Spanish Women's Writing 1849-1996 Spanish Women's ... - (Chapter 3 The Madwoman Dreaming Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885) )

3
The Madwoman, Dreaming:

Rosalia de Castro (1837-1885)
'[ . . . ] what always moves me [ . . . ] are the innumerable
hardships suffered by our country women, women who love
their ain folk and strangers, who are sensitive, strong in body,
and tender of heart, and yet so unfortunate [ . . . ] In the
countryside they share the rough work with their men, half
each; in the home they bear the anxieties of motherhood,
domestic work and the hardships of poverty. Alone most of
the time, labouring from dawn till dusk, without any assistance
to support them or their children and perhaps their elderly
parents, they seem condemned to never find rest except in the
grave. Emigration and the King [conscription] continually take
their men: the lover, brother, or husband, who provides for the
Copyright © 2000. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. All rights reserved.
large family. And so, abandoned, weeping and helpless, they pass
their bitter lives between the uncertainty of hope, the darkness
of loneliness, and the anguish of constant poverty [ . . . ] Their
stories are worthy of being told by a far better poet than I.' (Follas
novas, Poesias 1973, 162)
The life and works of the Galician author Rosalia de Castro differ
substantially from those of other women writers of her time in their
pattern and development. Gender considerations apart, the import
of her work in Spain may be compared to that of Scottish poet
Robert Burns (1759-96) in Britain because although Castro was
keen to promote women's rights within the broad framework of
democratic government, her prime concern was to consolidate a
separate Galician cultural identity in the face of central government
hostility. Rosalia de Castro was the poet of the common man
and woman. In Spain and South America, particularly Cuba and
Argentina, her name is synonymous with Galicia, its language, and
its people. Rosalia de Castro spoke up for the Galician peasant at
<i>Spanish Women's Writing 1849-1996 : Spanish Women's Writing, 1849-1996</i>, edited by
Catherine Davies, and Senior Lecturer Department of Hispanic Studies Catherine Davies, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2000. ProQ
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60 Spanish Women's Writing
a time of great social unpheaval and the establishment found this
hard to forgive. Castro also wrote in two languages, Galician and
Spanish, with the result that while she sits firmly in the Galician
literary tradition (she is the founder of modern Galician literature)
her position regarding the Spanish canon is more equivocal.
Castro was writing and publishing on the periphery of Spanish
Castilian culture but at the centre of the Galician. Like Gomez
de Avellaneda's, her work straddles national boundaries but it
is doubly displaced in as much as it also crosses class divisions.
This special positioning in the spaces of the multicultural map
of a rapidly changing hierarchical Spain gave her a singularly
dual perspective. From the point of view of Madrid she was
writing from the edge (Galicia/popular culture) looking in to the
centre; from the point of view of Galicia she was writing with an
indigenous perspective, from the inside looking out. Although a
broad awareness of European culture is evident in Castro's work, in
contrast to Bohl de Faber she is not concerned with consolidating
a Spanish national identity vis-a-vis Anglo-French incursions. Her
national concerns lie elsewhere.
Castro is unlike Bohl de Faber, Avellaneda, and Emilia Pardo
Bazan in that she did not belong to an influential family, did not
benefit from the open support of an adoring father, and lacked easy
access to a well-stocked library and a ready-made circle of literary
contacts. Like Pardo Bazan she lived for many years in the small
provincial towns of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, Corunna)
but in straitened circumstances. Bohl de Faber, Avellaneda and
Pardo Bazan were all supported, to some degree, by their family's
wealth, gained through commerce, sugar plantations, or landed
estates. Rosalia de Castro's mother, from whom she took her
name, belonged to a noble family whose titles went back to the
seventeenth century, but the Castros, like the majority of such
families at the time (and the peasants who worked their land) were
impoverished. During her lifetime Rosalia witnessed the gradual
loss of the family's property at the same time as the bourgeoisie
was busily purchasing titles. The Castro estate was broken up in
the 1870s and finally sold off in 1890 after Rosalia's death.
What made Rosalia's position extremely anomolous in the
circles of polite society was the fact that she was an illegitimate child
whose father, a miller's son, was the local parish priest. According
Rosalia de Castro 61
to the civil and ecclesiastical law at the time, sacrilegious children
such as Rosalia were not allowed to live with either parent or to
take the name of either. Rosalia did not enter the orphanage in
Santiago but was brought up in a hamlet by one of her father's
sisters with whom she maintained close, if discreet, contact all her
life. At the age of eight she lived in a nearby town, Padron, with
another paternal aunt, and, at the age of fifteen, with her mother
in Santiago de Compostela.
These early experiences had a marked effect on Castro and her
work. First, she learned the Galician language which, in the early
nineteenth century, was only spoken in the countryside by the
peasants. Second, she grew up in a small rural community and
absorbed its culture (songs, beliefs, lifestyle) and values. As a young
girl Rosalia had almost no contact with the urban middle classes.
Third, she acquired great respect for the peasants whose harsh life
she experienced and understood. They represented for her the
ancient Galician way of life which was suffering on account of
the machinations of the centralized state and the material greed
of the urban middle classes. Unlike her fellow women writers,
from an early age Castro was perfectly familiar with the lives of
the labouring classes and acutely aware of social injustice. In many
of her writings she would aim to articulate the worldview of the

Galician peasant, from the peasant's point of view.
Castro was educated in Santiago in the early 1850s but little is
known about her youth. She did not publish an 'autobiography'
and she did not engage in extensive public correspondence,1 nor
did she court the favour of literary and political figures of the day.
At no time in her life did Rosalia de Castro seek to ingratiate
herself with the oligarchy and her literary reputation suffered as
a consequence. In 1853, in Santiago, she witnessed the dreadful
effects of starvation and cholera on the peasants. She wrote:
Every day, more hours of anguish were brought to our

squares and streets by crowds of starving people who went
from door to door asking for bread for their dying children
and their wives, exhausted with misery and the cold. Their
cries reached deep down and touched even the most insen-
sitive of hearts [. . .] They fell at the roadside and in the
city streets. They died alone in their deserted homes. You
need to have seen it to know what it was like for those
people.2
Rosalia's contacts with a group of progressive students studying at

University of Santiago gave her the opportunity to publish. These
students were Galician provincialists or, in todays's terminology,
nationalists, who were allied with the left-of-centre Progressive
Party in Madrid and were inspired by Utopian socialism, democratic
republicanism and Christian democracy.3 They were convinced
the social evils of the region would never be solved while
Galicia depended on the central government in Madrid. As a
prelude to securing regional autonomy they were in the process
of encouraging awareness of Galicia's separate cultural identity
by promoting Galicia, its language and customs in the local and
national press.
Rosalia mixed with this group and married one of its leading
members, Manuel Murguia, in Madrid in 1858. The previous
year she had published a short book of poems, La flor [The
Flower] written in an outdated Romantic style (reminiscent of
Gomez de Avellaneda's). Rosalia's first novel, La hija del mar
[The Daughter of the Sea] (1859) was published in Galicia.
In the prologue she praises the novels of George Sand (men-

tioning Lelia) but the feminist slant of her own work was
already apparent in an article entitled 'Lieders'[sic] (1858) pub-
lished in the provincial press. 'Lieders' caught the attention of
the pre-nationalists who recognized her potential for writing
radical, feminist literature. Benito Vicetto wrote to Murguia:
What on earth are you doing to 'Lieders'? Why doesn't she sing?
[. . .] A poem by her to the liberty of our mountains published
in the Mino Pocal newspaper] and reprinted in the Pats [national
press] would be wonderful, (quoted in Davies 1987, 121)
As if in reply to this challenge, Rosalia's first Galician poem

appeared in the Madrid review El Museo Universal in 1861.
In the early 1860s Rosalia and her husband lived in Galicia
and Madrid. Her second novel, Flavio, a psychological drama,
was serialized in the press in 1861. Her mother died in 1862,
and Castro published a short collection of poems entitled A mi
madre [To my mother] (1863) in the style of La flor. The couple
then moved to Lugo (Galicia) because Rosalia preferred to be in
Galicia. Murguia, a well-known journalist in the capital, dedicated
himself to writing a social History of Galicia (vol. I 1865) where he
outlined current ideas on the future of Galicia. These ideas partly
explain the direction the Galician Rexurdimento (cultural revival)
took at that time and also the raison d'etre of many of Rosalia's
writings.
For Murguia, a political revolution in Galicia was unfeasible as
the peasants were uneducated and politically naive. The aim of
Galician intellectuals should be to initiate a cultural revolution to
raise the self-esteem of Galicians (mocked in the rest of Spain)
and convince Spain of the value of Galician culture. The only
surviving remnants of the rich Galician lyrics of the Middle Ages,
he believed, were in popular oral culture; only the peasants still
spoke the language and sang the songs. Galician culture was
ipso facto popular and rural, and it was the task of Galician
intellectuals to collect Galician songs and stories and infuse into
them nineteenth-century political and social demands. Rosalia de
Castro became a crucial element in this early nationalist cultural
campaign: she spoke Galician as her first language and she was lit-
erate, educated, and sympathetic to the group's progressive aims.
It was in this buoyant atmosphere of optimism that Castro's

most famous book of poems Cantares gallegos [Galician Songs] was
published in 1863, the first collection of Galician lyrical poems
published since the Medieval Cancioneros. Galician had not been
used amongst the governing classes since the late fifteenth century.
The significance of Cantares gallegos for the Galician language and
literary tradition, therefore, cannot be overstated. Castro not only
wrote and published in the peasants' language, which - according
to Eric Hobsbawm - is a politically significant event in itself.4 She
also recuperated popular verse forms and in lending them written
status she gave value to the thoughts, feelings and world-views of
the peasants who, for once, were presented as sane and sensitive
individuals. Rosalia's attitude to popular culture is quite different
from the more patronizing perspectives of Bohl de Faber and
Pardo Bazan who probed, sympathetically or otherwise, the
peasant's world from the outside. Even more subversive was
the way she inscribed in these songs what were then considered
revolutionary ideas.
Cantares gallegos, dedicated to Fenian Caballero, was followed
by a third novel El caballero de las botas azules [The Knight in
Blue Boots] (1867) which gained some critical success. After
the Revolution of 1868 which, it was hoped, would herald in
a prosperous age in Spain, Murguia was appointed Director of the
Historical Archives in Simancas. The family moved to Castile, but
Rosalia was unhappy in the arid plains and Murguia was transferred
to the post of Director of the Regional Archives of Galicia in
Corunna in 1871. Rosalia remained in Galicia from then on until
her death. The years following the Revolution of 1868 and the
declaration of the Spanish Federal Republic were ones of great
disillusion for the Galician nationalists and for the Murguia family
in particular. The progressive, popular alternative did not recover
ground in Galicia until the 1930s. Meanwhile, the Restoration of
the monarchy in 1875 meant that Murguia was removed from his
post as Archivist (civil servants were dismissed at each change of
government) and returned to journalism in Madrid. He would not
hold another secure post until 1892, after Rosalia's death.
By 1875 — at the age of thirty-eight — Rosalia lived in Corunna
with six children (aged 15, 6, 3 (twins), eighteen months, and
newly born), three servants, and a husband often absent and
without fixed employment. A second volume of Galician poetry,

Follas novas [New Leaves], her most important book, appeared
in 1880, eight years after it had first been announced. In 1876
Rosalia's young son fell from his chair and died four months later.
She was pregnant at the time and her daughter, bom some months
later, lived only two hours. Thereafter, Rosalia's health declined.
From 1879 onward she lived alone with her children and her
maid in a small Galician village far removed from literary life and
public affairs. Added to these unfavourable private circumstances,
aggravated by public events, was the personal animosity directed
towards her and Murguia. Murguia was attacked in the press
throughout the 1880s for his manners and ideas; one of his
principal assailants was Emilia Pardo Bazan. Rosalia, meanwhile,
was resolutely ignored. Althuogh she had published another novel
in Spanish, El primer loco [The First Madman] (1881), her fiction
received no critical attention.
In 1881 Rosalia published an article in the national press
describing an ancient custom in parts of Galicia: if a seaman came
to shore after a long time at sea the wife, daughter or sister of the
family with whom he stayed allowed him to share her bed. She
wrote, 'This custom will probably seem as strange to our readers
as it does to us, but for that very reason we have not hesitated
to make it known'.5 The article caused a terrific scandal in the
refined circles of Santiago and Corunna. As a result Rosalia swore
she would never write in Galician again. She wrote to Murguia:
not for three, or six, or nine thousand 'reales' will I ever write
anything again in our language, or even concern myself with
anything to do with our country. They dare to say I should
rehabilitate myself with respect to Galicia. Rehabilitate myself
for what? For doing everything I could possibly do for the
country's glory? (Obras en prosa, 1012).
She kept her word. In 1884 her final book of poetry, En las
orillas del Sar [On the Banks of the River Sar], was writ-
ten in Spanish, her first book of Spanish poetry to be pub-
lished in almost thirty years. Neither Follas novas nor En las
orillas del Sar would have been published, however, without
the assistance of the Galician emigrants living in Havana and
Buenos Aires. Follas novas appeared simultaneously in Havana
and Madrid and was paid for by the subscriptions of the emi-
grants, to whom it is dedicated. Rosalia was made 'Honorary
Member' of the Galician Centre in Havana that year. Over
twenty poems which were later included in the volume En
las orillas del Sar first appeared in the Buenos Aires press in
1883 thanks to a Galician emigrant in Argentina. These poems
were collected by Murguia to form a volume. Two years later,
virtually forgotten, Rosalia died of cancer at the age of forty-
eight. The Restoration of the monarchy and the failure of
the Republic had ushered in a period during which public
appreciation and recognition of her work had declined severely.
Her name would have disappeared altogether were it not for the
work of a small group of friends and Galician interest abroad.
It is significant that during the same period (from 1875 on) public
recognition of Emilia Pardo Bazan's work soared. Shortly after
Castro's death the Lyceum of Artisans in Corunna, whose President
was Pardo Bazan's husband, organized an event to commemorate
Rosalia's life and work. Emilia gave a speech but mentioned in
detail only Cantares gallegos because, she remarked, the 'poems
[written by Rosalia] which are liked and learned [ . . . ] are not
the poems which boast of being deep and cultured'. The educated
classes do not speak Galician, she continued; it has no future in a
modern Spanish state. Galician should be reserved for descriptions
of rural life. Follas novas were merely 'complaints quite common in
the sickly lyrical poetry of the last half-century'.6 Murguia accused
Pardo Bazan (who, like Rosalia, had published four novels at the
time) of relegating Rosalia's status to the level of local versifier, to
which Pardo Bazan aggressively replied. Unfortunately, Murguia
attacked Pardo Bazan's personality and feminist views rather than
her class prejudices. Murguia and Pardo Bazan became sworn
enemies to the extent that she would not support the setting up
of a Galician Academy in case her signature appeared next to his
and refused to contribute to a memorial to Rosalia. In Murguia's
view, Pardo Bazan extended her own interest in Galicia during
these years so that she, not Rosalia, would assume the role of local
bard. She was prevented from doing so, however, because she did
not speak Galician and had little sympathy for those who did.
After her death Rosalia de Castro's name acquired mythical
proportions in Galicia. For the emigrants she personified the mar-
tyred mother Galicia, the suffering country people, homesickness,

and revenge. In retaliation, the establishment portrayed her as a
weeping recluse, a saint or (more incongruously) a lamenting
virgin; her house-museum in Padron was decked out like a shrine.
Official versions of the poet's work deliberately blunted its political
edge. In the 1980s, with the revival of Galician nationalism and an
autonomous Galician government, Castro's social and cultural role
underwent major reassessment. Critics showed a belated interest
in her narrative. In the rest of Spain the importance of her
poetry had always been acknowledged, although not until the
first years of the twentieth century, some twenty years after her
death. As the great Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno
wrote in 1912:
In 1884 a volume of poetry [En las orillas del Sar] full of passion
appeared; the poems were written by a Galician woman. They
were not successful; they were criticised, for the sake of saying
something, for I don't know what technical defects, but the
truth is that [in those poems] a soul laid itself bare, (quoted in
Davies 1987, 427)
Castro is now considered the precursor of twentieth-century

poetry in Spain and the founder of modern Galician literature.
WORKS
Some of Rosalia's most feminist texts are her earliest, written
before she became involved with the nationalists. In 1858 she
published a piece of Romantic rhythmic prose entitled 'Lieders':
My lips have murmured only songs of freedom and independ-
ence, although all around me, since I was in the cradle, I have
heard the sound of chains that must imprison me for ever,
because a woman's heritage is the shackles of slavery [ . . . ]
But I am free [ . . . ] When the men of the world threaten me
with a look [ . . . ] ! laugh as they laugh [. . . ] I do not obey the
commands of those who are my equals. (Obras en prosa, 949-50)
Here, like Gomez de Avellaneda and Bohl de Faber, Castro claims

the high moral ground for women, 'Oh, woman,! [..] Why do men
pour their filth and excesses over you, scorning and deriding you
when you are exhausted' (OP 950). Her first novel, La hija del mar
(1859), an adventure story set amidst the the dramatic Romantic
seascapes of the Galician coast, in which a woman takes revenge
on an evil pirate, is replete with similar passages. In the prologue,
where Castro 'excuses' herself for the 'sin' of writing, she mentions
Father Feijoo (1676-1764) (as did Arenal and Pardo Bazan) as her
mentor, and several women writers, including St. Teresa and
Sappho, as well as Mme. de Stael and George Sand, literary mothers
who 'protested eternally against the vulgar idea that women should
only carry out their domestic duties'(OP, 11-12). Interestingly, she
does not mention Avellaneda or Bohl de Faber.
In La hija del mar, as in Bohl de Faber's La Gaviota, the
country people represent innocent virtue exposed to the vices of
commercial interests. The greed of an individual man (profiteering)
seriously damages a traditional fishing community, while the
fishermen are the true representatives of human community and
civilization despite their 'almost savage appearance'(OP, 29). The
Catalan trader-pirate, Alberto Ansot, is unscrupulous and perverse.
Despite his wealth and refinement he victimizes the poor and
rapes and abandons the women he encounters. However, unlike
Marisalada in La Gaviota, the spirited heroine of Castro's novel,
Teresa, is not seduced by the material benefits of the corrupt
world of the bourgeoisie. She saves herself and even reforms Ansot
temporarily.
More importantly, unlike the novels of Bohl de Faber and
Pardo Bazan, the world of vice and corruption in La hija del
mar is represented precisely by 'polite society, which hides the
most detestable defects' (OP, 81). Ansot, embodying the most
immoral aspects of this society, attempts to seduce Teresa's adopted
daughter, Esperanza, which leads the narrator to demand divine
and, more pointedly, political justice for poor women wronged
by rich men. She addresses the progressive 'young men of ardent
imagination and faith'(OP, 96) and asks for (working) women's
rights) to be included on their political agenda:
Oh Lord of justice [. . . ] Why do you not raise yourself against
the rich and powerful who oppress woman, who chain her with
chains much heavier than those in dungeons [ . . . ] Unhappy
creatures, disinherited beings who are dying in the mountains of
my land; beautiful and unfortunate women who only know lives
of servitude, leave your dear customs, which preserve the uses of

feudalism for ever [ . . . ] You men who spend your lives at the
devouring flame of politics [ . . . ] do not pronounce those hol-
low words 'civilization', 'freedom' [. . . ], look at Esperanza and
tell me what is your civilization, what is your freedom [ . . . ]?
Don't be selfish like men of the past! Remember Esperanza, that
is to say, woman - defenceless, poor, uneducated. (OP, 96)
In La Gaviota (1849) and in Pardo Bazan's La Tribuna (1883) a

poor woman aspires to middle class status (gained by means of a
sexual relationship with a man of a more affluent social class: the
Duke and Baltasar Sobrado). In both cases the heroine discards her
humble lifestyle and dons the accoutrements of the middle classes;
for both the attempt at social mobility leads to disaster and their
downfall. In La hija del mar the reverse takes place. When Teresa
decides to fight Ansot the moment is marked by her removing
her wealthy clothes and dressing in the rags of a fisherwoman.
Thus she reverts to her previous identity: by discarding the
dirtied clothes of the corrupt bourgeoisie she finds new strength
and redemption,
Here I am again, as I was before [ . . . ] ! , Teresa the orphan.
Teresa the fisherwoman, who stripped off the clothes of infamy
with which you covered her [. . . ] Silence!'- she added in a tone
which revealed indomitable will power, for the powerful spirit
of the woman had rebelled [ . . . ] 'This house is mine as much
as it is yours [ . . . ] ! am your legitimate wife and everything
you own belongs to me. But I am ashamed of it and I would
not lower myself to go before any person to claim the rights I
do not wish to have.' (OP, 114)
Teresa avenges the innocent by burning down Ansot's home.

Ansot is hanged and the women he had abandoned avenged.
Strangely, the novel ends with a moving lyrical piece in which
a mother laments the loss of her daughter and a daughter cries out
for her mother. This frustration of the mother-daugher relationship
may be read autobiographically, but it is foregrounded in an
exceptional way. It suggests that the most harmful damage done
in society is to separate a mother and her child. The narrator
repeatedly asks who the culprit is; the answer is trading, money,
corruption, and refined society.

The harsh conditions experienced by orphans, poor children,
and poor widows are brought to public attention in La hija del
mar. Echoing Gomez de Avellaneda in Sab, Rosalia mentions
Rousseau's ideas on the innate goodness of all human beings
corrupted by so-called civilization. Nevertheless, although she
idealizes Galicia and its landscape, she also presents a realistic
picture of the hard lives of its people who are shown to be
highly vulnerable to abuse, in particular by the Church. Their
defence, the novel suggests, is instruction and legal reform. Thus
Rosalia's view of the rural communities differs from that of Bohl de
Faber who intimates a desire to return to ancient feudal structures.
Both writers deplore the intrusion of bourgeois society in Spain
but while Rosalia looked forward to democratic reforms, Cecilia
harked back to the security of the past. Although Rosalia did not
mention Cecilia Bohl de Faber in the prologue to La hija del mar,
she did dedicate Cantares gallegos to the novelist, 'Because you
are a woman and the writer of novels with which I sympathise
greatly' (Poesias, 13). Rosalia added that she was grateful to Fernan
Caballero for having referred to Galicia without mockery. In many
ways Bohl de Faber's Cuentos y poesias populares andaluces [Popular
Andalusian Stories and Poems] (1859) is a forerunner of Cantares
gallegos, as was the Libra de los cantares [Book of Songs] (1852)
by Antonio Trueba, who also admired Bohl de Faber's work
(Davies 1987, 302).7
Castro sets out her cultural agenda in the prologue to Cantares
gallegos (written in Galician): to restore the reputation of Galicia,
'the humiliated province'; to demonstrate the beauty of the
Galician language in its literary form; and to bring to light the
customs, ways of thinking, and spirit of the Galician people.
The target of her complaints is the seat of the Spanish central
government, Castile; this was certainly a 'daring act' (Poesias,
15), as she noted.
The poems in Cantares gallegos are lively snippets of every-day
life, usually voiced by the peasants themselves in the form of popu-
lar love lyrics, descriptions of social events, and poems of social and
political protest. The love poems express the delicate thoughts and
emotions of young peasant girls and boys, particularly poignant
when they are about to emigrate and leave their loved ones.
Other poems describe dances and religious festivals, again from the
participants' points of view. Some poems are humorous: a young
seamstress asks a Saint to teach her to dance in return for her ear-
rings and necklace; a girl asks Saint Antonio to give her a man 'even
though he might be / as wee as a grain of maize' (Poesias, 65).
Other poems are subversive in their political message. A boy
laments having to leave Galicia because he is poor and 'my land
is not my own / even the sides of the road / where a man born
poor will walk / is given out on loan'(Poesias, 70). The poem which
caused most scandal was 'La Gaita Gallega'(The Galician Bagpipe)
which states the need for a regional autonomous government in
order to improve social conditions in Galicia and stem the wave of
emigration to South America:
Poor Galicia, Spanish

should never be your name
Spain has forgotten you
though you're beautiful just the same [ . . . ]
Galicia, you have no fatherland
you live in the world alone
and your large and fertile family,
in scattered throngs they roam. (Poesias, 128)
The nation (Galicia) is figured as the martyred mother who

is abused by an authoritarian Castile and whose progeny are
neglected.
Castro inscribed in Cantares gallegos gendered voices which
construct individual peasant identities, and in turn reveal aspects
of the loves and lives of young people in a rural community.
Some twenty years later, in Follas novas (1880), her second book of
Galician poetry, she focuses more on the experiences of the peasant
women. The prologue to this book is despondent, written by an
author who seems to have lost her early pluck. Rosalia writes about
women's 'innate weakness' for 'the hard work of meditation';
women engaged in thought might be able to 'deceive more
frivolous spirits [ . . . ] but not men of study and reflection' who
immediately perceive 'vulgarity', and there is nothing worse than
'vulgarity' in thought or art (Poesias, 160). Rosalia may be speaking
ironically here although the pessimistic tone of the text suggests
otherwise. Cantares gallegos, she points out, was written in 'days

of hope and youth' while at present she is writing 'in the midst of
all exiles' (Poesias, 161). In a poignant poem she wrote, 'they gossip
about me and exclaim: "There goes the madwoman, dreaming /
with the eternal spring of life [ . . . ] and soon, so soon, her hair
will be grey'" (Follas novas, Poesias, 370). Many poems voice her
own sadness, but they also reflect the sorrows in Galicia:
because there is so much suffering in this dear Galician land.
Whole books could be written about the everlasting misfortunes
suffered by our poor villagers and fisherman, the only people
who do any work in this country. I have seen and felt their pain
as if it were my own (Follas novas, Poesias, 162)
In Follas novas, the sections 'Of the Land' and 'The Widows of
the Living and the Widows of the Dead' are mainly concerned
with the problems of the Galician women: emigration, loneliness,
disillusion, crop failure, rising prices, hunger, and old age. 'Poor
thing! She's deaf, shows the wiles of an old woman to secure
food and a bed for the night (Poesias, 253); in 'My little house, my
little home' a woman tells how she scrapes together a meal from
cabbage leaves and water after having foraged for wood for a fire;
'With your sorrow on your back' (Poesias, 309), shows a woman
weeping for her man who has emigrated. This theme is recurrent
in many short poems, for example,
I will not tend the rose trees
he gave to me, or the doves,
let them wither as I dry
let them die as I die (Poesias, 289)
I wove my cloth alone
Alone I sowed my plot
Alone I go to the hills for wood
And I watch it burn in the hearth [ . . . ]
Little swallow who has flown with him
Across the waves of the sea
Little swallow, fly and fly and fly,
And tell me, where is he? (Poesias, 287)
The causes and effects of emigration are captured concisely in a
few lines,
It was dry at Christmas.
It rained on St.John's day.
In Galicia the hunger
Is sure to come this way.
With melancholic eyes
They stare out to the sea
In far away lands
Their bread they must seek. (Poesias, 289)
Particularly moving are the poems describing the plight of chil-
dren,
A child is trembling in the doorway damp . . .
With hunger and cold
His face has the stamp of an angel's
Still lovely, but shrivelled and dulled.
In rags, with no shoes, on the cobbles
His poor tiny feet
Which the frosts of winter have wounded
Are standing in fear
For it seems as though they're cut
With the knives' cold steel.
Like a dog without kennel or owner,
Shunned by them all
In a corner he crouches, trembling,
On the stone stair wall.
Like a lily he wilts and withers
An innocent drooping his golden head
Exhausted with hunger
On the stones he rests his face.
And while he is sleeping,
Sad image of misery and pain,
The wealthy lords of the earth, Oh Pharisees!
Come and go, 'the Almighty Lord to adore'
Thus the rich calm their thirsty greed.
And the innocent orphan ignore (Poesias, 247-8)
About a third of the poems in Follas novas articulate social concerns.

Many are directed against the established Church, others against

'those who have an honourable reputation in town' (Poesias, 190).
The victims of this unjust society are invariably women, children
and the defenceless poor, although some women, as in 'Justice by
hand' take revenge. In this poem a 'woman who has been raped and
whose children have starved to death cuts the 'honourable' culprits'
throats with a scythe.
A large proportion of the poems in this moving and dramatic
book voice the poet's own reflections: her sadness, confusion,
nostalgia for the past and, above all, her anger and hatred. Poems
such as 'A foreigner in her homeland', 'Silence!', 'They barked
against me, she who walked', 'When I think you've gone' are
some of the most poignant and disturbing in the Galician language
and undermine any attempt to portray Rosalia de Castro as a
pathetic recluse.
Returning to Rosalia's work in prose, 'Las Literatas' (Women
Writers), published in the provincial press in 1866, purportedly
written to warn an aspiring authoress of the disadvantages faced
by women writers, offers a vivid picture of the social conditioning
in operation at the time. To write and publish, claims Rosalia,
is considered a vulgar pursuit. In addition, while some women
writers are famous like George Sand, for the vast majority writing
is a torment. You are criticised constantly: if you express an opinion
you are a know-all; if you remain silent you are disdainful; if you
are modest you are thought stupid; if you enjoy yourself you are
ostentatious; if you distance yourself from society you attract atten-
tion. Women discuss all your tiniest defects and men tell you they
would rather marry a donkey. Male writers order you to darn your
husband's socks. If your writing is considered good then it is your
husband's. Above all, people think you dominate your husband and
deride him too (Obras en prosa, 954-57). In other words, the social
consequences for women writers are not inconsiderable.
Rosalia explored this theme further in her novel El caballero de
las botas azules (1867) which is set in an urban context, Madrid. It
received a flurry of critical attention; Fernan Caballero wrote to
Rosalia to congratulate her. El caballero is a strange tale. A magical
knight, the Duke of Glory, rich and charismatic, appears in the
capital with the intention of changing people's ways of thinking
and lifestyle. Every woman wants to meet him, and yet he criticises
women mercilessly. He constantly refers to the uselessness of

aristocratic and middle class women which, he believes, is the
source of all social malaise. His solutions are simple. First, women
should be educated. Second, they should fulfil some productive
purpose in life, independently. Third, they should forget romantic
fantasies.
When Lady Vinca Rua, 'the queen of fashion', complains of
an exhausting lifestyle (visits, changes of dress, evenings at the
theatre) the Duke exclaims, 'A woman who knows nothing better
than to be driven around in a carriage, sit herself down in an
armchair, and say she is bored [ . . . ] will never be anything
other than a useless entity; a cardboard figure'.8 Vinca Rua is
astounded at his suggestion that she should spin wool, as did
queens of old, to make stockings, and is so upset by the Duke's
derision that she establishes an 'Economic Soiree' for wealthy
ladies who, dressed in overalls and diamond tiaras, knit socks
for charity. When it is suggested that if they sell their tiaras
they might make even more money the 'Soiree' is abandoned.
The Duke encourages women such as the aristocrats Countess
La Pampa and Casimira, appreciated for their beauty rather than
their intelligence, to fulfil their intellectual potential. The lesson
they learn from the Duke is to resist criticism; he explains:
I see that instead of being strong like the oak you are weak like
the withering leaf [. . . ] women, in the East and the West [. . . ]
will only conquer when they know how to resist [ . . . ] These
poor daughters of slavery love freedom, the greatest gift in life,
but they have not understood yet how to procure it. (311-12)
Other social practices, such as the traditional upbringing of young
girls to be ignorant virgins on their wedding day, are derided. The
ideal wife, according to battle-axe school mistress, Dona Dorotea,
should never 'dare to raise her eyes' from the ground (107). This
is how her charge, Mariquita, has been educated. Dona Dorotea
assures the prospective husband, 'she doesn't know anything about
anything [ . . . ] Blind she is, as blind as a new born kitten [ . . . ]
What else could you ask for?' (107). The novel also attacks arranged
marriages. Women should enter into marriage with their eyes wide
open because 'men can marry many times; they marry the toga,
politics, science, or a Minister's portfolio, but women only marry
once in their life' (211).

The social sector which is most lampooned by the Duke are
the professional middle classes: the wives and daughters of doctors,
lawyers, and army officers. These women, who employ servants to
raise their children, could put their spare time to use. Traditional
patriarchal views, argues the Duke, are no longer relevant in
modern society; women must work. But middle-class women are
shown to be interested in one thing only, to marry their daughters
into the aristocracy. They all live above their means in order to
keep up appearances and they are shocked at the idea of having
to work. When the Duke suggests that the young ladies 'should
work [ . . . ] and leave behind this pretence of wealth which hides
shameful misery and a ridiculous and uselss pride' (246), and earn
money by knitting hats, their reaction is explosive, 'Jesus, how
awful! Knit hats! Work as if we were miserable working class
women! We don't need to work in order to eat' (245). The moral
is obvious: 'so many people exhausted by work and poverty; so
many others exhausted by boredom and leisure [ . . . ] Such a
calamity' (294). Pardo Bazan identified exactly the same problem
in her novels some twenty years later. Between the 1860s and 1890s
attitudes hardly changed.
The novel also mocks women's slavish imitation of foreign
fashions but, unlike Fernan Caballero, there is less concern to
contrast Spanish national characteristics with the Anglo-French.
An English ambassador mixes with Spanish high society (nobility,
generals, bankers, and diplomats); he is typically a red-haired,
over-weight and arrogant lord but he is harmless. More interesting
is the ironic portrayal of the Cuban lady, Marcelina la Blonda,
who - we might speculate - is modelled on Gertrudis Gomez de
Avellaneda. Marcelina speaks constantly of 'her adored America, in
a loud voice, as if she were talking of Heaven itself with its gods,
angels, archangels and seraphim — South American ladies, of course
- and Cuban poetesses, amongst whose number she was honoured
to include herself (110).
El caballero de las botas azules should be read, then, as an ironic
social critique focusing on the world of women and the corrupt
literary circles, press, and publishing industry of the capital. In this
way Rosalia scrutinized those sectors of urban society with which
she had had some contact. The Duke's verdict is that Spanish
society is decadent and ripe for radical reform: professional men

are forced by their silly wives and daughters to live beyond their
means; consequently, they overcharge their customers and are
corrupt. Changing women's attitudes would play a large part in
preparing the ground for revolution. The novel was published one
year before the liberal Revolution of 1868, which suggests that its
message would not have been lost on a contemporary readership.
Rosalia's final book, En las orillas del Sar (1884), continues this
social protest. The abandonment of children, emigration, and the
cutting down of the Galician forests are key issues. Poems such
as 'The Oaks' and 'I will never forget' are rousing nationalist,
ecological protests calling for the revenge of 'the warlike bagpipe'
on land speculators (Poesias, 333). More importantly, perhaps, is the
way Castro's poetry reveals a woman's inner thoughts, doubts and
anxieties, at a moment when sincerity and emotional engagement
were not encouraged. A woman writer such as Emilia Pardo Bazan
would carefully and assiduously project a rational, albeit controver-
sial, public self; Cecilia Bohl de Faber attempted to keep the public
and the private apart; Gomez de Avellaneda was not afraid to make
public the literary expression of her feelings, though their impact
was tempered by the Romantic formulae she appropriated. Castro's
subjective poetry is not declamatory. It is subdued, confessional,
intimate, almost embarrassingly so to the reading public of the
1880s. The tone of much of her later poetry, like that of her
English contemporary, Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), is dark and
despairing centering on death, resignation and lost love. She did not
respect the poetic formalities of the time either, but wrote in loose,
flexible verse forms with varying, original cadences and rhythms
suiting her personal preferences rather than those stipulated by the
Academy. Hence, the Academy's remarks in 1887 that the poems
in En las orillas del Sar suffered from 'not a few artistic slips, formal
extravagances and metaphysical nebulosities, generally due to a
desire to imitate the German school, which is not always within the
capabilites of Spanish women' (quoted in Davies 1987, 424). The
most poignant poems are those which are clearly autobiographical:
'Banks of the Sar', 'The Sad Ones', and 'Those who through their
tears'. In these and others an intimate bond develops between
the voice and the landscape, a landscape which reflects back to
the woman her ambiguous notions of self-identity, a love-hate
relationship between the imagined self and the Galician other. So,
in the poem 'They say that plants don't speak' she portrays herself
as a 'madwoman, dreaming of the eternal spring of life' when soon
her hair 'will be grey and the meadows covered in frost'. Yet
even here she is defiant: 'Stars and fountains and flowers, don't
complain about my dreams / without them how could I admire
you, without them how could I live?' (OS, Poesias, 370). Rosalia's
feelings for herself were conflated with those for her country.


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3

The Madwoman, Dreaming:

of her writings she would aim to articulate the worldview of the

Every day, more hours of anguish were brought to our

Rosalia's contacts with a group of progressive students studying at

In the prologue she praises the novels of George Sand (men-

As if in reply to this challenge, Rosalia's first Galician poem

It was in this buoyant atmosphere of optimism that Castro's

without fixed employment. A second volume of Galician poetry,

tyred mother Galicia, the suffering country people, homesickness,

Castro is now considered the precursor of twentieth-century

Here, like Gomez de Avellaneda and Bohl de Faber, Castro claims

of servitude, leave your dear customs, which preserve the uses of

In La Gaviota (1849) and in Pardo Bazan's La Tribuna (1883) a

Teresa avenges the innocent by burning down Ansot's home.

corruption, and refined society.

Poor Galicia, Spanish

The nation (Galicia) is figured as the martyred mother who

otherwise. Cantares gallegos, she points out, was written in 'days

About a third of the poems in Follas novas articulate social concerns.

Many are directed against the established Church, others against

women mercilessly. He constantly refers to the uselessness of

once in their life' (211).

society is decadent and ripe for radical reform: professional men

<i>Spanish Women's Writing 1849-1996 : Spanish Women's Writing, 1849-1996</i>, edited by

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