointedly refuses to demonise any of the parties involved in the Butler incident: those in Kilkenny are the sort one might have a drink with or kneel beside at Mass, those who in Dublin opposed Sheehy-Skeffington might be met at the dogs or in a bus queue. Rather, they are all potential interlocutors with whom the issues ought to be debated in complexity, and people to whom the argument might be presented as to whether they “really think they have served their church nobly by preventing a University lecturer from talking about the Freedom of the Individual? Are they serving

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anything by that sort of behaviour? Or disserving it? Is that true Loyalty?” (89). Of paramount importance here is the manner in which O’Faolain not only openly solicits the participation of the public in debate but also, through his consistent utilisation of questions, he seeks to try to provoke or solicit consideration of issues at hand and so encourage the possibility of discussion. Just as O’Faolain seeks to draw the antagonists of Butler and Sheehy-Skeffington into debate, so too does he attempt to broaden the spectrum of potential debate by highlighting the fact that Church figures in Italy and France and even, as he puts it “to balance Cardinal Segura”, in Spain are dealing with issues such as the “Land Question” and the relationship between social unrest and social injustice as well as asking such pertinent questions as whether “the reason men become communists is because they have ‘no longer any hope’” (523). Clearly, the more radical voices in Irish Catholicism would censure such areas of debate. O’Faolain, however, to echo Said, thinks “in terms of interrelationships or of common histories” (1994: 88), while, by his promotion of the value of questioning, he seeks to promote a civil space of active, popular engagement. Using something as emotively resonant to the Irish as the “Land Question” allows O’Faolain map a discursive space which is not collapsed irremediably into poles of permanent opposition. Clearly, the intention is to create in the reading public a space for doubt with the intention of permitting constantly evolving engagements with issues of identity and loyalty, so reiterating them as a process, not a reified given. In Said’s words: “Yes, you have convictions and you make judgements, but they are arrived at by work, and by a sense of association with others, other intellectuals, a grassroots movement, a continuing history, a set of lived lives” (1994: 89). From the outset The Bell sought to develop a sort of grassroots movement of complicit, like-minded individuals capable of creating a network of resistance to the orthodoxy of the new State, and here we see how as O’Faolain addresses his public he seeks to provoke, to activate in them an identification with the model of informed, intellectual Catholic conscience he proposes. The reader is being

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invited to critically engage with the issues, to reappraise false loyalties and to reposition him/herself in terms of an evolving debate, an ongoing process that contests the positions of fixity proposed by the authoritarian discourse of the hegemonic elite. Decisions, convictions are arrived at by work, according to Said. This work is critique, going beyond stereotypes and simplicities and through a model of contrapuntal complexity, deconstructing fixed oppositions such as that of Truth and Loyalty or indeed self and other, a dynamic particularly relevant to the question of national identity to which O’Faolain relates the Butler controversy.9 The discourse of autarkic authenticity that is borrowed from the colonial model and had the Free State promote itself as a paradise of purity and Gaelic essence is challenged and critiqued as O’Faolain asks: “What is our foreign policy? Our contribution? I put it to you that our policy is a mean one. We are slipping into the attitude that our hands are too lily-white, our souls too pure, to touch the muck of the world” (523).10 He then remarks with irony that Ireland will be protected from the conflicts of the world by “geography, geology, and God’s special regard for His chosen people. In short, we are snoring gently behind the Green Curtain that we have been rigging up for the last thirty years -Thoughtproof, World-proof, Life-proof. The only people we are ready to fight for are the angels” (524). Unfortunately, this fight seems only to take the shape of the pursuit of the easy victims Butler and Sheehy-Skeffington. By contrast, O’Faolain, from his liminal critical position which we can describe as in essence “geographical” and “contrapuntal”, facing both to the nation and away from it, seeks to raise this “Green Curtain”, and in order to do so he goes to the content of the matter, he addresses the facts, and reveals that the reaction of Catholics to the issue has not been based on intellectual engagement with the reality of what happened. Their attitudes are not the result of an informed consideration of the complexities of a context different to their own but come from a confused sense of loyalty. He wonders “whether those Catholics who have been so offended by the suggestion that he (Cardinal Stepinac) did behave unwisely really know what he is charged with having done” (524). Then, after outlining some of the key details in a manner designed to make them understandable to his

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audience and not as part of any obscure theological debate, O’Faolain opens a space of doubt, associates one side with another and suggests that, in fact, it might be more appropriate to interpret Butler’s remarks as a defence of Cardinal Stepinac than a charge against him. He concludes: “All I am saying is that we should not only be allowed but encouraged to discuss the matter freely, on the ground of that Higher Loyalty where the Truth and all lesser Loyalties become, or should become, magnificently one” (527). Said would, no doubt, have readily concurred with such a secular interpretation of matters of a distant realm. NOTES The issue of the importance of the role of the public intellectual has been addressed most lucidly in a number of speeches by the current President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, notably in “Of Public Intellectuals, Universities, and a Democratic Crisis” (2012) and in Corcoran and Lalor’s Reflections on Crisis: The Role of the Public Intellectual (2012). Originating in a 2009 symposium held by the Royal Irish Academy, the latter publication includes contributions from Liam O’Dowd -editor of the important 1996 collection of essays, On Intellectuals and Intellectual Life in Irelandand Tom Garvin. Garvin is one of the few academics to address the question of the decline of profound intellectual debate in the universities and its substitution by the sort of managerial rhetoric which he, following Orwell, caustically terms “Duckspeak” (2012). See also Walsh (2012) and in the British context, Collini (2012). 2 See Said’s Afterword to Ireland and Postcolonial Theory for his reading of Ireland in postcolonial terms. 3 McQuaid was archbishop of Dublin and, along with de Valera, generally reputed to have been hugely influential in the promotion of a reactionary Catholicism explicit, for example, in the severe censorship culture characteristic of the state up until the 1960s. See Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (1999) and for a general historical overview, Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (2005). 4 For a recent examination of O’Faolain as a postcolonial intellectual in 1

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The Bell see Matthews (2012). Goldring, (1993: 149-159), highlights The Bell’s role as a “dissolver” of borders. 5 The immediate consequence was that the Chairman of the association stopped the discussion and the next day the Nuncio was visited with an apology by two Committee members. Later Mr. Butler was forced to resign his honorary post as Secretary of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society and elsewhere the member who had invited Butler, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, was banned from a public debate in Dublin with the apposite title “Can the Individual Survive?” 6 See also “The Priest in Politics” (1947). 7 Although most obviously an “ecclesiastic intellectual”, in a sense O’Curry is what Antonio Gramsci called an organic intellectual (1971: 6-7) in view of the fact that he is speaking for a specific class except that his class and its values are hegemonic rather than counter-hegemonic. One could perhaps argue that the same is true to a degree of Hubert Butler as he defends the Anglo-Irish perspective in the new position of disadvantage it finds itself in the Free State. 8 See also O’Faolain’s Bell editorials “The Stuffed Shirts” (1943) and “The Gaelic Cult” (1944). 9 Said describes “critique” as at the heart of his idea of secular, democratic humanism (2004: 21-22). 10 In relation to Ireland and “authenticity”, see Graham and Kirkland, Ireland and Cultural Theory: The Mechanics of Authenticity (1999). WORKS CITED Banville, J. 2004 “Memory and Forgetting: The Ireland of de Valera and Ó Faoláin” in D. Keogh, F. O’Shea and C. Quinlan, eds. The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s Cork: Mercier, 21-30. Collini, S. 2012 What Are Universities For? London: Penguin. Cooney, J. 1999 John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland. Dublin: O’Brien. Corcoran, M. and K. Lalor eds. 2012 Reflections on Crisis: The Role of the Public Intellectual. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. Ferriter, D. 2005 The Transformation of Ireland: 1900-2000. London: Profile.

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Garvin, T. 2012 “The Bleak Future of the Irish University”. The Irish Times May 1. Accessed March 30, 2013 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-bleak-futureof-the-irish-university-1.512488 Goldring, M. 1993 Pleasant the Scholar’s Life: Irish Intellectuals and the Construction of the Nation State. London: Serif. Graham, C. and R. Kirkland eds. 1999 Ireland and Cultural Theory: The Mechanics of Authenticity. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Gramsci, A. 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Higgins, M.D. 2012 “Of Public Intellectuals, Universities, and a Democratic Crisis”. Accessed March 30, 2013 http://www.president.ie/speeches/of-public-intellectualsuniversities-and-a-democratic-crisis/ Matthews, K. 2012 The Bell Magazine and the Representation of Irish Identity. Dublin: Four Courts. O’Dowd, L. ed. 1996 On Intellectuals and Intellectual Life in Ireland: International, Comparative and Historical Contexts. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies. O’Faolain, S. 1942 The Great O’Neill. London: Longmans, Green and Co.. O’Faolain, S. 1943 “The Stuffed Shirts”. The Bell June: 181-193. O’Faolain, S. 1943 “The Gaelic Cult”. The Bell Dec.: 185-196. O’Faolain, S. 1947 “The Priest in Politics”. The Bell Jan.: 4-24. O’Faolain, S. 1953 “On a Recent Incident at the International Affairs Association”. The Bell. Feb.: 517-27. Said, E. 2003 “Afterword: Reflections on Ireland and Postcolonialism” in C. Carroll and P. King, eds. Ireland and Postcolonial Theory. Cork: Cork UP 177-185. Said, E. 2004 Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia UP. Said, E. 1994 Representations of the Intellectual. The Reith Lectures. London: Vintage. Spivak, G. 2010 “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in R.C. Morris, ed. Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia UP, 21-80. Walsh, B. ed. 2012 Degrees of Nonsense: The Demise of the University in Ireland. Dublin: Glasnevin.

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ECHOES OF WALTER STARKIE’S VOICE FROM THE ROAD TO SANTIAGO IN LUIS BUÑUEL’S THE MILKY WAY * Verónica Membrive Pérez Universidad de Almería veronicamembrive@hotmail.com The Irish hispanist Walter Starkie defined himself as a ‘wanderer’ and proof of that are his multiple travels around Rumania, Hungary, Italy and Spain following the gypsies. Considering the nomadism of his character, one can understand why he felt attracted by St. James’ Road or ‘the road that never changes’ to the extent of dedicating his book The Road to Santiago, published in 1957, to the adventures of his fourth pilgrimage. Ian Gibson claims that Starkie’s travel book could have served as inspiration to the surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel when he composed the script for The Milky Way in 1969. Both personalities could have certainly coincided in the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid and they both had a solid opinion on religious issues. What is more, both the book and the film show the extent to which Starkie and Buñuel make a journey around time and space following similar discursive strategies in their division concerning past and present. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the possible interdiscursive relationships between Buñuel’s film The Milky Way and Starkie’s travel book The Road to Santiago in a time of political turmoil in Ireland and Spain. Keywords: Walter Starkie, Luis Buñuel, travel writing, The Milky Way, The Road to Santiago. El hispanista irlandés Walter Starkie define a sí mismo como un “ vagabundo “ y prueba de ello son sus múltiples viajes por Rumania, Hungría , Italia y España siguiendo a los gitanos. Teniendo en cuenta el nomadismo de su carácter, se puede entender por qué *

Fecha de recepción: Abril 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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se sentía atraído por el Camino de Santiago o “el camino que nunca cambia“, hasta el punto de dedicar su libro El Camino de Santiago, publicado en 1957. Ian Gibson afirma que la obra de Starkie podría haber servido de inspiración al cineasta surrealista Luis Buñuel cuando compuso el guión de La Vía Láctea en 1969. Ambos artistas podrían haber coincidido en la Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid y los dos tenían una sólida opinión acerca de la religión Católica. Es más, tanto el libro como la película muestran el grado en que Starkie y Buñuel hacen un viaje por el tiempo y el espacio siguiendo estrategias discursivas similares en su división sobre el pasado y el presente. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar las posibles relaciones interdiscursivas entre La Vía Láctea de Buñuel y el libro de Starkie El Camino de Santiago en una época de agitación política en Irlanda y España. Palabras Clave: Walter Starkie, Luis Buñuel, literatura de viajes, La Vía Láctea, El Camino de Santiago. Pilgrimage has been a central element of major religions and Saint James’ Way has always been a place of veneration for Catholics since the discovery of the Saint’s sepulchre in the year 813. From Aymerie Picaud, the monk who wrote The Codex Calixtinus in the 12th century which offers useful details to forthcoming pilgrims, to Dante Alighieri, the tradition of visiting “the milky way” of many fervent Catholics, kings, spiritual individuals or even sports people, have suffered a remarkable increase, especially in recent centuries. Throughout history, several accounts have captured the pilgrimage experience towards the city of Santiago de Compostela in literature and cinema and, according to the Centro de Estudios y Documentación del Camino de Santiago, there are almost 5000 works focused on St. James’ way held in its library. Included in this collection is the Anglo-Irish Dublin-born hispanist Walter Starkie (1894-1976) who published in 1957 a travel book on the pilgrimage titled The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James, one of his last books (a book about Spanish history of music followed in 1958 titled Spain: A Musician’s Journey Through Time and Space and his autobiography in 1963 titled

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Scholars and Gypsies: An Autobiography). Starkie recalls his enjoyable and humorous last adventure as a pilgrim before retiring from public life. Another important figure that captured the essence of the road was one of the most representative figures of Surrealism, the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), who developed this style as an aristocratic response to the madness of capitalism (Santander 2002). In his controversial film The Milky Way released in 1969 (in 1977 in Spain due to Franco’s censorship policy), he captures two men’s atypical journey to Santiago which also unveils a journey through the history of religious dogmas and mysteries1. Although Ian Gibson is confident that Walter Starkie and Luis Buñuel did not meet during the filmmaker’s years at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madridii, it could have been possible for them to have coincided during Starkie’s lectures on Spanish drama that the Hispanist gave on the 22nd and 23rd of December 1924, as the presence of renowned guest lecturers and political and cultural figures was a common practice at the Residenciaiii. Buñuel left the Residencia after obtaining his Degree in History in January 1925 and established his residence in Paris. Walter Starkie was a common visitor to the prestigious institution in which he also stayed for a brief time after finishing his trip around the North of Spain and whose experiences were captured in his travel book Spanish Raggle-Taggle: Adventures with a Fiddle in Northern Spain published in 1934. The Irish Hispanist met many important Spanish cultural personalities such as Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, or Salvador Dalí, with whom he established a good relationship. His forthcoming nomination as first Director of the British Council in Spain, a position held for fourteen years (1940-1954), would bring close and lasting cultural bonds between England and Spain. In spite of Gibson’s uncertainty of Buñuel and Starkie’s acquaintance, he conversely claims that Starkie’s travel book, published more than one decade before Buñuel’s film was released, could have served as inspiration to the Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel when he was writing the script of The Milky Way in 1969 (Gibson 2010:7), during a new phase of maturity in his career in which religion became one of his obsessions. Gibson’s hints at the probable parallelisms between the Marian apparitions that take place in both

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works: in the presence of two hunters in Buñuel’s film, and St. Godric and his mother in Starkie’s book. Buñuel’s awareness and reading of travel books on Spain seems to be reinforced by the filmmaker’s statement: “Adoro los relatos de viajes por España escritos por viajeros ingleses y franceses en los siglos XVIII y XIX” (Buñuel 1982: 189). In the same way, Starkie had a wide knowledge of British and French authors who wrote guides to Spain and were responsible for providing and perpetuating a Romantic and stereotyped vision of the country, namely Richard Ford who published A Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home in 1844, Théophile Gauthier with Un Voyage en Espagne (1843), or George Borrow, who wrote the famous The Bible in Spain in 1843. What is more, Starkie was sometimes referred to as “the Irish Borrow” for showing a similar style and wit in his travel books. Thus, although it cannot be asserted that Buñuel could have used Starkie’s The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James as one source for his movie, this possibility can be strongly inferred. Certainly, small details can be appreciated, such as the physical similarities between one of Buñuel’s character named Pierre and Walter Starkie, or the pain they both undergo in their feet during the pilgrimage and the presence of a map showing the different roads which lead to the Saint’s sepulchre at the beginning of both works. Starkie also reflects on the miracle of Calanda at the beginning of the second part of the book in the words of a commercial traveller he meets in France (1969: 125) who was born in that city. Buñuel was very influenced by this miracle as he was also born there and echoes the miracle in Tristana (Gibson 2013b: 60). However, the aim of this paper is to explore further parallelisms and shed light on the possible interdiscursive relationships between Buñuel’s film The Milky Way and Starkie’s travel book The Road to Santiago. Buñuel and Starkie shared the habit of a subversive management of classic literary works. The influence of literature in Buñuel’s scriptwriting process is evident due to the array of adaptations from literary works he made throughout his career, his scripts developing into a style that might confirm them as subject of literary analysisiv. A relevant semiological element in Buñuel’s film and Starkie’s travel book is the employment of the picaresque as a common narrative technique in both works to articulate their stories. Buñuel declared in his autobiography that he was enthusiastic about the

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picaresque novel, especially El Lazarillo de Tormes, El Buscón, de Quevedo and Gil Blas (Buñuel 1982: 189), and it can be asserted that most of Buñuel’s movies are overwhelmed with picaresque elements. Carlos Rebolledo dedicated a book chapter to the influences of the picaresque novel in Buñuel’s works in 1954 and, although the chapter includes some mistakes in dates and some confusions with Quevedo’s El Buscón and El Lazarillov, Rebolledo provides a significant account of Buñuel’s gradual assimilation and integration of roguish features in his movies, such as the presence of a greedy blind character(s), or the eradication of the classic hero. The Milky Way might be regarded as the culmination of Buñuel’s picaresque exhibition. Rebolledo points out that Buñuel based the main part of his characters upon the formula of contradiction (142), a contrast between the traditional epic ideal and the vagabond antihero. In The Milky Way, the main characters Jean and Pierre are well-defined examples of the antihero, as they avoid behaving as the classical pilgrims who look for expiation at the end of the road and acquire a diametrically divergent conduct as they do not follow the path accordingly. In the same way, Starkie proved to be an atypical traveller, very different from the classical British traveller of the 19th century who visited Spain displaying snobbery as their main feature and portraying a vision of the country tinged with arrogance and condescension. In his pilgrimage to Santiago, Starkie mixes with people from all social classes and prefers travelling as a vagabond instead of as a renowned scholar. According to Ernesto Acevedo Muanoz, Buñuel already gave a glimpse of this narrative technique in one of his so-called “películas alimenticias”vi Ascent to Heaven (1952) (2003: 112), in which the main character is travelling to a Mexican city to meet a lawyer who would give validity to his mother’s last will and testament and, in his “pilgrimage”, he encounters a mixture of characters used as the vehicle to present the past and present of the country in the decade of the 1950s. In the same way, in Nazarín (1959) the filmmaker had already showed Quixotic nuances in a priest’s travel after leaving his homevii. In The Milky Way, Buñuel sets two pilgrims on the road named Jean and Pierre (in fact they could be better defined as beggars since they seem to be going to Santiago in order to make some money), who begin their pilgrimage in Fontainebleau and encounter different people from all social classes and tackle unlikely situations during their tour. They

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could represent Buñuel’s subjective contemporary versions of Don Quijote and his squire Sancho Panza. Throughout the film, it can be observed that the characters have opposite personalities, one (Pierre) is older and wiser and the other one (Jean) younger and more impulsive. Duality is present in Luis Buñuel’s filmography (GarcíaAbrines 1992:155) as a strategy to cause ambiguity, a concept that is very much related to Walter Starkie. Buñuel might have been interested in The Road to Santiago due to Starkie’s enthusiasm for Cervantes and the character of Don Quijote, to whom the Hispanist makes continuous reference in all his travel books around Spain (he even published a translation of the masterpiece in 1964). The references are notably symbolic in all his texts because every time Starkie took the decision of undertaking a new journey, he relinquished his scholarly disguise and his hidden personality of beggar arose, what he called “a vagabond second self ” (Starkie 1934: 3). This aspect might be related to identity issues Starkie faced during his life. He was Anglo-Irish, two identities linked by a hyphen, and this condition used to lead him to a perpetual state of ambiguity and limbo (Starkie 1963: 85). In the same way, as David Gordon mentions, ‘the dominant theme of Don Quixote, in Starkie’s opinion, is that the initially idealistic Quixote becomes more realistic as the novel unfolds, while the realistic Sancho Panza moves in the direction of idealism. Eventually, the two figures converge and indeed can be considered as aspects of a single character’ (2008). It could be claimed that this duality in the Knight of the Sad Countenance appeals to Starkie who, unconsciously feels that he is also experiencing this contradiction of living in a constant “pattern of binary structures” (2005: 55), a concept coined by Jacqueline Hurtley in her paper focused on the causes and effects of the “di/visions” experienced by the author. Starkie escapes from his scholarly personality and escapes from his monotonous life, as if he was wearing a mask which is disgarded whenever he undertakes a new trip. This was not something unusual for Starkie, since he spoke, metaphorically, of “adopting a mask while he was at Shrewsbury” (Hurtley 2013: 74), the English school he was sent while still a boy. Although Starkie felt a deep attachment to his native country, Ireland, he constantly mentions the restlessness he feels when thinking of going back due to his reluctance to follow the ordered life his father had thought for him many years ago when he was still a young boy, what he defines as having an “evasive

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personality” (Starkie 1940: 157) and Jacqueline Hurtley would refer to as “the tension between his Don Quixote and Sancho Panza personalities” (2013: 85). In his travel books, all of them written in a picaresque style, many surreal imagery with quixotic elements crop up, for example, the identification of his violin (and in other occasions his walking stick) with Rocinante (Starkie 1963: 275), or when at the beginning of his pilgrimage to Santiago he claims to share his intentions with Don Quijotes’s quest of healing solitude (83). Buñuel’s issues of identity are also relevant in The Milky Way, as the whole film questions the dogmas and mysteries of the Catholic religion as they tormented Buñuel’s life and were reflected in his works. Buñuel presents two opposed characters to show both sides of the same coin: Jean might be the representation of the pious religious believer who does not seem to have any breach with his Catholic beliefs and Pierre, the younger pilgrim, might represent the younger generations that had started to question the established beliefs in the country as Buñuel himself did during his lifetime. Another aspect to consider is Walter Starkie’s narrative, which emphasizes his particular use of the double dimension of time and space to present his stories. Explicit references appear in most of his books, especially in his autobiography Scholars and Gypsies: An Autobiography (1963), Spain: A Musician’s Journey through Time and Space (1958), and also in The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James (1957). Starkie divides this travel book on the pilgrimage into two separated parts: the first part (“Early Pilgrims”) goes back in time and deals with the history of the Saint and his sepulchre throughout the centuries, whereas the second part (“A Modern Pilgrim”) moves forward in space and it is devoted to his final out of a total of four pilgrimages he made when he had followed the road as a “wanderer”, which was how he liked being defined. Starkie’s second section of his travel book shows a linear structure by recalling the pilgrimage at a specific period of time in a given space (in 1954, from Arles, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain), although there are some deviations from the road experienced by the Hispanist during his picaresque adventure (e.g. he stops in Lourdes to find the miracle which could heal his aching feet, or in Oviedo to appreciate the changes in the city from the last time he visited it in 1937 when it was devastated by the Spanish Civil War). Deviations are presumably used as the pretext to portray the

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collective reality of Spain during the 1950s, a country immersed in a social and political turmoil. Through The Road to Santiago, Starkie presents his encounters and conversations with the different characters of the “camino”, encompassing people from all social strata, from vagabonds, fishermen and students, to priests and intellectuals. The approach the author seems to follow is an apparently onedimensional gathering and a presentation of anecdotes, testimonies and ideologies of the Spanish people from those years to the reader. While the Irish Hispanist is part of these discussions, he lacks an open ideological alignment in the book (also lacking in his travel books), and he only displays the picture without making any judgements. This allows the reader to gather his own suppositions. Buñuel seems to match this approach of staying on the periphery, as he claimed in 1953 during a conference in a Mexican university: El cineasta habrá cumplido su tarea cuando, a través de una pintura fiel de las relaciones sociales auténticas, destruya la representación convencional de la naturaleza de tales relaciones y quebrante el optimismo del mundo burgués; obligando al espectador a dudar de la perennidad del orden existente, aunque él mismo no nos proponga directamente una conclusión e incluso si no toma partido de forma manifiesta (Alcalá 1973: 111). As Starkie does in his travel book, Buñuel makes indirect references to the complex Spanish society of the sixties in the movie –for example, when we see that the French part of the Road is more advanced than the Spanish one, in which an obvious backwardness is present at the inns along the way and the condition of the roads–, as well as the incongruences of the history of religion because the Camino “provides Buñuel with a handy allusion to both religious and political intolerance” (Jones 2009:19). As with Starkie, Buñuel had previously shown his skill in exposing the Spanish social reality taking as example Las Hurdes. Tierra sin Pan (1933) or the corrosive Viridiana (1961) with his praised “picture” of paupers at the Last Supper.

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Buñuel revealed as well a particular focus in the twofold aspect of time and space. In the film, a brief historical overview of the Saint’s relics and the different roads to follow is well explained by a voiceover at the beginning of the film. As a paradigm of the surrealist trend –his initial affiliation to the surrealist movement was well-known (Buñuel 1984: 89), it is not unusual to see how he manipulates the Bakhtian chronotopeviii, even almost erasing the linearity of the story and moving forward and backward in time and space, together with the alterations in the point of view, the shifting from the two pilgrims to the two hunters and the conclusion of the film with the two blind men healed by Jesus Christ. As happens in Don Quijote, “there are several discontinuities in narrative markers and subsequent ruptures in the diegesis” (Donnell 1999:277). This technique was commonly explored throughout Buñuel’s cinematographic production –being his well-known short-film Un Chien Andalou (1929) being its maximum expression, lacking a logical order of events, and consisting of a display of automatisms on the screen. Even though he does not go that far in The Milky Way, the film is tinged with a lack of spatial limits and a plethora of time leaps, with the result of constant breakdowns in continuity. Starkie’s strategy could have served as inspiration to Buñuel’s narration of his particular vision of the social effects of Catholicism and his exploration of its dogmas and heresies presenting them as the two pilgrims’ deviations from the road. When referring to the movie in his autobiography, he claims that “el camino recorrido por los dos peregrinos podía aplicarse a toda ideología política o, incluso, artística” (Buñuel 1982: 211). In The Milky Way, Jean and Pierre’s peculiar pilgrimage towards Santiago move in time and space without any apparent organized succession and they are also interrupted by many incidents or deviations; however, these are shown with the same naturalness and spontaneity and deprived of any sense of oddness as occurs to Starkie in his merry tour along the road to Santiago. Buñuel is able to achieve this process of dissociationix of time and space because the movie is structured on a surrealist style that contains an oneiric basis. It was not unexpected that Buñuel chose St. James’ way to talk about the Catholic dogmas and heresies and to articulate his story since the road “evokes the place of Christian devotion” (Hurtley 2005:157). In spite of the deviations from the road experienced by

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Starkie on the one hand, and Jean and Pierre on the other hand during the pilgrimage, they always came back to the road in order to accomplish their initial purpose, hunger always being the main encouraging force. According to Hurtley, in Starkie’s book “the road constitutes a metaphor for the route to be pursued in order to contain revolution, a plea from the Establishment in the present for the past and into the future” (2005: 163). Considering this theory, it might be significant to mention that Starkie embraced the Catholic religion when he was a child and that he supported the Fascist movement both before Franco’s rise to power and after –he even published an article for the International Centre of Fascist Studies and its Yearbook- Survey of Fascism in 1928. Nonetheless, he wrote his books to be published in English speaking countries (England and Ireland) by the John Murray publishing house, so this might be one of the reasons that led him to avoid unfolding his beliefs explicitly. It could be argued that Buñuel could have based his movie’s main storyline on Starkie’s novel and have used the pilgrims “as a critical element in Buñuel’s effort to undermine the pretensions of authority” (Jones 2009:23). The Spanish film-maker seems to build upon Starkie’s strategy but he twists and deconstructs this approach of dealing with the road as the established path to be pursued in a sardonic way. An example would be the absence of the expiatory objective in Jean and Pierre’s pilgrimage that a “virtuous Catholic” would have. Starkie states at the beginning that his “1954 pilgrimage bore for [him] a deep significance, for it marked the time of [his] retirement from official life, and [he] wished to perform religiously all the rituals, in order to prepare [himself] for making [his] examination of conscience” (1957:83). On the contrary, at the beginning of the movie, Jean and Pierre state that they are heading for Santiago in order to make money from the tourists and at the end, they are seduced by a prostitute who informs them that things have changed and there are no more tourists in Santiago de Compostela due to a recent finding that claims that the relics do not belong to St. James, but Priscillian. Curiously, at the end of his travel book, Starkie criticized this change in the attitude of modern pilgrims, calling their experience a “pilgrimage without tears” (1957: 323). Summing up, although it could seem that Time and Space have been disintegrated in the movie and the “Milky Way” to Santiago is present in the road itself, […] rendered only vaguely in the title” (Acevedo-

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Muanoz 2003: 112), its relevance in the film could be observed since linearity is loosely retained by the road which is the element that preserves the narrative thread of the movie. Thus, although these humoristic deviations are present in both works, the consistency of the main story is kept by the road, representing “a source of serenity in a whirlwind world” (Hurtley 2008: xi). Buñuel was a declared atheist (Buñuel, 2008: 149), and he always specified not being an agnostic, to a great extent influenced by his strong Catholic education as a child and the circumstance that Catholics and non-Catholics shared the Residencia de Estudiantes. Max Aub defines Buñuel as “ese extraño ateo que habla continuamente de la iglesia católica” (2013:225) and Víctor Fuentes (2005) even divided Buñuel’s production into three lines, including a theological one. His struggles with the intricacies of religion are continually shown in his filmography, as in Viridiana¸ which won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961 and that caused a scandal in Franco’s Spain. In The Milky Way (considered by Fuentes as “la summa del cine teológico de Buñuel” (329)), he explores the six central mysteries of Catholicism together with their heresies from a particularly abstract viewpoint. The film oozes intertextual interactions with old and modern religious authors and texts, to the point that at the end of the film Buñuel gives a bibliography of sorts in French informing the public about the accuracy of his sources. Jean and Pierre have recurrent discussions in a humoristic tone on religious topics, such as the existence of God during a thunderstorm or the issue of freedom of choice and freewill, acting as if they were “comic ghosts” (Conrad 1976: 18) who materialize and disappear constantly. Starkie has many encounters with young and old priests and they are all described in positive terms without showing an open alignment to any political or religious trend but showing discretion; seeming to represent the “shepherds” that will guide the unsettled and devastated country. An example can be given by Don Victoriano and his belief that “there is no hope for the world until a spiritual alliance is made among the different people everywhere and weakened the moral law” (Starkie 1957: 302). In contrast, Buñuel shows in the movie a debate between science and religion in a countryside inn between a policeman and a priest. The policeman believes that science

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can explain almost everything today. However, the priest asserts that “las palabras de Cristo hay que tomarlas al pie de la letra”. At the end the priest was a lunatic who had escaped from a psychiatric hospital and changes his opinion just when he hears the ambulance’s siren, with which the filmmaker cynically makes a sharp reference to the inconsistencies and absurdities that have taken place throughout the history of religion. By the same token, these famously controversial words by Jesus that appear at the end of the movie: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10, 34-11, 1), if applied to Buñuel’s ideology, can be interpreted as his rejection of the extremes of religious behaviour inspired by Christianity through the history of humanity. His presentation of events, as in Starkie’s book, is disconcerting not only due to the “time travelling slippage of epochs […] but for the absence of either reverence of mockery in the portrayal of the Gospel characters” (Christie 2004:139). These scenes taken from the movie are consistent with Buñuel’s assertion that “la ambigüedad del filme es la ambigüedad de nuestra época, sin proponérmelo” (Aub 2013: 262). Both authors had a sardonic attitude towards the topics presented in their works, as it was the main characteristic of the picaresque narrative. Manuel Alcalá points out that Buñuel’s treatment of humour can be understood as a “salida de emergencia ante determinadas situaciones de conflicto” (1975: 122). His problematic obsession with religious affairs could explain his approach to the topic because, as Aub’s claims: “Buñuel se ha pasado la vida reprochándole a Dios el haber permitido que la sociedad se organizara tal y como lo está. Toda su obra es protesta y cuando se protesta es evidente que se alza contra algo” (2013: 281). In the same way, plenty of comic anecdotes are described in The Road to Santiago using humour as a tool to vent the distress provoked by political and social problems in the country, as had been a recurrent approach of many Irish authors. Starkie made use of humour as the way to confront the convulsion that was taking place in Spain as he had already done in his satirical accounts of the Easter Rising in Ireland (1963). In his books on Spain, Starkie never talked openly about his political affiliations, he mainly acted as an observer of the different people from all social classes he encountered in his trips. Accordingly, although Buñuel was said to have a penchant for the communist ideals of the first half of the twentieth

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century (Aub 2013: 301), he did not pursue this path in his movies, he just limited himself to, as Aub claims, “acusar a la sociedad de sus absurdos, recurriendo a las imágenes” (2013: 300). Jean and Pierre observe the scenes they encounter in their pilgrimage, but they never offer an opinion on the topic. After considering the potential similarities between these two authors, it can be said that Starkie’s book could have been one of the sources of Buñuel’s influence when scripting his film in terms of the narrative technique and the peculiar use of the chronotope. Walter Starkie used the “Camino” as a way to confirm himself as a person who worked all his life to uphold the institutions of family, nation and religion (Hurtley 2013:159) due precisely to his problems of identity which made him have an ambiguous attitude towards these pillars. On the contrary, Buñuel took this same road to deconstruct Starkie’s institutions and use it as the perfect scenario in which to show the incongruities that these complex concepts –especially religion– conceal in Spain. NOTES Original title: La Voie Lactée. Release year: 1969. Producer: Serge Siberman. Script: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière. Starring: Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Alain Cuny, Edith Scob, Michel Piccoli, Jean-Claude Carrière. Country: France, Italy. Length: 95 minutes. Production companies: Greenwich Films Production (France) y Fraisa (Italy). 2 According to emails exchanged with Ian Gibson in March 2013. 3 Notable personalities such as Ortega y Gasset, Keynes, Marañón, Le Corbusier, Esplá, Falla, Stravinski, Marinetti or Manuel Machado visited the Residencia. 4 Robert M. Hammond’s interesting article on ‘The Literary Style of Luis Buñuel’ reflects how Buñuel worked with the script as his literary genre by analyzing the script of a series of key films adaptations such as Robinson Crusoe, Cumbres Borrascosas or Nazarín. Max Aub approved this argument when he affirms that “en general, el arte de Buñuel está mucho más cerca de la literatura” (2013: 222). 1

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Gwynne Edwards in 1982 and Miguel Báez Durán in 2000 make reference to Rebolledo’s multiple mistakes. 6 It refers to the first part of Buñuel’s Mexican cinematographic phase and to those Buñuel’s movies made at the Mexican industry’s request in order to be able to subsist (Muñoz-Basols 2007:67). 7 Sydney Donnell (1999) also makes a very interesting analysis of Quixotic elements in Buñuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz. 8 The chronotope is defined as the essential connection of temporal and spatial relationships assimilated by literature. 9 In her article “Luis Buñuel: The Process of Dissociation in Three Films” (1973), Elisabeth H. Lyon analyses how Buñuel manipulates time, space and movement by employing dissociative principles in Un Chien Andalou, L’Age D’Or and Land Without Bread. 5

WORKS CITED Acevedo-Muanoz, E. R. 2003 Buñuel and Mexico: The Crisis of National Cinema. California: University of California Press. Alcalá, M. 1973 Buñuel. Cine e Ideología. Madrid: Cuadernos para el Diálogo. Aranda, J. F. 1969 Luis Buñuel, Biografía Crítica. Barcelona: Lumen. Aub, M. 2013 Luis Buñuel, Novela. Granada: Cuadernos de Vigía. Báez Durán, M. 2014 “La evolución del ciego y los múltiples pícaros en Los olvidados de Buñuel” Hoy No se Fía. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2014. • http://www.oocities.org/mbaezduran/ciego.html Barreda Ferrer, A. L. 2006 “Novela y Literatura en el Camino”. Bibliografía Jacobea. 9:1-16. Buñuel, L. 1982 Mi Último Suspiro. Barcelona: Random House Mondadori. Christie, I. L. 1969 “Voie Lactée, La (The Milky Way)”. Monthly Film Bulletin. 420:262. Christie, I. L. 2004 “Buñuel against Buñuel: Reading the Landscape of Fanaticism in La Voie Lactée”. Luis Buñuel. New Readings. Londres: BFI Publishing. Conrad, R. 1976 “A Magnificent and Dangerous Weapon”-The Politics

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of Luis Buñuel’s Later Films.” Cinéaste 7:4, 10-51. Donnell, S. 1999 “Quixotic Desire and the Avoidance of Closure in Luis Buñuel’s ‘The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.’” MLN: 269-296. Fuentes, V. 2005 La Mirada de Buñuel. Cine, Literatura y Vida. Madrid: Tabla Rasa. García-Abrines, L. 1972 “La Dualidad en Luis Buñuel”. Turia: Revista Cultural, 20:155-160. Gibson, I. 2010 “El Hispanista Andarín y Juglar”. El Camino de Santiago: Las Peregrinaciones al Sepulcro del Apóstol. Palencia: Cálamo. 2013a. “Re: Buñuel and W. Starkie.” Message to the author. 04 March. E-mail. 2013b. Luis Buñuel. La Forja de un Cineasta Universal. 1900-1938. Madrid: Aguilar. Gordon, D. 2008 “Walter Starkie and the Greatest Novel of All”. First Principles ISI Web Journal. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2014. • http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/print.aspx?article=579 [Retrieved: 15/03/2014] Hammond, R. M. 1963 “The Literary Style of Luis Buñuel.” Hispania 46:506-513. Hurtley, J. 2005 “Re-Writing the Road: Walter Starkie on St. James’s Way”. Traducción, (Sub)versión, Transcreación. Camps A.; Hurtley, J.A.; Moya, A., eds. Barcelona: PPU. Hurtley, J. 2005 “Wandering Between the Wars: Walter Starkie’s Di/Visions”. Post/Imperial Encounters: Anglo-Hispanic Cultural Relations. Juan E. Tazón Salas and Isabel Carrera Suárez, eds. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Hurtley, J. 2013 Walter Starkie: An Odyssey. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Jones, J. 2009 “The Saint and the General: Buñuel Cocks a Snook at Authority on the Road to Santiago.” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas. 6.1:19-30. Lyons, E.H. 1973 “Luis Buñuel: the Process of Dissociation in Three Films.” Cinema Journal. 13:45-48. Muñoz-Basols, J. 2007 “Siempre hay algo dentro de uno que nadie conoce (1955)”. Hybrido: Arte y Literatura. 10:67-72. Rebolledo, C. 1978 “Buñuel and the Picaresque Novel.” The World of Luis Buñuel: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Joan Mellen. Nueva York: Oxford University Press. Santander, H. N. “Luis Buñuel, Existential Filmmaker.” Especulo: Re-

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vista de Estudios Literarios. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2014. â&#x20AC;˘ http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/especulo/ numero20/bunuel2.html Starkie, W. 1963 Scholars and Gypsies: An Autobiography. London: Murray. Starkie, W. 1934 Spanish Raggle-Taggle. Adventures with a Fiddle in North Spain. London: Murray. Starkie, W. 1957 The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James. London: John Murray Publishers. Starkie, W. 1940 The Waveless Plain: An Italian Autobiography. London: Butler & Tanner Ltd.

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REINFORCING THE DOMESTIC ROLE OF WOMEN THROUGH THE WOMAN AS CHICKEN METAPHOR. A DIACHRONIC STUDY * Irene López Rodríguez Calgary Board of Education irlopezrodriguez@cbe.ab.ca “The chicken metaphor tells the whole story of a woman´s life. In her youth she is a chick. Then she marries and begins feathering her nest. Soon she begins feeling cooped up, so she goes to hen parties where she cackles with her friends. Then she has her brood, begins to henpeck her husband, and finally turns into an old biddy.” (Nilsen, 1994:374) This paper traces the origin, evolution and survival of the WOMAN AS CHICKEN metaphor from Antiquity to present day in order to unveil the patriarchal views transmitted regarding the role of women by means of such an animal image. By looking at different sorts of sources which include literary fragments, proverbs, medical treatises, religious, didactic and political texts as well as newspaper and magazine articles, the different figurative senses attached to such an animal term are analyzed. The study reveals that regardless of the time lapse sexist attitudes towards the role of women have not changed that much throughout history. Key words: sexism, women, chicken, hen, metaphor El presente artículo traza el origen, evolución y pervivencia de la metáfora animal que equipara a la mujer con una gallina desde la Antigüedad Clásica hasta el momento actual con el objetivo de analizar la ideología sexista que subyace bajo esta imagen aviar. Mediante un cotejo de textos de índole muy diversa que incluyen refranes, fragmentos literarios, tratados médicos, *

Fecha de recepción: Marzo 2014

Fecha de aceptación: Octubre 2014

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religiosos, filosóficos y didácticos así como panfletos políticos y artículos periodísticos, se proporciona una visión panorámica de los distintos sentidos adquiridos por dicho vocablo animal. El estudio revela de esta manera que a pesar del lapso temporal transcurrido la ideología sexista que se transmite mediante dicha metáfora no ha cambiado tanto a través de la historia. Palabras clave: sexismo, mujeres, pollitos, gallina, metáfora 1. INTRODUCTION From the gospel of Saint Matthew to the latest pop sensation of the Dixie Chicks through Aesop´s fables, mystery plays, Chaucer´s The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare´s works, Restoration comedies, the essays from The Spectator and The Tatler, D. H. Lawrence´s articles, political campaigns against the suffragette movement, proverbs, songs and nursery rhymes, the chicken metaphor has a long tradition in Western culture. This paper attempts to provide a diachronic approach to the WOMAN AS CHICKEN metaphor in order to show how patriarchal views regarding the role of women are transmitted and perpetuated through such an animal image. First, the article will provide a brief sojourn throughout history in order to trace the origin and evolution of the woman as chicken metaphor. Literary, religious, political, economic and didactic texts along with proverbs will be consulted in order to shed some light onto the different figurative senses acquired by this animal term. This diachronic study will be followed by an analysis of a corpus of metaphors taken from today´s written press, which will prove not only the continuity of such a metaphor, but also its productivity, judging from the metaphorical networks generated. The discussion section will adopt a cognitive approach to unveil the underlying assumptions that motivate the use of such linguistic products. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn regarding the origin, existence and productivity of the WOMAN AS CHICKEN metaphor in today´s society.

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2. A DIACHRONIC APPROACH TO THE WOMAN AS CHICKEN METAPHOR: FROM ANTIQUITY TO PRESENT DAY References to hens as feminine symbols can already be found in the Classical World. In the second century A.D. Aelian wrote about the existence of two temples in Greece which were separated by a stream. One was consecrated to Hercules; the other to his wife Hebe. Roosters were kept in the temple of the god and hens in that of the goddess. Once a year the roosters would cross the stream to mate, returning with any male offspring and leaving the females for the hens to raise (Sax, 2001). As time went by, with their gradual and widespread domestication, these two originally exotic birds became quintessentially associated with the male and female sex. Probably based on the observation of their behavior, roosters were extolled for their sexual vigor, aggressiveness, vigilance and courage. They were also in charge of taking care of hens and chickens and of providing them with food and care, embodying therefore the ideal virile qualities held within the Greco-Roman society (Dubisch, 1993:272-287). By the same token, hens became the paragons of domesticity and motherhood due to the protective attitude shown towards their offspring and the unquestioning obedience displayed to their male. In fact, several treatises of the time devoted to the education of children such as Plutarch´s De amore parentis often resorted to the figure of the hen as the archetype of motherly love: What of the hens whom we observe each day at home, with what care and assiduity they govern and guard their chicks? Some let down their wings for the chicks to come under; others arch their backs for them to climb upon; there is no part of their bodies with which they do not wish to cherish their chicks if they can, nor do they do this without a joy and alacrity which they seem to exhibit by the sound of their voices” (quoted in Smith and Daniel, 1975:160). The rooster, by contrast, turned into a solar emblem.1 His cry on announcing the dawn was interpreted as a greeting to the sun and soon took on a religious dimension. In fact, the rooster epitomized the

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victory over the night and in classical mythology one of the most common representations of the gods of light, Zeus and Apollo, was a rooster (Sax, 2001). The religious significance of this animal will continue with Christianity, where the rooster´s crow marking the end of darkness allegorically represents the triumph of good over evil and, ultimately, Christ (Cirlot, 2002).2 Within the Hebrew tradition in which the Bible is inscribed, the hen remained a symbol of parental love. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (23:37) the rejection of the Israelites to take part in the messianic banquet culminates with Jesus´ lament over Jerusalem, in which he invokes the feminine image of the hen to express the relationship he desires to have with the Hebrew people: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Yet, running parallel to the positive metaphorical identification of women with hens the image of a fussy, domineering and stubborn animal started to emerge in Antiquity. Certainly, hens stand out for their intransigence, noisy disposition and obstinacy, since they always lie in the same location and have a rigid system of accessing food. These negative traits made their way into language and the metaphoric hen started to undergo a process of pejoration, being used as a term of contempt for those females who did not conform to the normative view of docile, submissive and quiet women established in the male chauvinistic Ancient world. Indeed, it is not uncommon to come across images of hens with the purpose of ridiculing females, as in Aesop´s fable “Venus and the hen,” where the supposedly stubborn nature of women is explained in the light of the hen´s behavior: When Juno boasted of her chastity, Venus didn’t want to quarrel with her so she did not dispute what Juno said, but in order to show that no other woman was as chaste as Juno she reportedly asked some questions of a hen. ‘So,’ Venus said to the hen, ‘could you please tell me how much food it would take to satisfy you?’ The hen answered, ‘Whatever you give me will be enough, as long as you let me use my feet to scratch for something

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more.’ ‘What about a peck of wheat: would that be enough to keep you from scratching?’ ‘Oh my, that is more than enough food, of course, but please let me go on scratching.’ Venus asked, ‘Then what do you want to completely give up scratching?’ At that point the hen finally confessed her natural-born weakness and said, ‘Even if I had access to a whole barn full of grain, I would still just keep on scratching.’ Juno is said to have laughed at Venus’s joke, because by means of that hen the goddess had made an indictment of women in general. (Aesop, translated by Gibbs, 2002:100). Stubbornness as an innate characteristic of women is also at the core of the conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades. The former, when asked about his inability to control his wife, resorted to an analogy with a hen to explain the similarities between the two beings, both physiologically and personally speaking. It was said of Socrates that when Alcibiades asked him why he did not turn out his shrewish wife (the same wife whose naggings were reputed after all to have made him philosophical about life), Socrates replied, “why don´t you drive out hens that are noisy with their wings?” When Alcibiades answered, “Because they lay eggs,” Socrates replied, “A wife bears children for me.” (Fowler & Abadie, 1986: 238) During the Middle Ages the predominant view of animals was symbolic and allegorical. Bestiaries and fables resorted to beasts as vehicles for religious allegory and moral instruction (Flores, 2000; Yamamoto, 2000).The fox embodied slyness; the owl, wisdom; the snake, deception; the rooster, vigilance, courage, leadership, arrogance and the hen epitomized naivety and weakness.3 Several short stories presented hens as preys easily deceived by cunning wolves or foxes, subtly implying lack of intelligence in this female species. The vulnerability of the bird was equally transmitted in countless medieval tales, like “The Widow´s Son,” which narrates the story of a poor widow whose only possession is a hen. Both creatures are alone and vulnerable. One day the Roman army passed by the widow´s house

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and the hawk of the king´s son flew at her window, eventually killing the hen. The moral of the story seems to echo the idea of protecting those who are defenseless and without male protection. Being domestic animals, hens came to symbolizing easily manipulated subjects. The miniature from Jean Froissart´s Chronicles illustrates a group of hens devouring grain. According to the legend, the Turkish king, pictured in the balcony, threatened to send an army equaling the number of grains in a bag to attack the king of Hungary, to which the latter replied by having starving hens eat the grain, showing in this way his military power over the citizens.

Figure 1. Miniature from Jean Froissart´s Chronicles As far as the rooster is concerned, its religious associations with Christ were reinforced at this time. Its crowing made it an emblem of the Christian´s attitude of watchfulness and readiness for the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment of mankind. Rooster, then, came to represent resurrection and vigilance, appearing in weather vanes or church steeples and later on in houses (Sax, 2001). The pair rooster/hen kept on encompassing the ideal virtues of a married couple. Society´s notions of expected male and female

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behavior were supposed to mirror those of these farmyard animals. Books on marriage advice delimited the male and female spheres through avian imagery: “The cock flyeth to bring in and the dam siteth upon the nest to keep all at home” (Fletcher, 1995: 61). Reversing those gender roles was judged as an infringement of society´s order, which, within medieval thought, reflected God´s design of the universe and, therefore, the commitment of a sin. In this regard it is worth mentioning that within the Medieval imagery the universe was conceived in a strict hierarchical order through the mental schema of the Great Chain of Being, pictured as a chain vertically extended where every existing thing had its place depending on their properties and behavior (Lovejoy, 1936). That is, the more complex the being, the higher it stood. Hence at the bottom stand natural physical things such as the four elements. Higher up are plants; then, animals; afterwards human beings, followed by celestial creatures and finally the almighty God. Within each level there are sub-levels defined by different degrees of complexity and power in relation to each other (e.g. within the animal realm the fox is above the hen, which, in turn, is above the worm. Likewise, within society man was above woman). This ranked structure, then, presupposes that the natural order of the cosmos is that higher forms of existence dominate lower forms of existence. Order and harmony reign when the hierarchy is respected. Yet, chaos will take place if any element is altered. Violation of this natural order was sanctioned through fowl symbolism. Figure 2, taken from the 14th-century manuscript the Luttrell Psalter, warns of the dangers of angry women by depicting a female holding a distaff while threatening a man who is imploring piety. Next to the chaotic image resulting from powerful women, there appears a woman taking care of her chickens and hens, the distaff this time is in her waistband. The juxtaposition of those images relies on the distaff but also in the avian imagery, for chickens and hens ran parallel to the domestic role of females.

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Figure 2. Luttrell Psalter Manuscript. The British Library.4 The 12th-century text On Various Arts warns of the dangers involved in reversing gender roles by imagining monstrous creatures like the legendary cockatrice, a monster born from the union of a serpent and a rooster, mentioned as an example of depravity due to the shift of the domestic roles traditionally assigned to men and women. Actually, images of the so-called “maternal roosters” pervaded medieval bestiaries with the didactic purpose of showing the consequences of going against nature and, within a theocentric mentality, ultimately against God (Hodkinson, 2013). Medical treatises also accounted for the reproductive system of human beings with such birds. Hens were praised for their fertility due to their ability to lay many eggs throughout their life and women were encouraged to follow the example (Sullivan, 1986: 98-99)—just like men were supposed to display the sexual vigor exhibited by the rooster. Nevertheless, the highly productive hen also encompassed negative views about women, since in the Middle Ages the animal often denoted loose women and even prostitutes (Vivanco, 2002:527). The old saying “Women and hens by too much gadding are lost” superbly highlights the dangers of women wandering—both in the literal and moral sense.

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Prostitution is at the core of La Celestina and so are images of hens. The well-known go-between that gives name to the literary work is repeatedly described as a hen herself and is even physically feathered by the law, a common type of punishment given to prostitutes in order to make the public aware of their status (Classen & Scarborough, 2012: 412). Celestina: Elicia, Elicia, arise and come down quickly, and bring me my mantle; for by heaven, I will hie me to the Justice, and there cry out and rail at you, like a mad-woman. What is´t you would have? What do you mean, to menace me thus in mine own house? Shall your valour and your bravings be exercised on a poor silly innocent sheep? On a hen, that is tied by the leg, and cannot fly from you? On an old woman of sixty years of age? (p.192) Similarly, the other women who work in the brothel, Elicia and Areúsa, are called hens in reference to their profession and even Melibea, who does not work in the sexual business, is compared to a hen when she is on the verge of sexual initiation. Som good bodi take this old thefe fro me, That thus wold (me) disseyue me with her fals sleyght! Go owt of my syght now! get the hens streyght ! C. If I n an yuyll howre cam I hyther ; I may say, I wold I had brokyn my legges twayn. M. Go hens, thou brothell, go hens, in the dyuyll way! Bydyst thou yet to increase my payn? (p.285) The negative views attached to hens in Antiquity prevailed in the representation of females during the Middle Ages. There are proverbs galore reflecting the relationship between women´s verbosity and hens, presumably because of the almost continuous twittering of the animal: “A whilsting woman and a crowing hen are neither good for God nor men” or “When the hen crows the house goes to ruin” (Sommer & Weiss, 1996; de la Cruz Cabanillas & Tejedor Martínez, 2006) will suffice to illustrate the case tackled.

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This misogynistic tradition is likewise reflected in literary sources, which employ hen imagery in the representation of disagreeable women. Within the early theatrical performances The Second Shepherds´ Play of the Townley Cycle 13, based on the biblical visitation of the shepherds, provides a monstrous portrayal of a wife through animal imagery. Advising young men never to marry, the shepherd Gib describes the size of his wife “as great as a whale withal” whose insufferable bossy and chatty character equals her to a hen: But as far as I know, or yet as I go, We poor wedded men suffer such woe. Old comb our hen, both to and fro She cackles. But begin she to croak To prod or to poke, For our cock it´s no joke For he is in shackles. These men that are wed have not their own will, They are full hard put to, but they sigh full still. God knows they are led full hard and full ill; In bower and in bed, but speak not then till. Now, in an aside. (Guthrie, 1999:4) It was thanks to Chaucer´s The Canterbury Tales, however, that the metaphorical conceptualization of women in the guise of hens caught on in the collective imagination of Medieval people. In “The Nun´s Priest Tale” the author provides “an example of human marital relationships” (Ashton, 1998:113) by means of the rooster Chauntecleer and Pertelote the hen. The symbolic associations of the name Pertelote, meaning “one who confuses somebody´s lot or fate,” already reveal the allegorical dimension of the tale, which seems to echo the biblical story of the fall of man, with Chaunticleer as Adam misled by Eve cast in the role of Pertelote (Spearing, 2000; Wallace, 2002). The tale tells of Chauntecleer´s fright at a dream in which he sees that a fox kills him. Asking Pertelote for advice, the hen mocks him for his cowardice telling him that he is just sick and in need of

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some laxative. Following the hen´s counsel, Chaunticleer ignores his dream and eventually is almost devoured by a fox, although his wit enables him to escape. Pertelote, then, reflects this dual image of the hen as a symbol, on the one hand, of domestic virtues and, on the other hand, of bossiness and intransigence. During the Renaissance the connections of the hen with the household strengthened.5 The feudal attitude whereby women were regarded as men´s chattel made domestic animals a common vehicle for the conceptualization of women. The hen comprised the epitome of motherhood set at the ideological center of Renaissance society and together with the rooster became synonymous with ideal marital relationship. The proverbial lore of this period echoes the division of the male and female domains forged upon the image of those barnyard animals: “If you be a cock, crow; if a hen, lay eggs,” for instance suggests that the main role of the female sex was procreation whereas the authority pertained exclusively to the male. Interestingly, reversing the roles was channeled by shifting the animal imagery: “A sad barnyard where the hen crows louder than the cock” (Skeat, 1910; Wilkinson, 2002). In the same line, several treatises on the education of the sexes used identical images to warn against the dangers of empowering women. Sometimes men are ridiculed by identifying them with hens, like in Ball´s description of a husband dominated by his wife in terms of “She is the Cock and I am the Hen.” As a matter of fact, as will be seen later on, lack of masculinity and even homosexuality will often be attacked through hen symbols. On other occasions the target is the woman, as in “Marriage of Wit and Wisdom” (1570), where not adhering to the patriarchal canon established for women as silent and submissive creatures is rendered linguistically through the semantic field of hen, as observed in the figurative use of “cackle” instead of other speech verbs belonging to the semantic field of human beings: “She can cackle like a cadowe” or “A young wife and a harvest hen, /Much cackle will both; /A man that hath them in his clos, /He shall rest wroth.” (Thiselton-Dyer, 2010). Heir of the classical and medieval traditions, Shakespeare superbly commingles the twofold and antithetical images of the hen

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in the portrayal of his characters (Findlay, 2010:184-185). On the one hand, the hen appears as the archetype of maternal care, love, protection and domesticity, as seen in the characters of Macduff and, above all, Rosalind. On the other hand, this fowl also stands for overbearing and fussy women, like the female figures of Volumnia, Mistress Quickly or Kate. In Macbeth Lady Macduff is portrayed as a fiercely protective and nurturing woman. Her husband´s desertion of the family is even seen in terms of animal imagery, as a flight from the nest, and her protective attitude towards her children places her in the role of the mother hen. In the climactic scene when Macduff finds out that his family has been murdered, the image of the chicken awakens the notions of vulnerability at the time that suggests the image of the protective mother: “He has no children. All my pretty ones? /Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? /What, all my pretty chickens and their dam/At one fell swoop?” (4.3. 217-220). Within the same play, another metaphoric usage of chicken applied to females is encountered. This time the addressee is Lady Macbeth, who is referred to as chuck (i.e. a corruption of chick according to the O.E.D.) by her husband: Lady Macbeth: ….What´s to be done? Macbeth: Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, / Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day (III, iii, 44-47) Despite the fact that Shakespeare builds this character as a strong woman, the use of this term of endearment not only shows the affection professed by her husband, but also hints at the domestic ideal surrounding the role of women. In addition to the human senses of chicken as “children” and “beloved,” a new figurative meaning emerges from Shakespeare´s pen. In Cymbeline the playwright makes numerous references to different types of fowl with the purpose of linking the history of Britain to classical mythology and also of creating a social hierarchy by likening people to animals. In several instances men are called chickens to deride

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their cowardice when fleeing away from the battlefield. This metaphor is clearly grounded in the behavior of the animal, which tends to run away when it feels a menace: “Forthwith they fly/ Chickens, the way which they stooped eagles” (5.3.41). This domestic baby animal is laden with negative connotations when applied to adult males, since it highlights the opposite qualities of the virile rooster, particularly when juxtaposed to the bird prey “eagle.” In a similar fashion, one encounters the metaphoric use of “capon” as an insult for those men who are sexually impotent and have no social power, as seen in Cloten´s description in the following terms: “You are cock and capon too, and you crow, cock, with your comb on” (Act II, scene ii). The loving disposition of the hen finds its best counterpart in the romantic female lead of As You Like It. The faithful Rosalind, who falls in love with Orlando, speaks of the mood changes of a married woman and her jealousy is conveyed through the stereotypical roles attributed to both rooster and hen: Rosalind: Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her. Orlando: Forever and a day. Rosalind: Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen (Act IV, scene i) Co-existing with these loving images of hens, Shakespeare also gives voice to strong feminine characters through the same bird. The construction of such metaphors, however, more often than not, hides negative views about strong women, adhering to the norms imposed by the patriarchy. Such is the case of Volumnia, the mother of Caius Martius Coriolanus. Far from the stereotypical image of defenseless woman in need of a man for protection, Volumnia is a widow who has profound control over her son´s life, both in his personal and militarypolitical life. Although she compares herself to a doting hen:

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There´s no man in the world/More bound to ´s mother, yet here he lets me prate/Like one i´ th´ stocks. /Thou hast never in thy life/Show´d thy dear mother any courtesy/When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,/Has cluck´d thee to the wars and safely home,/Loaden with honour. (5.3. 160-4) her extended speeches seem to activate the image of the overbearing, fussy and talkative animal which were so in vogue in medieval proverbs (Findlay, 2010:184-185). Another depiction of a fussy woman in the guise of a hen can be gleaned out through the character of Mistress Quickly. The hostess of the Board´s Head Tavern in Eastcheap London is likewise a powerful woman. Despite being married, she is economically independent since she owns her own inn. Certainly, from a patriarchal point of view, empowered women were seen as a threat, which accounts for her negative portrayal in Henry IV, part 2. Shakespeare rescues Chaucer´s well-known hen to present a hysterical woman: Falstaff: God-a-mercy! So should I be sure to be heart-burned. Enter the Hostess How now, Dame Partlet the hen? Have you inquired yet who picked my pocket? Hostess: Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I have inquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before (Henry IV, part 1, scene 3, act iii, 47-56) The scene recreates an argument between Mrs. Quickly and Falstaff over whether or not she picked his pocket when he fell asleep in the bar. The Hostess demands Falstaff pay her for the debt he has accumulated, but he pretends he was robbed the night before. Mrs. Quickly makes a big fuss and is presented as a vociferous woman. Another example of an outspoken woman is Kate, the main character in The Taming of the Shrew. The play par excellence associated with animal imagery—the title itself already condenses the core of the

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drama: the taming of a shrewish wife—plays on the antithetical images of hen, as a submissive and domineering woman. By means of verbal puns which convey sexual innuendoes, the exchange between Katherina and Petrucchio suggests how a fussy hen will be domesticated, in other words, how a strong woman will become docile and subservient to her husband even if physical violence is to be exerted on her: Katherina: What is your crest—a coxcomb? Petrucchio: A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen. Katherina: No cock of mine, you crow too like a craven (2.1.) Although the hen is an animal deeply rooted in the feminine world, Shakespeare uses this fowl in the portrayal of weak male characters, anticipating the 17th-century compound of “hen-pecked husband” (O.E.D.) and the 20th-century secondary sense of “flamboyant feminine male homosexual” (O.E.D.). In the Winter´s Tale Leontes gives Antigonus grief because he is a wimpy husband unable to control his vocal wife, Paulina, whose outspokenness and nagging criticisms are completely inappropriate given the social expectations of female behavior of the age. Playing on the traditional animal couple associated with both sexes, Leontes reverses the roles while evoking again Chaucer´s hen to ridicule his friend, accusing him of being a “woman-fired, unroosted/ By they dame Partlet here” (2.3.74-5). Attacks to masculinity are also channeled by means of hens in Don Quixote. Cervantes makes use of this animal so deeply aligned with domestic women in order to draw gender boundaries (Ciallella, 2007:32-33). In several episodes some of the male characters seem to play what would be regarded as a feminine role since they stay at home, granting them the offensive description of hens. When seeing Sancho at home instead of with his master Don Quixote, Teresa quotes the proverb “long live the hen even with its pip.” The implicit comparison between the squire with the hen highlights the reversal of gender roles. After all, Teresa is simply suggesting Sancho leave the house and search for the isle that Don Quixote has promised. In other words, adventures and social betterment were the duty of a man whereas women should be confined to the domestic sphere.

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Later on, it will be Sancho himself that resorts to the same proverb in order to encourage Don Quixote to continue with his adventures. His defeated master, tired of his misfortunes, has decided to stay home, adopting, therefore, the position reserved to women. Don Quixote cheered up a little and said, “Of a truth I am almost ready to say I should have been glad had it turned out just the other way, for it would have obliged me to cross over to Barbary, where by the might of my arm I should have restored to liberty, not only Don Gregorio, but all the Christian captives there are in Barbary. But what am I saying, miserable being that I am? Am I not he that has been conquered? Am I not he that has been overthrown? Am I not he who must not take up arms for a year? Then what am I making professions for; what am I bragging about; when it is fitter for me to handle the distaff than the sword?” “No more of that, senor,” said Sancho; “‘let the hen live, even though it be with her pip; ‘today for thee and tomorrow for me;’ in these affairs of encounters and whacks one must not mind them, for he that falls to-day may get up tomorrow; unless indeed he chooses to lie in bed, I mean gives way to weakness and does not pluck up fresh spirit for fresh battles; let your worship get up now to receive Don Gregorio; for the household seems to be in a bustle, and no doubt he has come by this time;” (p.443) A strong sexual symbolism attached to the figure of the hen in the 17th century. In addition to the amorous disposition of the animal, phonetic considerations might have played a major role for crediting fowl names with obscene connotations, since the term “fowl” is homophonous with “foul” meaning “filthy” (Leach, 1964). This idea of dirt resonates in the plays of the time where the names of fowl became a common vehicle to refer to prostitutes in English theatrical performances (Partridge, 1993; Chamizo & Sánchez 2000). Images of hens conjure the image of promiscuity in some of Quevedo´s satirical poems. In the Letrilla VI women who cuckold their husbands are compared to hens. The only difference is that whereas the former lay eggs, the latter lay horns.

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The early years of the 18th century saw the rise of journalism and the actual vogue of the periodical essay began with the publication of The Tatler and The Spectator. With these two periodicals Addison and Steele held a mirror of London society. Their sketches of characters include females who are compared with chickens or hens depending on their age: “Madam, I have nothing to say to this Matter, but you ought to consider you are now past a Chicken; this Humour, which was well enough in a Girl, is insufferable in one of your Motherly Character” (The Spectator, no. 216). Also in this century avian metaphors to refer to males pervade literary texts. Once again, by identifying men with a female species the former are being degraded. Such is the case of Robert Burns´ poem “Henpecked Husband,” which, in the line of the medieval shepherd, offers an animalistic portrayal of a domineering wife, who is metaphorically labeled as a “bitch,” at the time that conveys a negative and ultimately violent perspective on marriage while encouraging the so-called “henpecked husbands” to assert patriarchal authority over their wives. Henpecked Husbands Curs’d be the man, the poorest wretch in life, The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife! Who has no will but by her high permission, Who has not sixpence but in her possession, Who must to her his dear friend’s secrets tell, Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell. Were such the wife had fallen to my part, I’d break her spirit or I’d break her heart; I’d charm her with the magic of a switch, I’d kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch. The Romantic spirit against the constraints of civilization led to a celebration of nature and, therefore, of animals. The Victorians ascribed the hen and the rooster with the attributes of domestic bliss. The relationship between these two animals continued the classical tradition that reflected the idyllic married couple (Ritvo, 1987; Dekkers, 2000).

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In addition to delimiting the social roles of both husband and wife, hens and chickens alike kept on channeling stereotypes about the female sex. Given that Victorians valued, above all, beauty and silence in a woman, as condensed in the dictum “women should be seen but not heard,” writings of the time are rife with avian imagery in order to either praise or condemn females. Obviously, the latter case would entail the use of chickens and hens, as seen in the next fragment belonging to the Uruguayan essayist Herrera y Reissig. In his description of local customs of the passers-by, the essayist provides a social catalogue with detailed descriptions of the fashionable garments for women and men as well as their customs. Some young women chatting in a park catch the attention of the essayist, who portrays them as “chatty chicks:” The urban park, within a short distance from Montevideo, and with its reputation for having an artistic beauty and natural attractions, caught my attention and in twenty minutes I found myself immersed in that live emerald, where a noisy repertoire of characters were enjoying themselves: women with bright garments, with hats like rural houses […] groups of Spring nymphs, of chatty chicks escorted by young men in heat (1905).6 The same century characterized by strong gender divisions also witnessed the advances of the feminist movement. In response to the pernicious widespread acceptance of the Victorian image of a “proper” woman, which was very often channeled through the symbol of domestic birds,vii women´s writings exploited avian motifs with the aim of vindicating the rights of women. The novels of Brontë, for instance, employ the visual image of the woman configured as a caged bird whose flight represents her freedom (Shefer, 1990). A similar yearning for escaping the confinement of the domestic sphere is felt in the South-African novel The Story of an African Farm (1883). Lyndall, a non-conventional woman who bears a child out of wedlock, dreams about a future free of restrictions for females. Her male counterpart, Waldo, however, represents the rigid world in which they dwell. He constantly reminds her of their position and refuses to

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change the norms of their society. Such an attitude makes Lyndall compare Waldo to an old hen: “Like an old hen that sits on its eggs month after month and they never come out?” she said quickly. “I am so pressed in upon by new things that, lest they should trip one another up, I have to keep forcing them back. My head swings sometimes. But this one thought stands, never goes—if I might be the one of these born in the future; then, perhaps, to be born a woman will not be to be borned branded.” (p.188) As could be expected, those who opposed the women´s movement rescued the traditional pair rooster/hen to support their ideas based on the natural order. Lawrence´s argumentative essay “Cocksure Women and Hensure Men” must be interpreted in this context. Written in response to the woman´s rights movement, when the movement was at its climax demanding the right for women to vote, Lawrence vehemently opposes the new role of women and men by turning upside down the fowl imagery. Just as Shakespeare had done before when attacking the weak personality of Antigonus by calling him a hen, Lawrence vertebrates his essay upon the analogy of the hen and the rooster, drawing the roles of the female and male sexes based on those animals: There are the women who are cocksure, and the women who are hensure. A really up-to-date woman is a cocksure woman. She doesn´t have a doubt nor a qualm. She is the modern type. Whereas the old-fashioned demure woman was sure as a hen is sure, that is, without knowing anything about it. She went quietly and busily clucking around, laying the eggs and mothering the chickens in a kind of anxious dream that still was full of sureness. But not mental sureness. Her sureness was a physical condition, very soothing, but a condition out of which she could easily be startled or frightened. (cited in Boulton, 2003:115)

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On the other side of the Atlantic, identical animal imagery was being used to attack the new roles being given to women and men. The new right of women to vote was seen as a threat to the establishment and particularly to men, as can be seen in the political pamphlet below, where the hen and the rooster play opposite roles. Although retaining their sexes, the hen/woman is depicted with the typical attributes of the rooster/man, that is, confident, cocky, and strutting, leaving the barnyard/home. The rooster/man, by contrast, is shown in a submissive position, crestfallen and submissive, being left in the confined domestic sphere to bring up their chickens/children. The image is accompanied by some lines which humorously play on the semantic field of “hen,” more precisely with the terms “henpecked” and “henpecking,” charged with unfavorable overtones that denote a weak man.

Figure 3. Political pamphlet against the suffragette movement in the U.S.A.8

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In the medical field, the anatomy of a woman continued to be explained with the analogy of the hen. Apart from the correlation between their reproductive functions, the physical abilities of females were regarded as inferior to those of males and likened to a hen: she can swim, she can dance, she can ride; all these things she can do admirably and with ease to herself. But to run, nature most surely did not construct her. Like the domestic hen which at times attempts to fly, woman running displays a kind of precipitate waddle with neither grace, nor fitness nor dignity. (The Globe, 1890, cited by Mitchinson 1994:74) With the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing underwent a drastic change and so did the breeding and rearing of chickens and hens.9 From the barnyard ambience to the mass production in factories the hen left the domestic sphere to gradually become industrial food. Hand in hand with this process of industrialization came the notion of deprivation of individuality due to the living conditions of the animal, usually squashed in a tiny space, just fed for future consumption and deprived of movement to speed the process of gaining weight. Such living conditions make the animal practically undistinguishable, which might account for their present figurative usages of chicken and hen, being virtually synonymous with girls and women respectively, as seen in the following excerpts taken from the magazine Rolling Stone: “You can´t go off with these random chicks who just walk up and give you their number”(No. 964/965 Dec/Jan 30/13, 2004/2005-01-15, p.90) and Cosmopolitan: “Travel Miss Adventures–hen weekends with a difference” (June 2002, p. 4). 3. IMAGES OF WOMEN AS CHICKENS AND HENS IN TODAY´S MEDIA Images of females in the guise of chickens and hens are still alive in Western thought. Stationery products with logos such as “groovy chick,” companies devoted to organizing “hen parties” and nursery rhymes that praise the domestic virtues of the animal, like the popular “The clever hen” (“I had a little hen, the prettiest ever seen,

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/She washed me the dishes and kept the house clean; /She went to the mill to fetch me some flour, /She brought it home in less than an hour”) prove that the hen continues to be a powerful feminine symbol in today´s society (Hines, 1999; Eckert, 2003). The original significance of the hen as a motherly creature devoted to the rearing and care of their offspring continues to exist in the press today. Articles that report deadly events involving shootings, wars or terrorist attacks rescue the classical image of the hen as the archetype of maternal love in the representation of females that take care of children in dangerous situations. The first headline, which will certainly bring home to us the previous portrayal of Macbeth´s Lady Macduff, captures such a motherly sense. A woman is said to act as a human shield in order to save some children from being shot: (1) “Mother hen” protects kids during mall shooting (Koi, December 11th, 2013) The same idea of protection is transmitted in the next headline dealing with the changes females go through once they reach the state of motherhood: (2) How a fancy-free girl about town became an overanxious mother hen (The Telegraph, February 11th, 2014) But even in the description of powerful women, like in the case of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, notions of power and strength, traditionally associated with males, are downplayed in favor of the feminine symbol of the mother hen. It is likely that by conceptualizing the ruler of a country as a hen, a less threatening image to the patriarchy is conveyed. Besides, the use of the motherly hen seems to connect with the tradition that represents a nation through maternal metaphors. (3) Here he recalls Baroness Thatcher, the “Mother Hen” (16th April 2013 https://www.gov.uk/government/ news/we-called-her-mother-hen) Given that the embryo of the hen metaphor rests in its

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motherly role, it seems logical that such a bird be intrinsically linked to her offspring, which, in turn, will figuratively represent younger females. As a matter of fact, according to the O.E.D. hen denotes a wife or a woman, especially a middle-aged or old one whereas chicken is applied to a girl or a young female, as seen in these extracts: (4) Give those chicks on Girls Gone Wild some competition (Cosmopolitan, April 2005, p. 188) (5) Denise Welch is the center of attention in orange bikini on hen do in Majorca (The Huff Post, 2014, 15th February) From a physical standpoint, the identification of women and girls with this type of fowl seems to adjust to the wide repertoire of small animals used in the conceptualization of females (e.g: cat, bunny, pigeon). The size of these animals seems to correspond with the physical appearance of women, who, when compared to men, tend to be of a smaller size. In addition to stature, weakness in an animal appears to be a favorable trait for crediting the animal name with a positive evaluation, as opposed to animals of a considerable size and strength, which usually comprise a less condescending attitude (e.g: cow, seal). In fact, as seen before, negative portrayals of women often included images of big beasts, like the depiction of the shepherd´s wife as a whale. Actually, research has shown that desired women tend to be identified with small animal metaphors. Consider, for example, the metaphorical uses of bunny, bird, cat and, of course, chicken (Hines, 1999a, 1999b), which can certainly account for their sexual connotations in the following passages: (6) What a difference a year makes! Trashy street kids TLC have dumped the baggy togs and developed into sexy chicks. (Nineteen, February 1995, p. 57) (7) From the hottest chicks […] this is my very best mag (Top of the Pop, January 2004, p. 40)

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Sex oozes from chicken and, to a lesser extent, hen imagery. Due to the fertility of the animal and their high production of eggs, these birds acquired negative connotations, becoming terms of opprobrium to refer to loose women and prostitutes. This notion of promiscuity still pervades the media, as reflected in the following article in which one-night stand girls are identified with chickens: (8) One Naughty Night Won’t Ruin Your Rep Even the most discerning chick might wake up thinking, I can’t believe I made out with our office intern. Don’t stress that you’ve sullied your good name…you can rebound… (Cosmopolitan, April 2005, p. 136) Linked to the ideas of size and weakness is physical violence. Certainly, the smaller size and lesser strength of the animal give man a decided advantage in the successful application of physical force, as shown in The Taming of the Shrew. Yet, despite its small size, the same does not hold true for the image of the hen, as shown in this article giving advice to grown-up women about how to conceal the effects of the passing of the time on their bodies with cosmetics: (9) Face it, you have become a middle-aged hen and can´t go out without these make-up tricks (In Touch, June 2002) The negative stance derived from this image of the hen might be explained in terms of age. Obviously, one of the main features that sets chickens and hens apart has to do with the youth of the animal. Chickens are baby animals, but the name hen is given to female chickens once they have surpassed one year. Therefore, youth in an animal frequently conveys positive connotations, which might account for the favorable overtones generally attached to the metaphorical names of offspring (Hines, 1999; Halupka-Rešetar, 2003). Getting older, on the other hand, is stigmatized when the affected is the woman (Nilsen, 1994). In fact, there are examples galore of animal pairs reflecting this dichotomy that associates youth with positive connotations whereas the more mature animals are tinged with negative ones. Consider, for instance, cat as opposed to kitten, nag in relation to filly, and, of course, the animal pair under

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discussion, chicken as compared with hen. Another relevant aspect presumably reinforcing this juxtaposition that associates chickens and hens with attractive and less sexually desirable females pertains to notions of edibility. Needless to say, both animals are reared for consumption, either to make use of their flesh or eggs (Baker, 1981; de la Cruz Cabanillas & Tejedor Martínez, 2006). However, whereas the tenderness of the meat of chickens is highly esteemed, hens are usually reserved for dishes of lower nutritional value, such as broth or soup. There exists a wellknown correlation between people´s understanding of sexual desire with their experiences of feeling hunger or thirst and the object of desire is often represented in terms of food. Actually, research across different languages has shown that eating and food are commonly used to express sexual desire, sexual satisfaction and to evaluate the sexual desirability of a person (Lakoff, 1987; Emanatian, 1995; Kövecses, 2002; Gibbs, Lenz and Francozo, 2004). Thus, in so far as they are consumed as food, the figurative uses of chicken and hen may transmit this notion of sexual appetite. This conflation of food with sexual desire is certainly at work in the following instances of chick: (10) Studly Rob Sutter vowed to keep his hands off the sexy new chick in town, Kate Hamilton, but when he finds her working late one night, the two wind up burning the bawdy midnight oil. (Cosmopolitan, March 2005, p. 254) (11) Secret Sex Fears All Guys Have. Chicks aren’t the only ones who panic predeed. See what dudes stress about. (Cosmopolitan, February 2005, p. 74) In addition to disclosing the negative connotations attached to getting older, the pair chicken and hen also tails with society´s views on marriage. As already mentioned, since Antiquity the rooster and hen embodied the perfect married couple while the chicken was conceived of as their child. So the image of the hen became deeply embedded in the institution of marriage, which reminds one that the traditional party held to celebrate the last moments of a single woman is labeled in British English hen party:

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(12) For a girl´s pre-nuptial gathering, check out these hen parties (Cosmopolitan, April 2005, p. 182) (13) From the engagement, through the stag and hens, the big day itself and the honeymoon - we’ve got it all mapped out (The Mirror, 2013, May 26th) Chickens, by contrast, because of their age, have not been associated to a male partner, which accounts for the use of chick to refer to single ladies: (14) When to marry is a huge decision in most women’s lives, and these days, many sexy single Cosmo chicks are putting off getting hitched until their mid to late 20s and even 30s (Cosmopolitan, April, 2005, p. 183) Regardless of their age, the life of both chickens and hens heavily depends on a rooster. This fowl are gregarious animals that live together as a flock, in which the rooster is in charge of establishing order and control. In fact, so strong is this dependency that removing the rooster from the flock results in disruption among chickens and hens. This idea of lack of independence and need of a male figure is conveyed through the following figurative use of chick: (15) Even the toughest chick needs a guy (Top of the Pop, February 2000) Traditionally, the constant noises made by chickens and hens were paralleled to women´s talk. As seen before, women were praised for their obedience and discretion and a woman´s tongue basically meant a threat to male power. This archetypal image of chatty females is still commonplace in today´s press. In the following fragments the relationship between women with chickens and hens is established not only through avian imagery but also through the use of the speech verbs “gossip” and “talk:” (16) Some guys can´t stand their chicks gossiping about them (CosmoGirl, 2001)

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(17) Indulge yourself in a hen night to talk with your friends (Cosmopolitan, May 2002) It is not sheer coincidence that the same image of a loquacious bird is evoked in the identification of female t.v. presenters. The next excerpt taken from The Guardian newspaper provides a review of a popular talk show on British television that is conducted by women. The references to hens are not limited to the explicit use of the metaphor, but the passage is rife with figurative senses pertaining to the semantic domain of this fowl. So, both presenters and audience (mostly composed of females) turn into “hens,” the atmosphere of the studio is described as “hen-night air” whereas laughter and talk become “cackling:” (18) There’s a certain hen-night air to proceedings. It has been compared to Afternoon Yak, the chatshow featured on The Simpsons (when Homer tunes into the Oestrogen Channel: “Today’s topic is men”. [Audience]: “Boooo!”) Male guests look understandably terrified – it’s four against one after all. Martin Kemp’s rictus grin the other week said it all. It was difficult not to feel sorry even for Danny Dyer, although his way of dealing with it was to flirt with the cackling women and even kiss them (“pwopah nawty!”), provoking uproarious laughter and whooping from the all-female studio audience. It’s difficult to imagine a male equivalent of the show ever being made. (The Guardian, 26th January, 2011). The metaphorical sense of hen as a “fussy and noisy woman” is illustrated in the following cartoon taken from Week magazine. The image supposedly represents the t.v. program The View, an American talk show hosted by five women. The images used for both British and American programs are like peas in a pod. Yet, what makes this cartoon more striking is the context in which it was drawn, since it dates back to the day on which US President Barack Obama was going to be interviewed in the show (July 29th, 2010). The deeply entrenched parallelism between men/women with rooster/hen is brought to the fore once more. However, not only do the cackling hens hint at the medieval lore of verbosity and hysteria, but also suggest the need of male order, implicitly represented by Obama.

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Figure 4. Cartoon illustrating the t.v. talk show The View http://www.commonsenseevaluation.com/tag/the-view/ #sthash.FBTewafg.dpbs

Figure 5. Image of the t.v. talk show The View http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_View_(U.S._TV_series) The cartoon certainly reveals the chicken metaphor in its full splendor given that the t.v. studio is a barnyard where hens are

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confined thanks to a wire fence. Domesticity clearly underlies the metaphorical conceptualization of women in the guise of this fowl. In fact, as opposed to wild animals that enjoy complete freedom, the whole life of domestic animals gravitates around the house. Pets and livestock co-exist with people, but whereas the former tend to live under the same roof as their owners and are kept to provide company and entertainment, only are the latter enclosed in the farm and reared for consumption. This image of domestic confinement has been used throughout history to justify the natural role of women as housewives. Despite the fact that more and more women have entered the job market, the media still resort to these farmyard animals in the representation of females.10 (19) Not long ago, most women’s Sunday-night addiction was watching four stylish single gals in the city. But now, damn near everyone is tuning in to catch the backstabbing antics and salacious sex-capades of sizzling married suburbanites on the huge hit Desperate Housewives. Which got us wondering: Do stay-at-home chicks actually ever feel that desperate? To whet our curiosity about this new breed of babe, we asked a bunch of real-life housewives for their uncensored answers. (Cosmopolitan, Feb. 2005, p. 167) (20) Don´t be a stay-at-home hen (Cosmopolitan, February 2005, p.167) Along with the patriarchal view of women as mothers and housewives, subservience vertebrates some of the figurative uses of the chicken and hen metaphor. Unlike other animals that are bred for sport, pleasure or research, farm animals exist to be exploited an eaten. They render service to man either by helping him in farm labor or by producing foods. In previous texts analyzed images of chickens and hens certainly mirrored the conception of women as domesticated servants. Centuries have gone by and a similar belief is channeled through the following figurative use of chick: (21) Be a nice chick and surprise your guy (Cosmopolitan, February, 2011)

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Lack of intellect is also conveyed through images of chickens and hens. Previous texts have shown how none of this sort of poultry is associated with intelligence, as is the case of other birds like the owl, the hawk or the eagle; but, on the contrary, they stand out for their naïve, nonsensical and, at times, stupid behavior—particularly evident in medieval tales in which chickens and hens were tricked by predatory animals. Idiocy continues to be a distinctive semantic value in some of the figurative uses of chicken, judging from the extract below, in which women who run risks when having unprotected sex are categorized in the guise of this bird: (22) The STD You Don’t Know. Safeguard yourself from fertility-robbing PID. Women who consistently used condoms during intercourse were half as likely to develop pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) as were chicks who relied on rubbers only occasionally or not at all, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. (Cosmopolitan, April 2005, p. 236) From Antiquity to present day the WOMAN AS CHICKEN metaphor has revealed society´s views regarding the role of women. The success of such a metaphor is not only shown in its survival but also in the metaphorical networks created by such a metaphor. Hence, the domestic chick, apart from having become interchangeable with girl, has generated a whole network of spin-offs. So, a film produced for females is no longer a girl movie, but a chick flick, an actress performing in a girl movie becomes a chick flick chick, material to produce a film for women turns into chick flick fodder, the lyrics of songs dealing with women´s concerns are chick antics, parties for women turn into chick fetes, literature devoted to women is labelled as chick lit and men who date several women become chick magnets. (23) Chick-flick alert: This month, Goodwin stars in Mona Lisa Smile-think Dead Poets Society with short pleated skirts- (Vanity Fair, Jan 2004, p. 75) (24) Friday 12/17 Entertainer of the Year 2004 Calling all star-watchers: In this sassy look at 2004´s biggest –and busiest– celebs, experts name Lindsay Lohan as

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Hollywood Hottie, Renée Zellweger as Chick Flick Chick and Jude Law the reigning Role Hog (six flicks in all!). (Us, Dec. 20th, 2004, p. 106) (25) Her Irish eyes are smiling. In the Ahern family, it´s usually Dad–Irish Prime Minister Bertie–who has people saying, “Let´s make a deal.” But last week, it was the turn of his daughter, Cecilia Ahern, 21, pictured with friends David Keoghan. She sealed a $1 million two-book contract with US publisher Hyperion, just days after Harper Collins reportedly snapped up the British and Irish rights for more than $300,000. Her as-yetunfinished debut, P.S. I Love You, follows Holly, a woman whose boyfriend dies of a brain tumor but leaves her one letter for each month of the year after his death. Sounds like chick-flick fodder–and Ahern´s agent told Reuters she expects a movie deal to be done this month. (Time, Jan 20th, 2003, p. 60) (26) Courtney Love, America´s Sweetheart. She´s known for her rock-chick antics, but it’s time to check out her melodic rock. (Cosmopolitan, March 2004, p. 50) (27) Lots of dishing at this chick fete …hang with the girls more. Research shows that when a woman chills with friends while she’s stressed, her bod produces more oxytocin, a hormone that makes people feel calmer. (Cosmopolitan, February 2005, p. 186) (28) There’s a secret about chick lit, that diary-style fiction genre (spawned by Bridget Jones’s Diary) featuring quirky, feisty protagonists on a mission to land their dream life, or at least shoe. It’s not only fun to read, but it’s also teeming with tips about love and the many challenges of courtship and relationships. (http://love. ivillage.com/snd/0,,doyenne_rvq3,00.html, 11th April, 2005) (29) Naturally, you´d be with a hot, confident, chick magnet of a boyfriends. But it´s hard not to get steamed

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when other girls find him just a tad too irresistible. (http:// magazines.ivillage.com/cosmopolitan/men/menu/ articles/0,,426365_533694,00.html 29th April, 2005) In like manner, the identification of middle-aged and married women with hens has branched off. Thus, bachelorette parties are called hen parties, trips and outings turn into hen weekends and hen nights and, just like before, literature targeted to women is labeled as hen lit. (30) Find me a woman who looks forward to a hen party Hen parties are the bane of most women’s existence. With thousands of them packing their bags to have some ‘organised fun’ this weekend, Rebecca Clancy asks why they have to cost so much? (The Telegraph, 15th February, 2014) (31) Here´s a one-word open letter to all those women who, on their hen´s nights, don´t want to get all drunk and leery, don´t want to get kitted out in embarrassing, tacky gear, who just want to have a bit of pampering, a quiet vino and a good old gas with their girlfriends (http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/ 3985002a19516.html) (32) Hen night and hen weekend shows in Newcastle (http://search.ivillage.com/search/ivillage?ivi&partner_ tag=ivillage_hearst_us_websearch&q=hen+ weekends&restrict=Cosmopolitan&filter=p 3/15/2007) (33) Women´s Lit, Chick Lit, Hen´s Lit—All Great (http://www.amazon.com/Womens-Lit-Chick-HensGreat/lm/1KG3NBWIMH4T) 4. DISCUSSION: UNDERSTANDING THE WOMAN AS CHICKEN METAPHOR THROUGH THE “PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS” METAPHOR From ancient times human beings have used their knowledge of the natural world in constructing a meaningful social existence and

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the animal field has provided one of the richest metaphorical sources (Cooper, 1992; Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005). In fact, people have often resorted to animals in order to explain human behavior (Kövecses, 1998, 2000, 2002) and, as this article has tried to show, females have often been understood in terms of chickens and hens. Animal metaphors, no doubt, originated from people´s firsthand experiences. In earlier times, societies were mainly based on agriculture and the subsistence of whole communities depended on the knowledge of the animal world. Being able to recognize which animals could destroy the crops, were poisonous, had healing properties or were suitable for work must have been of vital use. Because hens were soon domesticated, contact with this animal was part and parcel of everyday life. Hence the observation of their traits as well as behavior served man to draw parallelisms with the feminine sex. Animal metaphors not only have a cognitive basis rooted in human experience, but they are also culturally motivated, that is, they reflect the attitudes and beliefs held by a particular community towards certain animal species and, therefore, may vary across cultures (Deignan, 2003; Echevarría, 2003; MacArthur, 2005). Despite the fact that, as time has gone by, in our modern industrialized societies there is a clear estrangement from animals, every animal has its history and as such it transmits “knowledge that is still shared as part of our cultural repository, but no longer directly experienced” (Deignan 2003:270). By means of texts of a very different nature hens have come to symbolize mothers, wives, middle-aged, old, bossy, outspoken, promiscuous females and, at times, even prostitutes, just as chickens have acquired the senses of young, sexy, defenseless and often promiscuous girls. As a matter of fact, such is the myriad of senses evoked by this sort of fowl that in some circumstances, as already seen, even men are conceptualized in the guise of this type of bird. The hen as a feminine symbol, then, reveals a clear dichotomy in terms of praise and abuse. Nevertheless, judging from the varied senses analyzed at different points in history, there seems to be a general tendency to convey negative views about women by means of this fowl. In fact, perhaps with the exception of the maternal image all of the other senses derived appear to convey patriarchal views about

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the role of women in society. So being a domestic animal in charge of laying eggs and taking care of their offspring nicely corresponds with the traditional belief that a woman´s place should be her home while her duty should entail the upbringing of her children and care of her husband. Analogously, the fact that hens are of a relatively small size, make twittering sounds and are neither intelligent nor independent runs parallel to the chauvinist notion that women are weak and therefore need a man for protection since they are not very smart, but fussy, noisy and engage in idle talk. The negative import attached to most of the figurative senses of hen, chickens and of animals in general can be accounted for when recalling the previous folk model of The Great Chain of Being. As explained before, this theory organizes the cosmos hierarchically depending on the qualities and behavior of every existing thing, from the lowest (and more imperfect) to the highest (and closer to perfection). Animals, of course, rank lower than people since the former are ruled by their instincts and the latter by their reason. So by comparing people to animals, they are being descended in the hierarchy, and, thus, the animal-based metaphor is likely to become a vehicle to convey undesirable human characteristics (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005). After all, what separates people from animals is the rational capacity that enables human beings to control instincts and behavior. It is ultimately this notion of control, or rather, lack of control, that constitutes the bedrock for the metaphorical identifications of people with animals. The PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS metaphor, then, presupposes that there is an animal or instinctual side inside each person and civilized people are expected to restrain their animal impulses, letting their rational side rule over them. The metaphors OBJECTIONABLE HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR (Kövecses, 2002), ANGER IS ANIMAL BEHAVIOR (Nayak & Gibbs, 1990), PASSIONS ARE BEASTS INSIDE US (Kövecses, 1988), OBJECTIONABLE PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS (Kövecses, 2002), A LUSTFUL PERSON IS AN ANIMAL (Lakoff, 1987) or CONTROL OF AN UNPREDICTABLE/UNDESIRABLE FORCE IS A RIDER´S CONTROL OF A HORSE (MacArthur, 2005) conceptualize extreme behavior and, therefore, lack of control, by

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resorting to a common scenario: the animal kingdom. Seen in this light, failure to restrain one´s instincts results in the degradation of human beings to the animal realm. So, for example, the inability to control appetite, sexual urge or verbosity are linguistically channeled through the figurative senses of pig, bitch and, as seen, hen, respectively. Nonetheless, although being a lower form of life, the names of animals are likely to become vehicles for the transmission of undesirable characteristics and behavior, a closer look at metaphorical animal identifications can show that this is not always the case, for certain animal terms do capture the positive features of people (e.g. lion/courageous person; owl/wise person). In this regard, it is relevant to mention that within the semantic field of animal terms there exists a clear disparity in their metaphorical uses depending on their application to males or females (Nilsen, 1996; Fernández Fontecha & Jiménez Catalán, 2003). Suffice it to say, for example, that whereas fox, dog, stud and, of course, rooster are charged with favorable overtones, for they denote a clever, crafty and good-looking individual, their feminine partners, that is, vixen, bitch, mare and hen stand for promiscuous, fat, ugly, old and fussy women. This dichotomy associating the male sex with positive connotations whereas the female one carries negative ones might corroborate the general tendency in language that shows a clear bias against women (Fasold, 1990; R. Lakoff, 2003). Yet, because most animal metaphors highlight the notion of control, it may very well be argued that lack of restraint in human beings is more objectionable when the agent is a woman. Apart from the diverse historical contexts in which the figurative senses of chicken and hen have been forged, ethnobiological classifications of animals may help decipher the underlying assumptions motivating both metaphors. These taxonomies usually rely upon five basic parameters, namely, habitat, size, appearance, behavior and relation to people (Wierzbicka, 1985, 1996; Martsa, 2003). Such factors may be informative in understanding the metaphorical senses of both animal terms when applied to females. In terms of habitat, animals can be classified into two broad categories: wild and domestic. The first live in the wilderness, are independent and, therefore, not subject to man´s control; but, on the

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contrary, they may even pose a threat to them. The opposite applies to the second, since they depend on man for their survival, are tame and somehow confined to the domestic world. As could be expected, the set of animal images portraying women as wild creatures is relatively scarce (LĂłpez-RodrĂguez, 2009), given the aforementioned notions of independence and danger attached to them. Predatory beasts applied to females have different origins: the land (e.g.: coyote, fox/vixen, lioness, tigress, she-wolf, hyena), the sea (e.g.: seal, whale, walrus) and the air (e.g.: crow, magpie, parrot, bat).Whatever their provenance, however, nearly all of them seem to be tinged with negative connotations, implying ugliness, fatness, old age, verbosity and promiscuity.11 In the encoding of these metaphors physical traits together with relation to people appear to justify the negative import attached to wild animal terms. Certainly, with the exception of birds, all these creatures are of a considerable size, both in terms of height and weight, and, therefore, do not adhere to the previous metaphor DESIRED WOMAN AS SMALL ANIMAL (Hines, 1999) to which, in theory, chicken and hen belong to. Apart from physical considerations connecting women with smaller animals since, when compared to men, they tend to be of a smaller size, the notion of control underlying the generic PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS metaphor seems to be at the core for making these wild animals terms of derision for females. Because bigger animals are more difficult to subjugate, it might be implied that a womanÂ´s freedom is a threat to man and, therefore, should be linguistically castigated for trespassing the domestic confines traditionally assigned to their gender. Along with this, canons of beauty might likewise prompt the negative views attached to big wild beasts since, particularly in modern society, thinness has become practically interchangeable with beauty whereas fat women are objects of derision. The case of fox/vixen, lioness, tigress and she-wolf deserves considerable attention because these terms condense the sense of attractive females (O.E.D.). Despite being positive on the surface level, these metaphors encapsulate a strong sexual component which ultimately reduces women to the status of sexual objects (i.e.

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preys to be hunted by men).12 Interestingly, although the above predatory animals stand out for their smartness, slyness and independence, none of these traits are selected in their metaphoric application for females, but, by contrast, sexual innuendos are seen at work, hinting at the metaphor SEX IS HUNTING (Chamizo & Sánchez, 2000) whereby men take the active role of the pursuer whereas women assume the passive role of the prey. Therefore, although at first sight these metaphors may seem to empower women, a closer look reveals that once more they are depicted as the ones to be controlled by men. Within the wild category, bird species also provide a prolific source of metaphors. Crow, magpie, bat or parrot, to mention a few, metaphorically denote females. Even though these birds, just like chickens or hens, are small and, therefore, should adjust to the metaphor that conceptualizes attractive females in the guise of small animals, none of the terms are charged with favorable overtones, for they refer to ugly and talkative women. Indeed, judging these animals on the basis of appearance, one soon realizes that none of these birds are associated with intelligence (as is the owl), nobility (as are the hawk or the eagle) or even beauty (such is the case of the swan), but rather they stand out for their ugliness and chatter, which historically speaking have been the two traits looked down on in women. As opposed to wild beasts, there is a wide repertoire of animal metaphors pertaining to the domestic ambience, either the home (cat, dog, canary, parakeet) or the farmyard (cow, heifer, mule, filly, sow, nag, rabbit, chicken, hen), which are applied to women. When compared to the previous beasts, the numbers are striking since domestic creatures by far outnumber wild ones. Such an imbalance seems to respond to the patriarchal view that states that a woman´s place should be limited to the confines of the house and be submissive to man. Yet, conforming to these ideals does not guarantee a positive evaluation in the metaphor, since other factors like physical appearance, servitude and edibility play an equally significant role. Firstly, a pivotal distinction needs to be made when it comes to domestic animals: pets and farmyard. The former live with the owners and their main function is to provide company and

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entertainment. The latter live close to the owners but are exploited for man´s advantage. Although one would think that pets should be used as terms of endearment since they arouse feelings of affection, when applied to females they tend to be insults. The very word dog refers to an ugly female and even to a prostitute (Eble, 1996). Similar considerations apply to cat and, of course, to the largely taboo bitch. Even the infant words puppy and kitten together with the baby language bowser, bowwow, pussy and mud-puppy convey the senses of ugliness and promiscuity. This awkward correspondence between the most beloved pets and women can be explained on historical grounds, since witches were credited with supernatural powers that enabled them to assume the form of these two animals (Sax, 2001).13 Another hypothesis surrounding the negative stance attached to such metaphors might stem from notions of productivity. In fact, when compared to barnyard animals, pets do not render any type of service to man and, from this point of view, are useless. Another animal commonly kept as a pet is the bird. Common species of domestic birds include the canary and the parakeet.14 All these terms are usually charged with affective connotations to refer to loving women, particularly girls. Here the sense of domesticity is reinforced by the fact that these animals are in cages, and, thus, seem appropriate to stress the role of women in the house and controlled by men. Unlike pets, farmyard animals are exploited for man´s advantage, either for service or for food. Servitude and edibility, then, underlie the metaphorical usages of these types of animals. There is one set of animal words that depict women as cow, heifer, mare, mule, filly, sow and nag. The identification is probably based on the strictly biological functions of producing and rearing offspring (Shanklin, 1985; Brennan, 2005). All the terms listed refer to big mammals and size again seems to explain the negative overtones of the metaphors when applied to women, for they convey the senses of fatness and ugliness— and in the cases of mule and nag even stubbornness and verbosity. The only exception in this category is found in filly. Defined as “a lively young girl” (O.E.D.) this animal commingles the senses of big size and

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young age. Yet, it appears that just like in the pair hen/chicken the age factor has a heavier clout than the size one when endowing the metaphor with positive connotations. Last but not least, there is a group of bird names within the farmyard ambience whose metaphorical uses resemble those of chicken and hen. So biddy, quail and pigeon can be used figuratively in the identification of females. All these birds share the values of small size, domesticity and nourishment. Yet, whereas chicken, quail and pigeon denote women who are young and sexually attractive, neither biddy nor hen hold any hint of physical beauty, since they suggest old or middleaged women who tend to be ugly, fussy or clumsy (Hines, 1999). Once again, youth is an animal prompts positive connotations. 5. CONCLUSION Patriarchal views regarding the role of women have been successfully transmitted and perpetuated throughout history by means of the WOMAN AS CHICKEN metaphor. Negative views about the nature and social position of the female sex have gradually attached to this animal species. Despite the fact that in its origins the figurative use of hens when applied to females conveyed favorable overtones, since, based on its biological functions, it highlighted the notions of maternal love and protection; as time went by, the metaphor clearly underwent a process of pejoration. In fact, misogynistic views regarding notions of weakness, lack of independence, inability to work outside the domestic sphere, intransigence, talkativeness, fussiness, promiscuity and noisy disposition became deeply associated with this animal term. The survival of this metaphor in todayÂ´s society is well attested not only in its widespread use and acceptance, but also in the metaphorical networks generated. As this article has tried to show, images of women in the guise of chickens and hens pervade the media and the assumptions conveyed through such linguistic products are not too distant from those of bygone days.

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NOTES The fiery comb of the rooster also made this animal a symbol of fire and, ultimately, of light. 2 In Christian symbolism the rooster epitomizes Passion too. According to the Bible, prior to being arrested by the soldiers, Jesus foretold that Peter would deny him not only once but three times before the rooster crowed on the following morning, and so did he. At the rooster´s crowing, Peter remembered Jesus´ words and wept bitterly (Matthew 26:75). So the rooster came to represent Peter´s denial of Christ and also his remorse and repentance, and given that later on Peter went on to become the leader of the Church, the rooster also came to stand for vigilance. 3 It is in the Middle Ages that the term cock become taboo, being replaced by rooster. In this regard McDonald (1988, p. 26) says that “the word cock was originally used in ancient times as the name for certain fowl- as indeed it still is. Apparently because of the resemblance in appearance between a chicken’s neck and a water tap, the name water-cock was given to taps in the Middle Ages […]. Then the resemblance between a water tap and a penis, in both shape and function, suggested the use of the word for a penis as well. North America with its puritanical traditions did not like such associations, a fact which largely explains why, even to this day, water cocks are called faucets and cocks are called roosters in the USA.” Yet, the adjective cocky is quite often in English. 4 Illustrations taken from http://habetrot.typepad.com/habetrot/ 2007/02/faith_will_prot.html. 5 This idea is superbly condensed in Shakespeare´s The Taming of the Shrew, when Petruchio makes it clear that as a man he will rule over what is his, and this includes not only his house and animals, but also his wife: “I will be master of what is mine own./She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,/ My household stuff, my field, my barn,/My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,/And here she stands, touch her whoever dare!”(III.ii. 231-35). 6 My own translation: The origina,l chronicle in Spanish reads as follows: “El Parque Urbano, a corta distancia de Montevideo, y con su reputación de belleza artística y de naturales atractivos, 1

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tentó mi curiosidad y en veinte minutos me encontré en plena esmeralda viviente, donde retozaba un fandango de humanidades de todas las layas: mujeres de atavíos chillones con sombreros como viviendas de campo, en los que no faltaban animales ni plantas de los más curiosos, hombres endomingados con levitas cortas o largas, anchas o ridículamente estrechas, pero sí muy lustrosas y cadenas de reloj; por lo menos, como la de Prometeo dando gravemente el brazo a espesas consortes; grupos como de ninfas primaverales, de pollas parleras, escoltadas por pebetillos en celo, con un escarbadiente de caña en la mano bailante y un “habano” de dos céntimos entre los dientes aceitunados, y en fin, chorros caprinos de chicuelos enloquecidos por Menini, con su ferro-vía ó por las góndolas pedantes de los laguitos para muñecas del célebre parque”. 7 By contrast, Faulkner´s female characters are somehow depicted as hens, suggesting the idea of confinement and submission to a male. In fact, as Díaz-Diocaretz points out in “Faulkner´s HenHouse: Woman as Bounded Text:” “women exist, in Faulkner´s discourse, as hens, protected, surrounded by boundaries that act as fence and restrictions, creating confinement and shelter.” (1986: 235). 8 Image taken from the on-line Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Remember the Ladies!” Women Struggle for an Equal Voice. http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/exhibits/suffrage/struggle.htm. 9 Despite the fact that during the Industrial Revolution animal imagery flourished in order to depict the harsh working conditions of people, who were often portrayed as any sort of beast, including chickens and hens, in Elizabeth Gaskell´s North and South the rural population who had to emigrate to the city tries to come to terms with their new industrialized reality by comparing the factories with hens: “Quick they were whirled over long, straight, hopeless streets of regularly-built houses, all small and of brick. Here and there a great oblong many-widowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black ‘unparliamentary’ smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain.” (p. 96). 10 Interestingly, in tune with politics, Hilary Clinton was compared with a chicken during the 2008 presidential campaign in the USA. Pundits created a fried-chicken Hillary Meal Deal mug which

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read as follows: “Two fat thighs, two small breasts, and a bunch of left wings.” Several articles in the press echoed such an animal image. See, for example: http://content.time.com/time/ magazine/article/ 0,9171,2028091,00.html, http://www. couriermail.com.au/news/lets-get-over-our-hang-ups-andjudge-women-in-power-on-their-merits/story-e6frerfo1225950161315?nk=9e53472dc52c52a7b1e14e6c87f04e59. 11 When applied to females, coyote refers to an ugly female, especially in the collocation coyote date, which, according to Eble (1996:100), denotes “a woman who is so ugly that when her companion for the night wakes up the next morning and she is asleep on his arm he would rather chew off his arm than wake her up.” According to the O.E.D. fox means “an attractive woman,” just like vixen, although the latter also possesses the values of “illtempered” and “quarrelsome woman.” Lioness, tigress and she-wolf usually allude to sexually active females or women who take the initiative in the sexual arena whereas hyena figuratively suggests a hysterical, loud and chatty woman. All the maritime animals (seal, whale and walrus) denote big, fat, and usually ugly females whereas the metaphorical senses of birds are equally negative. Crow is defined as “a woman who is old or ugly,” and even “a promiscuous female.” This last value of promiscuity is likewise transmitted through bat. As for magpie and parrot, their metaphorical senses when applied to women suggest chatterboxes. 12 In this regard Baker makes it clear that the connection man-fox/vixen is that of predator and prey: “[T]he term “fox” or “vixen” is generally taken to be a compliment by both men and women, and compared to any of the animal or plaything terms is indeed a compliment. Yet considered in and of itself, the conception of a woman as a fox is not really complimentary at all, for the major connection between man and fox is that of predator and prey. The fox is an animal that men chase, and hunt, and kill for sport. If women are conceived of as foxes, then they are conceived of as prey that is fun to hunt. (1981:169) 13 Cat denotes “a malicious woman, a loose woman and a prostitute” (Partridge, 1970). It is likely that because cats are independent and treacherous, metaphorically the term is used as an insult for females.

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Bird, canary and parakeet denote a young woman. In US college slang it also refers to a female student, particularly in the collocation “canary dorm” (a female residence) (Eble, 1996).

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PRESENTACIÓN DE COLABORACIONES BABEL a.f.i.a.l. es una revista anual de filología inglesa y alemana que publica trabajos, previo informe positivo del Comité de Redacción, sobre la siguiente temática: lengua inglesa y alemana literatura inglesa y alemana lingüística aplicada teoría literaria traducción metodología lexicología, lexicografía Las colaboraciones se enviarán antes de finales del mes de marzo de cada año a nombre de la Prof. Cristina Larkin Galiñanes a la siguiente dirección: BABEL a.f.i.a.l Facultade de Ciencias da Educación As Lagoas s/n 32004 Ourense (e-mail: larkin@uvigo.es) NORMAS PARA LA REDACCIÓN DE ORIGINALES: 1. Se enviarán por correo ordinario 3 copias en papel del artículo, sin datos referentes al autor, y una hoja aparte con el título del artículo y los siguientes datos del autor: centro de trabajo, dirección, número de teléfono y dirección de correo electrónico. 2. El artículo ha de estar precedido por dos resúmenes: el primero en inglés y el segundo en español o gallego. No debe exceder las 150 palabras. 3. Cada resumen debe ir seguido de las palabras clave en las que se enmarca la investigación del artículo en los dos idiomas escogidos.

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4. Si el artículo resultase aceptado, se enviará por correo electrónico en un solo archivo a la dirección arriba indicada. Este archivo debe contener: el título del artículo, el nombre del autor, la institución a la que pertenece, el correo electrónico, el resumen en inglés, las palabras clave en inglés, el resumen en español/ gallego, las palabras clave en este idioma y finalmente el texto del artículo, seguido de las notas y las obras citadas. 5. Las lenguas admitidas para la publicación de los artículos son: alemán, español, gallego e inglés. 6. La extensión de los artículos no debe superar las 20 páginas, incluyendo en ellas notas y bibliografía. 7. Tamaño de letra: 12 en todo el artículo, incluidas las notas. 8. Interlineado: doble espacio, a excepción de los resúmenes y las notas que han de ser presentados a espacio sencillo. 9. Tipo de letra: Times New Roman en todo el artículo 10. Titulo del artículo: Mayúsculas y negrilla 11. Encabezamientos de las secciones del artículo: Mayúscula, negrilla y numerados (1., 2., 3., etc) 12. Subencabezamientos de las secciones: Minúscula, negrilla y numerados (1.1, 1.2., 1.3., etc) 13. Las notas a pie de página deberán figurar inmediatamente al final del artículo (NOTAS/ NOTES/ FUbNOTEN) utilizando números normales (no romanos) y, a continuación, la bibliografía en orden alfabético, bajo el encabezamiento OBRAS CITADAS/ WORKS CITED/ ZITIERTE WERKE. 14. Las referencias bibliográficas serán elaboradas siguiendo rigurosamente los ejemplos siguientes:

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Culler, J. 1975 Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Graham, J.W. 1975 “Point of view in The Waves: Some services of the style en S. Lewis, ed. Virginia Woolf. A Collection of Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill Guiora, A., R. Brannon y C.Dull. 1972 “Empathy and second language learning”. Language Learning. 22:111-130 15. Cuando se cita algún texto, trabajo o artículo consultado en Internet, ha de indicarse el día, el mes y el año en los que se accedió a la página web correspondiente. Por ejemplo: Dahlgren, M. 1993 “From Narratology to Pragmatics: Narrators, Focalizers and Reflectors in Some Works by William Faulkner”, BABEL a.f.i.a.l. Consultado el 20 octubre de 2009 • http://webs.uvigo.es/babelafial/number2.html Más información en nuestra página web http//webs.uvigo.es/babelafial