Women and the Law: Carmen de Burgos, an Early Feminist (Monografías A)

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Colección Támesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFIAS, 221

WOMEN AND THE LAW CARMEN DE BURGOS, AN EARLY FEMINIST

This study in the interdisciplinary field of law and literature analyses the representation of law in the work of twentieth-century Spanish writer Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932). Drawing on Anglo-American legal theory and Spanish historical practice, it argues that her narratives of legal critique were used as a means of political propaganda, in which she introduced the question of women’s right into the public domain. Burgos can be considered one of the most important proponents of the feminist movement in the leadup to the Second Republic and presents a particulary interesting case study, since she combined her writing career with a political agenda. Given the remarkable similarities between Burgos’s critical analysis and recent feminist legal theory, her writings are still disturbingly relevant today. This study also explores the relationship between melodrama as a genre of manichean worldviews and law as a system of binary oppositions and discusses Burgos’s subversion of the former as a means to criticise the latter. ANJA LOUIS is lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield.

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ANJA LOUIS

WOMEN AND THE LAW CARMEN DE BURGOS, AN EARLY FEMINIST

TAMESIS

© Anja Louis 2005 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Anja Louis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2005 by Tamesis, Woodbridge

ISBN 1 85566 121 7

Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

This publication is printed on acid-free paper from camera-ready copy provided by Anja Louis Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

Justice versus Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2

Equality versus Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3

Rights versus Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4

Melodrama and Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Works cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The intellectual and personal debt owed to others is enormous in a project that takes over one´s life for such a long time and I feel privileged to have had the support of so many people. Everybody listed below contributed — often unbeknownst to themselves — to varying degrees and at different stages; their help and encouragement enriched both the study and its author in ways that are often difficult to articulate and sometimes impossible to repay. Undoubtedly, the biggest debt is owed to Jo Labanyi, directora sin par. If this study has any intellectual rigour, it is mainly due to Jo’s stubborn belief in my abilities, her refusal to let me settle for mediocrity and her patience during periods of my slowness of thought. For that my eternal gratitude. I am also particularly indebted to Alison Sinclair, whose genuine interest in both my professional and private self has been a vital source of support. Sincere thanks to Nicola Lacey (LSE) for making me feel that this is an interesting project. Piyel Haldar (School of Law, Birkbeck College) for advising me not to ask ‘what is law’ and much less ‘what is justice’. The whole School of Law at Birkbeck for their kindness and encouragement to ‘that woman from the Spanish department’. Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca for basic lessons on Spanish law and gender discourse at the beginning of my research. Montserrat Lunati for her encouragement throughout. Bill McNeil (Griffith University, Australia) for his serious interest in young Turks at many a Critical Legal Studies conference. Many thanks also to the staff at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut PK, Berlin, and at the Biblioteca del Congreso de los Diputados, Madrid. My bookselling contacts in Spain were all very supportive, my thanks to all of them, and especially to Elizabeth Feigenbaum, Jaime Lucía, Juan Mateos and the Fàbregues family (Angels, Joan and Sebastián) who were always ‘at my service’. Infinite thanks to the Grant & Cutler community for providing a home when I first came to London and for encouraging me to leave home when I had grown out of it. Lala Isla, amiga sin par, who I will never be able to thank enough for her friendship and her help in all things Hispanic. Paloma Castañeda for assistance whenever Burgos resisted easy categorisation. My friends in Madrid for unstinting support, genuine interest and, most importantly, countless lessons on Spanish culture: Ariadna Allés (also for editorial help), Simón Bernal, Susana Bertuzzi, Terry Berne, Fernando González, Jesús Lara, Angeles Marin (also for help at nervous-breakdown stage), Samuel Muñoz, Ana Rubio, María José Saiz

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and Fernando Tafalla. Warmest thanks to all my friends at Suffolk University in Madrid, particularly Leslie Croxford for his unwavering belief in my abilities and Elizabeth Baile for providing “you-can-do-it” kind of solidarity. I am also grateful to everybody at New York University in Madrid, especially Anjouli Janzon, jefa sin par and soulmate, for her lively curiosity about my work and her sensitivity and understanding in times of difficulty. My lovely students at both institutions for so much fun and so many lessons they taught their teacher. Astrid Abelen, Anja Brauers and Kate Burton, my three musketeers, for fighting with me against vicious enemies and windmills. Patiently listening to my ‘feminist nonsense’ they brought the ‘real-life’ perspective into my analyses. Kate Burton, fountain of knowledge, also for innumerable editorial nightshifts and her patience with the author. Infinite thanks to my cousins: Sven Busche for practical help and making me laugh so much. Nicola Nonhoff for always ‘jumping’ — in true family fashion — whenever I asked her to. Deborah Nonhoff, abogada sin par, without whom the task of getting to grips with legal thinking would have been even more daunting. The many discussions we had about law and literature have enormously enriched my views on the complexity of law; not to mention her moral support against the trials of life. My sister Britta for her love, her patience, her friendship in times of acute crisis and for the many discussions enlightening me about grass-root feminist mobilisation. My father for being the first feminist in my life, for his genuine interest in this project and for providing the proverbial ‘shoulder’. My brother Jan for his love, his patience, for believing in me and for sharing his pertinent observations about the academic world with me. Dagmar Diehl for putting things into perspective a couple of times — in her inimitable fashion — and for all her practical help. My brother Stefan for being there whenever needed. My mother for her unflagging support despite the fact that she would have preferred a grandchild rather than a book and for her outrageous sense of humour at times when I was not amused. The one and only Efraín Sánchez Cabra for believing in me more than I ever will, for getting me through this one yet again and for declaring one Saturday morning that law cannot possibly be that unjust.

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When a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. [...] Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it. (Woolf 1992: 4-5)

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To my parents for letting me do everything my way. To my family and my friends who have always been there for me, even when I didn’t want them to be. To my students for teaching me so many things.

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Introduction Law is like love: Romantic in concept, but the actual practice gives you a yeast infection (Ally McBeal, 1997: Pilot episode).

Carmen de Burgos Seguí, if known at all by posterity, is mainly remembered as an author of popular novellas and, to a lesser extent, as a feminist. This study in the interdisciplinary field of law and literature aims to contribute to a reading of Burgos as a champion of first wave feminism and argues that her feminist fiction can only usefully be analysed in conjunction with her feminist essays, in particular La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a). As I shall demonstrate, the events narrated in the novellas discussed encapsulate many of the ideas presented in Burgos’s theoretical works. I suggest that Burgos’s narratives of legal critique were used as a means of political propaganda, in which she introduced the question of women’s rights into the public domain. To this end, this introduction first contextualises Burgos’s feminism and then gives an overview of her life and work. This is further contextualised by an overview of the publishing developments of which Burgos took advantage, as well as a concise discussion of melodrama as a genre. Finally this introduction also supplies an account of Spanish law relevant to this study, a discussion of the functions of law and legal subjectivity.

FIRST WAVE FEMINISM The intellectual origins of feminism can be traced back to the Enlightenment when, for the first time in history, divine omnipotence was rejected and replaced by the power of reason. By 1789 there was a considerable amount of literature demanding equal education, equal rights to work and equal political rights for women, ‘justifying these claims on the grounds that all human beings were equally endowed with reason’ (Evans 1977: 15). In 1792 Olympe de Gouges’ Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman were published, both basing their demand for rights on the fact that women are equally intelligent beings and thus, they argued, male dominance is arbitrary (Evans 1977: 16). The nineteenth century saw the rise of organised feminist movements in the United States and most

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European countries. However, as Evans rightly points out: Intellectual history cannot by itself explain the growth of feminism in the nineteenth century; people do not, whatever the rationalists of the Enlightenment thought, commit themselves to political action and suffer the scorn, contempt, ridicule and hatred which the feminists were forced to endure, merely out of intellectual conviction (Evans 1977: 23).

Evans, amongst others, argues that with industrialisation and urbanisation the feminist movements grew stronger, since unmarried middle-class women began to demand admission to the professions, which would guarantee them a salary corresponding to the social status of their family (Evans 1977: 23-24).1 Furthermore, throughout Europe women became increasingly aware of the fact that they were denied basic civil rights. In most countries they did not have legal personality, i.e. they were minors before the law.2 Hence it is not surprising that first wave feminism was preoccupied with legal rights, most notably the vote, although, as Evans notes, their point of departure was more immediate: The aims of feminist movements were initially primarily economic in character. The early feminists demanded access for unmarried women to the professions and the right of married women to control their own property. They backed these demands by fighting for improvements in girls’ secondary education and the admission of women to universities, in order to secure the qualifications necessary for engagement in professional activities and to attain the level of education necessary to manage their own domestic and financial affairs. As these demands were conceded, [...] middle-class women began to move into professions, above all into teaching (Evans 1977: 232).

While the aim was to become independent, the means to do this was almost entirely dependent on legal reform. Evans also suggests that the moderate and radical feminists were often so divided regarding how to achieve equality that the only focus they could all agree on, amongst the many rights they demanded, was the vote.3 Once that was achieved, the momentum of first wave feminism was lost: ‘By the 1930s classical feminism in Europe, America and Australasia had come to the end of its historical trajectory’ (Evans 1977: 232). Evans also notes how surprisingly similar the aims and convictions of feminists were in the different countries and explains that all feminist movements observed their fellow organisations in other parts of the world. What is more, in many countries

1 See also Fagoaga (1985: 16), Folguera Crespo (1997: 457-461) and Franco Rubio (1982: 243-245), who argue similarly with regard to feminism in Spain. 2 ‘Legal personality is the sum total of a person’s legal rights and duties’ (Curzon 1994: 285). 3 For more details on how Spanish feminists could not agree even on the topic of the vote, see Fagoaga (1985).

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international feminist organisations were founded partly to give their own movement an ‘air of internationalism’ (Evans 1977: 247), and, more importantly, to give themselves confidence ‘in the inevitability of ultimate victory’ (Evans 1977: 252). In the case of Spain, social change in general and feminism in particular were less effective than in other European countries. Geraldine Scanlon argues that the delayed arrival of Spanish feminism stems from the lack of influence of the Enlightenment period and the backlash of Catholic dogma against the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution (Scanlon 1986: 6). She also maintains that: las fuertes tensiones políticas y sociales en España perjudicaron el desarrollo del feminismo en el siglo XX. En otros lugares, las feministas de diferentes opiniones políticas consiguieron unir sus fuerzas para la causa de la emancipación, pero semejante colaboración fue imposible en España. [...] El movimiento se debatió, por tanto, entre la indiferencia de la izquierda y las ambiciones de la derecha, y, en consecuencia, consiguió muy poco (Scanlon 1986: 11).

Folguera Crespo distinguishes between different kinds of feminism, most importantly, Catholic, moderate and radical feminism. While the former saw the key function of women as their reproductive role, the last two fought, in varying degrees, for equal rights (Folguera Crespo 1997: 487). Mary Nash argues that, while a small number of women led the feminist struggle, the vast majority supported the status quo (Nash 1994: 155-156). Scanlon includes Burgos, alongside Margarita Nelken and Clara Campoamor, in the category of women who publicly fought for social and legal reform: Además de la actividad colectiva de las organizaciones femeninas, hombres y mujeres exigían individualmente una reforma, destacándose en especial la actividad de Margarita Nelken, Clara Campoamor y Carmen de Burgos. Carmen de Burgos abogó por la causa de la reforma legal no sólo en sus artículos periodísticos, sino también en su labor literaria; su relato El artículo 438 es un apasionado alegato propagandístico (Scanlon 1986:139).

Folguera Crespo also makes special mention of Carmen de Burgos and the Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas: El feminismo de Carmen de Burgos se encuentra en una posición intermedia entre un feminismo burgués y un feminismo obrero. La reivindicación del derecho al voto, la igualdad en el trabajo y la exigencia del principio de igual salario para igual trabajo, serán algunos de los presupuestos incluidos en su ideario (Folguera Crespo 1997: 489).

Contextualising Burgos’s work a few points can be established: firstly, regardless of the success or size of Spain’s feminist movements, Burgos can be considered one of the most distinguished proponents of Spanish feminism in the

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lead-up to the Second Republic. As I hope to demonstrate throughout the study, at the beginning of her career Burgos was a moderate feminist, becoming increasingly radical by the 1920s. Secondly, in line with international first wave feminism, she strongly believed in the urgency of legal reform, manifested most notably in her life-long campaigns for divorce and the vote. Finally, as President of both the Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas and the Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas, Burgos understood the importance of both national and international organised feminism.

BURGOS’S LIFE AND WORK Carmen de Burgos’s life was as melodramatic as her fiction. Yet, unlike her heroines who are invariably victimised women, Burgos herself was a feminist, always determining the course of her own life. The beginning of her life, however, was rather conventional. Born in 1867 into a bourgeois family in Almería, she had a sheltered and comfortable upbringing: ‘En esta tierra mora, en mi inolvidable Rodalquilar, se formó libremente mi espíritu y se desarrolló mi cuerpo. Nadie me habló de Dios ni las leyes, y yo me hice mis leyes y me pasé sin Dios’ (Burgos 1909a: 42). Despite her bourgeois education Burgos, from an early age onwards, ignored two bastions of patriarchal society: religion and the law. In 1882 she fell in love with Arturo Álvarez Bustos, a local journalist and poet. Despite family opposition and the fact that he was fifteen years older than her, she married him around 1883, this being the only socially acceptable form of escape from paternal guardianship. As for many of her heroines, married life was a rude awakening for Burgos. Her husband turned out to be an alcoholic who showed little, if any, respect for his wife. Due to his alcoholism, she was obliged to become the bread-winner and virtually take over his work as a typesetter on his father’s newspaper. Ironically, this experience gave her both financial independence from her husband — which would later become her first stepping stone towards leaving him — and her first experience of journalism. She stayed unhappily married for seventeen years, which is, without doubt, the source of her harsh criticism of marriage in all her work and the catalyst for her life-long struggle for the modernisation of the divorcio legislation. During these years the couple had four children, of whom only the last survived. It was the death of her son Arturo in 1894, aged 8 months, that was the turning point in the relationship, leading her to end this unbearable situation. Since she had to do this without any family support, her only option was to educate herself. In 1894 she enrolled on a teacher training course and, after years of studying, she finally graduated as a teacher in 1900. An early example of a single mother, she soon decided to move to Madrid with her daughter in order to start a new life of self-determination. Once in Madrid she initially supported herself and her daughter through teaching. After a few preliminary attempts with articles in El Globo and La

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Correspondencia de España in 1902, in 1903 she became the first redactora of the newly-founded progressive newspaper Diario Universal and started writing daily columns in it (Lectura para la mujer) covering everything from fashion, health and needlework through political events to outright feminist articles. In short, the column — almost always prominently situated on the front page of the paper — informed women about everything which could possibly interest them. Writing under the pseudonym Colombine4 she quickly made a name for herself and became established as a journalist. In 1903 she caused a big stir with a survey of the divorce question, closely followed by another survey on female suffrage (1906). In 1906 she moved from Diario Universal to the liberal newspaper Heraldo de Madrid. The newspaper announced her joining as follows: La notable escritora Carmen de Burgos, que ha popularizado el pseudónimo de Colombine, entra á formar parte de la Redacción del HERALDO, en cuyas columnas tratará de asuntos interesantes para la mujer. La sección Femeninas es una de las permanentes, creadas en el HERALDO al aumentar éste su lectura, poniéndose á la altura de los grandes diarios de Europa. [...] Por lo mismo estimamos de importancia el concurso constante de Colombine, y le anunciamos seguros de que él complacerá al gran público que apoya al HERALDO (Heraldo de Madrid 13 February 1906: 1).

She was also the first Spanish female war correspondent during the SpanishMoroccan War (1909-1925), as well as during the First World War, which broke out while she was travelling in Europe. Burgos was often funded by government grants to extend her studies abroad and thus travelled through most of Europe, Argentina, Mexico and Cuba. In 1906 her estranged husband died, improving her civil status from separated wife to respected widow. In 1908 she started a relationship with Ramón Gómez de la Serna which was to last twenty years until its melodramatic conclusion when she discovered that he had had a brief affair with her daughter. When they met Colombine was already a famous figure while the much younger Gómez de la Serna was almost unknown. They were both very active members of the literary establishment, each publishing and editing literary journals while Burgos also organised tertulias in her house. For many years they worked together at her home, enriching each other’s work and becoming ‘one of the most modern, productive relationships in Spanish literary history’ (Davies 1998: 120). In 1921 Carmen de Burgos founded the Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas to

4 See Castañeda (1994: 35), where she explains that the editor of Diario Universal, Augusto Suárez de Figueroa gave her the job of redactora as well as her pen-name: ‘Figueroa también decide que cambie su nombre. Nace Colombine, seudónimo que la identificará durante toda su carrera, si bien ella en nada se parece a la frágil y voluble marioneta de la Commedia dell’Arte. Carmen es fuerte, recia, emprendedora.’

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demand women’s suffrage and two years later she became President of the Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas. Burgos herself explains that: En 1921, la “Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas” y la “Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas”, convencidas de la justicia de la causa femenina y de que nada existe en la Constitución española que se oponga al voto, acudió a las Cortes a presentar su demanda y su programa de vindicación de todos los derechos civiles y políticos. Grupos de mujeres de todas las clases sociales repartieron el manifiesto por la calle y lo presentaban en el Congreso y el Senado, realizando así el primer acto público de las sufragistas españolas (Burgos 1927a: 283).

Concha Fagoaga rightly points out that, strictly speaking, it was not the first public act but the first time the suffragists went to the streets and distributed leaflets, the first time photographs of them were published in the press, and the first time that ‘el Heraldo llega a calificar el acto como “el amanecer de un serio movimiento feminista” que había sorprendido a los propios diputados’ (Fagoaga 1985: 153). Given Burgos’s involvement in both feminist groups, it seems safe to assume that from 1921 onwards she became increasingly involved in politics, primarily through the issue of the vote. In 1930 she joined the Partido Republicano Radical Socialista (one of the victorious parties in the elections of the following year), only to break party discipline and support Clara Campoamor of the Partido Radical in favour of female suffrage. According to Davies, by the end of her life, her worldview ‘was anticlerical, antimonarchist, socialist (but not marxist), and pacifist’ (Davies 1998: 123). Her death in 1932 was, similar to her whole life, tinged with melodrama. While giving a public speech she collapsed with heart failure. According to newspaper reports her last words were: ‘¡Muero feliz, porque muero dentro del pleno triunfo republicano! ¡Viva la República! [...] Señores: griten ustedes conmigo ¡viva la República!’ (Heraldo de Madrid 9 October 1932: 1). The Unión Republicana Femenina praised Burgos in an obituary and demanded public recognition of her life’s work: Una ilustre precursora de las actuales realizaciones feministas en España, ya como periodista, como escritora y como organizadora infatigable de nobles empresas femeninas, laboró toda su vida y hasta el instante de su muerte, por los derechos y por los ideales que la República ha venido a consagrar. En consideración a estos singulares méritos y a la alta categoría de escritora de la insigne mujer que acaba de rendir su último aliento en un viva a la República, la Unión Republicana Femenina, acogiendo un deseo de su presidenta, Clara Campoamor, acordó por unanimidad solicitar del Ayuntamiento de Madrid que de una calle de esta capital al nombre preclaro de Carmen de Burgos (El Liberal 13 October 1932: 12).

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To date there is no street in Madrid named after her. Much of Carmen de Burgos’s work is autobiographical.5 Her sheltered Andalusian childhood, her unhappy marriage, her travels, her experiences as a war correspondent, and her feminist and Republican convictions are all fictionalised in her novellas and novels. Her total output consists of some 160 titles. This includes some 120 novels and novellas, as well as travel accounts, translations, literary criticism, books about fashion, beauty, needlework, and other manuals. Additionally, she published a vast number of newspaper articles throughout her life. At the beginning of her career she was a writer with little overt interest in feminist issues. Her first four novellas, published in El Cuento Semanal, were quite traditional short stories in a costumbrista style without feminist overtones. It is also interesting to note that her work is very varied. A woman who as early as 1903 took the divorce question into the public domain and who in 1906 introduced the debate on female suffrage to her readers, would also publish what today would be classified as self-help manuals such as Moderno tratado de labores (1904b), La mujer en el hogar (1909d), El arte de seducir (1916a), ¿Quiere usted conocer los secretos del tocador? (1917e) or El tesoro de la belleza (1927b). One would understand the need to do so at the beginning of her career, but as the dates of publication show she published, for example, El tesoro de la belleza (1927b) the very same year as La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a), at a time when she was one of the most wellknown writers of contemporary Spain and, according to Davies, earned ‘a sizeable salary’ (Davies 1998: 121). Davies also states that, due to the increased production of literature, ‘authors — including women — became professionals able to make a decent living from their writing’ (Davies 1998: 118). However, in the case of Burgos there was a price for this: as shown above, she had to publish works that perpetuated a female stereotype. Almost all of Burgos’s fiction has female protagonists, yet apart from a few notable exceptions the heroines are, by and large, the powerless victims of a hostile male world. As we will see in the discussion of melodrama later, Burgos’s representation of women characterises them as victims, which is, paradoxically, totally opposed to the vision of women presented in her feminist essays. Burgos’s life and work have to be considered against the backdrop of a fastchanging Spain. The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the transition from a monarchical system to the proclamation of the Second Republic. Due to an increasing literacy rate, the potential readership grew considerably and there was unprecedented demand for reading material, which completely redefined the relationship between writer and the reading public. Burgos took advantage for feminist purposes of one of the biggest publishing events of her time, namely the conversion of fiction into an article of mass

5

For an extensive overview of the entirety of Burgos’s work, see Núñez Rey (1992).

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consumption on an unprecedented scale through the publication of cheap popular novellas in pamphlet form, which set out to satisfy the demands of, and to educate, a growing reading public. The publishing world underwent a drastic modification and became ever more dependent on market forces. Research into this phenomenon has mainly centred on El Cuento Semanal (1907-1912), generally seen as the first weekly literary magazine on the Spanish market.6 Its publication sparked off an unprecedented number of weekly subscription series with varying success, the most important of which were: Los Contemporáneos, El Libro Popular, La Novela Corta, La Novela Semanal, La Novela de Hoy and La Novela Mundial. The contributors to these series included renowned writers (Pérez Galdós, Pardo Bazán, Picón, Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Unamuno and Benavente) as well as those whose emerging reputation and popularity were inextricably linked to the magazine (Pérez de Ayala, Miró, Martínez Sierra, Noel, Espina, Insúa, Mata, García Sanchiz and Hoyos y Vinent). Burgos was one of the first contributors to El Cuento Semanal; her first four novellas, El tesoro del castillo (1907), Senderos de vida (1908c), En la guerra (1909b) and El honor de la familia (1911a), were published in the above series and hence shared its enormous success. Granjel suggests that the print-runs for El Cuento Semanal and Los Contemporáneos were between 50,000 and 60,000, whereas La Novela Corta and La Novela Semanal had print-runs of between 100,000 and 200,000 (Granjel 1968a: 478, 1968b: 15). The illustrations that accompany the text assume a less educated readership, since one can almost follow the plot by looking exclusively at the pictures. The purported aim of the publishers, not only to satisfy demand but also to educate an increasing reading public, is most obviously expressed in the editorial statement ‘Nuestro Propósito’ in the second issue of La Novela Corta. José de Urquía, the editor, explains that: Esta es la verdadera manera de hacer patria, de elevar el nivel cultural del país, de dignificar al obrero. Al obrero español, que si bien está organizado para su completa redención, le faltaba este pan espiritual. La cultura, bajo una forma no pedagógica, severa, doctrinal para la que no está preparado, sino bajo una apariencia amena o frívola, algo así como esas maravillosas comedias de Jacinto Benavente, que lo dicen todo sin decir nada.[...] Hace tiempo, los editores, a través de sus publicaciones de carácter popular — semanarios y revistas — vienen persiguiendo un noble ideal estérilmente. Poner en contacto al vulgo con los grandes escritores (Urquía 1916: 1).

Sáinz de Robles quotes Pérez Galdós (without date or bibliographical details), who allegedly summarised the whole phenomenon with the following words: Poco, muy poco leían los españoles de mi tiempo. Una edición de dos mil ejemplares tardaba en venderse...¡que sé yo el tiempo! Y el precio de los mejo-

6

For an extensive analysis of El Cuento Semanal, see Magnien (1986).

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res libros era irrisorio: una, dos pesetas, tres... Ahora, vosotros, en plena juventud [...] conseguís tiradas de cinco, de seis mil ejemplares, y las agotáis en menos de un año. Habéis logrado “el milagro” de que el pueblo se apasione por las novelas con calidad literaria. De rechazo nos habéis beneficiado a los novelistas de mi tiempo, que ya también vendemos bastante más... ¡Yo os estoy muy agradecido, muy agradecido! (Sáinz de Robles 1966: 111)

It is important here to recognise that Pérez Galdós considers the novellas quality literature. According to him, the promotion of popular fiction feeds back into increased consumption of high-class literature. As far as he is concerned, mass culture and elite culture are not separate phenomena but interrelate with each other. Hence it was so important that high-class writers wrote for these publications.

LAW AND LITERATURE Both law and literature construct narratives that are, at best, artificial and, at times, arbitrary. Some narratives have more discursive power than others, some narratives impose and legislate meaning. It is the aim of the law and literature project to show that these two disciplines both deal with texts that are ultimately open for negotiation. Broadly speaking, the field can be divided into ‘law in literature’ and ‘law as literature’, the former examining the cultural representation of law and the latter exploring the dis/similarities of legal and literary language and its functions in the various situations of human interaction. Law as literature seeks to apply the techniques of literary criticism to legal texts. Such analysis raises questions of objectivity in interpretation, a question that has long preoccupied literary scholars. By confronting two disciplines that have traditionally been constituted as distinct discourses, looking for textual and thematic affinities and contrasts, we can enquire into how legal and literary discourses construct subjectivity, before going to explore how literature subverts or reinforces the narratives that help to legitimate the legal order. As I will argue throughout this study, law at the time of Burgos was used as a patriarchal instrument of social control. This manifested itself, amongst other things, in the male opposition to legal changes regarding divorce or female suffrage. In my discussion on legal subjectivity, I will also argue that reading and hence interpretation in law, unlike in literature, requires giving normative meaning to legal texts with practical consequences for people’s lives. In their excellent article ‘Convergences: law, literature and feminism’, Carolyn Heilbrun and Judith Resnik suggest that feminism is where the social and the political converge, and hence the field of law and literature lends itself to the debate on women’s position in society. Women’s narrative, which has long been recognised in literature, can make its way, by means of this debate, into law.7 7

See also Smart (1989: 1), who argues that in literary studies the inclusion of women’s

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The point of departure, Heilbrun and Resnik argue, ought to be women’s actual experience, since the highlighting of experience is, in part, an act of recognition. A key issue is what they term proximity, i.e. ‘the closeness of the intellectual discussion to the experiences of daily life’ (Heilbrun/Resnik 1996: 95). Feminist literary theory has long known of the need for a new language representing women’s experience, and feminist legal theory, facing the same problem, finally found legal terms for long-standing women’s problems like sexual harassment or Battered-Woman Syndrome. The historical example of Burgos’s work demonstrates that the highlighting of women’s precarious legal or social situation is nothing particularly new. Much of her journalistic, essayistic, fictional and politically activist work shows Burgos’s endeavour to construct proximity and interaction between the intellectual debates of her time and women’s lived experiences. As will become clearer in my discussions throughout this study the crucial question for a law and literature project is whether, and if so how, law and literature, respectively, can be instrumental in social change. Does law change society or, conversely, does social change alter law? These questions have been a major source of controversy throughout the history of law. Some argue that law is determined by the morality of the population and legislation can only achieve change by staying relatively close to social norms. Others, however, perceive law as a tool of programmed social change. As Steven Vago rightly points out, both contentions are likely to be correct; the more interesting question is under what precise circumstances does law entail social change (Vago 1997: 287). Historically, law has always been used as a tool of social change whenever societies have wanted radical reforms. In Spain during the 1930s, laws were implemented to reform agrarian labour, employment relations or the position of women in society (Graham 1995: 101). Similarly, in the former Eastern bloc, law was the main tool in transforming society from a bourgeois to a socialist one. According to Vago, law entails two interrelated processes: the institutionalisation and the internalisation of patterns of behaviour. While the former process establishes norms and provides the necessary sanctions to enforce them, the latter incorporates the implicit values of law in society’s attitudes. Law directly influences behaviour through institutionalisation and only if this process is successful does it facilitate the internalisation of law’s implicit values (Vago 1997: 294). Vago suggests that changes in law may be induced by a voluntary and gradual shift in society’s morality, i.e. people may come to believe that abortion is not evil, that contraception is desirable, or that divorce is not immoral. These shifts in social attitudes can be caused by a variety of factors such as changing social and economic conditions, politics and technology. In such cases, law is reactive and

narrative has been easier than in social sciences and law.

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follows social change. Nevertheless — Vago explains — many legal theorists consider law to be a highly effective instrument of social reform, preferable to other implements of change. The advantage of law as an agent of social change is its binding character, not just because it imposes sanctions, but also to a large extent because people consider it ‘the right thing to do’ (Vago 1997: 291-298). However, Vago also rightly notes: A good illustration of the systematic ineffectiveness of unsupported law is provided by the utter failure of legislation designed to enforce private morality. [...] Laws prohibiting adultery, for example, have existed for centuries, but adultery remains a favourite indoor sport in the United States and elsewhere. Similarly, laws dealing with homosexuality and prostitution have generally been ineffective. The well-known failure of the prohibition of alcohol through constitutional amendment and legislation to produce a truly “dry” society, or to keep most people from drinking, is another example of the limitation of the law to bring about social change in public “morals” (Vago 1997: 304).

As discussed in more detail in Chapter 1, the relationship between law and morality is another controversial issue in legal theory. Burgos’s work illustrates how one of the crucial issues in legal discourse of the time was the prevalent morality that prohibited such ‘revolutionary’ behaviour as divorce and remarriage. Finally, Vago also explains that there is a variety of factors which resist change, for example, vested interests of a social class or group; ideological reasons; psychological factors such as habit, ignorance or selective perception; and cultural factors such as ethnocentrism or sexism (Vago 1997: 306-312). In conclusion, it can be argued that law can influence social change directly or indirectly in that it redefines the normative order and extends formal rights. Law as a means of social control relies on two basic processes: the internalisation of group norms due to socialisation and control through external sanctions. Formal controls are incorporated into social institutions and characterised by the explicit establishment of procedures regulated by laws (Vago 1997: 190-191). Most interesting for this study is Vago’s discussion of why certain norms but not others are chosen for inclusion in the criminal code. Vago explains that crimes are either mala in se, acts that are inherently wrong, like rape or murder, or mala prohibita, i.e. behaviour that is made criminal by law and where there is no social consensus as to whether these acts are evil in themselves. Vago suggests that certain social forces are instrumental in the creation of laws, e.g. moral indignation, a high value attached to order, and political reasons (Vago 1997: 195). As my later discussion of the laws relating to adulterio will show, adultery at the time of Burgos is a prime example of how morally wrong behaviour is not only constructed as a mala prohibita, but is also highly gendered.

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LEGAL SUBJECTIVITY Like justice and law (discussed in Chapter 1),8 legal subjectivity is a concept that is notoriously difficult to define. For current legal theory, the definition of legal subjectivity fundamentally involves the ability to bear rights and responsibilities, basic equality before the law, respect and self-determination. As we will see in Chapter 1, both Rawls’ and Dworkin’s theories of justice construct a legal subject in these terms. In cultural studies, subjectivity is an equally contested concept. According to Ashcroft et al. (1998), the concept of subjectivity problematises the relationship between the individual and language and focuses on the notion that the human subject is produced through discourse. This has been elaborated in the work of Foucault who argues that the subject is the result of social processes and that subjectivity is produced by a system of knowledge that controls the subject’s identity (Foucault 1980). A sharp criticism of Enlightenment philosophy, this theory contradicts the belief in individual autonomy most famously summarised in the Cartesian declaration: ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 219-220). Discourse, then, is seen as a decisive factor in the production of subjectivity, and individual identity is understood as an effect rather than a cause of the production of discourse. Ashcroft et al. question the validity of this theory pointing to its inherent problem for any kind of social change: ‘for if the subject is produced by ideology, discourse or language, is it trapped in this subjectivity beyond the power of choice, recognition or resistance?’ (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 225) While Ashcroft et al. are right in challenging Foucault’s conceptualisation, I think it is fair to suggest that the individual’s perception of their own identity is at least influenced, if not dominated, by cultural discourses and that this, in turn, can conceivably weaken their ability to challenge the conditions of their subjection. In legal studies, the legal subject, in its simplest form, has an abstract identity. Legal subjectivity is the legal definition that is given to a subject: either externally, i.e. all citizens are subject to the law (all citizens have the duty to obey the law as well as having a set of rights), or internally, i.e. the subject infringes a law. According to the English Vagrancy Act of 1824, for example, anybody found begging more than twice in a public place was deemed to be an ‘incorrigible rogue’ (Halsbury’s Statutes of England and Wales 1997: 61-66). This example of an internal definition shows that the need to define a subject arises only when somebody disturbs public order and, more importantly, that the

8 ‘Justice’ is defined as: ‘The basic value underlying a system of law, or the objective which that system seeks to attain’ as well as ‘the correct application of a law, as opposed to arbitrariness’ (Curzon 1994: 213). ‘Law’ however is the ‘written and unwritten body of rules largely derived from custom and formal enactment which are recognised as binding among persons who constitute a community or state, so that they will be imposed upon and enforced among those persons by appropriate sanctions’ (Curzon 1994: 219).

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definition given is arbitrary: the law could also have constructed a person as an incorrigible rogue after ‘more than three times’ or ‘more than five times’. Equally, the definition of minors and adults is arbitrary. According to current English law, a child under the age of ten is doli incapax, i.e. incapable of a crime (Curzon 1994: 126). This is based on the irrebuttable presumption that a child under ten is incapable of forming a mens rea.9 Whereas the argument is reasonable (children under a certain age are not capable of predicting the consequences of their actions), legal subjectivity is fixed somewhat arbitrarily by partly basing the definition of this legal subject on the age. As these two examples have shown, there often is a certain arbitrariness in the construction of legal subjectivity, while at the same time it rests on reasonable assumptions. What interests me for the argument of this study, however, is the fact that Spanish law at the time of Carmen de Burgos not only fixed female identity in legal definitions arbitrarily, but also based them on unreasonable assumptions.10 In Spanish law at the beginning of the twentieth century female subjectivity was defined, in the Constitution and legal codes, in a variety of ways through a multitude of different definitions. Spanish legal discourse made a distinction between discriminación por razón de matrimonio and discriminación por razón de sexo. The latter mainly involved mayoría de edad, tutela, testigos, and most importantly, el voto. Since the lack of marital rights and female suffrage are discussed extensively in my first and second chapters, respectively, here I will give only a brief overview of the legal subjectivity of women in relation to the other above-mentioned matters. In her chapter on single women’s rights, Burgos calls for equality before the law: ‘Se necesita en las leyes igualdad completa, no privilegios de un sexo’ (Burgos 1927a: 208). Calling for legal reform, she informs her readers that: ‘Se dice que tienen capacidad jurídica las solteras, viudas y legalmente divorciadas porque pueden comprar, vender, administrar sus bienes, hacer contratos, [...], pero realmente, su capacidad jurídica está limitada, no es cierto que tienen plenitud de derechos’ (Burgos 1927a: 192). While it is true that single women had more rights than married women, legal subjectivity in their case was still often defined by gender. Single women could look after their own financial and commercial affairs and become the director of a bank or any other commercial entity. Scanlon explains that an unmarried woman could: enajenar y gravar sus bienes, arrendar y comprar los ajenos, ser depositaria o depositante, prestamista o prestataria, constituirse en fiadora de otro; [...]. A pesar de la igualdad en estas esferas, había todavía una amplia gama de acti-

9 Literally ‘guilty mind’, more accurately, ‘criminal intention, or an intention to do the act which is made penal by statute or by the common law’ (Curzon 1994: 245). 10 For an interesting introduction to fixing female identity in today’s Anglo-American legal systems, see Bridgeman and Millns (1995).

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vidades donde la capacidad legal de la mujer soltera estaba mucho más restringida que la del hombre. Por lo general, se le negaba a ella los puestos de autoridad o responsabilidad en los que estuviesen implicadas otras personas. Podía dirigir una banca, un comercio, una industria, pero no podía pertenecer a una Cámara de Comercio, aunque fuese elegida por los asociados. Podía ser declarada en concurso o quiebra, pero no tenía, a pesar de esto, capacidad para ser síndico en esos juicios, aunque en ellos tuviese comprometida su fortuna (Scanlon 1986: 123).

They were under the guardianship of their father until the age of 25, despite legally coming of age at 23 (Código Civil 1889: art. 320-321). The issue of guardianship is another interesting example of gendered legal subjectivity, not so much because of the fact that under article 237 of the Código Civil (1889) women were not allowed to be legal guardians but, more importantly, on account of other subjects excluded from such responsibility: female legal subjectivity is equated with that of criminals, delinquents and bankrupt people. In other words women, for reasons of gender, are by definition given parity of treatment with men who have committed an offence. However, to confuse matters even further, when there was a practical requirement to allow for women to be guardians, then wives, mothers or grandmothers were given the legal capacity to do so (Código Civil 1889: art. 211-227). An equally unstable category of female legal subjectivity is that of women’s capacity to be witnesses. As Burgos notes: Otra función de orden civil privado es servir de testigo en documentos públicos y también se le niega a la mujer. No se la admite como testigo de matrimonio, contrato, testamento y muerte. Si se necesita un testigo para uno de estos actos puede servir un hombre cualquiera que se preste, [...] pero no puede servir la señora abogada, doctora o profesora, ni la comerciante o propietaria de reconocida solvencia y honorabilidad. Se acepta al que va oliendo a vino, derrotado, asalariado tal vez pero su testimonio tiene valor... por ser hombre. [...] Pero lo más raro es que a pesar de ese concepto de la mujer se la admite como testigo en lo criminal, donde el testimonio puede decidir del honor y de la vida de los acusados. Se le concede lo más negándole lo menos. Además su incapacidad desaparece en casos de epidemia, que se las admite de testigos de testamentos, sin pedir más requisitos (Burgos 1927a: 191).11

Again there appear to be various legal subjects for the same juridical function of being a witness. The codification of law was supposed to create a body of laws arranged in an orderly, comprehensive and logical way. However, the unity that was aimed at in the various codes remained theoretical. The legal discourse concerning women shows quite clearly that there were glaring discrepancies

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between the legal subjectivity of women in the Constitution, Civil Code and Penal Code. As the above two examples clearly show, even within the Código Civil (1889) there is no one coherent female legal subject to be found. I would therefore go even further and argue that the codification of law at the time of Burgos is a testimony to arbitrary patriarchal power. If power fixes identity by defining subjects, then these legal codes are not so much a demonstration of a body of laws arranged in an orderly and logical way as reminiscent of arbitrary absolutism.

THE SPANISH LEGAL SYSTEM Spanish law is part of the Romano-Germanic legal system that predominates in Europe. It is a codified system whereby basic laws are set out in codes, i.e. a body of laws arranged in an orderly, comprehensive and logical way. By contrast, English common law, or ‘case law’, is based on the doctrine of precedent cases. The divisions of the common law, its substance, the methods of the legal profession and its vocabulary are very different from the RomanoGermanic systems. While I am aware of the danger of legal anachronism and of falsification of Spanish legal reality when using theoretical concepts derived from Anglo-American theoretical writing, I would nonetheless argue that in the realm of the law and literature debate, and to quote Richard Posner: the law is a remarkably unchanging facet of human social existence. Specific doctrines and procedures may change, but the broad features of the law do not. The legal systems of Elizabethan England and even Periclean Athens are thoroughly accessible to modern understanding, and differences between the Austro-Hungarian procedures reflected in The Trial and modern Continental or American procedures, though important to lawyers, would strike most laymen as small (Posner 1996: 63-64).

The Age of Enlightenment constituted the theoretical basis for a dramatic change in the history of law. The School of Natural Law,12 represented by Grotius and Hobbes amongst others, proclaimed that if reason could explain the functioning of nature and its laws, it should also be able to explain the laws governing human nature and hence proclaim the principles according to which men should be governed. These principles, together with the theories of individual natural rights13 of Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau, provided the

12 Natural law denotes ‘a system of right and justice common to all men prescribed by the supreme controlling force in the universe and distinct from positive law, laid down by any particular state or other human organisation’ (Walker 1980: 868). 13 ‘Claims asserted as being rights inherent in an individual by virtue of natural law or the nature of man rather than by the positive law of his State. The individual natural rights normally asserted are life, liberty, property and happiness’ (Walker 1980: 871).

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ideological background that quickly spread across Europe. Absolutism with its arbitrary system of justice received harsh criticism from these philosophers as contrary to reason and to the natural order of things.14 Three principles emerged as a result: the principle of legality (both nature and mankind are subject to laws);15 the principle of rationality (laws governing humanity are deduced from natural laws by use of reason); and the principle of nationality (positive law16 must be adapted to the circumstances of each nation). These philosophical ideas entailed two major achievements in legal history: the creation of a state of law governed by a supreme rule — the Constitution — and the codification of law. As we will see in what follows the principle that human behaviour obeys natural laws was used in the early twentieth-century legal debates about divorce and female suffrage as a reasoning strategy to argue that ‘natural law’ dictates that women should not be granted basic natural rights. It is these rights that Burgos’s heroines claim for themselves in their pursuit of happiness. The notion that the law was an organised system of rules derived from nature was articulated by the creation of codes. Merino-Blanco explains that: The existence of a single source whereby the rights recognised by the Constitution — especially private ownership and individual freedom — could be established in an universal way provided the bourgeoisie with legal certainty. A code could also be presented as the instrument with which to achieve a break with the past and consolidate the new order recognised in the constitutional text (Merino-Blanco 1996: 20).

The legal codes in force during Burgos’s time were the Constitution of 1876 (the one longest in force until the proclamation of the Second Republic), the Código Civil of 1889, the Código Penal of 1870, and the Código de Comercio of 1885. The first Spanish Código Civil came into force on 1 May 1889, nearly a century after the first French Civil Code (1804), by which it was highly influenced. It is a product of nineteenth-century liberalism, which is reflected in the protection of individual freedom and private ownership. The Código Penal of 1870 was derogated during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and replaced by the Código Penal of 1928, and then re-established and modified in 1932 under the Second Republic (Merino-Blanco 1996: 22). Despite the agenda of universal human rights, or at least legal recognition of the same, liberal discourse falls short of including women. Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca

14 15

For a good brief introduction to natural law, see Walker (1980: 867-871). See Merino-Blanco (1996: 15, n. 42), where she explains that the principle of legality was first recognised by the French Constitution of 1791: ‘There is no authority superior to the law.’ 16 Positive law is defined as: ‘The legal rules adopted and actually endorsed in formal fashion by the state’ (Curzon 1994: 220).

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observes that: El mundo liberal imagina al individuo como un ser libre, lo redefine como propietario de su propio cuerpo y bienes, y en virtud de tal definición lo constituye en sujeto de la vida pública. Y es en la sociedad liberal, pero no en las anteriores, donde el discurso legal se convierte en obligado referente para un movimiento feminista que afirma la opresión de la mujer mirando las limitaciones establecidas por el derecho para que la mujer actúe como el varón (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 222).

As demonstrated below, Burgos’s heroines are not owners of their property, let alone their bodies. The above quotation explains why Burgos analyses the legal discourse of the time in order to highlight and publicise the gendered injustices of the law.

MELODRAMA Melodrama theory is wide-ranging and to outline the whole spectrum is beyond the scope of this study. Nevertheless, to ignore it altogether would do injustice to Burgos’s work and, more importantly, disregard some obvious similarities between melodrama as a genre of manichean worldviews and law as a system of binary oppositions. My aim is to demonstrate that mass culture, in general, can have a positive function in the renegotiation of identities and how Burgos’s work, in particular, reworks melodramatic conventions in order to foreground and question accepted identity formations. We may note that the history of melodrama gives some indication of the subversive potential of the genre and thus its appropriation for feminist purposes does not seem entirely unreasonable. However, melodrama is also renowned for being a genre that disempowers women by portraying them as virtuous victims. As I hope to demonstrate in Chapter 4, the conservatism of melodrama’s representation of women is undermined in Burgos’s popular fiction. What is more, by using not only the genre of melodrama but also the mass distribution series discussed above, Carmen de Burgos ensured that she would reach readers who had had little, if any, contact with feminist issues, thus obliging a wide readership to reflect on these ideas. One of the distinguishing factors between high and low culture is their respective modes of consumption, i.e. disinterested aesthetic detachment as opposed to participatory, emotional involvement. According to Elsaesser, the usefulness of melodrama lies in the ‘audience’s participation, for there is a desire to make up for the emotional deficiency, to impart the different awareness, which in other genres is systematically frustrated to produce suspense: the primitive desire to warn the heroine of the perils looming visibly over her in the shape of the villain’s shadow’ (Elsaesser 1987: 66). In melodrama of political protest the conflict of good and evil as opposites not subject to compromise is politically crucial and becomes a useful means of easy recognition: the reader

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can take a side and accept its credo. Ethical conditions are made manifest and operative through bipolarisation. The celebration of right and condemnation of wrong, the binary constructions of virtue/villainy, justice/law and woman/man in its either/or exclusivity are intrinsic to the moral manicheisms of melodrama as well as to law. Burgos not only subverts melodrama, but also intelligently uses a genre based on manichean worldviews in order to criticise a legal system of melodramatic proportions, using the very construction of reality that is criticised. Looking at the generic features of melodrama, we will find that all forms share a few fundamental characteristics: the indulgence of strong emotionalism; a manichean worldview and the desire to express all. These characteristics have by and large encouraged critics to treat melodrama as vulgar and degraded near-tragedy. Yet the genre’s raison d’être is the possibility of saying everything, of expressing emotions that are almost overwhelming. Women in Burgos’s melodrama are not silenced, they speak out with melodramatic clarity, although society would want them to assume the stereotypical role of silent martyr. As I will argue throughout this study, melodrama with its insistence on speaking out and constructing reality in manichean terms is particularly suited to Burgos’s purpose of disseminating information about legal issues and a powerful reminder that some ethical issues are beyond moral relativism.

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS Chapter 1, ‘Justice versus Law’, examines the intersection between society and morality and argues that justice is absent from Spanish law at the beginning of the twentieth century. Injustice can best be demonstrated when examining married women’s lack of rights. Focussing on inequality before the law, this chapter concentrates on Burgos’s critique of the indissolubility of marriage in her theoretical writings and her fiction. Using John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1999b) and Ronald Dworkin’s Taking Rights Seriously (1978) as a theoretical framework, this chapter first examines Spanish legal and public discourse regarding the divorce debate, and then discusses Burgos’s work in the context of both legal theory and historical practice. It also explores the lack of rationalism in the legal argumentation of the divorce debate. For my analysis I have chosen four non-fictional works (El divorcio en España (1904a), La mujer en España (1906), La misión social de la mujer (1911b) and La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a)), in order to illustrate how prevalent the issues of divorce and adultery are throughout Burgos’s work. I will also analyse two fictional works: the novel La malcasada (1923d) and the novella El artículo 438 (1921a) and show how Burgos’s melodrama fed into a public debate and was used as a vehicle of feminist propaganda. Chapter 2 is theoretically informed by the ‘equality versus difference’ debate in recent feminist legal theory. I hope to demonstrate how the politics of equality and the discourses of difference at the

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time of Burgos were diametrically opposed to today’s concepts. Focussing on her book-length essay La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a), I shall ask where, how and why the prevailing equality feminism resisted its own politics and slid into difference feminism. My legal discussion is supplemented by recourse to Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex (1992) which argues, amongst other things, that medical discourse in the nineteenth century ‘created’ biological difference in order to legitimate legal difference between the sexes. This chapter therefore explores the creation of biological difference in dominant Spanish legal discourse and examines the relevance of these biological ‘facts’ in the debate on female suffrage. As in Chapter 1 regarding divorce, I will explore the emotionalism and non-rational reasoning strategies of these debates. The third chapter deals with theories of moral reasoning, taking as a point of departure the common philosophical contention that women have an inferior sense of justice. Having given a brief historical overview, the chapter will then centre on Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1993), one of the most influential studies on gendered moral reasoning in recent years. While the first chapter raises questions about justice from a legal point of view, this chapter looks at justice from a moral viewpoint, examining the intersection between the individual and morality, and asks how the individual arrives at a sense of justice. The discussion of gendered moral reasoning lends itself to application to the female sense of justice as portrayed in El abogado (1986a), El hombre negro (1916b), El artículo 438 (1921a) and La malcasada (1923d). The last two, also discussed in Chapter 1, are analysed here again in order to look at the same stories first from a public and then from a private angle. In Chapter 1 the implicit question is whether women should have the public legal right to equality, self-respect and freedom of the person, while in Chapter 3 I analyse them in relation to the question of how a woman privately reasons about her moral rights. Two issues are recurrent throughout this study: female selfishness and the question of equality versus difference. Chapter 1 shows how those opposed to divorce argued that divorce was a selfish female pursuit, while Chapter 2 discusses how prevailing notions of female selfishness in demanding suffrage co-exist with a belief in female altruism, seen as a form of moral superiority. My third chapter deals with selfishness and moral reasoning: how do Burgos’s heroines negotiate between the desires of the self and the demands of others? The second recurrent issue of equality versus difference is raised differently in each chapter. Whereas Chapter 1 deals exclusively with the politics of equality in terms of the modernisation of divorcio and adulterio legislation, Chapter 2 introduces difference into the debate and explores the relation between the two concepts. Chapter 3 concentrates on difference and demonstrates how prevalent the issue of a different sense of justice was in the work of Carmen de Burgos. The concluding chapter deals with the correlation between melodrama and law. Using melodrama theory, in particular Peter Brooks’ The Melodramatic Imagination (1985), as my theoretical framework, I will use the fiction of

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Carmen de Burgos as a paradigmatic case to draw conclusions about the relation between law and melodrama. It is my aim to show how two disciplines with quite disparate aims share important matter of common concern, and how transgressing the boundaries that separate them enriches our understanding of both.

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Justice versus Law Is the law law because it is just or is the law just because it is the law? (Douzinas/Warrington 1995: 198)

INTRODUCTION Justice and law have an uneasy relationship, and running through the history of legal theory is a recurring concern about the connections between the two and about the ways law is implicated in injustice. Nicola Lacey somewhat provocatively argues: ‘it is something of a truism that justice can generally only be glimpsed in law, and that when law delivers justice, this is often as much by accident as by design’ (Lacey 1998: 247). Legal thinkers from Aristotle to Derrida have called law to account in the name of justice, yet the justice that is usually spoken about in these theories is elusive and disconnected from the embodied practice of law. Law, for its part, has come under severe pressure since the advent of deconstruction, which in its broadest terms reveals law as a construct, questions the possibility of giving objective meanings to legal texts and believes that legal issues are ultimately political and subjective. The question of whether morality needs to be an integral part of law is a further moot point in legal theory.1 Ronald Dworkin is highly critical of legal positivism2 and, as we will see in what follows, demands law to be representative of society’s moral positions. This chapter analyses two theories of justice which I consider

1 This is famously discussed in the so-called Hart-Fuller debate. H.L.A. Hart in his seminal text The Concept of Law (1997 [1961]) argues in favour of legal positivism, which asserts that morality is irrelevant to law. Fuller (1964), on the contrary, posits that there is a need for moral values in law. 2 ‘Doctrine in legal theory based on the examination of man-made law, which is set down (i.e. posited) by man for man. It is concerned, essentially with law as it is, rather than as it ought to be. Hence propositions of law are “true” only when describing correctly the rules of law or the content of laws’ (Curzon 1994: 290).

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relevant to the work of Carmen de Burgos, given that her feminism, like first wave feminism in general, defined justice as consisting of gender neutrality and equality before the law. At the time of Burgos the injustice of law with respect to women was blatantly obvious. The litmus test of contemporaneous legal thought was the issue of marriage, or more precisely its indissolubility. The question of divorce was feverishly debated and Burgos herself was one of the most outspoken champions of the modernisation of the divorcio law. As argued below, values that seem to be considered just by the legislators in Burgos’s time appear blatantly unjust when recent theories of justice are applied to them. Marriage, divorce and adultery are issues most prominent in the writing of Burgos. Therefore, my analysis of justice will be limited to these three issues. Justice here relates to women’s (lack of) rights in marriage, the social injustice resulting from the divorcio law, and the gross injustice regarding the different legal subjectivities of adultery. In short, if we define justice as gender equality, then it follows that justice is absent from the positive law at the time of Burgos. Those who championed divorce called law to account in the name of justice and demanded that there should be a change in the law. One explanation regarding terminology is needed: although the term divorcio was used in the Código Civil (1889), this did not actually mean divorce in today’s sense of the term, but only allowed for the separation of the spouses. Throughout this chapter I therefore use the term divorcio when I refer to legal separation; when referring to divorce in the modern sense of the word, I shall use the English term divorce. The latter dissolves the marriage and hence makes remarriage possible, which is what Burgos as well as progressive legal writers of her time were striving for. To complicate matters even further, as will be obvious from the quotations throughout this chapter, all writers contemporary to Burgos use the term divorcio to mean a modern divorce law. Nevertheless, to avoid this imprecision in terminology I have given specific meanings to both divorcio and divorce.

LIBERAL THEORIES OF JUSTICE Two theories of justice have highly influenced legal theory in the late twentieth century: John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1999b) and Ronald Dworkin’s Taking Rights Seriously (1978). In what follows I will use Rawls’ and Dworkin’s liberal theories of justice as a tool of interpretation for the historical debate on divorce, as well as Burgos’s theoretical essays and fictional works. My intention is to demonstrate that both Rawls’ and Dworkin’s notions lend themselves to use in the context of the Spain of Carmen de Burgos. John Rawls’ theory of justice is based on social contract theories and, like these, it assumes an original agreement (‘original position’).3 It consists of two main principles, which are in 3

See Rawls (1999: 11), where he explains this: ‘This original position is […] understood

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turn based on an even more general conception: First principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, [...] and b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (Rawls 1999: 266). General conception: All social values — liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect — are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage (Rawls 1999: 54).

The basic liberties Rawls’ theory posits are the right to vote and to be eligible for public office, as well as freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person ‘which includes freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault and dismemberment (integrity of the person); the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law’ (Rawls 1999: 53). As I hope to demonstrate, in the case of women the right to equal treatment, or in Rawls’ words ‘equal basic liberties’ (particularly freedom of the person), were ‘criminally’ disrespected in the Spanish legal codes at the beginning of the century. Carmen de Burgos, in line with Rawls and Dworkin, claims basic legal equality in La mujer moderna y sus derechos as well as in her other theoretical work, while denouncing the abundance of legal injustices in her fiction. Analysing Spanish legal discourse at the time of Burgos about marriage, divorce and adultery we find a surprising number of rationalisations about why it is immoral to allow women more legal rights in marriage and/or to allow divorce. Given that morality was the issue in question, I will draw on Dworkin’s analysis of the relationship between the individual’s rights to liberty and morality. Dworkin’s concept of a moral position Ronald Dworkin’s theory of justice, more than any other contemporary legal theory, revolves around the issue of equality. Its definition is central to his legal

as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance’ (my emphasis).

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philosophy, and equality forms the very core of his theory. However, my particular interest for the purpose of this study is his concept of a moral position. Dworkin distinguishes between a moral position in an anthropological sense and in a discriminatory sense: the former refers to attitudes a social group displays about the correctness of human conduct, whereas the latter is used to contrast the positions they describe with prejudices, rationalisations or personal preferences. ‘Its most characteristic use’, Dworkin argues, ‘is to offer a limited but important sort of justification for an act, when the moral issues surrounding that act are unclear or in dispute’ (Dworkin 1978: 248). A moral position in the discriminatory sense, then, is meant to establish itself by way of reasoning strategies involving logical faculties of judgement as opposed to simple arbitrariness or pseudo-logical reasoning tactics such as circular arguments. As we will see in the following section on the divorce debate, the conservative legal writers in favour of the status quo largely used such tactics, which did not achieve even minimal standards of logic, whereas the divorcistas tried to question the dominant values of contemporary society and reached their positions by means of intellectual discrimination. Equally, we will find that in La malcasada and El artículo 438, the heroines assume discriminatory moral positions while society by and large condemns them due to the prevalent anthropological morality. We can note that, historically speaking, moral positions of a discriminatory nature tend to be at work when people need to distinguish themselves from the dominant public view on a certain issue with far-reaching consequences. Dworkin himself attempts to explain how to reach a discriminatory position of morality by constructing a case study in which he proposes to the reader that he will vote against a man running for a public office, because he knows about his homosexuality and believes this to be profoundly immoral. ‘What must I do’, he asks, ‘to convince you that my position is a moral position?’ (Dworkin 1978: 249) Dworkin’s point of departure is that he has to produce some reasons that do not fall into any of the following categories: Prejudice: reasons like ‘homosexuals are inferior because they don’t have heterosexual desires’. Emotional reaction: reasons like ‘they make me sick’. Rationalisation: reasons like ‘homosexual acts are physically debilitating’. Parroting: reasons like ‘everyone knows homosexuality is a sin’.

In a legal context a person must not be held to be morally inferior on grounds of racial, religious, sexual or other characteristics they cannot help having (prejudice). Moral positions must be distinct from emotional reactions, not because moral positions are supposed to be dispassionate, but because the moral position is supposed to justify the emotional reaction, and not vice versa (emotional reaction). Furthermore, we reject a proposition of fact that is

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implausible and challenges minimal standards of evidence (rationalisation) or argumentation by citing the beliefs of others (parroting) (Dworkin 1978: 249250). What reasons can a moral position be based on then? While some actions are self-evidently immoral (e.g. all crimes that are mala in se like rape or murder), on other issues (crimes that are mala prohibita) the reasoning is more complex. According to Dworkin, it needs to be a general moral principle or theory such as: ‘the Bible forbids homosexual acts’ or ‘homosexual acts make it less likely that the actor will marry or raise children’. Here, however, one would still have the problem of both sincerity and consistency, for one can only argue that the injunctions of the Bible are morally binding if a) one makes a general principle out of it and b) it is consistent with one’s own conduct and one’s other convictions. If one condemns all homosexuals on biblical authority but not all fornicators on the grounds that fornication is now very common and has been sanctioned by custom, then one cannot claim to accept the general position that what the Bible condemns is immoral. And believing that men have the right to remain bachelors or use contraceptives all their lives would contradict the argument of homosexuality being immoral on grounds of harming any population policy (Dworkin 1978: 251). As we will see in the section on the divorce debate, the conservative legal writers were consistently inconsistent in their quest to uphold the status quo. Dworkin concludes that the ultimate grounds of morality are limited to a small set of very general standards. The act in question “involves no breach of an undertaking or duty, for example, harms no one including the actor, is not proscribed by any organized religion, and is not illegal” (Dworkin 1978: 252). As we will find in the following discussion of Spanish legal discourse at the time of Burgos and of her own work respectively, the last two standards are difficult to apply to the divorce debate. Both divorce and adultery were proscribed by Catholicism and were illegal. What is more, the term illegal is in itself highly problematic, since the legality of one’s action depends on the society one lives in. Dworkin himself argues in a later chapter on civil disobedience that illegal actions are not necessarily immoral.4 As the fictional examples of Burgos show, illegal actions are sometimes required to achieve justice. In fact, one could also argue that divorce as it was perceived at the time was a breach of a duty and harmed at least one of the parties involved, so that in fact none of the four of Dworkin’s standards quoted above could be applied to the divorce debate in Spain at the beginning of the century. However, this would be a simplistic interpretation of Dworkin’s concept of a moral position and we need to remind ourselves what Dworkin’s aim is in the formulation of such concept. Dworkin attempts to arrive at a procedure for establishing a moral

4

See Dworkin (1978: 206-222), where he uses conscientious draft offenders as an example.

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position, the ‘bottom line’ of which is justice in general and equality before the law in particular. It follows that for Dworkin the law-making process has to allow for changes to the status quo, if the status quo actually reflects an anthropological kind of morality and such morality cannot be justified with a moral position in a discriminatory sense. Dworkin’s concept of a moral position is therefore extremely pertinent in a historical debate that attempts to use morality as a reason to deny women basic liberties.

DIVORCE Historical practice The lack of a modern divorce law made the precarious legal status of women blatantly obvious. To be precise, the Código Civil (1889) did provide divorcio legislation, but, article 104 clearly states: ‘El divorcio sólo produce la suspensión de la vida común de los casados’, and article 105 gives the limited number of reasons which make divorcio possible: Las causas legítimas de divorcio son: 1ª El adulterio de la mujer en todo caso, y el del marido cuando resulte escándalo público o menosprecio de la mujer. 2ª Los malos tratamientos de obra, o las injurias graves. 3ª La violencia ejercida por el marido sobre la mujer para obligarla a cambiar de Religión. 4ª La propuesta del marido para prostituir a su mujer. 5ª El conato del marido o de la mujer para corromper a sus hijos o prostituir a sus hijas, y las connivencia en su corrupción o prostitución. 6ª La condena del cónyuge a cadena o reclusión perpetua.

In what follows I give an overview of the legal debate on divorce at the time of Carmen de Burgos. As I hope to demonstrate by bringing the contemporaneous legal discourse and her work together, Burgos relied on a real debate that informed her novels and novellas. Her narratives, in turn, enriched that debate by giving examples of ‘matrimonios mal avenidos’ (Burgos 1903: 1) and supplied women with a voice, albeit in a fictional representation. In the 1910s and 1920s, this divorce debate gained such momentum that quite a variety of legal publications were produced, testifying to the various positions of legal thought. Both sides, i.e. those in favour and those opposing divorce, attacked each other’s arguments and, in refuting them, argued their own case. For both sides the issue at stake was morality. While those opposing divorce used prejudice, emotional reaction, rationalisations and parroting (albeit at a higher intellectual level than the examples given by Dworkin), the divorcistas implicitly or explicitly based their arguments on the moral position of maximum liberty for the individual and, more importantly, on gender equality. The issues

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at stake in the divorce debate were love as the conditio sine qua non for marriage, the conflicting interests of the individual and the society s/he lives in, and a largely unreasonable discussion of what would happen if the legislator did allow divorce. As we will see in what follows, Burgos implicitly or explicitly takes issue with those opposing divorce as well as echoing the arguments of the divorcistas. Neither Burgos nor any legal writer discussed below questions the institution of marriage itself. Unlike the anarchists who rejected the idea of marriage altogether, since it was based on inequality and power, Burgos suggested that feminism was in favour of marriage. I have therefore concentrated on the mainstream debates of the time and will not discuss the anarchists’ anti-family views on women and marriage.5 Love was considered the conditio sine qua non of marriage and thus many reasoning strategies regarding its indissolubility started with that topic. The crucial question was whether love was eternal or not. It is surprising that legal writers should make this the starting point of their argument, given that it is by no means a legal, or indeed rational, category. As we will see from the quote below, Luis Aguirre, abogado del Ilustre Colegio de Madrid y académico profesor de la Real Academia de Jurisprudencia, as he is billed on the title page, uses it for the purpose of circular arguments in order to explain the very basis of everlasting marriage: La causa del matrimonio la constituye la voluntad libre de los contrayentes, pero la voluntad realzada: el amor. Y este amor, ¿es pasajero? En modo alguno. Así el varón como la mujer, cuando contraen matrimonio, van impulsados de un cariño que no estiman de hoy ni de mañana, sino de siempre; limitarles el amor sería el mayor agravio que pudiera inferirse á los contrayentes. Y es que el matrimonio no puede engendrarse con amor transitorio, la unión que este lazo formara no merecería tal nombre; sería concubinato,6 vaga unión; recibiría cualquier nombre menos el de venerado matrimonio. Es, pues, el primer elemento del matrimonio, el amor perpetuo (Aguirre 1902: 9).7

Marriage has to be lasting, because otherwise one would deprive the spouses of their alleged eternal love to each other — clearly not the most logical argument. It is also interesting to note here that marriage is based on the spouses’ free will to enter it, which was usually used to explain why discriminación por razón de matrimonio was considered less unjust than discriminación por razón de sexo. While some legal writers considered it immoral to allow divorce, others, like the lawyer Manuel Góngora Echenique,8 argued the exact opposite: ‘El matrimonio

5 6

For further reading on the subject, see Cleminson (1995) and Ackelsberg (1991). ‘Concubinato’ is defined as: ‘Relación marital de un hombre con una mujer sin estar casados’ (Villa-Real Molina/Arco Torres 1999: 94-95). 7 The same point is made by José María González de Echávarri y Vivanco (1912: 3). 8 Born in Madrid in 1894, Góngora Echenique was a lawyer and lecturer in law. For further

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es una unión legítima entre individuos de distinto sexo, creada y mantenida por el amor. Desde el momento en que éste falta, el matrimonio carece de razón de ser y cae en la inmoralidad’ (Góngora Echenique 1918: 10). Here obviously, im/morality is given a different meaning through different conceptions of the term — a recurrent issue throughout the whole debate. Miguel Romera Navarro9 also refers to love as the crucial issue: La permanencia del vínculo no puede depender de las fórmulas exteriores. [...] Ni la Iglesia ni el Estado unen á los contrayentes. El vínculo del matrimonio está en su propia voluntad de contraerlo. Al funcionario sólo corresponde la declaración oficial, el testimonio de este acuerdo de voluntades. La cuestión queda reducida verdaderamente á saber si la permanencia del matrimonio se funda en el amor ó en la promesa de conservarlo (Romera Navarro 1910: 67).

He also suggests that the crucial question is whether love should be the decisive factor in a marriage or only the will to conserve it. He opts for the former: Organizado para el bien de la sociedad y de la especie, deberá anularse cuando una enfermedad ó una barrera de odios separe á los cónyuges y repugne á la procreación; formado por dos seres libres que no enajenan su libertad por el hecho del matrimonio, debe ser disuelto cuando uno de los cónyuges oprima ó maltrate al otro cónyuge; celebrado el matrimonio para hacer vida común, deberá disolverse por la condena de uno de los cónyuges á la privación de libertad (Romera Navarro 1910: 66-67).

Romera Navarro, in line with Rawls and Dworkin, values individual liberty more highly than marriage, pointing out that marriage cannot be based on oppression. As the case studies of La malcasada and El artículo 438 will demonstrate, it is precisely the issues of oppression in marriage and malos tratos which were the crux of the matter and hence, if women’s suffering is not taken note of, any discussion revolving around the indissolubility of marriage is distorting the issue. That women’s suffering should have been forgotten is hardly surprising, since the family and marriage were seen as the basis of society. Those opposing divorce feared the breakdown of society if there was to be a modern divorce law. The main thrust of the whole debate was therefore the

details, see Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, vol. 26 (1925: 595). 9 Miguel Romera Navarro was born in Almería in 1888. He studied law, philosophy and literature in Madrid. From 1909 until 1910 he was Secretario de Ciencias Morales at Madrid's Ateneo. In 1912 he moved to the United States and was, from 1921 onwards, professor of Spanish literature at the University of Pennsylvania. During his time at the Ateneo he wrote the books drawn on in this study: Ensayo de una filosofía feminista (refutación a Moebius) (1909) and Feminismo jurídico (1910). He died in 1954. I have found no evidence to suggest that Burgos and Romera Navarro knew each other. For further details, see Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, vol. 52 (1926: 201-202).

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time-honoured issue of the individual versus society. According to Luis Aguirre, marriage is the basis of society and ‘hacer, pues, disoluble el matrimonio es proclamar la guerra y muerte de la familia, tribu, etc., de donde se deduce también que el matrimonio, como fundamento de otras sociedades, envuelve en sí la indisolubilidad’ (Aguirre 1902: 10). Social interest was more important than individual desire. The lawyer Victor Espinós argued that: Los divorcistas, que en todas las demás relaciones humanas se abstendrían de aconsejar el desprecio del interés colectivo, lo pisotean sin piedad precisamente cuando se trata de organizar sobre bases sólidas la colectividad misma, es decir, en todo lo que se relaciona con el matrimonio y con su inmediata consecuencia: la familia. El lazo conyugal es el estorbo. Se suprime el lazo conyugal. Para eso se inventa un sistema de razonamientos especiosos; se plantean conflictos terribles ó se explotan los existentes [...] se pronuncian discursos ó se escriben libros llenos de promesas de felicidad, [...] pero todo ese aparato, todo ese movimiento de ideas ó de hechos, no es más que la hipertrofia monstruosa de un pronombre [...] que esparce alrededor un frío glacial, esencialmente inhumano: la hipertrofia monstruosa del yo. Enfrente y en contra del interés social, yo; enfrente y en contra del fin racional, yo; enfrente y en contra del amor de la esposa, yo; enfrente y en contra del hijo, inerme, inocente, cuyo llanto no me conmoverá, cuya indefensión no me importará, yo; es decir, mi pasión, mi deseo, mi rebeldía (Espinós, 1915: 8-9).

Victor Espinós criticises the tactics of the divorcistas saying their arguments are egotistical, hidden behind rationalisations claiming to protect the family when in fact they do the exact opposite. According to Espinós, the institution of the family had to be safeguarded and divorce was seen as the beginning of all evil and of all egotistical behaviour. As we will see in the discussion of La malcasada and El artículo 438, both heroines are blamed by the conservative elements of the societies they live in, in Almería and Granada respectively, for outrageously egotistical behaviour. The divorcistas, however, countered, saying that loveless marriages only cause adultery. Addressing those opposing divorce, Góngora Echenique asks with reference to unhappy marriages: ¿Qué podéis esperar de estas uniones? Acaso el crimen [...] sea el arma preferida por los mal exaltados. Y si no es el crimen el que la disuelve, es la inmoralidad la que se encarga de apartar á aquellos dos seres, á quienes obligasteis á vivir juntos cuando entre ellos existía aversión; á quienes exigisteis fidelidad sin cariño; á quienes condenasteis — si os ocupasteis de su separación — á un celibato perpetuo, que no acataron porque era contrario á las leyes de la Naturaleza; que desobedecieron porque, impulsados por su corazón, encontraron al “elegido” y se unieron á éste, en una unión desinteresada y libre, sin más leyes que las del amor (Góngora Echenique 1918: 10-11).10 10

See Romera Navarro (1910: 70), who also claims that the lack of a modern divorce law

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As we will see below, Burgos’s novella El artículo 438 is a fictional demonstration of Góngora Echenique’s arguments, in that it narrates the story of an adulterous woman who temporarily finds happiness in an extra-marital affair. Both Góngora Echenique and Romera Navarro explicitly or implicitly maintain that adultery is a natural consequence of the indissolubility of marriage. Yet this is not good enough a reason for Luis Aguirre, since in his view the spouses could still live in celibacy: ¿Por qué los cónyuges separados han de vivir en concubinato? O este argumento no tiene valor alguno, ó significa que no se puede vivir honestamente en el celibato, levantándose así una atroz calumnia á los que de la castidad hacen un voto, y por fortuna, con rarísimas excepciones, lo cumplen sin quebrantarlo (Aguirre 1902: 15).

Using circular arguments, and trying to refute the divorcistas’ argument that every person has a right to self-determination, Aguirre explains: El nervio de la dificultad está en que un principio puede ser bueno en teoría y malo en la práctica. [...] Con razón se ha dicho que entre la verdadera teoría y su aplicación en la vida no debe establecerse ninguna diferencia; principio que no sirve para la práctica no es tal principio. De donde sigue que admitida la indisolubilidad como buena, debe imperar como principio absoluto en la realidad de la vida. Aunque á distinto propósito, Kant sostiene la misma doctrina en la refutación que hace del lugar común: “Tal cosa, que puede ser justa en teoría, que está fundada sobre la noción del deber, pues dice que en ella no hay que temer sea vano el ideal” (Aguirre 1902: 12-13).

The logic here appears to be that, because a theory has to be applicable to practical life to verify its truth, it follows that, given the ‘good’ of the indissolubility of marriage in theory, it is of necessity so in practice. Aguirre gives this ‘good’ axiomatic value, based on the apparent fact that: ‘Es, pues, el primer elemento del matrimonio, el amor perpetuo’ (Aguirre 1902: 9). The notion that ‘love is eternal’ is an axiom of his reasoning, as is the ‘good’ of the indissolubility of marriage, and citing Kant is always convenient when trying to find philosophical reasons for circular arguments. Aguirre gives axiomatic value to the very points in question and his citing of Kant in order to give credibility to his argument makes the whole argumentation a ‘parroting’ exercise in a Dworkinian sense, in which the beliefs of others are cited without proving anything at all. Romera Navarro, distancing himself from the low level of intellectual debate, is damning in his evaluation and calls for a higher moral position:

results in adulterio.

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La doctrina del divorcio viene rodeada de tales perfidias de concepto, de tan graves censuras, de tan injustas acusaciones que muy pocos poseen independencia moral y entereza bastante para salir á su defensa y romper una lanza contra los prejuicios, misoneísmos, mediocridad ética, errores y prevenciones conjurados contra la verdad sexual. Acusaciones que, traspasando los límites de la crítica honrada, han llegado por labios de espíritus groseros á herir todo respeto personal, confundiendo la lógica de la razón y la aspiración ideal con los sucios erotismos de un temperamento que persigue el desenfreno. Queremos purificar ese ambiente y saturarlo de una elevada concepción moral (Romera Navarro 1910: 60-61).

While attacking those opposing divorce for their biased opinions, false concepts and lack of moral independence, Romera Navarro portrays his own moral position as follows: Cuando la naturaleza y fines del matrimonio, hemos dicho, se oponen á la permanencia del vínculo, no queda otra solución que el divorcio. Formado para la felicidad y ventura de los cónyuges, el matrimonio debe ser disuelto cuando se convierta en semillero de dolores; creado en bien de los hijos y de su legitimidad, se disolverá por el adulterio de cualquiera de los cónyuges; generado por la voluntad libre, y con garantías legales, debe disolverse, conforme á los requisitos y procedimientos de la ley, cuando se pierda aquella voluntad de convivencia (Romera Navarro 1910: 66).

For Romera Navarro it is a simple matter of will: once the couple has fallen out of love, there is no reason to ask the spouses to stay together. As we will see later, this attitude and way of argumentation is very similar to Burgos’s stance. The law lecturer and politician José María González de Echávarri y Vivanco11 uses rationalisations and parroting to justify his anti-divorce position and thus destabilises his own arguments: La Moral y las buenas costumbres padecen extraordinariamente con el divorcio. Contradice la ley natural que proclama la indisolubilidad como necesaria para la educación y el auxilio de los cónyuges y en vez de formar de ambos contrayentes una personalidad solo divisible por la muerte, turba el pensamiento de los cónyuges con la tentación de poderse disolver el vínculo, crea uniones frívolas, de constitución incierta, sin constante comunicación de derechos y deberes. En apoyo de nuestra opinión citaremos lo escrito por [...] el jurista Trendelumburg [sic]: “El matrimonio, es, por su naturaleza, indisoluble, su fuerza ética reposa solamente en esta presuposición. Si el matrimonio

11 José María González de Echávarri y Vivanco (1875-1950) was professor of law from 1906

and senator from 1918; he published many books on law, amongst the more important was El divorcio y el delito. For further details, see Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada EuropeoAmericana, vol. 26 (1925: 655).

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fuese por sí mismo disoluble, sería por otra parte sacarlos de su centro de gravedad: sin la comunidad de vida, no es completo, cada mitad del único todo necesariamente ha de esforzarse en atraer á la otra parte.” El matrimonio es la unión del hombre y de la mujer en toda su plenitud. Ahora bien, tal unión no puede ser plena si no es indisoluble. De donde la indisolubilidad procede de la naturaleza del matrimonio (González de Echávarri y Vivanco 1912: 23-24).

For González de Echávarri y Vivanco the indissolubility of marriage is allegedly a natural law and necessary for the education and mutual support of the spouses. If they knew they could divorce, it would make the union insecure. In citing the German legal philosopher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, who argues that marriage is by nature indissoluble, its ethical force rests on that presupposition, González de Echávarri y Vivanco follows a pattern. As with Aguirre quoting Kant earlier, foreign thinkers or experts are quoted to verify what the writer himself is attempting to prove in a circular argument. Despite being on a higher intellectual level, this tactic can also be considered a ‘parroting’ exercise. Again, the very issue in question, the indissolubility of marriage, is given axiomatic value and hence it is implied that there is no real need to prove anything. Those who opposed divorce argued that for the good of society the individual should suppress all egotistical desires and thus — by means of abstraction — swiftly wrote women out of the whole divorce discourse. The issue was merely constructed as that of the struggle between individual hedonism versus the presumed moral ideal of leading a selfless life for the greater good of society. The divorcistas, however, identified the problem as a gender-specific matter arguing for women’s rights. Romera Navarro clearly identifies the hypocrisy in his opponents’ arguments: Y cuando el interés de las mujeres se rehúsa y sólo se atiende al interés del sexo viril, es cuando se habla del interés social. Para que la ley responda al verdadero interés colectivo sería preciso que se equilibrara en ella las conveniencias de uno y otro sexo. Y como no sólo de conveniencias vive la ley, sino que primordialmente se nutre, ó debiera nutrirse, de realidades de justicia, procede hablar de equidad12 social y derechos de los sexos, más que de interés social y conveniencias de los mismos. Porque la pureza de la justicia legal no puede rectamente ser subordinada á ninguna clase de intereses — ni necesita serlo á los intereses legítimos — supuesto el principio de armonía que concilia y enlaza en un solo cuerpo la justicia y el interés social; en cuya virtud si el legislador adapta sus imperativos á las puras exigencias de la equidad, no podrá en ningún caso lastimar los intereses sociales. Convendría, pues, no emplear, en un honrado tecnicismo jurídico, la

Equidad is defined as: ‘Justicia natural por oposición a la letra de la ley positiva. Norma individualizada adaptada a las circunstancias de un caso concreto’ (Villa-Real Molina/Arco Torres 1999: 176). 12

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frase “interés social” como cosa ajena, y menos contraria, á la noble locución de equidad social, sino como uno de los factores y peculiaridades de esta última. [...] cuando los vivos resplandores del sol de la nueva justicia que redime y salva, ilumina la conciencia social y desvanece los privilegios de clase; alientan todavía los privilegios de sexo y no sólo en la vida exterior y pública, sino en el mismo matrimonio y la familia, ese bello tabernáculo de las virtudes sociales, permanece un régimen de odiosa tiranía que permite la convivencia bajo el mismo techo de un señor y de una esclava, permanece la vieja concepción monárquica de la familia—que de ser indispensable, ¿por qué ha de vincularse su majestad en el sexo masculino? (Romera Navarro 1910: 15-16, my emphasis).

Romera Navarro emphasises what those opposing divorce had so conveniently forgotten: the price women pay for the social stability of indissoluble marriage. He calls for gender equity13 arguing that this cannot be against the social interest if such interest is based on equality. Women are oppressed in marriage and a failure to apply justice and equality to this sphere means that women are prepolitically disadvantaged. In line with Rawls’ theory of justice, Romera Navarro demands equal rights to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties, in particular that of the freedom of the person: Todas las legislaciones modernas consignan entre sus disposiciones fundamentales el humanitario principio jurídico y social de que ninguno puede obligar sus obras ó servicios más que por determinado tiempo ó para determinada empresa. En el derecho novísimo es inmoral todo compromiso que implique una renuncia de la libertad personal (Romera Navarro 1910: 67-68).

Furthermore, Romera Navarro also criticises his opponents for forgetting about the different social realities of being husband and wife: ¡Y en estas condiciones, cuando la mujer moderna sigue padeciendo un género de capitis diminutio, todavía llegan á sostener que los hombres, sacrificándose, han conservado el matrimonio en bien del bello sexo! Esto podría decirse, cuando en el matrimonio supiera el hombre refrenar sus instintos de polígamo; mas no ocurre así, su monogamia está en la ley, pero no en las costumbres. A la mujer es á quien se ha impuesto la verdadera monogamia (Romera Navarro 1910: 28-29).

As we will see in the following two sections on Burgos’s feminist essays and on her fiction respectively, the above quotation relates perfectly to Burgos’s critique of male-dominated society. 13 Throughout this study ‘equity’ is used in its more colloquial meaning of natural justice, since this is what the original term equidad signifies. In English law it is also defined as: ‘any body of rules existing by the side of the original civil law, founded on distinct principles and claiming incidentally to supersede the civil law in virtue of a superior sanctity inherent in those principles’ (Curzon 1994: 140).

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Burgos’s feminist essays Los códigos, al fijar los deberes de ambos cónyuges, hablan de la obediencia de la mujer ó bien de la protección; y el Código nos protege del mismo modo que los ingleses protegen á Egipto (Burgos 1905: 5).

As we have seen, contemporaneous Spanish legal discourse was — not surprisingly — predominantly a male enterprise. Carmen de Burgos’s feminist legal critique is no exception to that rule, and unlike Clara Campoamor or Victora Kent, who were both trained lawyers, Burgos had no legal training and was therefore talking from the vantage point of an informed layperson. Her feminist essays, however, attest to thorough legal knowledge and Burgos can thus be considered an intermediary between the legal profession and the general public. She used her position as redactora (1903-1906) at the prestigious liberal newspaper Diario Universal to inform and educate the public about legal issues in general and those concerning women in particular. It should be clear from the above discussion that the issue of divorce was of particular interest to women. Burgos was for decades at the forefront of the campaign for a modernisation of the divorcio law. As early as 1903 she drew attention to a Club de Matrimonios mal avenidos that was to study the question of a divorce law with the intention of having it subsequently presented in parliament: Me asegura que muy en breve se fundará en Madrid un “Club de Matrimonios mal avenidos”, con el objeto de exponer sus quejas y estudiar el problema en todos sus aspectos, redactando las bases de una ley de divorcio que se proponen presentar en las Cámaras (Burgos 1903: 1).

This resulted in a number of letters to the editor by women expressing their support for divorce, which prompted Burgos to launch an opinion poll in the Diario Universal directed both at her readers in general and at eminent personalities in Spain’s literary and political world in particular. The former wrote in of their own accord, while the latter were personally asked for their opinion in a letter from Burgos. Politicians were by and large non-committal and are therefore not included in the following analysis. The survey was published in her book El divorcio en España and shows some interesting results: of the general readership there were 1462 people in favour of divorce and 320 against (Burgos 1904a: 137). The whole spectrum of opinions ranged from the most conservative, considering divorce to be an egotistical desire that would be the end of society as we know it, to those of liberal opinions who thought it was high time Spain became a civilised country and introduced a modern divorce law. The debate in the public domain partly revolved around the same issues that were central to legal discourse: love, morality, social reform and the question of natural law (naturaleza). The large majority of letters congratulated Burgos for

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having started the debate. Interestingly, as with those legal writers opposed to divorce, the primary focus was yet again not on women but on the social reform a modern divorce law would entail and consequently on the ramifications for society as a whole. However, unlike legal discourse, the public survey gave women a voice. When the cronista Francisco Durante sent a letter to Carmen de Burgos commenting on the note quoted above, he sarcastically stated that: ‘[...] la probable formación de un Club de Matrimonios mal avenidos para pedir el establecimiento del divorcio, ha caído entre las señoras mujeres como agua de Mayo en tierra necesitada de bienhechora lluvia’ (Burgos: 1904a: 94). Yet he himself considers the institution of marriage in Spain to be superior to that in other countries: ‘[...] superioridad fundada en la abnegación de nuestras mujeres, en su fidelidad y en una dulce resignación tradicional, que les ha dado, á mi juicio, cierto sello de grandeza’ (Burgos 1904a: 95). He also questioned the genuineness of women’s desire: ‘Las señoras que pidan el divorcio para volver á casarse, ¿han amado á sus maridos? Esa es mi duda. ¿Se casaron sin amar y no se dieron cuenta de ello, ó se dieron cuenta exacta y se casaron sin embargo?’ (Burgos 1904a: 96). These polemical statements gave rise to a heated public debate prompting women to take issue with his arguments. Dolores Fernández, one of the many women writing in to express her opinion, took Durante up on his arguments and reasoned that one could, of course, love more than once; widows who remarry were the best example of that: Como dice muy bien el notable cronista Sr. Durante [...] la creación de este Club ha caído entre las señoras mujeres como agua de Mayo en tierra necesitada de bienhechora lluvia. El caso no es para menos, mi respetable señora Colombine. [...] Sí, Sr. Durante: se trata de eso, se trata de la rescisión del contrato de matrimonio, ya que un contrato es, y el único que se celebra á perpetuidad. [...] ¿Hay más de un amor? Pregunta el delicado cronista. [...] Si por un solo amor nos casáramos, ¿cómo se casarían en segundas nupcias viudas y viudos? [...] Las señoras que pedimos el divorcio, hemos podido haber amado á nuestros maridos; pero ¿y si éstos se han hecho indignos de nuestro amor? ¿Y si éstos han profanado con sus mancebas algo más que el hogar conyugal, y la venda se ha caído de los ojos y el alma ha recobrado su imperio de dignidad? ¿Qué debemos hacer entonces? ¿Resignarnos? ¿Callarnos? ¿Besar la mano del amo que nos da el latigazo? ¿Son ustedes los amantes de la libertad, y quieren, para nosotras las mujeres, una odiosa esclavitud que repugna toda honrada conciencia? [...] En síntesis, Sr. Durante: el amor puede estar en el matrimonio, pero puede no estarlo. Para el caso en que no lo está, el divorcio es una admirable é imprescindible institución (Burgos 1904a: 101-103).

This specimen of public opinion raises a few points that are worth commenting on. Fernández argued that marriage is nothing but a contract, and hastened to point out the one striking anomaly of such a contract: it is the only one that cannot be terminated. She also challenged Durante about his insinuation that

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women are not sufficiently in love with their husbands. She argued that, as the fiction of Burgos illustrates, women are, generally speaking, in love and then fall out of love, because of their husbands’ vile behaviour. Fernández also heavily criticised Durante’s lack of consideration for the inferior position women are in when married, while at the same time pointing out that male-dominated society made marriage the only career women were allowed to have. As we will see in what follows, this is also a criticism that Burgos levels at the customs of the society she lives in. In sum, then, the letter of Dolores Fernández raises points that both Romera Navarro and Burgos try to elaborate on in an attempt to rescue the divorce issue from phallocratic interest in the status quo. This is particularly striking in view of the problematic question of how to ascertain a public morality. Other female readers, however, declared unstinting support for Francisco Durante. Surprisingly, this was done under the mantle of ‘true feminism’ and can be taken as a prime example of conservative women who were afraid of the possible consequences of divorce. One obvious fear was that men would use divorce to abandon their wives and women would lose economic stability as well as the one social environment of which they had any experience (Graham 1995: 105). Conservative women, like their male counterparts in legal discourse, rationalised their fears and predicted the downfall of morality and society at large. One could thus argue that this section of the female population colluded in its own disempowerment. Although the public survey gave women a voice this did not necessarily result in support for the divorcistas’ cause.14 The public debate, contrary to the legal debate, also expressed the opinion that divorce is a social reality to which law merely reacts. The journalist and politician Salvador Cañals states that: ¿Existe entre nosotros, en las realidades penosas de la vida, el divorcio? Indudablemente; no hay quien no conozca abundantísimos ejemplares de matrimonios rotos por el desamor, consiguiente á la desilusión ó al desengaño. Pues si las leyes han de responder á las necesidades de la vida, á las realidades de la sociedad, ¿cómo no ha de ser indispensable en España el establecimiento del divorcio? Percibo clarísimamente los inconvenientes gravísimos de esa reforma. Nuestro carácter de imprevisores é inconscientes; nuestro enorme atraso intelectual y moral (Burgos 1904a: 18).

As outlined in my introduction, law can be considered both a cause as well as an effect of social change (Vago 1997: 285). In this instance, and according to

14

For more details on women's voices colluding with dominant legal thought, see Burgos (1904a: 36-38, 44, 78, 103-105, 110-112). For the female pro-divorce lobby, see Burgos (1904a: 107-110, 124, 131-135).

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Cañals, law follows social change and can, as such, be considered reactive: divorce is already a de facto part of social reality, even if de jure marriage is still indissoluble. Amongst the literary elite two factions stand out: those who are in favour of divorce for liberal considerations and those who are surprisingly uninterested in the topic. Pío Baroja for example tells us: Soy partidario de él [el divorcio] porque todo lo que sirva para resquebrajar esta costra de leyes, de preceptos, de costumbres, de dogmas intangibles é inmutables que no nos dejan vivir, me parece bueno. Soy partidario de él porque creo que hay que afirmar, que todo es revocable, que nada es definitivo, que todo puede transformarse y mejorar (Burgos 1904:12).

Blasco Ibáñez goes even further than that when he states: ‘Soy partidario decidido del divorcio, por lo mismo que creo en el amor y no en el matrimonio’ (Burgos 1904:13), a statement so radical that it explains the fears of those opposed to divorce. Then there are those who are completely uninterested. Unamuno confesses that: Me pasa con eso del divorcio lo mismo que con las novelas de adulterio: muy rara vez logran interesarme. [...] De aquí que el feminismo me llame muy poco la atención, considerando que algunas de las cuestiones que plantea lo son de organización y reglamentación del trabajo y otras de cultura general. La mayor parte de los males de que las mujeres se quejan son males de que padecemos también los hombres (Burgos 1904:84).

Quite an error of judgement, given the legal discrimination that women were subjected to. Even more astounding is Pardo Bazán’s reply, given that she herself had separated from her husband over his opposition to her writing: Muy señora mía y de mi aprecio: No contesté á usted porque no tengo opinión alguna sobre el divorcio, y por lo tanto no me es posible emitirla. Necesitaría dedicarme á estudiar esa cuestión, y no dispongo de tiempo. Para que no parezca descortesía el insistir en mi silencio respondo á usted, y celebro esta ocasión de saludarla, quedando de usted afectísima s.s.q.b.s.m., Emilia Pardo Bazán (Burgos 1904:71).

Burgos herself (1904a: 137) concludes that ‘los defensores del matrimonio indisoluble, fueron pocos y tibios los argumentos basados en la ciega fe que no discute.’ None of those opposed could argue their case convincingly, so that religious, political and moral pseudo-arguments were used. The socio-political fear was that of family upheavals, damage to the children and thus damage to society as a whole. Moral considerations, in line with religious restrictions, were also paramount. These were most bitterly attacked by Carmen de Burgos, who, echoing the divorcistas, points out that what was, in fact, immoral was not to allow proper divorce. As long as there is love, she reasons, marriage is no

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problem for either party, but, once abhorrence sets in, it is morally wrong to ask people to stay together: ¿Que si después de haberse amado pueden aborrecerse? Esa es una cuestión en la que entran igualmente la psicología y la fisiología; y la experiencia demuestra que el caso sucede con harta frecuencia. [...] Divorciados moralmente los esposos, no están lejos las traiciones, el odio, el engaño y hasta el crimen... Es horrible el hogar de dos séres que se aborrecen y que saben que sólo la muerte puede separarlos. En estas condiciones es absurdo condenar el adulterio. Cuando teniendo facultad de separarse y de formar un hogar nuevo los esposos se engañan, la pena debe ser severísima; pero mientras las leyes les obliguen á vivir juntos, la traición es una consecuencia lógica; no todos los séres humanos tienen bastante voluntad para ser héroes ó mártires (Burgos 1904a: 139).

Her own conclusions then read as follows: El divorcio es un signo de progreso y está admitido en la mayoría de los países. El divorcio es conveniente á la sociedad y á la moral. Hay religiones que aceptan ó rechazan el divorcio y esto sólo depende de la conciencia del individuo, sin que interese al legislador. De nuestro plebiscito resulta que la opinión en España es favorable como conquista de la civilización (Burgos 1904a: 142).

The following points are worthy of note in Burgos’s summary of her findings. Firstly, she refers to foreign countries in an attempt to prove that social change need not result in anarchy. Secondly, and reminiscent of Dworkin, she relegates the controversial topic of religion to private morality and hence puts it outside the reach of the legislator. Finally, and most obviously, she points out that, according to her survey, public opinion in Spain is favourable to social change concerning divorce. After this public debate had set the tone, Carmen de Burgos continued to campaign for divorce in various media. Her theoretical writings La mujer en España (1906) and La misión social de la mujer (1911b), both lectures given and later published in the form of a pamphlet, followed on from the divorce debate, tackling the issue from a completely different angle: the wrongs of courtship and marriage itself. What interests me here is how Burgos deals with some of the issues that emerged from the legal and public debate. According to Burgos, the ‘gender war’ starts in childhood through lack of co-education. The fact that girls and boys are kept apart during childhood makes girls start to see boys as the enemy, as a necessary evil that must be endured to achieve the one socially acceptable goal in a woman’s life: marriage. No existe la coeducación. Se acostumbra á la niña á ver en el hombre un enemigo al que hay que temer y engañar; es un enemigo fuerte y necesario, puesto que se le dice á la mujer que no tiene más carrera que el matrimonio.

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Separados desde la infancia, no ejerce la mujer la influencia de su dulce carácter sobre la rudeza masculina, no se conocen, y el matrimonio es pocas veces hijo del amor y la reflexión (Burgos 1906: 41).

Both boys and girls, then, are pushed into stereotypical behaviour simply because they are kept apart in childhood. To make matters worse, during courtship they are again not given enough opportunity to get to know the opposite sex: Después de casados empiezan á conocerse, y esto hasta en las relaciones largas, pues durante el tiempo del noviazgo la mujer y el hombre mienten... mienten sin esfuerzo... ella muestra sólo gracias, él condescendencia y dulzura. [...] La vida en común revela los defectos y los días se cuentan por las decepciones. [...] Y de esta manera se va al matrimonio en un país donde no existe el divorcio. Esto perjudica más a la mujer (Burgos 1906: 41-42).

To be trapped in an irrevocable marriage, then, is particularly hard on women, as men are given more freedom both by law and custom. Nevertheless Burgos states very clearly that she is not against the institution of marriage itself; marriage has to be based on a union of two human beings: [...] que han de formar el hogar y la familia que no quisiera que se uniesen más que por amor y estimación mutua. Un matrimonio que no esclavice á las personas sino, que una las almas. Por eso quiero á la mujer independiente, para que no se case por necesidad; para que tenga derecho á elegir; para que sea consciente de sus actos. Y si aún así la vida convenciera á los cónyuges de la infelicidad que les espera unidos, que las leyes permitan la separación, el divorcio, el que los equivocados puedan formar un hogar nuevo. Admitido ésto, tenemos quitado todo el cortejo de engaños, adulterio y deshonor de la sociedad moderna (Burgos 1911b: 17).

Burgos, like the divorcistas in the legal debate, argues that a divorce law would avoid adultery and therefore make society more moral instead of less. She therefore demands a modern divorce law: El matrimonio civil y el divorcio son necesarios á la libertad de la mujer. El hombre que no es feliz en su hogar huye de él y se crea otros lazos con la tolerancia de la sociedad; la mujer tiene que aceptar el papel de mártir sin preguntarle si tiene fuerza para ello (Burgos 1911b: 17).

In both La mujer en España and La misión social de la mujer, Burgos calls for the vindication of women’s rights: ‘La mujer española desea reivindicar sus derechos jurídicos como hija, esposa y madre’ (Burgos 1906: 44). Interestingly, here Burgos perpetuates the notion of woman as existing only in relation to man. However, as shown in my introduction, given that at the time the legal subjectivity of women was trapped in these concepts, Burgos only demands the

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most obvious and immediate changes necessary. She also points out that, due to the discriminación por razón de matrimonio, women have an inferior status in the family: Veamos el Código civil en qué situación nos coloca dentro de la familia. No tenemos en ella las mismas prerrogativas que el marido. Nuestros hijos se acostumbran á vernos como inferiores. ¿Qué extraño es que luego vejen á las otras mujeres y no sepan respetarlas? ¿Qué extraño que sean banales y caprichosos si se educaron entre la injusticia y la desigualdad? (Burgos 1911b: 18-19).

This inferiority in marriage is particularly harmful for women, since children tend to disrespect their mothers — a detail entirely overlooked by both legal and public debate. Yet, Burgos is careful not to disregard marriage as such and in La misión social de la mujer she also describes her ideal type of woman: Es el tipo ideal de la mujer moderna; dulce y fuerte, que ama y piensa, con perfecta conciencia de sus derechos y deberes. Una mujer muy tierna, muy amante del hogar, algo coqueta [...] jamás masculinizada. A primera vista parece que existe una contradicción entre todas estas cualidades; pero no es así. Todas ellas se funden en dos sentimientos naturales que no pueden ser antagónicos: el Amor y la Justicia (Burgos 1911b: 7).

Not only is she in favour of marriage, but she also portrays the ideal woman as a mixture of a housewife and a free and independent woman, a hybrid between the traditional image of a woman and a modern, strong woman, fully aware of her rights, while never masculinizada. This blurring of binary oppositions is justified by a harmonious interplay of love and justice, which, according to Burgos, are not antagonistic values. As we will see later, both in the section on Burgos’s fiction in this chapter, and more importantly in Chapter 3, it is the juxtaposition of love and justice as antagonistic values that the heroines in Burgos’s fiction desperately attempt to escape from. After 24 years of campaigning and writing about marriage, divorce and adultery, Burgos used La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a) to give a more complete overview of her position. Largely ignored by biographers and researchers alike, it is — at some 350 pages — Burgos’s most comprehensive and most mature theoretical work. Yet, by today’s standards, her feminist essays are lacking in theorisation. She fails to abstract her very many discerning observations and does not offer any conclusive theoretical overview. However, according to Humm’s assertions, ‘feminist theory begins with women’s experience of oppression and argues that women’s subordination extends from private circumstances to political conditions’ (Humm 1999: 223-224). Hence Burgos’s writings can be considered theoretical. Elizabeth Starcevic (1996: 77) considers the work an important precursor of de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1997) and indeed it does have some similarities. Both have in common that they take issue with the well-known ‘facts’ and myths about women in order to

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refute them, but in Burgos’s case this is used to establish a very comprehensive enumeration of demands for rights. Her own definition of feminism reads as follows: ‘PARTIDO SOCIAL QUE TRABAJA PARA LOGRAR UNA JUSTICIA QUE NO ESCLAVICE A LA MITAD DEL GENERO HUMANO, EN PERJUICIO DE TODO EL’ (Burgos 1927a: 9). Not surprisingly, then, she considers feminism a result of social injustice: El feminismo existe, independiente de la voluntad, y comprende a la sociedad en general. Nace de la injusticia, del malestar, que una parte de la humanidad sufre. Sólo puede resolverse reestableciendo la integridad de la justicia para que todos tengan garantizado su derecho (Burgos 1927a: 10).

She considers justice a guarantee of rights in general and of women’s equal rights to men’s in particular. As a proponent of first wave feminism, Burgos demands equal rights for women based on their inalienable rights as citizens of a society: [...] para lograr la liberación de la mujer y mejorar su condición a fin de garantir sus derechos individuales en nombre del principio del derecho humano y en interés de la colectividad, que realizará más fácilmente su misión contando con el concurso de las dos mitades que la constituyen: Así, pues, el feminismo encierra como doctrina los principios más puros de libertad y de justicia y como obra, entraña una gran utilidad social (Burgos 1927a: 9).

In line with liberal theories of justice as well as Romera Navarro’s writings, Burgos simply points out what those opposed to divorce had so conveniently forgotten in their abstract discussions of the social good: that the interests of society have, of necessity, also to comprise of the interests of women. However, Burgos is by no means against marriage as such. She maintains that feminism actually favours marriage. Women, she argues, increasingly resist marriage not because of lack of love for men or interest in marriage, but because they know how much their civil rights are restricted once they do marry: El feminismo, lejos de perjudicar al matrimonio, como de mala fe se ha dicho, lo favorece. [...] La mujer instruída y emancipada no dejará de sentir el amor, más intenso cuanto más fuerte sea su personalidad. [...] El feminismo favorece al matrimonio desde el punto de vista económico que es otro de los fines legales de la asociación (Burgos 1927a: 132-133).

Interestingly, Burgos also advocates that women should not be a financial burden on their husbands but should attempt to achieve economic independence: Al dejar de ser la mujer una carga para el hombre, se facilita el matrimonio y se da una garantía de selección al hogar; pues la mujer, con su situación económica asegurada, no se casará con el primero que la pretenda, hostigada por la necesidad. Culta y libre, sabrá elegir y el matrimonio se realizará llenando

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los requisitos necesarios de amor, estimación y conveniencia. [...] Se formará un tipo de hogar nuevo sobre nuevos jalones económicos, que constituirá una forma superior de relaciones familiares, lo que vendrá a ser como un refuerzo del vínculo [...]. El divorcio no ha hecho más que aumentar su número (Burgos 1927a: 133).

In a consciousness-raising exercise, Burgos explains that there is a discrepancy between the legal subjectivity of women in the Código Civil (1889) and the Constitution. The latter actually gives women the same rights as men: Nuestra Constitución de 30 de junio de 1876, lo mismo que la del año 12, consagra los derechos humanos prescindiendo del sexo. La mujer es, en realidad, igual al hombre. Tiene la inviolabilidad de domicilio y correspondencia, no puede sufrir pena de confiscación de bienes ni ser molestada por sus opiniones religiosas. Es libre de elegir la profesión que le guste y ejercerla como mejor le parezca. [...] La Constitución reconoce por igual a hombres y mujeres los derechos políticos y el de emitir ideas por escrito o de palabra, sin sujeción a censura previa. Tiene derecho de reunión pacífica, petición, asociación para los fines de la vida, admisibilidad a empleos y cargos. No pueden ser procesadas ni condenadas más que por juez competente y con arreglo a las leyes anteriores al delito (Burgos 1927a: 84-85).

Burgos here illustrates that the Constitution proclaims universal human rights regardless of sex and states that: ‘bastaría respetarla [la Constitución] para crear un buen estado de derecho’ (Burgos 1927a: 136). She refers to all those rights that Rawls calls basic liberties and rightly points out that these inalienable rights are violated in the Código Civil (1889): A pesar de estas declaraciones terminantes, el Código Civil ha desenvuelto los principios y artículos de la Constitución de un modo absurdo y contrario a su espíritu, privando a la mujer de derechos que realmente tiene e inmovilizándose con esa rigidez del derecho escrito, sin revisión desde 1888, cuando, como nacido de las costumbres, necesita ser flexible y evolucionar con ellas (Burgos 1927a: 85).

Burgos obviously believes in law as being reactive to social change. In terms of married women’s rights, she demands that marriage should not diminish the legal capacity of women: La subordinación de la mujer está proclamada en nuestros Códigos. Se necesita un plan razonable de emancipación, comenzar por la igualdad de derechos. El feminismo no desea para la mujer una situación de privilegio, no es una doctrina revolucionaria; tiende sólo a reconocer a la mujer todos sus derechos, sin emanciparla de ninguno de sus deberes. El matrimonio no debía disminuir la capacidad civil de la mujer casada puesto que el Código declara que “la menor edad, la demencia o imbecilidad, la sordomudez, la prodigalidad y

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la intervención civil no son más que restricciones de la personalidad jurídica”. Así, pues, el matrimonio no está incluído entre las causas de disminución de la capacidad que sufre la mujer en general, pero que se acentúa en la casada para convertirla en la eterna menor (Burgos 1927a: 135).15

Here Burgos illustrates that not only does the Código Civil (1889) violate the universal human rights that are proclaimed in the Constitution, but, furthermore, there are also inconsistencies within the Code. This, of course, speaks volumes about the lack of logic in legal reasoning and clearly indicates how unashamedly gender-biased the law was at the time. It is also interesting to note the different functions of Constitutions and Civil Codes, respectively. The former was used nobly (and theoretically) to proclaim equality of rights, while the Civil Code, organising social life in much more detail, subsequently makes a mockery of the universal rights granted in the Constitution. Burgos’s observation is an astute critique of what the legislator claimed to be justice in law, namely the upholding of universal and equal rights. She also criticises the social predicament women find themselves in: unmarried, they were considered almost social outcasts but had more civil rights; married, their legal status was reduced virtually to that of a juvenile: Las costumbres están también en pugna con las disposiciones del Código. Este da mayores derechos a la mujer soltera o viuda que a la casada, y en cambio, en la vida social la casada goza de mayor libertad. El casamiento es como un ascenso en la categoría social y la mujer adquiere más libertad en las costumbres. La sociedad es más benévola y tolerante con la mujer casada cuya moral es dudosa que con las jóvenes solteras. [...] Pero el Código cierra la puerta de esa libertad aparente. La mujer casada [...] está peor considerada en las leyes que las mujeres de vida equívoca que permanecen solteras (Burgos 1927a: 136).

As already outlined in my introduction, the legal subjectivities of unmarried and married women were very different. Burgos here astutely observes the paradoxical correlation between marital status and rights, and argues that women are trapped in an interaction between a legal and a cultural discourse.

15

Burgos here quotes article 32 of the Código Civil (1889).

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La malcasada La justicia, en España, ofrece el fenómeno de asustar hasta a los que buscan su amparo (Burgos 1923d: 197).

Against the backdrop of the divorce debate and Burgos’s feminist essays, her novel La malcasada (1923d) reads like a case study out of a law textbook.16 The story is exemplary in its treatment of the injustices married women were subjected to and is Carmen de Burgos’s finest example of a narrative illustrating the legal machinery women were entrapped in. Dolores, the heroine of the novel, is not only the victim of a vile man, but, almost more importantly, the victim of an unjust legal system that condemns her to a ‘life sentence’ in a marriage without any legal scope for escape. She is one of Burgos’s most progressive married heroines in that she takes on her husband, his family and the bourgeoisie of Almería, who all form an unholy alliance against her, because she has the ‘audacity’ to insist on her right to freedom of the person. Challenging the legal system, she puts the existing divorcio legislation to the test, only to find that, despite overwhelming evidence in her favour, the phallocratic machinery works effectively enough to force her to stay with her husband. Not only does the story supply almost every legal, and indeed moral, reason to justify divorcio, but the whole divorce debate, as described above, is also re-enacted in various conversations throughout the novel. La malcasada is a critique of dogmatic law in that it criticises the legal codes for their lack of modern divorce laws. What happens in the course of the novel is fictional ‘evidence’ of how law can make a misery of two lives and a scathing criticism of the indissolubility of marriage. It is also a critique of law as a political rather than independent tool, attesting to no clear separation of powers. Ultimately, Dolores’ lawsuit does not fail because of lack of evidence, but because of the political influence of her in-laws. Written in 1923, this novel testifies to Burgos’s increasing interest in publicising the blatant injustices of the Spanish legal codes; a project continued and expanded in her main theoretical work La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a). In what follows, I hope to demonstrate that Burgos’s fiction is a mirror of the divorce debates (both legal and public) as well as a fictional answer to any doubts regarding the question of whether divorce can be justified. To this end, I will first analyse Dolores’ moral position followed by a description of the divorcio case. La malcasada is a narrative of a woman’s quest for equality and in that quest her only option is to get out of her marriage, since it becomes increasingly clear throughout the narrative that she will not find equality within marriage. Dworkin’s concept of the moral position is useful to understand Dolores’

16

For real-life divorce cases, see Castillejo (1934).

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situation: once she decides to file for divorcio she is virtually on her own, trying to explain to the world why it is not immoral to want legal separation. Her position is what Dworkin calls a moral position in a discriminatory sense — a position adapted in order to distinguish itself from prejudices, rationalisations, emotional reactions or simple arbitrariness. Its most characteristic use, according to Dworkin, is ‘to offer a limited but important sort of justification for an act, when the moral issues surrounding that act are unclear or in dispute’ (Dworkin 1978: 248). Dolores does precisely that: she offers a limited justification for her lawsuit, i.e. her personal happiness as she puts it. By refuting one argument after the other given in the divorce debate — and its moral positions in an anthropological sense — she establishes her own moral position and thus she has to do nothing less than go completely against the prevalent morality of the time, personified in Almería’s middle class in general and her inlaws in particular. Dolores assumes the moral position of the most fundamental of rights, i.e. the right to equality, based on equal liberty for all and self-respect (Rawls 1999: 266). Dolores’ basic liberties in a Rawlsian sense are freedom of the person (freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault), freedom of thought, and the right to hold personal property. Dolores has none of those liberties in her marriage in which she endures a long list of curtailments of her rights: emotional cruelty (19-21, 88, 113); she is not allowed to play music (29); her husband decides which people she should frequent (116); she is her husband’s property (‘Ella era como una cosa que le pertenecía a aquel hombre.’ (33)). In short, her right to freedom of the person, in particular freedom from psychological oppression, is curtailed. Worse still, she does not have ownership of her own body: Su desesperación llegaba al odio. No podía comprender que se le quisiera imponer la obligación de entregar su intimidad, sin amor, a un hombre que había llegado a repugnarle, como si ella hubiese abdicado de su libertad de espíritu. No. No podía ser aquello. ¿Qué ley podía condenarla a besar? (114)

It is important here to note that these rights are inalienable natural rights and, as Burgos points out in her essays, these rights were incompatible with the positive codified law legislating categorically against those basic rights for married women. In fact, the very crux of the matter lies in this: throughout the narrative Dolores assumes the moral position of wanting the inalienable right of basic liberties, e.g. freedom of the person: ‘El derecho de propiedad, adquirido de cualquier manera que fuese, no podía ser aceptado sobre los seres inteligentes.’ (112), the narrator tells us alluding to the fact that wives were virtually the property of their husbands. Interestingly, Lacey observes that even today this conception of ownership of one’s own body is perpetuated by some commentators who argue that the law on rape protects a proprietary interest in one’s own body (Lacey 1998: 106).

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At the beginning of the novel Dolores finds it hard to be submissive (28) and subsequently feels physical repulsion for her husband (‘Cuando su marido iba a buscar sus caricias de modo rutinario, Dolores se sentía incapaz de corresponderle. Antonio, tan buen mozo y tan jacarandoso, le causaba una repugnancia invencible. Lo prefería enfadado a amoroso.’ (32)). While still living with her husband shortly before the divorcio proceedings commence, she challenges him on one occasion and indirectly asks for equal treatment: — ¿Se puede saber dónde ha estado la señora esta mañana? — le preguntó sin tomarse el trabajo de saludarla. Ella se sentía ya fuerte. — ¿Te pido yo cuentas a tí? El respondió con otra pregunta: — ¿Pero es que te has llegado a creer que eres igual que yo? (165)

Antonio’s last question is indicative of the inequality enshrined in law. He can hardly contain his indignation at her (in his view preposterous) insinuation of equality. Not surprisingly, shortly thereafter, when she refuses to be touched by him, he maltreats her physically: — ¿Así te portas? Pues vas a venir de grado o por fuerza. — No. — Lo veremos. — No quiero. La cogió brutalmente del brazo, atenazándola entre sus manos. Dolores dió un grito. Ciego de ira le descargó un bofetón. La joven escapó al balcón, gritando: — ¡Socorro! ¡Socorro! — ¡Calla, maldita! La cogió del cabello para arrancarla de allí; pero ella, asida a los hierros, soportaba el horrible dolor sin dejar de gritar. Los vecinos salieron a los balcones y a las ventanas. La calle comenzó a llenarse de gente. [...] César, que esperaba a su amigo en el comedor, fué el primero en intervenir llevándose a Antonio casi arrastrando. [...] La joven, a pesar del dolor de los golpes recibidos, se sentía feliz. Había recobrado toda su decisión. El escándalo venía a favorecerla. — ¡Mañana seré libre! — pensaba (166-167).

Justice here means being freed from a man who beats her and thus Dolores merely tries to escape from unjust and illegal behaviour. Progressively, her moral position shifts from a demand for equal treatment (as in the first dialogue) to the simple right not to be beaten up and indecently assaulted (as in the second dialogue). This is the first time in the narrative when this shift in her moral position becomes obvious. Although she is clear in her mind that she has a right to equal treatment, she increasingly realises that, due to the phallocratic law, she has to settle for less, that is, just ownership of her body.

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After she files for divorcio, two of her husband’s aunts try to talk some sense into her. In these two conversations Dolores tries to explain her moral position of the right to freedom of the person: — Pero tía — decía la joven atajando aquella letanía —, yo no hago nada

malo en no querer continuar al lado de un hombre que me maltrata y... — ¡Las cosas que Dios ata no las pueden desatar los hombres! — ¿Pero está segura de que estos lazos los ha anudado Dios? — ¡Calla, infeliz, no blasfemes! Es cierto que Dios no ha bendecido vuestra unión dándoos un hijo (de tenerlo otra cosa sería), pero tienes el deber de sufrir con paciencia la cruz que te ha tocado en suerte. — No tengo vocación de mártir. — Ya lo veo... y así... como eres joven, correrás tras los placeres [...]. Pero no dudes de que Dios te pedirá cuenta de los pecados de tu marido, abandonado por ti... (179).

Women who have the audacity to insist on their right to freedom of the person are perceived by more conservative women to be following nothing but their egotistical desires. As Victor Espinós argued in the legal debate, divorce was considered ‘la hipertrofia monstruosa del yo’ (Espinós, 1915: 9). If women demanded equality it was deemed egotistical, a view that denied women the right to a self or, in Rawlsian terms, the right to basic liberties. As we will see later, the right to freedom of the person in the case of Dolores is, at the beginning of the narrative, nothing but the right to freedom of movement and the right to self-respect, while towards the end of the novel once the divorcio case has failed, it is reduced to the right to own her body. In the same conversation, the issue of justice versus law is mirrored in the discussion and summed up by Dolores’ moral position (‘las ideas verdaderas’) as opposed to the dominant morality (‘las falsedades establecidas’) of society’s rationalisations as well as positive law: — Habla usted así porque es feliz. Una cosa es aconsejar y otra sufrir. — Es que yo he tenido la suerte de ser madre, y nada hay que haga conocer el sentido de la vida como los hijos. — ¡Los hijos! — exclamó Dolores—. ¡Pobres hijos! Yo me alegro ya de no haberlos tenido, si habían de ser el lazo enojoso que me uniera a ese hombre. [...] Es un crimen que exija la pureza, el candor, la inocencia en una niña, un hombre enfermo, degenerado, vicioso. — ¿Pero tú te has vuelto loca? — exclamó escandalizada doña Carolina —. ¿Qué ideas son esas? Se exaltó aún más Dolores. — ¡Las ideas verdaderas, las ideas humanas, las que enseñan la vida y los desengaños frente a todas las falsedades establecidas! — ¡Me estás ofendiendo con esas teorías! — ¡Quiero defender mi vida, sin dejar que nadie se crea con derecho a intervenir en ella! (179-180)

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The ‘falsedades establecidas’ refer to morality in an anthropological sense: society has decided what is right and wrong, so that anything against God and society is by definition immoral. Equally, however, malos tratos against one’s wife are immoral and illegal, both according to Christian belief and penal law (Código Penal 1870: art. 431). Following Dworkin’s suggestion that moral arguments have to be consistent, Christian beliefs can then not be quoted as a reason for Dolores to reconsider divorcio. Equally, the aunt’s outrageous insinuation that Antonio’s treatment of his wife is her own fault would fall under Dworkin’s category of rationalisation of Antonio’s behaviour and hence would be dismissed as a valid reason for a moral position. In her attempt to defend her right to lead her own life, Dolores attacks two bastions of womanhood: religion and motherhood, questioning the raison d’être of both. Interestingly, Burgos depicts a heroine who does not have children and thus shows that the argument that ‘divorce means damage to the children and hence to society’ cannot be considered applicable in all cases. The following conversation with the next aunt who calls on her uncannily foreshadows the violent end of the novel. Dolores has the nerve to insist on pursuing her own happiness, again demanding her right to freedom of the person: — Yo tengo derecho a ser feliz, tía — se atrevió a decir la joven—. Yo creo que mi felicidad es tan respetable como la ajena. — Sin duda, pero el divorcio, la separación de los matrimonios, ofende a Dios. — Más lo ofendería mi deseo de ser feliz sin el divorcio; porque ese deseo envolvería el de la muerte de mi marido (182).

In this conversation, equality is presented as an equal right to happiness. Again the aunt, this time tía Pepita, uses religious reasons to rationalise why Dolores has no right to legal separation. Religion is used as a universal argument, dangerously close to the parroting strategy Dworkin dismisses for moral positions. Again it is inconsistent, since surely emotional cruelty, domestic violence, and attempted rape also ‘offend God’. Dolores’ moral position is at the centre of all the ‘complications’. Without her insistence on her rights, the marriage would not have ended in disaster — allí donde las costumbres rechazan todos los actos de rebeldía de las mujeres (220) — or at least, that is how both Antonio and his family view the situation. The internal logic to this argument is quite simply that the marriage would have functioned properly had it not been for Dolores’ refusal to obey, whether in daily household duties or, more importantly, in the débito conyugal of sexual relations with her husband. Her refusal to be submissive results in domestic violence and ultimately in her killing her husband in self-defence.17

17

Self-defence is defined as: ‘Acting so as to defend oneself, one's property or, possibly,

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Burgos, while drawing attention to the fact that women do have the right to self-determination, could also be charged with playing dangerously into the hands of those opposed to modernisation of the divorcio legislation, given that Dolores’ attempt to achieve a free, fulfilling life goes so drastically wrong. However, it can also be argued that the divorcio case and its technicalities enlighten the reader about how outrageously antiquated the law was, and hence it can be considered a show-trial to propagate an uncomfortable social reality: women are trapped not only in marriage but also in a patriarchal legal system. When Dolores appeals to the law as a means of dispute resolution, the law instead turns out to be a patriarchal tool of social control, instructing women not to deviate from the norm. Hence the evaluation of the narrator shortly before Dolores meets the judge for the first time: ‘La justicia, en España, ofrece el fenómeno de asustar hasta a los que buscan su amparo’ (197). Ironically, in this statement justice can be read ambivalently: while literally it signifies the legal system which is supposed to protect the rights of the individual, it is precisely the same legal system, in its phallocentric manifestation, that shows the law to be an institution void of any intrinsically just value. It can be argued then that here the law appears ‘just’ simply because it is the law. To make matters worse the case does not fail on legal grounds but because of political considerations. When César Lope tells his friend Antonio that his wife has just left him, he tries to calm the irate husband down: ‘Nosotros tendremos influencia y la demanda no prosperará... te la volverán a llevar a tu casa’ (175) — a statement that proves all too true. Dolores’ fate depends on the outcome of the next elections: Su caso era, en el fondo, no una cuestión que había de resolverse con el Código, sino con las eventualidades de la política. Si los liberales triunfaban, Pepe conseguirá salvar a su cliente; si venían los conservadores, Antonio triunfaría (190).

The political intrigues, however, are only alluded to, and the reader is not enlightened as to what the exact legal argumentation is that makes the demanda de divorcio fail. The case of Dolores versus Antonio is a prima facie18 case: the malos tratos (76, 107, 166) are covered by Clause 2 of Article 105 of the Código Civil (1889), the public scandals (107, 135) are covered by Clause 1 of the same article. Hence, the fact that it does fail for no apparent reason makes political dealings more likely. Not only does Burgos highlight the way in which women

some other person such as a parent, child, spouse, against violence or a reasonable apprehension of it. It may be an answer of homicide, where no more force is used than is necessary and there is an honest belief based on reasonable grounds that force is necessary’ (Curzon 1994: 347). 18 ‘Of first appearance; on the face of it. Based on a first impression’ (Curzon 1994: 299).

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are trapped in marriage as well as a phallocentric legal system, but she also depicts law as a political tool of social control. The presumed objectivity of the law is criticised and her novel clearly attests to a loss of faith in the availability of objective legal rules and shows that legal issues are ultimately political and subjective. This case study is a classic tale typical of Burgos’s fictional work: Dolores, una madrileña, marries into a family of Almería’s high society. Predictably, and these are the wrongs of courtship Burgos mentions in her essays, she and Antonio, a typical Andalusian señorito, get married without knowing each other well. Frustration sets in as early as her train journey from Madrid to Almería (27), straight after the wedding. She feels socially isolated and marital fights displaying emotional cruelty on his part are a daily occurrence (19-21). Despite almost immediate unhappiness in the marriage she does not feel she has the right to self-respect in a Rawlsian sense and much less freedom of the person. The marriage deteriorates and ends in domestic violence and indecent assault. Her husband’s best friend propositions her, and this, when she looks for support from her husband, is blamed on her (148-153). She finally seeks legal advice from a neighbouring lawyer, decides to file for divorcio and her running the gauntlet begins: she is deposited in the house of her husband’s uncle for the duration of the legal proceedings and gets indecently assaulted by both the uncle and the cousin of her husband. Her lawyer manages to arrange a new home where the victim can be depositada and there she is propositioned by complete strangers. Article 68 of the Código Civil (1889) stated that for the duration of the trial women had to be deposited in somebody else’s house. The following explanation is given in the official commentary by Enrique Díaz Guijarro and Antonio Martínez Ruiz: Se trata de garantizar la persona y bienes del cónyuge que se presume inocente, contra la perfidia y violencias del presunto culpable, y de proteger la persona de los hijos, y ésto ni admite dilaciones, ni esperas, ni mucho menos cabe aplazarlo. [...] Ambas medidas de precaución [separación de los cónyuges y depósito de la mujer] están íntimamente enlazadas y propenden á la conveniencia del sistema preventivo para evitar males que necesariamente podrían sobrevenir cuando la paz doméstica resulta profundamente perturbada por una demanda de divorcio (Díaz Guijarro/Martínez Ruiz 1900: 332-333).

While this sounds reasonable and seemingly attests to the law’s function of protection, a closer examination of the Ley de enjuiciamiento civil (1881) shows how gender bias can be found even in procedural law. Article 1899 of the above law states that: Constando la admisión de la demanda ó de la querella, el Juez se trasladará á la casa del marido; procurará que se ponga de acuerdo con la mujer sobre la persona en quien hubiere de constituirse el depósito; y si no convinieren, nombrará el Juez la que el marido haya designado, si no hubiere razón fundada que lo impida.

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This explains why Dolores is deposited, in the first instance, in the house of her husband’s uncle, which contributes even further to her social isolation. Looking at the entirety of the Ley de enjuiciamiento civil (título IV: de los depósitos de personas), articles 1880 to 1899, it becomes clear that the complexity of the procedures of a demanda de divorcio is described accurately throughout the plot of La malcasada. In this particular instance Burgos stays true to legal reality, while in other examples below Burgos uses poetic — and melodramatic — licence to critique the law. In her first encounter with her future lawyer Pepe Suárez, Dolores is told how very difficult divorcio proceedings are — a device used by Burgos to explain the intricacy of the divorcio law to the reader: — Lo único que la ley consiente en España — dijo Pepe — es la separación, a la que llama divorcio. — Pues eso es lo que yo deseo. — ¿Pero qué puede usted alegar para pedir esa separación? Se exaltó Dolores: — ¿Le parece a usted poco el que hayamos llegado a odiarnos, a ofendernos a todas horas, a no haber nada de común entre su espíritu y el mío? — No... a mí no me parece poco. Es más, yo creo que es el caso más claro de todos el de la incompatibilidad de caracteres... [...] Pero la ley no admite estas cosas como causa de divorcio. — Todo el mundo sabe la vida de Antonio. Que tiene queridas... — Eso no importa; para ser delito la infidelidad del marido se necesita que viva con su amante o que la introduzca en el domicilio conyugal. Cuando se trata de la mujer, ya es otra cosa. — Pero si no es eso sólo. Se emborracha diariamente, me insulta, me maltrata... — Sevicia... sí... eso cae dentro del Código... Pero ¿tiene usted testigos de sus malos tratos? — Todo el mundo lo sabe y los criados no creo que negaran la verdad. — Aunque no la nieguen, los criados son testigos que no dan fe. Los malos tratos y las borracheras de su marido no tienen bastante importancia para pedir la separación. No dejan huellas en usted. Por fortuna no la ha herido o le ha saltado un ojo. — Hágame usted parecer a mí culpable. — ¡Está usted loca! Se ve que no conoce la ley. Se la recluiría en una prisión o en un manicomio (142-144).

Dolores files for divorcio, as advised by her lawyer Pepe Suárez, because of sevicia. Even the dogmatic legal codes allowed for more possibilities, since Antonio did commit adultery resulting in a public scandal but due to lack of evidence, not even the limited justice as laid down in contemporary law could be enforced. Lack of evidence, then, is the crucial, if official, reason why Dolores loses her case. Ultimately, Pepe cannot even make the allegations of malos tratos stick and Dolores has to return to her husband: ‘Su casa se le

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parecía como la peor de las cárceles, porque en ella no tendría ni siquiera el derecho de ser dueña de su intimidad, de pudor de mujer’ (247). In a last melodramatic encounter between Pepe and Dolores, he promises her that he will resume the divorcio proceedings whenever there is enough evidence, to which she sharply replies: ‘Sí, Pepe; yo daré motivos para que me pegue, para que me maltrate, para que me hiera. Yo haré que me mate o que existan claramente los motivos de separación’ (251). Throughout the narrative, Pepe is the personified intermediary between justice and law: ‘la defendía en nombre de la ley’ (183). He is also the object of her desire, the proof that people can love again, the proof that people should be allowed to divorce (‘Había un lazo poderoso de unión entre Pepe y ella. Dolores lo había visto surgir a su lado joven, digno, bello, protector y desinteresado.’ (206)). Burgos assigns to Pepe the double function of would-be legal saviour and of a future which was not meant to be, in order to refute the argument that ever-lasting love is the best reason in favour of indissoluble marriage. Pepe is clearly the better partner for Dolores and their love for each other is another victim of the non-existent divorce laws. Under current legislation she could not even have started an affair with him, since that would have made her guilty of adulterio and have allowed her husband to sue her for it (Código Penal 1870: art. 448-449). So while Antonio can be ‘unhappily’ married and simultaneously have a whole serrallo of lovers, Dolores has to endure an unhappy marriage which effectively incarcerates her in her marital home and forces her to perform el débito conyugal. Interestingly, in desiring Pepe she desires an embodiment of the justice/law opposition reconciled in the same person. Pepe’s personification of law manifests itself whenever he explains to Dolores the intricacies of the divorcio legislation. In this particular conversation he confirms her status as a married woman, even if they achieve separation: — La separación, que aquí llamamos divorcio, no se llega a fallar casi nunca. La pobre mujer que salió de la patria potestad para quedar bajo la autoridad del marido, cambia ésta por la de un depositario. Entre nosotros la mujer es una verdadera esclava. No es esto una frase vana. Es una eterna menor. — ¿Pero cuando se falle el divorcio yo dejaré de ser ya la esposa de...? — No, no señora. El vínculo subsiste siempre. No puede usted dejar de ser la esposa... de... su marido. Parecía costarle trabajo enunciar aquella idea. Se exaltó Dolores. — Pero es cruel no poder romper esa cadena que amarra a dos personas que no se aman. — La cadena es sólo para la mujer, amiga mía. Las costumbres tienen una fuerza sobre el espíritu, superior a la de las leyes. El hombre conserva, en la desigualdad de los códigos que ha dictado, todas las ventajas legales y, además, toda la tolerancia que le concede la costumbre. — Pero una vez separados... — El conserva siempre, mientras el divorcio no se falle, y no se falla nunca,

una autoridad sobre usted. El podrá vivir libremente, formarse un hogar

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a su gusto... Pero el día en que usted llegase a obrar con igual libertad, tendría derecho a recluirla en un convento y hasta a matarla. — ¿Existen esas leyes? — preguntó asombrada Dolores. — Tácitamente al menos. Todo marido que sorprende a la esposa con un amante, puede matarla impunemente. Los jueces, son hombres; los jurados, son hombres. Se ponen siempre de parte de los hombres, no por justicia ni por simpatía sino por la solidaridad con que defienden así sus egoísmos, sus fueros y sus privilegios, mientras las mujeres, sin idea de la necesidad de la defensa, guiadas por bajas pasiones de envidias y celos, son las que más contribuyen a su propio daño (222-223). This explanation neatly summarises the injustice of man-made law which unashamedly victimises women and denounces the absurdity of the main argument put forward by those opposed to divorce. Not only does the current divorcio legislation create legal inequality, but this is also enforced by customs favourable to men’s egotistical desires. Hence the argument that divorce is an egotistical pursuit that ruins society can, in line with the Dworkinian demand for consistency, easily be refuted by the above arguments. The fact that it is a male lawyer who explains the legalisation of these injustices heightens the force of the feminist critique. What is more, Pepe clearly accuses men of responsibility for the unholy alliance formed between male judges and male jurors in order to declare solidarity with their own sex.

ADULTERY Adultery is a recurring theme in the work of Burgos. Not only does she denounce in her essays the fact that adultery was a mala prohibita, she also fictionalises it in various novels and novellas (El artículo 438, El hombre negro, La justicia del mar, La que se casó muy niña, Quiero vivir mi vida — to name but a few). El artículo 438 is, without doubt, the most severe critique of the adulterio19 legislation in general and of article 438 of the 1870 Código Penal in particular. The crime of adultery was one of the most glaring examples of inequality before the law in Spain at the beginning of last century. As demonstrated below, adultery was gendered both in definition and in punishment. In what follows I will argue that committing the crime of adultery can be just within the parameters of the case study of El artículo 438. This is, of course, much more difficult to argue than that ‘divorce is justice’, since adultery is generally considered a crime or a sin depending on the

19

According to article 448 of the Código Penal (1870) adulterio is defined as both female infidelity and male participation in the act. Throughout this chapter I use the term adulterio when I refer to the above definition of the term. When referring to adultery in the modern sense (male or female infidelity) I use the English term.

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historical period in question. Nevertheless, I hope to demonstrate that Carmen de Burgos tried to construct a moral position that makes the heroine’s actions justifiable. I will give a brief overview of the legal discourse regarding adultery and article 438 as well as analysing Burgos’s legal critique in her feminist essays. This is followed by an analysis of El artículo 438. Historical practice The jurist Emilio Langle Rubio explains that there are some legal commentators who consider the legislation of adulterio as clear-cut: Para aquellos penalistas, [...] parece que no debe haber cuestión: si el derecho positivo, reflejo del común sentir de nuestra sociedad y de nuestra época, síntesis de la conciencia social, conjunto sistemático de costumbres elevadas á la categoría de reglas jurídicas, aprecia en la conducta de los adúlteros motivo suficiente para que la acción justiciera de los tribunales intervenga, imponiéndoles una sanción determinada, ningún requisito falta al adulterio para que legítimamente merezca el título de delito. Pero entendemos que hay algo que está por encima de la ley, la filosofía; algo que escapa á sus imposiciones, el espíritu de crítica; algo, en fin, que no puede limitarse á abrazar como justo y como bueno lo que se nos da hecho, el pensamiento, la razón humana, de cuya propia esencia se desprende ese deseo incontrastable y primordial que arrastra siempre á buscar el por qué de las cosas (Langle Rubio 1911: 41).20

Langle Rubio’s description of dogmatic legal doctrine can be described as morality in an anthropological sense. He obviously disagrees with the lawmaker and searches for a moral position in a discriminatory sense. Langle Rubio deconstructs the lawmaker’s reasoning by exposing the inconsistency of the approach: on the one hand adulterio is a criminal offence and could thus be interpreted as a public issue, while at the same time the law only comes into force when the betrayed husband denounces the culprits: Queda por examinar el supuesto de que la falta que los adúlteros cometen vaya contra la honestidad pública. Desde el punto de vista legal, no cabe afirmarlo. El adulterio no es delito perseguible de oficio, sino á instancia del agraviado (artículo 449), cuyo consentimiento ó perdón remite la pena (artículo 450). Cuando la ley penal estima que una acción es contraria al interés público, no pone en manos de los particulares la exclusiva facultad de perseguir ó absolver al culpable, sino que obra por cuenta propia (Langle Rubio 1911: 43).

So while the lawmaker does not consider adulterio a crime severe enough to prosecute publicly, at the same time he does not consider it private enough to

20

See also Jiménez de Asúa (1921: 222), where he argues in a similar vein.

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make it a civil instead of a criminal matter. The lawmaker of the Código Penal (1870) remains somewhere half-way between considering adulterio a crime but also making the husband (a private individual) the prosecutor. Putting the onus on the husband, the legislator gives him the legal tools to exert control over his wife. As we will see below, this comes to a legal culmination in article 438 of the Código Penal (1870), in which the husband becomes not only the prosecutor but also the executioner of his wife. The injustice of the adulterio legislation in force at the time was so blatantly obvious, that Alejandro Groizard y Gómez de la Serna, in one of the most important official commentaries on the Código Penal (1870), accuses the legislator of having committed a mistake when establishing different categories for male and female adultery: La violación de la ley moral, la violación de la ley religiosa, [...], la violación del deber social, es la misma cuando el adulterio es cometido por el marido, que cuando es cometido por la mujer; el daño mediato, esto es, la alarma que en las demás familias produce y que lleva al seno de la sociedad, es también la misma. [...] No hay, por lo tanto, razón, justicia, ni conveniencia en no castigar como delito el adulterio cometido por el marido, yaciendo con mujer distinta de aquella á quien juró fidelidad conyugal. ¿Por qué nuestro código, entonces, ha vuelto la espalda á estos principios y sólo ha incriminado el adulterio del marido cuando tiene la manceba dentro de la casa conyugal ó fuera de ella con escándalo? Para nosotros, la causa del error padecido consiste en que, separando la vista de los principios, se dejaron, quizá sin darse cuenta de ello, sus autores, arrastrar por la influencia de los precedentes clásicos del derecho romano y de las doctrinas proclamadas por el código francés (Groizard y Gómez de la Serna 1889: 19-20, my emphasis).

Groizard y Gómez de la Serna, unlike Langle Rubio, considers adultery a crime against society and hence that citizens committing adultery violate a ‘social duty’.21 More importantly, he also criticises the different value the legislator gives to female and male adultery, arguing that both crimes are equally damaging to society.22 As we will see below, his is a quite revolutionary statement against male supremacy and will form the very basis of my argument that El artículo 438 is a fictional case study constructed to show that in certain circumstances adultery can mean justice. Burgos also denounces these different legal subjectivities in her main feminist essay La mujer moderna y sus derechos: ‘No se la iguala al hombre ni siquiera

21

Interestingly, this is something the legislators of the 1932 divorce law contradicted by making adultery a civil and hence a private offence, with the result that in marital relationships adultery was not considered a motive for legal intervention (López-Rey 1932: 67). 22 See also Jiménez de Asúa (1921: 222) who seconds this view.

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en el derecho penal, donde a veces es ella la que lleva la peor parte, como en los casos de adulterio’ (Burgos 1927a: 20). Burgos establishes a clear cause/effect relation between the lack of a modern divorce law and the case of adultery: Los dos grandes males del matrimonio son la subordinación de la mujer y la indisolubilidad. Del mismo modo que el matrimonio tiene una razón de ser en la naturaleza, la tiene el divorcio. Desde el momento en que la vida nos demuestra que no siempre el amor es eterno, no debemos obstinarnos en que el matrimonio sea indisoluble. Es la indisolubilidad del matrimonio la que da origen al adulterio. El Código civil, al tratar de las causas de divorcio dice que éstas son: 1.º, “el adulterio de la mujer en todo caso, y el del marido cuando resulte escándalo público o menosprecio para la mujer”. Ya en esto comienza la desigualdad que aumenta el Código penal, cuya definición del adulterio no alcanza al marido, sino a la mujer y a su cómplice. Dice: “Cometen adulterio la mujer casada que yace con varón que no sea su marido, y el que yace con ella sabiendo que es casada” (Burgos 1927a: 161).

While in the Código Civil of 1889 the rights of women were curtailed, in the Código Penal of 1870, in some instances, the punishments for women were worse than for men. Applying Rawls’ theory of justice to adulterio legislation demonstrates the breach of both his first and second principle. Women are denied justice in terms of his first principle (‘Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all’ (Rawls 1999: 266)), since men are quite clearly in possession of more basic liberties of the person, due to the different definitions of amancebamiento23 and adulterio. When applying his second principle (‘Social [...] inequalities are to be arranged so that they are [...] to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.’ (Rawls 1999: 266)) we can conclude that if any inequalities are to be allowed they should be to the benefit of the least advantaged, that is women. So instead of giving equality to all or greater benefit to the least advantaged, the Spanish adulterio legislation at the beginning of the century gave the greatest benefit to the most advantaged, i.e. men. Carmen de Burgos notes that the Código Penal (1870) makes two distinctions between men and women and hence creates two different legal subjectivities: firstly in the definition of adultery and secondly in its punishment. Adulterio is the term used for both female infidelity and male participation in the act (Código Penal 1870: art. 448),24 while amancebamiento is the only form of male infidelity that is

23

According to article 452 of the Código Penal (1870) amancebamiento is the only form of male infidelity that is defined and punished: ‘El marido que tuviere manceba dentro de la casa conyugal ó fuera de ella con escándalo, será castigado con la pena de prisión correcional en sus grados mínimo y medio.’ 24 See also Burgos (1927a: 162), where she points out that, if the adúltero is married as well,

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defined and punished (Código Penal 1870: art. 452). The difference in terminology makes clear that there is a difference in approach towards female and male adultery, creating two legal subjectivities of unequal value. A woman who once sleeps with another man can legally be killed by her husband if caught in flagranti delicto, while a man can have as much casual sex as he likes; only an illicit union which is conducted in the marital home and/or results in a public scandal is punished. There are, of course, two ‘good’ reasons for this, which is why it is unlikely that the legislator, as Groizard y Gómez de la Serna suggested above, created different subjectivities by accident. Firstly, in the case of male adultery the only crime was a public scandal undermining patriarchal authority, in which case the law had to punish a man’s wrongdoings; secondly and more importantly, female adultery could conceivably introduce another member into the family, which then would have to be accepted by the husband, who was not the father of the child. Burgos (1927a: 166) also refers to Engels’ assertion that female monogamy was essential to the economic family unit of patriarchal society: Die Monogamie entstand aus der Konzentrierung größerer Reichtümer in einer Hand — und zwar der eines Mannes — und aus dem Bedürfnis, diese Reichtümer den Kindern dieses Mannes und keines andern zu vererben. Dazu war Monogamie der Frau erforderlich, nicht des Mannes (Engels 1973: 86) [Monogamy developed from a concentration of greater wealth held in one hand — that of the man — and from the wish to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man and nobody else. For that reason monogamy was required not of the man but of the woman.]

Handing down the family fortune from the father to the rightful heir was of the utmost importance to the former and illegitimate children could not be tolerated. This was the case for illegitimate children resulting from female adultery, for while a living proof of her adultery was considered a sign of a woman’s immorality, the father was biologically and legally saved from embarrassment. Indeed, the law positively prohibited the investigation of the paternity of illegitimate children (Código Civil 1889: art. 132).25 In other words, married men could have as many illegitimate children as they liked — and here it did not matter if they introduced

he is not punished because of his own infidelity, but because he committed adultery with another man's wife. 25 See Código Civil (1889: art. 132): 'Cuando el padre o la madre hiciere el reconocimiento separadamente, no podrá revelar el nombre de la persona con quien hubiera tenido el hijo, ni expresar ninguna circunstancia por donde pueda ser reconocida. Los funcionarios públicos no autorizarán documento alguno en que se falte a este precepto. Si a pesar de esta prohibición lo hicieren, incurrirán en una multa de 125 a 500 pesetas, y además se tacharán de oficio las palabras que contengan aquella revelación. '

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another child into somebody else’s family — without any fear of legal consequences. Put at its simplest, then, biology significantly advantaged men in adultery. Women could become pregnant, men could not. However, Langle Rubio sees little reason for punishing an adulterous woman more than an adulterous man. Just by sheer legal logic he sees no reason why women should be discriminated against in the Código Penal (1870): El hecho del parto, no agrava su responsabilidad; porque es involuntario y posterior á la falta. La voluntariedad culpable sólo puede estribar en el ayuntamiento, que es un acuerdo para infringir lo que la fé conyugal tiene prohibido. Si así no fuera, y en el hecho de crear hijos bastardos consistiera la mayor gravedad del delito de la mujer, habríamos de declarar, lógicamente pensando, que el adulterio no seguido de descendencia, es menos culpable que el que la tenga. Esto sería un verdadero absurdo y demuestra que apelar al hecho de la procreación, es, en este caso, un error evidente, hijo de vanas apariencias. [...] ¿Quién negará, por último, que en muchas ocasiones el esposo provoca el adulterio de su mujer? Sus desdenes, su abandono, sus malos tratamientos, su indiferencia ó menosprecio de los encantos que á la compañera de su vida adornan (lo que explica, en cierto modo, el ridículo para el marido á quien faltó su esposa, que hoy suele admitirse), son circunstancias, todas ellas, que atenúan la infidelidad femenina (Langle Rubio 1911: 53).

For Langle Rubio, then, biology does not disadvantage women. He posits the argument that the physical proof of their infidelity in form of a child does not make them more guilty and that, if anything, they might be less guilty in cases of adultery, since they could be considered to have been driven to it by their husbands. Like Burgos, Langle Rubio blames the husbands for the adulterous affairs of their wives. While the former diplomatically blames ‘unhappy marriages’, the latter openly accuses his own sex. What is more, he demands gender equality for the adulterio legislation: Véase cómo, si la mujer adúltera puede llevar perturbaciones al hogar doméstico, no son menores los daños que en el mismo producen los extravíos del padre, que debiera dar en la familia el primer ejemplo del orden que está llamado á mantener. Por eso nos parece demanda de justicia elemental que, rindiéndose el debido tributo al principio de la igualdad ante la ley, se hubiesen equiparado en esta las faltas de ambos cónyuges (Langle Rubio 1911: 54).

Article 438 of the Código Penal (1870) is the climax of phallocentric law and hence of different legal subjectivities. Adultery as noted above, is one of the reasons for separation under article 105 of the Código Civil (1889), or indeed, for the justifiable killing of one’s wife: El marido que, sorprendiendo en adulterio á su mujer, matare en el acto á ésta ó al adúltero, ó les causare alguna de las lesiones graves, será castigado con la pena de destierro. Si les causare lesiones de otra clase, quedará exento de pena.

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Estas reglas son aplicables en iguales circunstancias á los padres respecto de sus hijas menores de veintitrés años y sus corruptores, mientras aquéllas vivieren en la casa paterna. El beneficio de este artículo no aprovecha á los que hubieren promovido ó facilitado la prostitución de sus mujeres ó hijas (Código Penal 1870: art. 438).26

The decisive detail here is that the husband catch her in flagranti delicto. Álvarez Cid explains in his 1908 commentary on the Código Penal (1870) that: Para aplicar la atenuante privilegiada de este art., no basta que el marido conozca la infidelidad de su muger, sino que es condición indispensable, que la sorprenda en el adulterio. No tiene aplicación este art., al marido que sorprende á su muger escribiendo un billete que ella arrojó al patio, y que dirigía á su amante, pero sí al marido que sorprende á su muger con un antiguo criado, á quien por sospechas había despedido, juntos en una alcoba á oscuras y desnudos, con señales de haberse acostado en la cama que allí había (Álvarez Cid 1908: 215-216).

So husbands cannot just kill their wives whenever they feel like it; they need to catch them in the act or, at the very least, there has to be strong circumstantial evidence for Article 438 to become applicable. If the wife is killed, they are punished with destierro — one of the most lenient punishments on the scale for serious crimes (Código Penal 1870: art. 26-29)27 — ranging from 6 months and a day to 6 years.28 In case of mere assault and battery, the husband gets off scotfree. The same offence committed by a woman (a wife killing her husband) was treated, under any circumstances, as parricidio.29 Langle Rubio is devastating in his judgement of Article 438 and in line with Burgos demands the repeal of Article 438 (Código Penal 1870) as well as a modernisation of the divorcio legislation: Nuestro Código impone tan sólo una pena levísima al marido que, sorprendiendo en adulterio á su mujer, la matare en el acto. El art. 438, que prevé este caso, le castiga no más que con destierro (sanción poco dolorosa para aquél á quien las circunstancias hicieron ya molesta la sociedad en que vivía) y le exime de toda responsabilidad si sólo produce á su cónyuge lesiones que no

26

For an outline of the history of adulterio and its punishment, see Sau (1990: 17-20).

‘Destierro’ is defined as ‘Banishment from the home town or region’ (Salvat Universal diccionario enciclopédico, vol. 7 (1993: 484). 27 Article 26 lists the scale of punishments, while article 29 lists the duration. 28 For comparison see also articles 453 and 460 of the Código Penal which treat violación and rapto, respectively; both are punished with the much higher reclusión temporal which could be anything from 12 years and a day to 20 years. 29 ‘Parricidio’ is defined as: ‘Lo comete el que matare a cualquiera de sus ascendientes y descendientes, o a su cónyuge’ (Diccionario básico jurídico 1994: 345).

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alcancen la categoría de graves. ¿Cabe más terrible acusación que ésta contra nuestro derecho positivo? ¿No es absurdo y reprobable que por él se prefiera poner el arma homicida en manos del inocente, á dejar expedito el camino que abre el divorcio, única válvula de seguridad por donde escaparía la traición del adúltero, sin producir desgracias mayores, y por donde recobraría su infeliz consorte la libertad que perdió en mala hora por un ser que no mantuvo la fe jurada? (Langle Rubio 1911: 46-47).

Langle Rubio makes two interesting observations: destierro is hardly a punishment on a par with the crime committed, not only for the obvious leniency, but also because the wronged husband might find it difficult to carry on living in the same community. Secondly, and more importantly, the very fact that such a law should exist is a shameful state of affairs for positive law. As described in my introduction, the project of codifying the law throughout the nineteenth century was supposed to create a body of laws arranged in a comprehensive and logical way. The legal discourse concerning women shows quite clearly that there were glaring discrepancies between the legal subjectivity of women in the Constitution, Civil and Penal Codes (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 223). Burgos draws attention to this and rightly points out that while the civil law treats women as inferior beings and almost as juveniles, who need protection against themselves as much as against others, the Código Penal (1870) treats them as adults who should assume full responsibility for all their actions and, if they happen to commit adultery, should be punished more severely than men: En cambio el Código Penal nos iguala al hombre en responsabilidades y penas. Porque si se nos considera incapaces de discernir como el hombre, si se nos considera débiles, debe también en ciertos casos juzgársenos irresponsables, si no es que se quiere sostener la teoría de que el ser incapaz de gobernarse por sí mismo en la vida, es consciente sólo en el mal (Burgos 1906: 45-46).

Burgos highlights the inconsistency in legal logic, proving that the codification was by no means as unifying and logical an exercise as it was hoped. The difference in female legal subjectivity between the Código Civil (1889) and the Código Penal (1870) is a good example that proves her point and unlikely to have been caused by sheer oversight, as Groizard y Gómez de la Serna suggests. This construction of difference in law by means of the use of legal subjectivity will be further developed in Chapter 2, which concentrates on the issues of equality and difference. As we have seen, both in definition and punishment adultery was gendered. What this meant in real terms, and how Article 438 of the Código Penal (1870) could be used to assure male domination, is the subject of one of Carmen de Burgos’s most militantly feminist novellas.

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El artículo 438 El artículo 438, like La malcasada, reads like a classic case study of the key issues discussed in Burgos’s feminist essays. She takes almost every legal injustice married women are subjected to and constructs a novella around them: a logical tactic, since El artículo 438 (1921a) was a calculated publication at a time when feminist activists were publicly campaigning to have article 438 of the Código Penal (1870) abolished. That very year the Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas and the Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas presented a petition to Antonio Maura, the then president of the Comisión Permanente de Códigos, in which, amongst other things, they demanded the abolition of this article (Scanlon 1986: 138). El artículo 438 deals with the premeditated killing of the wealthy María de las Angustias by her nasty and insolvent husband Alfredo. The former feels trapped in her marriage and finally succumbs to her feelings for Jaime, starting an affair with him in her husband’s absence. Alfredo, suddenly returning home, catches the couple in flagranti, kills his wife and lives happily ever after on her money. Marriage ending in adultery and then in death: a textbook example of Burgos’s feminist critique, for with a modern divorce law in existence there would be no need for adultery and, in turn, no justification for killing one’s wife. Given that adultery was a crime at the time, María de las Angustias’ moral position is more difficult to prove than that of Dolores, since María de las Angustias is both victim and culprit. Her moral position is based on her inalienable right to be with the man she chooses. As before in the juxtaposition of Pepe and Antonio, here Jaime and Alfredo are bipolarised male extremes of good and bad. Her moral position then is based on two inalienable rights: her right to equality and her right to the basic liberty of freedom of the person in a Rawlsian sense. Neither right is granted to her, neither right is a legal possibility at the time. Instead Alfredo assumes the position of husband with all its legal advantages and uses the law as a means of social control. Empowered by the legal machinery of a male-dominated society, he uses it to control his wife fully to the point of engineering her death. In this particular case study, two legal issues ensure that the greatest benefit is given to the most advantaged, by equipping men with the necessary legislation to control their wives: the adulterio laws as described above and the legislation regarding bienes parafernales. The latter becomes a deadly issue for María de las Angustias, and hence requires some explanation: according to the Código Civil the husband was ‘el administrador de los bienes de la sociedad conyugal, salvo estipulación en contrario y lo dispuesto en el artículo 1384’ (Código Civil 1889: art. 59). Article 1384 referred to the bienes parafernales that the woman was allowed to administer herself unless she wanted to hand them over to her husband by means of a notary order. Articles 1387 and 1388, however, gave the husband control over his wife’s property and possessions, prohibiting any use of this property without the consent of the husband. So the apparent autonomy

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given over the bienes parafernales was swiftly denied since, although the wife was given control over them in one article, according to other articles she could not freely administer them, giving her a false sense of control over her own property. In the particular case of María de las Angustias, her father left his estate to her and thus it legally falls under article 1384 as bienes parafernales. The practical consequences are two-fold: firstly, unlike ‘normal’ marriages, in which the husband is the ‘administrador de los bienes de la sociedad conyugal’, Alfredo needs his wife’s consent and signature authorising him to withdraw money or to sell one of their properties. To be precise, this marriage is abnormal not only because Alfredo is not able to administer the marital estate, but also because he did not bring any estate into the marriage to administer. He quite happily attempts to exert complete control over his wife to finance his expensive, playboy-like lifestyle. Secondly, articles 1387 and 1388 prevent María de las Angustias from using her money for her own ends making a separation legally and practically impossible. The legal requirement of her signature, becomes a deadly issue: Alfredo starts to calculate his wife’s death precisely at the point when she starts resisting his authority. As soon as she refuses to sign her inheritance away, he starts planning her downfall. When she decides against giving him any money, he threatens her first with taking their daughter away from her and finally with rape (he is legally entitled to both), at which point she consents to the signature hoping Alfredo will, as promised, leave the country for good. He uses every patriarchal tool given to him by law to control his wife totally. Right from the beginning of the narrative, he reminds María de las Angustias of his superior status when she tells him to leave: — Puedes irte cuando gustes. — Tú me seguirás. — ¿Y si no quiero? — Te obligaré. Tú olvidas que yo soy el marido, el hombre. Tengo derecho de administrar los bienes y de elegir el domicilio que me acomode (5).

While adultery and the paraphernal property laws are the main issues in this novella, María de las Angustias is also subjected to almost everything Burgos warns us about in her essays: Alfredo threatens to change their residence (according to article 58 of the Código Civil (1889) he has the right to choose their residence) and he has the patria potestad (Código Civil 1889: art. 154): ‘Soy el hombre, el marido, el padre, y tengo el derecho de educarla [a la niña] como me plazca’(8). Thus not only can he exert control over his wife, but he can also use the daughter as another weapon to control her. In short, this is a textbook example of how effectively the law works as a means of social control. Even the legislation regarding female adultery, as outlined above, can be used by Alfredo to control his wife further and entrap her into infidelity. He introduces his old friend Jaime to her and encourages him to stay with his wife while he goes to

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England: ‘— Debes quedarte — dijo Alfredo con apresuramiento —. Yo me pienso marchar á Inglaterra y me iría más tranquilo si tú estuvieses aquí para velar por María de las Angustias y la niña’ (24). Jaime is the one who effectively foresees Alfredo’s premeditated uxoricidio:30 — Es decir, que un hombre decidido — concluyó — puede burlar las leyes, hacer lo que le dé la gana, casarse si le parece; pero las mujeres, no. Hasta en estos casos en que ellos se han libertado, ellas siguen casadas y sometidas á su potestad. — Eso es un absurdo. — Pero es así. Sobre todo, para las mujeres ricas. Le contaba casos en los que el dinero, móvil de casamientos sin amor, era el factor más importante. No era sólo Alfredo. Maridos que pasaban por serios, por respetables, que ocupaban cargos en la política y en la banca, habían aprovechado la infidelidad de sus mujeres, á veces hipócritamente provocada por ellos mismos, para deshacerse de ellas. [...] Ellos se valían fríamente de la ley, para enviar las esposas á un convento, ó bien para considerarlas dementes y relegarlas á un manicomio. No faltaban algunos que tendían hábilmente su red para cogerlas in fraganti y matarlas sin responsabilidad, después de pasar días y días en acecho, con premeditación y alevosía. A veces estaban entendidos el esposo y el amante para tender un lazo á la pobre mujer. De un modo ó de otro, los esposos se quedaban dueños de los bienes y libres para vivir á su capricho (39).

If husbands cannot exert enough control over their wives in life, they do so in death. Alfredo pulls out all the stops that patriarchal society allows him and does not shy away from the use of Article 438. Strictly speaking, he is, of course, not covered by Article 438. Two reasons make it inapplicable: firstly the article requires a degree of surprise on his part resulting in a crime committed on provocation,31 yet Alfredo’s crime is premeditated and secondly, as the prosecutor argues, he facilitated the prostitution of his own wife: Cuando el acusador sugirió que Alfredo había facilitado la prostitución de su mujer presentándole á su amigo y marchándose al Extranjero, vendiendo sus derechos por la firma para enajenar las fincas, la indignación de la sala llegó al límite. ‘¡El pobre hombre, que se había ido á trabajar confiado en su amigo y en su esposa!’ (56)

30 31

‘Muerte causada a la mujer por su marido’ (Diccionario básico jurídico 1994: 277). Provocation ‘may be pleaded only on a charge of murder so as to reduce the charge to

manslaughter. Provocation is some act or series of acts done by the dead man to the accused, which would cause in any reasonable person and actually causes in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self-control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make him for the moment not master of his mind’ (Curzon 1994: 309).

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The possibility that he might have prostituted his wife cannot be proven — just as his infidelities and maltreatment could not be proven sufficiently for Angustias to ask for a formal separation under Article 105 of the Código Civil (1889) — so the patriarchal judicial system (‘aquella institución incompleta y defectuosa, porque no formaba parte de ella ninguna mujer’ (56)) frees a man who cold-bloodedly killed his wife, because of lack of evidence. According to the letter of the law Alfredo should have been sentenced to destierro, yet, with true melodramatic excess, not even that happens: La moral hipócrita triunfó. Alfredo, absuelto, dueño de la fortuna de su víctima, [...] podría pasar por un hombre honrado al que no faltaría quien estrechase la mano, como no le había faltado abogado capaz de defenderlo. (58)

‘La moral hipócrita’ refers to morality in an anthropological sense: the dominant morality that made the legislator decide that adultery is a social crime. Against that, Burgos juxtaposes María de las Angustias and her moral position of a right to equality and freedom of the person. As we have seen in Burgos’s essays, not only does she condone adultery given the inadequacies of the current divorcio law, she also simply considers it a symptom of an unhappy marriage. One of her main arguments in favour of a modern divorce law is that it is immoral to trap people in marriage. This she illustrates in the form of the affair between María de las Angustias and Jaime. For María de las Angustias, trapped in a loveless marriage, the only way out, i.e. starting an affair with Jaime, condemns her legally and socially. That is her dilemma. María de las Angustias and Jaime are in the wrong and can therefore be found guilty, while Alfredo is moving within the law and within socially accepted standards at any one time. His borracheras resulting in his maltreatment of his wife and his womanising are socially accepted. She, on the contrary, is trapped in marriage with a man who terrorises her psychologically and is legally entitled to control almost every aspect of her life. Her moral position of wanting equality, of being allowed to commit adultery just like her husband, as well as her moral position of freedom of the person become obvious in a dialogue with her lover Jaime: — Y, sin embargo, la verdadera moral es la nuestra. — ¿Quién lo duda? — ¿Y no puedo yo pedir la separación? — No, porque no hay pruebas y testigos de los malos tratos y de los vicios de tu marido. [...] — Y en cambio tú tienes el desprecio de la sociedad, porque rechazas á un hombre indigno y correspondes á un amor honrado. [...] — Pero es absurdo que sea delito amarse y darse libremente. No ya sólo en este caso, sino en todos. No se puede consentir que las personas sean propiedad unas á otras por toda la vida, que lazos que crea el amor se

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impongan si el amor pasa. — Claro. Tú llegas por la pasión al conocimiento de todas esas verdades; pero las gentes han legislado contra la Naturaleza, han creado intereses que la libertad ataca, y todo lo que estás diciendo asusta á los hipócritas como la cosa más inmoral del mundo (31-32, 37-38).

This dialogue is clearly reminiscent of the issues covered in the legal and public divorce debate and the moral of the novella is as obvious as it should be in melodrama: with a proper divorce law Angustias could have divorced a husband who used and maltreated her, and she could have found happiness in a normal relationship with her lover Jaime, who is clearly the better partner for her, and father for her daughter. As it stands, Angustias is murdered and Jaime goes to prison for adultery. In conclusion, El artículo 438 is a melodramatic example of the opportunities men had within the law to oppress their wives. Although Burgos’s criticism of Article 438 is the centrepiece of the narrative, she also makes a wider point about the all-encompassing control men have over women. This novella, then, is a grim reminder of how men were legally empowered to sacrifice women to the egocentric values of a male-dominated society. By 1932 with the new divorce law in force the offence of adultery changed from being a criminal to a civil one and hence Article 438 was repealed (Machado Carrillo 1978: 49). At a time when the liberal project had long been under way to improve the legal relationship between citizen and state, legal discourse — with a few notable exceptions — fell short of including women in the modernisation of citizens’ rights (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 244). This is nowhere more obvious than in the contemporaneous legal discourse regarding divorce. Instead of using the law as a tool of social change the legislator continued to use it, in the case of women, as a means of social control. As both the legal and the public debate show, it was a topic of heated debates and extreme rationalisations. This attests to the high stakes involved for the loss of male supremacy. Modernisation of the divorcio law and/or giving married women increased rights was seen as the beginning of women’s independence and consequently as the loss of social (male) control over them. As we have seen, women could choose only between a rock and a hard place: unmarried, they were considered to be almost social outcasts; married, their legal subjectivity was similar to that of a juvenile. Marriage was an exacerbation of a woman’s plight rather than a solution, so that it is not surprising that the modernisation of the divorcio legislation was considered a step towards freedom and independence. Burgos was one of the main contributors to the struggle for legal recognition of women’s rights, and the divorce law of 2 March 1932 was a milestone in this struggle, even if some of the more conservative feminists — or indeed the ‘majority of Spanish women in the 1930s’ as Helen Graham suggests — ‘were hostile to a new divorce legislation’, which meant ‘eroding their economic security and the

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only social environment they had experience of’ (Graham 1995: 105). In any case, and fortunately for those who did oppose the new divorce law, it was one of the first pieces of legislation to be repealed by the Nationalists in April 1938, even before the end of the Civil War (Graham/Labanyi 1995: 431).

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2 Equality versus Difference In the first place, “oppositions and contrasts” between the female and male, if one wishes to construe them as such, have been clear since the beginning of time: the one gives birth and the other does not (Laqueur 1992: 9).

INTRODUCTION Women have always been defined in relation to men: women are inferior or superior, equal or different, always in relation to men. While current feminist legal scholarship largely concentrates on the contemporary debate, the historical example of Spain shows that these competing principles have dogged feminist politics since the nineteenth century. This chapter is theoretically informed by one of the major debates in feminist legal theory, the question of equality versus difference: is justice best served by applying standards in a neutral manner to formally equal parties or would justice be better served if law made allowances for gender differences? Equality feminism, for its part, is committed to the ideals of gender neutrality and equality before the law, whereas difference feminism is sceptical about the possibility of neutrality and takes into consideration questions of inequality and power of those parties who might affect the legal process. In its latest manifestation the ‘equality versus difference’ debate revolves around the contention that we must consider the differences among women as well as those between the sexes. Martha Fineman, in her excellent article ‘Challenging law, establishing differences: the future of feminist legal scholarship’ (Fineman 1997: 53-71), calls for a ‘theory of difference’ which locates feminist legal theory, of necessity, outside of dominant legal discourse in order not to be limited by its concepts of equality and neutrality. At the same time she admits that focussing on differences among women, while theoretically significant, can all too easily have an adverse effect: ‘The task of feminist theory in this regard is to encourage women to work together, across differences, so that the similar, shared gendered aspects of our lives do not continue to be invisible and unspoken in law’ (Fineman 1997: 55). The debate started in the 1980s when for the first time equality became a

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controversial concept in feminist legal theory. Originally, the discussion centred on motherhood and the crucial question was whether being treated the same as men did produce justice for women. Taking the specificities of women’s conditions into account suddenly made equality feminism appear inadequate as a goal for social policy. Lise Vogel, in an introduction to the topic, provocatively asks: ‘Why can’t feminists get beyond equality-versus-difference dilemmas?’ (1995: 112-113), and convincingly argues that, despite the apparent binary opposition between equality and difference, the issues are not only more complex, but also never entirely equality-based nor difference-based. Vogel distinguishes between symmetrical and asymmetrical positions, the former referring to equal-rights positions while the latter refer to special rights.1 The symmetrists favour gender-neutral policies mainly on practical rather than theoretical grounds, focussing on institutional constraints and strategic dangers, whereas the asymmetrists mainly focus on theoretical grounds, and hence encounter resistance when they attempt to turn their positions into government policy. The symmetrist position most relevant to the analysis of Burgos’s work is the so-called assimilationism, which can be described as a liberal approach to recognition of categorical differences. According to this, race and gender, like eye colour, are characteristics that should be disallowed from legal considerations. The assimilation stance constructs women as being fundamentally the same as men, taking men as the norm, and assumes that the role of law is to eliminate obstacles that block women’s ability to participate in society on the same basis as men. One of the main criticisms of this viewpoint is that the goal is assimilation to a male standard without questioning the desirability of that standard. Early twentieth-century female-specific laws based their rationale on women’s supposedly natural difference. Reacting against this position, feminists fought to have the same rights and access as men in all areas of social life. At a time when women were treated unfavourably with respect to education and basic rights, the struggle for equality appeared to make sense.2 Historically, the feminist campaigns to overturn protectionism usually reflect an assimilationist view and, as will become clear throughout this chapter, Carmen de Burgos’s equality feminism fits perfectly into these assimilationist policies. Equality and difference at the time of Burgos were diametrically opposed to today’s concepts. Today’s dominant feminist scholarship considers difference feminism as the only reasonable way forward on the way to gender justice. First

1

A more detailed discussion about the various positions is beyond the scope of this study. For a good introduction to this topic, see Vogel (1995: 111-127). 2 See also Lacey (1998: 191-192), where she explains that assimilationist tactics have been used as recently as 1975 in the Sex Discrimination Act: '[...] liberal feminism's central ideal amounted to a strategy of assimilation of women to a standard set by and for men. The rights assigned to men as legal subjects had to be made available to women wherever a comparison

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wave feminism, however, struggled within a very different context, using the notion of equal rights to remove legally imposed discrimination. As Sachs and Wilson have shown with regard to Britain, legislation denied women access to professional occupations and universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Sachs/Wilson 1978: 4-66). The law was blatantly gendered and overtly handed privileges and power over to men. It was important as a first step that these legal privileges were removed. Carol Smart rightly points out that: We know [...] that the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976 in the UK have been largely unsuccessful in changing the discrimination against women and ethnic communities. [...] Yet it would hardly be preferable to turn the clock back to a time when women had virtually no rights. So although second-wave feminists may be critical of first-wave liberal feminists for their emphasis on formal legal equality, and their apparent attempts to have women admitted to the male order, it is unlikely that we would willingly give up any of the legal reforms they achieved (Smart 1989: 138-139).

So while today difference feminism bases its theoretical opposition to equality feminism on the historical evidence that equal rights have furthered the feminist cause only to a point, equality feminism then was based on a very different legal situation. Nicola Lacey explains that: [...] one of the beauties of early liberal legal feminism was the relative simplicity of its politics: essentially, its politics were not oppositional, except at the level of challenging men’s self-interest. Its analysis was the quintessential expression of the philosophical discourse of modernity; its ideology was liberal; and, on the assumption that that liberal ideology was widely shared, its strategy was simply to appeal to the good faith of those in political and legal power. Doubtless, given the strength of those interests and the short supply of good faith, this in itself was rarely an effective approach. But, in principle, there was an easy and very direct inference from theory or analysis to policy or strategy. And this was highly sympathetic for feminism, which has always affirmed the intimacy of theory and practice (Lacey 1998: 195).

The controversy today revolves around the reductive and simplistic notions of formal equality, and those who support difference feminism call for a more differentiated position. The current form of difference feminism comes at a

between the treatment of the two revealed a disparity: but the equalisation was almost invariably in one direction — towards a male norm. [...] On the view emerging in the difference feminism which challenged liberal feminism, the Sex Discrimination Act was toppled from its position at the summit of feminist achievement. With its symmetrical and comparative method and its sex-neutral conceptual framework, it became instead the symbol of the effacement of the feminine, of women, from legal discourse — an effacement which was all the more problematic because it was effected in the name of sexual equality.'

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historical time and place when formal equality has already been achieved. In stark contrast to this, the historical example of Carmen de Burgos illustrates the dangers of difference feminism with its slippery slope of protectionism. As we will see, evoking difference in a society where the male is deemed superior, comes dangerously close to justifying women’s inferiority. Thus it comes as no surprise that Burgos chose equality feminism as her theoretical basis. As already mentioned, she can be considered an assimilationist. As a classic example of first wave feminism, Burgos’s feminism is one of equality between men and women. While being aware of gender specificities, her mode of argumentation always implies that these should not make a difference in terms of treatment or rights. As demonstrated in my introduction and in Chapter 1, the reality of women’s lives at the time of Burgos was that of a curtailment of rights and thus a lack of formal equality. Equality feminism was seen as progress, as an achievement of justice; and, as we will later see, equality discourse at the time of Carmen de Burgos was promoted by progressive, liberal, and modern legal theorists. Unlike today, when equality feminism is decried for its reductionism, in the early twentieth century the discourse of equality argued that there were no physiological or psychological differences between men and women which could justify a different set of standards for women, so contested the idea that there should be a different set of rights based on sex. In short, it demanded those rights women did not have at the time: equal rights in marriage; the right to divorce; equal rights in terms of testigos and tutela; and, most importantly, female suffrage. Difference feminism at the time of Burgos, in line with dominant legal discourse, believed in gender differences and hence promoted a more modest attainment of rights (mainly civil rights). As documented in Chapter 1 in the discussion of the divorce debate, conservative women denied the usefulness of additional rights, simply because they feared for their economic security (Graham 1995: 105). Dominant legal discourse openly opposed any changes in rights on the grounds of women’s ‘natural’ difference. Women were perceived and constructed as different, supplying the necessary justification to give them fewer rights. Burgos’s writing serves as a pertinent reminder of how this difference discourse was used as a patriarchal tool, and how important it was for early feminists to identify such political strategies. As Lacey argues: “Since the ancient disadvantages and exclusions which had marked the legal status of women had generally been justified in terms of supposedly “natural” characteristics and incapacities, the interpretation of many, if not most, of these differences as social constructs — as matters of gender rather than of “given” sex — assumed a distinctive political importance” (Lacey 1998: 189-190). Burgos’s feminist essays can thus be interpreted as fulfilling a dual task: firstly she rebuts dominant difference discourse of her era, while at the same time she creates her own feminist difference discourse, which could be labelled ‘different

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but equal’, thus giving difference a positive value. In this sense it can be argued that there are traces of difference feminism in her work. This chapter analyses the theoretical work of Burgos and focuses mainly on her book-length essay La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927a). It hopes to demonstrate that, while the prevalent form of feminism in Burgos’s day was equality feminism, one that was predicated on the attainment of equal rights, the strategies used by legal writers promoting equality were by no means monolithic, but frequently slid into difference discourse. To this end the legal discussion in this study is supplemented by recourse to Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex (1992) and Ornella Moscucci’s The Science of Woman (1993), both of which argue, amongst other things, that medical discourse in the nineteenth century ‘created’ biological difference in order to legitimate legal difference between the sexes. This chapter explores the creation of biological difference in Spanish legal discourse and examines the relevance of these biological ‘facts’ in the debate about female suffrage. In order to contextualise Burgos’s writing within the legal thought of her time, the analysis also draws heavily on two contemporary legal writers: José Francos Rodríguez and Miguel Romera Navarro.

BURGOS’S EQUALITY FEMINISM Estudiar la manera de borrar la injusticia de la desigualdad es el fin del feminismo moderno (Carmen de Burgos 1927a: 20).

In Chapter 1 of La mujer moderna y sus derechos Carmen de Burgos sets out what she sees as the aims of feminism. She identifies equality of rights as the main goal: ‘La base está en las leyes, en la proclamación de la “Igualdad de derechos”’ (Burgos 1927a: 8). It is noteworthy that she considers law as a crucial component for feminist strategies, identifying the legal system as a means of social control as well as social change. Positive law, she argues, goes against the evolution of customs which have advanced much further than law: Las costumbres han evolucionado mucho en favor de la mujer. Lo que se necesita es que los Códigos marchen de acuerdo con las costumbres y no pretendan fijar la vida en textos inmóviles. [...] Se borró el influjo de las costumbres y quedó sólo el derecho escrito, qu e ha servido de sello para marcar como esclava a la mujer durante tantos siglos. Se necesita que la libertad conquistada en las costumbres esté garantida por las leyes. Hay que fijar de un modo definitivo el verdadero concepto del feminismo (Burgos 1927a: 8).

As discussed in my introduction, law can be reactive to social change and Burgos here alludes to precisely that function, demanding that positive law be finally on a par with de facto social change. In order to appease those opposed to feminism, she also tries to clarify the fact that feminism wants equality

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between men and women and would by no means include ‘la idea de hegemonía femenina y de peligro para la sociedad’ (Burgos 1927a: 9). As we have seen in Chapter 1, Carmen de Burgos, as a proponent of equality feminism, demands equal rights for women based on their inalienable rights as citizens of a society. Citing Fourier, she argues that women’s position in society is a litmus test for the level of progress of a nation (Burgos 1927a: 9). However, she also immediately qualifies this by assuring the reader that: ‘De ninguna manera quiso significar con esa palabra un deseo de inversión de sexos o de funciones, y mucho menos la aspiración a la igualdad, que hace imposible la naturaleza’ (Burgos 1927a: 9). While pushing for equal rights, Burgos here shows an awareness of the impossibility of complete equality and thus brings difference into the debate. In a less than clear statement she seems to put forward an assimilationist viewpoint, interestingly not in order to argue for difference from a standpoint of strength, but again simply in order to appease potential male critics who might take the easy line of attacking complete equality for reasons of biological impossibility. Nevertheless, in a slightly later passage her discourse of difference becomes more openly critical. She attacks the ángel del hogar discourse: Se proclamó con todos los tonos patéticos que la naturaleza marca la misión de los dos sexos: El hombre debe trabajar, la mujer no debía ser más que madre, ángel del hogar, reunión de todas las gracias y bellezas. Esto traducido al lenguaje vulgar, significa que la mujer no debía ser más que servidora y recreo del hombre. Pero si se hubiera hecho una ley de acuerdo con su canto lírico, para que todos los hombres hubiesen tenido la obligación de sustentar a ese “ángel del hogar”, al que ellos se encargaban de cortar las alas, sin que tuviesen necesidad de trabajar y sin menoscabo de su dignidad de mujeres, la protesta hubiera sido general. Invocar la maternidad para mantener la esclavitud envuelve un cinismo superlativo y un desconocimiento inexplicable de la expansión que requiere la actividad de las mujeres que no han sido madres y de las viudas y casadas que, después de criar y educar a sus hijos, terminada la misión materna, tienen energías que reclaman aplicación (Burgos 1927a: 13).

As we will see later, Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca argues that it is precisely this ángel del hogar discourse that works as a cultural component to create gender difference and supports male politics which keeps women in the home. Furthermore, in this early chapter Burgos is quite categorical in her condemnation of difference feminism: Hay también quien se esfuerza por distinguir un feminismo de raza, estableciendo variaciones entre feminismo latino, sajón, etc. Es un nuevo error. Las diferencias nacerán en cada país de las leyes y costumbres a que hayan de sujetarse los ciudadanos, pero el fondo es idéntico. Los diferentes caracteres, descritos con más teatralidad en la presentación que verdad en el fondo, de los temperamentos de las mujeres de distintas razas, no pueden influir en los prin-

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cipios generales del derecho humano. Lo lamentable es que las disquisiciones quitan fuerza a la acción y que la obra feminista está aún sin realizar. Actualmente la mujer sufre en muchas naciones, como en la nuestra: Inferioridad pedagógica. Inferioridad económica. Inferioridad cívica. Inferioridad política. Inferioridad conyugal. Inferioridad maternal (Burgos 1927a: 19-20).

She opposes making distinctions between women for reasons that are theoretical as well as pragmatic. Her beliefs are based on the conceptual notion that all women suffer from the inferiorities listed above, which for her is the difference created by male discourse and power, and on the purely pragmatic grounds that any feminist activism has more power the more followers it can unite. Her motives here are quite clearly those of political pragmatism and her views on the political practicality and desirability of difference feminism prefigure those argued by Martha Fineman (Fineman 1997: 55). As illustrated in my introduction, Richard Evans suggests that women of the first wave feminist movement had similar aims in all countries and, as the quotation above illustrates, this is hardly surprising given that women were subjected to the same kinds of legal and cultural engineering. Burgos’s demands for equality are twofold: she demands equal treatment and equal rights while also immediately stating that it is an assimilation to an implicit male standard she wants and not different rights, in the sense of a privileged legal status: Georges Deherme, en “El Poder Social de las Mujeres”, [...] hablando de la catástrofe del Titantic, dice: “Si se hubiera practicado el feminismo, ninguna mujer se hubiera salvado.” Demuestra así no conocer la materia de que se ocupa y por eso no concibe que la mujer no desee una situación de privilegio, sino de igualdad (Burgos 1927a: 20).

Quoting the German philosopher Georg Simmel, Carmen de Burgos takes issue with the unashamed proclamation of male dominance. She starts her argument by quoting Simmel: La falta de ecuanimidad al hablar del problema feminista la proclama Jorge Simmel cuando dice: “La mujer no puede ser juzgada imparcialmente. [...] Desde el punto de vista masculino no es posible reconocer la independencia del principio femenino. La mujer queda sometida al mismo tiempo a dos medidas distintas y ambas de origen masculino: Una es la medida absoluta que se forma por los criterios de los hombres y se aplica a la actividad de la mujer, a sus convicciones, a los contenidos teóricos y prácticos de su vida. Otra es la medida relativa, que también procede de las prerrogativas del hombre. El hombre exige de la mujer, no sólo lo que le parece deseable en general, sino también lo que le parece deseable como hombre. Exige la feminilidad en el sentido tradicional de la palabra, que implica una índole especial orientada hacia el varón para agradarle, servirle y complacerle” (Burgos 1927a: 21).

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In a less than clear statement Simmel appears to argue that men are the dominant group and hence the norm. He distinguishes between the absolute measures, which are created by male norms and applied to female activities, and the relative measures, which are arrived at from male prerogatives and expect female servitude. In other words, in the former women are victims of a male worldview, while in the latter they are victims of male power. Burgos takes issue with Simmel and categorically states what the differences between femininity and feminism are in her view: El feminismo no está reñido con la feminilidad y la mujer será más femenina cuanto más mujer sea en la amplia acepción de la palabra. Ser femenina como quieren las ilusas, es estar sometida sólo a los imperativos sexuales, sin aspirar más que a ser nodriza y gobernante. Ser feminista es ser mujer respetada, consciente, con personalidad, con responsabilidad, con derechos, que no se oponen al amor, al hogar y a la maternidad. El feminismo, con las diversas ramas que nacen de su único tronco, no es más que vindicación de los derechos de la mujer. Nadie habrá capaz de sostener el absurdo de que porque a un sujeto de derecho se le reconozcan éstos, pueda variar en su naturaleza y en sus cualidades intrínsecas (Burgos 1927a: 21-22).

Again Burgos carefully avoids too militant a feminist view and seems at pains to assure the male opposition that giving women rights will not make them any less feminine. She also appeals to reason by pointing out that a different legal subjectivity of women (giving them equal rights) is hardly going to change their nature.

BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE The body could mean almost anything and hence almost nothing at all (Laqueur 1992: 217).

The creation of a legal difference discourse at the time of Burgos was based on the ‘fact’ that women were biologically different from the male norm and therefore perceived as inferior. I have no interest in proving conclusively that Burgos’s refutation of dominant medical discourse is scientifically sound, nor that her claims are any more reasonable than those of the people she argues against. What concerns me here is to demonstrate that one of her main aims in La mujer moderna y sus derechos was to write and publish a profound critique of the dominant gender discourse of difference in general and within the realm of law in particular. In order to argue convincingly that different legal subjectivities were based on false medical ‘facts’, Burgos had to dismantle the medical discourse first. This she does — to my mind rather convincingly — in La mujer moderna y sus derechos. Convincingly in the sense that her counterarguments raise enough reasonable doubt as to the truth claims of dominant

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medical discourse. Deconstructing the medical discourse was vitally important in that it provided the crucial counter-evidence to dismantle a legal system based on supposedly natural facts, which appeared to be reasonable and legitimate. In his ground-breaking book Making Sex (1992) Thomas Laqueur demonstrates how medical discourse throughout history is but one long narrative of rationalisations and circular arguments. According to Laqueur scientists started looking for biological differences when the establishment of difference became politically important. Given that by about 1800 patriarchy was seriously challenged for the first time a biology of incommensurable difference needed to be created: Structures that had been thought common to man and woman — the skeleton and the nervous system — were differentiated so as to correspond to the cultural male and female. As the natural body itself became the gold standard of social discourse, the bodies of women — the perennial other — thus became the battleground for redefining the ancient, intimate, fundamental social relation: that of woman to man. Women’s bodies in their corporeal, scientifically accessible concreteness, in the very nature of their bones, nerves, and most important, reproductive organs, came to bear an enormous new weight of meaning. Two sexes, in other words, were invented as a new foundation for gender (Laqueur 1992: 149-150).

The French Revolution with its creation of a new social order promised women they could achieve civil and, what is more, personal liberties and thus created a new feminism as well as antifeminism (Laqueur 1992: 194). Never before was male supremacy so publicly challenged and it is no coincidence that the biology of incommensurability was created in the aftermath of this revolutionary change. The most well-known moral anthropologists of the French Revolution wrote about family matters, arguing that corporeal differences demanded the social and legal differences of gender in the new Napoleonic Code (Laqueur 1992: 196). Needless to say, the Spanish legal codes were modelled very closely on the French examples and are therefore full of legal gender differences. It is noteworthy here that in Spain legal writers like Romera Navarro in his Feminismo jurídico (1910: 155-156) also situate the advent of feminism as a political movement precisely within the aftermath of the French Revolution, thus prefiguring Laqueur’s observations. The neutral language of liberalism wrote women as such out of discourse and hence initiated a feminist discourse of difference. Feminists like Olympe de Gouges, in her famous Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1792), uses the body, hence creating her own discourse of difference. Woman, she argues, is ‘le sexe supérieur en beauté, comme en courage dans les souffrances maternelles’ (Gouges 1993: 204), clearly determining women’s mission in life through their bodies. Some versions of feminism turned to a biology of incommensurability in order to combat male discourse on two levels:

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firstly in order to refute the view that women are lesser versions of men, because if this were so, there would not be any need to take part in public life, since men could represent women far better than they could represent themselves; secondly, to refute liberalism and its sexlessness, because if women were in all respects the same, they would not have any legitimate grounds for their social being and men could speak for them as they had in the past (Laqueur 1992: 197). Laqueur also quotes Millicent Fawcett as another example of difference feminism: ‘We want women’s special experiences as women to be brought to bear on legislation, [...] by giving women greater freedom the truly womanly qualities in them will grow in strength and power’ (Laqueur 1992: 197). As the section on female suffrage in Spain will demonstrate, Burgos as well as liberal legal writers like Francos Rodríguez and Romera Navarro also slide uncomfortably into a feminist difference discourse whenever it suits their argumentation. Using the examples of France after the French Revolution and Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, Laqueur argues that, whenever social change loomed, an extraordinarily elaborated physical anthropology of sexual difference was produced to justify the resistance to change. During the suffrage movement in Britain, for example, ‘women were construed as creatures, who for various reasons, in many respects like those that disadvantaged the darker races, were incapable of assuming civic responsibility’ (Laqueur 1992: 196). As we will later see, similar tactics were used during the long struggle for female franchise in Spain. The biology of sexual incommensurability offered theorists and ideologues alike an explanation of how in the state of nature women were already inferior to men; that they would be absent from the new civil society seemed a logical conclusion (Laqueur 1992: 197). Paramount to this project of female exclusion from the public world was the concentration on the family as the most basic structural unit of society. As Moscucci convincingly argues: Notions of biological maternity and of female physiology justified the association of women with nature in opposition to culture; they designated woman’s place within family, the most basic biological and social unit. The family occupied a pivotal place in the science of man, for it served to explain the relationship between the individual and society in a totally naturalistic manner. The family was rooted in individual acts of sex and reproduction; it was also a microcosm of society and the foundation of the social order. This separation between the private and public areas of life did not mirror the reality of women’s experiences, nor did it fit across classes and cultures, but it did form the basis of a pervasive ideology which proposed a model of femininity, providing the rationale for excluding women from man’s domain — politics, business, organised labour and the professions (Moscucci 1993: 3-4).

Ornella Moscucci also demonstrates that science played a crucial role in the rise of liberalism, because its methods seemed to be the only secure way of replacing

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the ‘false’ notions of human nature derived from religious speculation with a secular, value-free knowledge of society and nature (Moscucci 1993: 3). Nineteenth-century medicine, with its ‘certain’ and ‘objective’ methods of science, ‘proved’ that women are not capable of doing what men do, and hence argued that claims for equality between the sexes ‘were based on profound ignorance of immutable physical and mental differences between the sexes and that these, not legislative whim, determined social division of labour and rights’ (Laqueur 1992: 207). Laqueur calls this a ‘radical naturalisation’, in other words the reduction of women to their biology. For the first time in medical history, an incommensurable difference between the sexes was created and biological facts were used to ‘prove’ that women were slaves of their bodies. In a synecdochic move from female sexual organs (at that time in particular the ovary) to women per se, biology was used to explain women’s different behaviour. According to Laqueur, this radical naturalisation did not itself logically entail any particular position for women in society. The crucial tactic here is a kind of cultural synecdoche using a part to symbolise a whole: What mattered was the mode of argument itself, the move from sex to gender, from body to behavior, from menstruation to morality. The actual content of purported sexual differences varied with the exigencies of the moment. Thus the equation of heat and menstruation could be the basis for a case against women’s participation in public activities, which required steady, day-to-day concentration (Laqueur 1992: 216).3

Ornella Moscucci argues that science played a crucial role in the rise of liberalism, because its methods seemed to be the only secure way of replacing the ‘false’ notions of human nature derived from religious speculation with a secular, value-free knowledge of society and nature (Moscucci 1993: 3). As we will later see, the question of female franchise in Spain was fiercely debated in terms of the biological suitability of women for the public sphere. In

3

Laqueur here alludes to the comparison between heat in dogs and female menstruation analysed by Theodor von Bischoff in 1843. See Laqueur (1992: 214), where he states: ‘But why would anyone believe this story, this culturally explosive fiction that menstruation was in women what heat was in dogs, when all the behavioral signs suggested nothing of the sort? Bischoff's answer was simple: the equivalence of menstruation and heat is simply common sense. If one accepts spontaneous ovulation during periods of heat in mammals generally, it “suggests itself”. In any case, he adds, there is much indirect evidence for the equation of heat and menstruation, as well as the authority of the “most insightful physicians and naturalists” from earliest times on.’ While Bischoff was concentrating on ovulation during heat and menstruation, his French colleague Adam Raciborski specialised in the behavioural aspects of symptoms during heat comparing the breakdown of socialisation in animals with allegedly nervous over-excitement in women. His argument is ‘that menstruation is as dangerous as heat because it seems so little to resemble it’ (Laqueur 1992: 217-218). The examples of Bischoff and Raciborski illustrate how 'scientific evidence' is used for social constructions.

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a manner similar to Laqueur’s description of medical discourse, Spanish dominant legal discourse also displays this mode of argument moving from sex to gender. Catherine Jagoe, using Thomas Laqueur as her theoretical framework, puts these insights into a Spanish context. She illustrates that as early as 1853 the Spanish medical doctor Pedro Felipe Monlau constructed women ‘como synécdoque de su propia matriz’ (Jagoe 1998: 311). Jagoe also argues that: Para justificar la exclusión de la mujer de la ciudadanía, concedida únicamente a los hombres adinerados que sí se suponen libres, muchos médicos españoles del siglo XIX usan metáforas políticas para representar a la mujer como un ser fisiológicamente no libre, esclava de su naturaleza biológica. A diferencia del hombre, para quien la reproducción se cree limitada a su participación en el coito, la mujer se considera destinada en cuerpo y alma a la reproducción desde la pubertad (Jagoe 1998: 310-311).

In order to achieve the exclusion of women from citizenship at a time when women were getting more politically active, patriarchy needed to make sure that women remained in the private sphere. According to Enríquez de Salamanca, this was achieved by means of a collaboration between the legal discourse and a more general cultural discourse. As we have seen in Chapter 1, legal discourse prescribed a domestic model for women by creating a set of laws for marriage. Nevertheless, this is only part of the patriarchal strategy. Enríquez de Salamanca insists that, parallel to the legal discourse creating a ‘sujeto diferente y discriminado’, there was a cultural strand creating an ángel del hogar discourse in order to strengthen the patriarchal agenda of keeping women in the private sphere. As already mentioned, Burgos strongly opposed this ángel del hogar discourse, identifying it as a subtle form of domination. Enríquez de Salamanca, similarly, explains that: Uno de los principales cambios que introdujo el mundo liberal fue un nuevo discurso de género sexual que prescribió al ángel del hogar como modelo de mujer. Este modelo radica en la creencia en una diferencia básica entre los sexos, una diferencia que parte de la fisiología e incluye lo mental y sentimental; se abandona por tanto el antiguo principio de que la mujer es una imitación defectuosa del varón para proponer a ésta como un ser diferente y complementario del hombre (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 219).

New insights into women’s biological difference were used as arguments to rationalise gender inequality before the law. Enríquez de Salamanca argues that it is precisely because the liberal belief in equality was not in accord with the patriarchal endeavour to exclude women from the public sphere that there were glaring discrepancies with regard to female legal subjectivity in legal discourse: Así, el discurso de género de las leyes penales era incompatible con el de las leyes civiles, y el de las leyes políticas negaba el establecido en las leyes civiles. Todas estas discrepancias se producían, entre otras razones, porque las ins-

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tituciones jurídicas se inspiraban en varios discursos de género, y por tanto, producían también diversos modelos de mujer, además del prescrito por la ideología doméstica. Ello autoriza a afirmar que el discurso legal no funcionaba como una tecnología de género monolítica, sino que más bien tuvo dificultades para adoptar una visión unitaria del modelo de mujer que convenía adoptar, contradiciéndose a cada paso y fluctuando entre los diversos modelos de subjetividad que circulaban en la sociedad liberal (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 223).

Enríquez de Salamanca also argues that there was an interaction between the legal and non-legal discourse. As we will see in what follows, nowhere does the interaction between cultural values and legal norms become more absurd than in the question of female suffrage. Enríquez de Salamanca rightly points out as regards the law before 1890 that: Las leyes, pues, no excluyeron explícitamente a la mujer del sufragio; esta exclusión provino de la interpretación de las leyes políticas realizadas por una sociedad que había internalizado el discurso doméstico (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 246).

As already noted in my introduction, Vago argues that law as a means of social control relies on the internalisation of group norms and control through external sanctions (Vago 1997: 190-191). Enríquez de Salamanca suggests that in the case of nineteenth-century Spanish law an opposite interaction can also be detected: here legal discourse does not influence the internalisation of norms; rather cultural discourse influences the interpretation of the legal text. As noted above, Moscucci illustrates how nature instead of religion had to define the social place of men and women. Scanlon similarly argues that as soon as the influence of religion subsided as a source of antifeminism, male dominant discourse needed to find another source to replace it. She aptly observes that the advantage of scientific discourse was that ‘la mayoría de las mujeres carecían de la suficiente instrucción para ver las lagunas de los argumentos científicos’ (Scanlon 1986: 162). Both Scanlon (1986: 159-194) and Jagoe (1998: 305-367) demonstrate how in Spain there were the same strategies of cultural engineering at work as described by Laqueur and Moscucci; both illustrate the utmost importance that medical discourse ascribed to physiological differences between men and women, in particular the functions and the weight of the brain. Unsurprisingly, then, Burgos attempts to deconstruct these fallacies in La mujer moderna y sus derechos — as I will demonstrate below. Jagoe describes the stereotypical woman according to dominant medical discourse as follows: A la mujer la describen físicamente como suave, rellena, pequeña, con huesos más finos, con el cerebro de tamaño menor que el hombre, y presentando un desarrollo en diferentes esferas cerebrales que éste. Las zonas encefálicas más desarrolladas en la mujer son las posteriores e inferiores, que son las que,

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según los frenólogos, se asocian con la afectividad. Tiene mucha flexibilidad muscular aunque poca fuerza, y su sistema nervioso es altamente sensible (Jagoe 1998: 311).

This stereotype can be implicitly found in dominant legal discourse and is used to deny women basic political rights. Using the rhetorical means of hyperbole and irony Francos Rodríguez ridicules the cultural creation of difference: Cuando llega la hora de que hablen la razón, el estudio de la vida, el brío de los sentimientos hondos, entonces el hombre se considera legítimo dictador, árbitro insustituible. En el instante de crear Derecho, ¿cómo ha de tener la hembra el mismo de que goza el varón? ¡Sería absurdo que ella contribuyese a formar las leyes, a interpretarlas, a imponerlas! Ese papel corresponde, en absoluto, al “Rey de la Creación”, que de tal modo así mismo se llama, para que nadie dude de la supremacía que le corresponde. Exaltar las vanidades femeniles diciendo que pueden y deben colocarse en la misma raya donde están las masculinas, es absurdo, temerario, disolvente. La mujer tiene su reino, el hogar; su misión, atender a los hijos. El campo, la calle pertenecen al sexo masculino. La vida pública es suya, sólo suya (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 19).

These are the positions of dominant legal discourse that Francos Rodríguez attempts to refute. His strategies are two-fold: firstly he gives an overview of the political turmoil of the nineteenth and early twentieth century in an attempt to put the question of female participation in public life into perspective. Illustrating what public life without women looks like, he reasons: Y ahora dígase si los hombres de España pueden negar a las mujeres aptitudes para el Gobierno por flaquezas de carácter y por nerviosidad en las acciones, cuando en el siglo XIX y lo que va corrido del XX parece nuestra historia la clínica de un caso de histerismo (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 30).

Secondly, he takes issue with the theoretical topic of women’s biological inferiority. He informs the reader that women’s inferiority is far from scientifically proven: En razones de carácter biológico se apoyan algunos para considerar a la mujer inferior al hombre, pero el dimorfismo de los sexos, estudiado por los fisiólogos, tampoco autoriza la declaración de desigualdad; al revés: la ciencia revela que los dos sexos se complementan; la obra de la Naturaleza debe servir de pauta a la social. No hay supremacía ni de lo masculino ni de lo femenino; trátase de elementos diferentes con funciones definidas, que aportan a una acción común fuerzas indispensables y del mismo valer para que se realice la obra suprema de la vida (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 164).

Francos Rodríguez argues for a state of gender equality based on the fact that men and women are biologically different but nevertheless ought to be legally

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equal citizens of society: De las diferencias biológicas indiscutibles entre los dos sexos, de las de los respectivos caracteres y condiciones intelectuales, no se puede deducir con razón la superioridad del hombre sobre la mujer, ni la incapacidad de ésta para desempeñar en el mundo actividades inherentes a su emancipación. [...] La mujer y el hombre [...] no se definen exclusivamente por los órganos generadores, ni siquiera por los caracteres sexuales secundarios, sino que el sexo se expresa por la totalidad del organismo, desde la indumentaria a la voluntad; por lo mismo no puede prescindirse de la condición biológica de las dos mitades del género humano en cualquier problema social, y hay que considerarlas como son, ni mejores ni peores, ni superiores ni inferiores las unas y los otros, sino distintas (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 167).

Francos Rodríguez here attempts to establish an argumentation that could be termed ‘different but equal’. While obviously having to admit that women are biologically different, he tries to illustrate that the commonly held view that this necessarily means ‘different and inferior’ is by no means a logical conclusion. In order to give credibility to his way of argumentation he examines two further ideas of received wisdom concerning women. The first one relates to the assumption that, due to physiological reasons, women are more emotionally unstable than men: En nombre de la ciencia afirman algunos que las mujeres están invalidadas por motivos orgánicos para el desempeño de ciertas funciones sociales. Verdad que las crisis fisiológicas, ejerciendo influjo sobre todo el sistema nervioso, determinan anomalías reflejadas en el pensar y el sentir; pero de tales influjos participan los dos sexos. Pues qué ¿no se reclama diariamente ante los Tribunales por la irresponsabilidad de hombres que mataron a impulsos de la pasión? ¿Sería justo que se negase al sexo masculino aptitud directiva en vista de que muchas veces, arrastrado por impulsos superiores a su voluntad, derrama sangre del prójimo? (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 170).

Francos Rodríguez exposes the inconsistency in male dominant reasoning and illustrates why men, as well as women, are — at times — slaves of their emotions. This slavery to bodily functions becomes particularly aggravated, according to male medical discourse, during the menopause. Again Francos Rodríguez attempts to show how this is not an entirely female problem. Looking at the behavioural signs of middle-aged people, he explains that: Las crisis orgánicas que resuenan en la vida intelectual y afectiva, no las padece la mujer únicamente. El joven Dr. Marañón, [...] refiriéndose a la menopausia, es decir, al momento en que se inicia el crepúsculo que pudiéramos llamar vespertino en la existencia humana, recoge las afirmaciones de Mendel, acerca de la edad crítica del varón. Cuando llega a cierta edad, el hombre cambia de carácter, experimenta una gran irritabilidad nerviosa, reviven en él los

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sentimientos amorosos — muchas veces extraviados por los campos de perversión —; advierte, en fin, una gran transformación que influye en sus ideas y en su proceder (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 170).

Francos Rodríguez tries to deconstruct the creation of biological difference, which is used to justify different treatment of women. By shifting the argument from biological difference to ‘life-cycle equality’, he demonstrates that there might just be different ways of dealing with middle age. Burgos focuses on the question of the biological inferiority of women in La mujer moderna y sus derechos in one of her opening chapters. She sets out the main issues on her agenda which are to become recurrent themes in Chapter 2 as well as the whole work: Una ojeada, por ligera que sea, dedicada al estudio del sexo femenino, nos demuestra que la subordinación de la mujer no es obra de la naturaleza. Por eso el triunfo del feminismo puede considerarse como el restablecimiento de la justicia y de los fueros de la ley natural, largo tiempo violada con la desigualdad. Nada hay en la naturaleza que justifique la esclavitud de la mujer. Se ve claramente que en las misteriosas germinaciones de la existencia, ambos sexos tienen un papel claro y bien definido, de extraordinaria importancia, admirablemente determinado y apto para las funciones que ha de desempeñar (Burgos 1927a: 24).

From the very beginning, Burgos posits that the subordination of women is not based on biological facts and hence is untenable as a phallocratic claim. It is noteworthy that Burgos here uses the very rhetoric that is employed by her opponents. By using the term ‘fueros de la ley natural’ Burgos beats her opponents with their own weapons. Equality is the natural state of being, according to Burgos, and not the assumed inferiority of women, as the phallocratic worldview would have it. The role of feminism, then, is to achieve justice, or rather to restore the natural law of equality. In line with Francos Rodríguez she argues for two main ideas: firstly that women are not naturally inferior and secondly that their function in society is clearly defined but by no means inferior to that of men. As we will later see, Burgos does not argue for a role reversal or denial of the natural function of reproduction, but rather against the synecdochic move orchestrated by the dominant male discourse, in which the reproductive functions of women keep them, of necessity, out of the public sphere. She then goes to great lengths to produce evidence to counter dominant scientific discourse which allegedly proves the inferiority of women. As already mentioned, I am not concerned with proving that Burgos’s medical narrative is scientifically more sound than that of the dominant medical community of the time. What interests me is that one of the main intellectual premises of La mujer moderna y sus derechos is the detailed refutation of dominant medical discourse, demonstrating that ‘the body could prove almost anything and hence almost

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nothing at all’ (Laqueur 1992: 217). As we will see in the section on female suffrage, the truth claims with regard to women’s inferiority are appropriated by legal discourse and prevent women from having the most basic of civil rights. By drawing attention to this, Burgos deconstructs the power of medical discourse in order to disallow it as evidence. Chapter 2 of La mujer moderna y sus derechos is, by and large, a refutation of common misogynist views. Burgos’s strategies are two-fold: firstly she gives a broad overview of scientific ‘evidence’ only to display its arbitrariness; and secondly she enumerates enough counter-evidence to show that the creation of difference need not necessarily mean inferiority of women. While showing how easily women’s superiority could also be proven, Burgos insists that such a facile struggle for supremacy enriches no one: Nada significan, desde el punto de vista de la superioridad, las diferencias de que la mujer tenga más alto el talle y más cortos los miembros inferiores, los arcos cigomáticos más chicos y lo mismo las apófisis mastoidea y estiloidea, las crestas menos marcadas, los arcos superciliares poco dibujados, la mitad externa del borde orbitario superior adelgazada y cortante; la boca más chica y la nariz raramente aquilina, las pestañas más abundantes, el blanco de los ojos más limpio, la tez más satinada y los miembros más redondeados, aunque en todo esto no existe una regla general. Una gran parte de las diferencias pueden atribuirse a la vida sedentaria, y a veces esos caracteres predominan en el hombre. Para argumentar arbitrariamente como los hombres lo han hecho, la mujer podría invocar en estas diferencias signos de superioridad; como son tener los brazos más cortos, el maxilar inferior más pequeño, bien conformado y suelto, carencia, en muchos casos, de la muela del juicio y el que su ángulo facial sea más abierto, cosa que indica mayor elevación de la bóveda craneana (Burgos 1927a: 29, my emphasis).

As a committed equality feminist, it is not only the same rights for women that she demands, but also equality for men. While being aware of women’s biological difference, in this particular passage she maintains a position that does not elevate the feminist cause to higher grounds of female superiority. On the topic of the vote Burgos will change her position. Denise Riley, in her brilliant book ‘Am I that Name?’ (1988), suggests that British feminism of the 1920s and 1930s was characterised by a ‘nervous hesitation between “equality” and “difference”, or a search for the fragile median position which saw women as “different but equal”’ (Riley 1988: 62). According to Riley, this was mainly due to the questionable appeal of equality as a political strategy of winning the vote (Riley 1988: 55). As noted below in the section on the vote, Burgos’s work similarly fluctuates between her self-professed equality feminism and her discourse of difference. In line with the British feminism of her time she proposes the — not necessarily fragile — median position of ‘different but equal’.

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One example of her deconstruction of dominant medical discourse is her engagement with the Austrian psychologist Otto Weininger in order to give an example of commonly held views and to demonstrate how easily they are refuted. Weininger, as quoted by Burgos, argues that: ‘Si las mujeres son, a veces, dignas de estima, es sólo por los elementos varoniles que guardan, y, en cambio, lo que les impide a los hombres elevarse son los elementos de mujer que llevan escondidos’ (Burgos 1927a: 27). Burgos strikes back with rhetorical ease: Pero como Weininger no aduce pruebas de la superioridad del principio masculino, podría, con la misma arbitrariedad, argumentarse que: “las mujeres no pueden elevarse por los elementos de hombre que hay en ellas y que si los hombres son, a veces, dignos de estima, es por los elementos de mujer que conservan” (Burgos 1927a: 27, my emphasis).

As we have seen, Burgos repeatedly attacks the arbitrariness of phallocratic arguments and her main point of criticism is the notion that women’s intelligence is supposedly inferior to men’s: Desde Geist, Ribra y Peach no han cesado los antropólogos de pesar, medir y observar el cerebro femenino, con el deseo de establecer su inferioridad intelectual. [...] Hoffman asegura que el peso del cerebro es de dos onzas más en el hombre, y Lauret, que midió los cerebros de dos mil personas, establece que el diámetro de la circunferencia encefálica es menor en la mujer, y que los cráneos de las mujeres de las razas superiores están poco más evolutos que en las mujeres salvajes, en cuanto a tamaño (Burgos 1927a: 31).

Burgos first introduces counter-evidence by quoting those male theorists who disagree with this view and then produces her own conclusions: Esto no puede probar nada, pues Broca, que encuentra ridícula la pretensión de hacer que dependa el grado de inteligencia de las dimensiones y forma de la cabeza, asegura que el ejercicio intelectual aumenta el peso y el volumen del cerebro y el desarrollo de la inteligencia. Esta opinión la comparten Pancharpe, Lacassagne, Chiquet, Ferri, Vitalis, Galton, Van Finto y otros muchos. La mujer ha estado privada de cultura intelectual durante mucho tiempo, y hasta se le ha negado el enseñarla a leer y a escribir; no es extraño que el hombre tenga el cráneo más grande. Sappey, el gran anatomista francés, ha comparado el peso del cerebro entre 32 individuos, 16 hombres y 16 mujeres, encontrando que el encéfalo del hombre pesa un kilogramo y 550 miligramos, y en la mujer, un kilogramo y 250 miligramos. El cerebro pesa en el hombre 1,187 y en la mujer 1,093. El cerebelo del hombre pesa 0,143 y en la mujer 0,137 (Burgos 1927a: 31-32).

The anatomical structure of the female brain as well as its weight differ from those of the male. In absolute terms the male brain is heavier than the female, which could be interpreted as proof of more intelligence. However, in relative

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terms the result is the exact opposite: De modo que la diferencia en favor de los hombres es la siguiente: 0,300 encéfalo, 0,094 cerebro y 0,006 cerebelo. La diferencia es bien poca, pero aun así no se trata de una diferencia absoluta. No se tiene en cuenta la estatura. Si se hace proporcionalmente a ésta la comparación, como exige la equidad, el cerebro de la mujer es mayor que el del hombre (Burgos 1927a: 32).

Burgos here points to the one glaring omission in male argumentation, the obvious necessity to put anatomical data into relative terms. Again she calls for gender equity, in this case in terms of anatomical correlations, which need to be part of the equation. She also attacks the common view that motherhood and public duties are incommensurable. Quoting the dominant view, displaying its arbitrariness yet again, she argues that: Algunos fisiólogos, como Bonnet, Wolf y Lamarck, señalan diferencias que se relacionan con lo que podríamos llamar vida animal, menos acusada en la mujer que en el hombre. Dicen que su temperamento es más linfático que sanguíneo, y rara vez bilioso, y que el sistema nervioso es más impresionable, para llegar arbitrariamente a esta conclusión: “La naturaleza particular de la mujer, su debilidad, hija de su constitución, su temperamento afectivo, su carácter impresionable y emocional, su vocación, su misión social, su destino natural se oponen a toda transposición y establecen una incompatibilidad racional entre los deberes de la madre y las funciones del ciudadano. La existencia de la mujer se resume toda entera en la maternidad” (Burgos 1927a: 3334, my emphasis).

Finally calling for gender equality and against latest medical research which supports difference she concludes: Aunque la vida humana esté influida por el sexo, aunque exista un acento sexual, como dice Marañón, es absurdo forjar con esto un nuevo eslabón de la cadena femenina. Es monstruoso dar al sexo esa importancia que le concede Freud para que se infiltre en todo y todo lo subordine. En los dominios del pensamiento, en la libre aplicación de la actividad, en la esfera igualitaria de la justicia y del derecho, el sexo no debe tener ninguna importancia (Burgos 1927a: 34).

As we have seen, Burgos, as a proponent of equality feminism, strongly opposes the dominant difference discourse that uses biology as evidence to justify patriarchal political agendas. The following section will show how the prevalent legal discourse at the time of Burgos orchestrated a synecdochic move from sex to vote, from biology to the right of suffrage.

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THE VOTE In 1931 Spanish women obtained the right to vote after a long struggle for female franchise.4 There have been various interpretations of how successful Spanish feminism was as a political movement in obtaining the vote (Fagoaga and Saavedra 1986, Fagoaga 1985, Capel Martínez 1992). Fagoaga in her excellent study La voz y el voto de las mujeres (1985), suggests that there was a long struggle culminating in the franchise in 1931, while Helen Graham argues that ‘women’s formal political emancipation was being implemented in 1931 “from above” in order to deliver the principles of republicanism rather than achieved “from below” by dint of women’s grass-roots mobilization’ (Graham 1995: 101). A detailed discussion of Spanish female suffrage is beyond the scope of this study. My prime intention here is to analyse the political tactics that were used in the debate about the vote. Denise Riley argues that the struggle towards political emancipation philosophically and strategically exposes the fluctuations of the category ‘woman’ (1988: 68) and it is these fluctuations in Burgos’s feminist essays I am focussing on. Furthermore, it is not my intention here to prove conclusively that Carmen de Burgos was a militant member of an active feminist movement that brought about social change. What concerns me here is to demonstrate that, however effectual or ineffectual this struggle for suffrage may have been, Carmen de Burgos, as one of the most active proponents of the feminist movement, uses questionable reasoning tactics in order to achieve her goal. To this end, this section analyses Burgos’s feminist essays in the context of two contemporary legal writers, Romera Navarro and Francos Rodríguez. Romera Navarro — prefiguring Laqueur — places the theoretical justification of suffrage in the ideological framework of the French Revolution, when the declaration of basic civil and personal liberties fell short of including women. He considers that to grant personal rights, but not political rights beforehand, is a legal paradox. According to him, the right of suffrage is the most basic right of a citizen and this right should be granted first and foremost: Los derechos políticos son la salvaguardia de los derechos individuales, y por esta relación indispensable á la efectividad de los últimos, hay que considerarlos como emanados del mismo Derecho natural. Conceder éstos sin los primeros, equivale á conceder, no un derecho verdadero, sino una autorización que puede retirarse cuando así lo disponga el capricho ó la conveniencia de los legisladores (Romera Navarro 1910: 157).

4

This compares to 1920 in the United States. British women obtained a restricted right to vote in 1918 and a full right to vote in 1928. See Fagoaga (1985: 19).

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The fact that it is not granted to women is indicative of the legislator’s attitude towards suffrage, showing that they do not consider it a naturally given right. What is more, he considers it a strange paradox that while modern law in general is most developed in terms of political rights, ironically this does not include women, the one social group that cannot violently claim their rights: Trátase de un grupo social, que por sus especiales condiciones en la vida, no puede, al invocar su derecho, recurrir á la violencia. Tratáse de la clase obrera, de la militar, y el temor al desorden y á los actos de fuerza, sería bastante para que respetasen sus derechos los legisladores (Romera Navarro 1910: 158).

Francos Rodríguez, like Romera Navarro, considers the vote a natural right for any citizen. Given that women, as citizens, have as much interest as men in society, the logical conclusion is that they have the same right to participate: ¿El voto de las mujeres? ¿Quién solicita tal dislate? Porque veamos lo que representa el voto. Es, sin duda, la expresión con que el ciudadano marca su interés en el gobierno del país a que pertenece. La mujer forma parte de ese país y tiene también interés en que esté bien regido y sea justo, noble y progresivo. [...] El voto político ¿es para que la vida municipal y la provincial y la del Estado se realicen con justicia, orden, moralidad y progreso? Indudablemente, pues si en ello, de ello y para ello ha de participar la mujer, su derecho a votar es indiscutible. Pero los hombres imponemos silencio a la lógica, que por algo tiene nombre de mujer, y decimos: en la ordenación del mundo, como en las oraciones gramaticales castellanas, rige el género masculino y se dispone que sea el elemento femenino coadyuvante al fin social común, no colaborador con los mismos atributos de que gozan los varones (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 199200).

Criticising his own sex he compares male domination with the grammatical structures of the Spanish language in order to highlight its arbitrariness. Carmen de Burgos goes further than just stating that women have an innate right to suffrage. Criticising ‘el feminismo sensato que sólo pide protección para la mujer’ (Burgos 1927a: 264), she calls for the attainment of political rights in order to further feminist aims: Pero las mujeres cultas de todos los países han comprendido que la papeleta de voto es un arma y que si tienen el derecho al sufragio no obtendrán fácilmente de los Parlamentos las reformas que solicitan. Las mujeres que se interesan por cuestiones de moralidad, de higiene, de educación y pacifismo, saben bien que necesitan reclamar el sufragio, no por vano orgullo, sino para tener medios de trabajar en mejorar el porvenir (Burgos 1927a: 264-265).

Interestingly, Burgos, while calling for equal rights, and suffrage in particular, slides uncomfortably into a difference discourse. She quotes the French feminist

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Abbadie d’Arrast at length who promotes difference feminism: ¿Quién niega [...] que la acción de la mujer es ante todo una acción altruista? Esta acción se inspira en intereses superiores; intereses de familia, de trabajo, de seguridad, de protección al niño; ella quiere sobre todo implantar una higiene física y moral en el seno de una sociedad que desea regenerar, purificar, limpiar para seguridad y educación del niño. Sus ojos de madre juzgan el medio ambiente. Ella se remonta hacia el ideal que la mujer debe cumplir mientras sea realmente mujer; desea el voto por amor, por desinterés. Su obra será obra de mujer, no una mala copia de la obra masculina. Ella ve el mal porque sus ojos saben ver; ella se revuelve contra la pornografía, contra el alcoholismo, contra el vicio, porque sus hijos y ella son víctimas de los males de nuestra época (Burgos 1927a: 265).

While the attainment of equal rights — and in this particular case the vote — was the goal on the agendas of d’Arrast and Burgos, the discourse used here is that of claiming moral superiority, creating difference instead of equality. The use of difference discourse was heavily criticised by Burgos when biological difference was created in order to justify male supremacy. Yet she did not seem to oppose the creation of difference as a strategy of equality feminism. Hence difference when creating female inferiority was ‘politically incorrect’, while difference when creating female superiority was not only condoned by also applauded. As Laqueur argued, the fact that liberalism forgot about women’s rights and used a difference discourse to justify this, initiated a counter-reaction in terms of a feminist discourse of difference. Francos Rodríguez, in line with Carmen de Burgos, calls for women’s involvement in public life in order to ensure laws based on equality: Y aun se puede añadir, pidiendo la intervención de la mujer en la vida pública, para que las leyes no se hagan por y para una sola parte de la humanidad. En otro sitio, hablando de las desigualdades jurídicas entre el sexo femenino y el masculino; de la imposición de éste sobre aquél, mediante fórmulas de protectorado que implican superioridad de uno, se expone la necesidad de no consentir que las mujeres, por serlo, estén sometidas a tutelas completamente innecesarias y depresivas (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 299).

Again equality feminism, here put forward by Francos Rodríguez, is demanded as a counter-balance to male protectionism based on men’s alleged superiority. Male superiority is criticised as a difference discourse. ‘Diferencias de sexo’, he argues, ‘como de condición, no han de constituir motivo de inferioridad, ya que cuantos integran la vida de un pueblo tienen derecho a dirigirle’ (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 291). Yet, as we will see in what follows, legal writers in favour of suffrage used a double-edged tactic, jumping all too easily between equality and difference discourse. Time and again women’s alleged moral superiority was used as one of the main arguments in favour of female suffrage

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and here the creation of difference did not seem to matter. Burgos argues that, according to the Spanish Constitution, women do have political rights and that nothing legally prohibits them from voting: Por otra parte, el espíritu de la ley en España no ha sido nunca el de eliminarnos del derecho político. Además de probarlo así el hecho de que puedan reinar las mujeres, no hay ningún artículo de la Constitución ni de la ley electoral que taxativamente nos prohíba ejercer ese derecho (Burgos 1927a: 285).

Burgos errs in this instance, as both Romera Navarro and Enríquez de Salamanca prove. Romera Navarro argues that: La Constitución no niega capacidad electoral al sexo femenino, pero una de sus leyes complementarias en este extremo declara que “son electores para diputados á Cortes los españoles varones.” Tampoco gozan del sufragio en las elecciones provinciales y municipales, á las que se aplica la referida ley electoral por Real decreto de 5 de Noviembre de 1890. La ley electoral del Senado no niega á la mujer el derecho de sufragio pasivo, pero la costumbre le priva de su ejercicio. Respecto á las funciones del gobierno, no reconoce la Constitución ninguna participación á las mujeres (excepto los artículos 60 y 67), aunque tampoco las excluye. Las leyes especiales son las que luego vienen á declarar la incapacidad de la mujer para el desempeño de las funciones públicas, que respectivamente regulan (Romera Navarro 1910: 187-188).5

Hence Burgos is right in thinking that according to the Constitution women would be entitled to vote, but she is wrong in thinking there are no other legal restrictions. This is likely to have happened through a ‘technical’ error on her part, given that the electoral laws before 1890, namely the Ley electoral de 18 de marzo de 1846 and the Ley electoral de 28 de diciembre de 1878, did not specify the sex of the voter (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 245). As Romera Navarro illustrates, the constitutional text, as a theoretical manifestation of liberal society, allows for equality between the sexes in order to stay true to liberal concepts of political rights. Thus, while the Constitution operates by means of an equality discourse, difference is either ‘sneaked in’ at a lower stage in the hierarchy of legal codes (as in the example of the Ley electoral de 8 de agosto de 1907),6 or, according to Romera Navarro, just depends on custom (as in the electoral law prior to 1890). Enríquez de Salamanca seconds this view:

5 Romera Navarro quotes from the Ley electoral de 8 de agosto de 1907. He also refers to articles 60 and 67 of the 1876 Constitution. These articles refer to the succession to the Spanish throne. For further details, see Montero (1998: 151-152). 6 The Ley electoral in force at the time of Burgos is that of 1907. The text concerning the sex of the voter does not differ from that of 1890.

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[...] era preciso aportar unos argumentos que estaban fuera del sistema legal, o para ser más precisos, que se incorporaban al sistema legal en cuanto servían para interpretar sus normas, pero que no estaban taxativamente enunciados en la letra de la ley. Cuando se estableció el sufragio masculino universal, la negación de los derechos políticos a la mujer se hizo taxativamente, al incluir el término “varones” en la descripción de los posibles electores, aunque la necesidad de justificar esta limitación aportando argumentos foráneos al sistema legal se mantuvo (Enríquez de Salamanca 1998: 246-247).

This strangely inappropriate situation described above is paradigmatic of the intricacies of law. It is also indicative of how law itself is both inconsistent and the legal text open to interpretation. The earlier Leyes electorales of 1846 and 1878 did allow women to vote, in that they did not specify the sex of the voter. According to Romera Navarro, in those days women were excluded due to custom. From 1890 onwards, the legislator suddenly explicitly specifies ‘electores varones’ in order to clarify what was meant. Why this clarification? It seems no coincidence that at a time when feminism was getting stronger and more organised, the legislator felt obliged to lay down the law concerning something which before was just cultural practice: the exclusion of women from the electorate. It could, of course, be argued that there is no inconsistency in the law, the legislator had always wanted to exclude women from suffrage. In 1846 and 1878 there was no need explicitly to exclude women, this was achieved through cultural means. By 1890, with the rise in feminism, this cultural engineering no longer sufficed. As already stated by Laqueur, these cultural reasons outside the legal sphere were mostly linked to biological difference, in particular to a supposed lack of intelligence.7 In addition to that, dominant discourse found a variety of other rationalisations to explain why women should not be given the vote. Burgos analyses these in La mujer moderna y sus derechos as a result of two public surveys she conducted in 1906 and 1920, respectively. Interestingly, at the beginning of her writing career Burgos herself was not in favour of the vote for women. In her La mujer en España (1906), she clearly indicates that she is against female suffrage: Desde luego que sería de desear que la mujer fuese culta para comprender los verdaderos intereses de su país, más que por el derecho de votar por la educación cívica de sus hijos. Pero ahora darle el derecho de voto es poner un arma

7 See Enríquez de Salamanca (1998: 246), where she states that: ‘Salvo rarísimas excepciones, estos debates [durante el siglo XIX] afirmaron que la mujer no estaba capacitada para ejercer funciones en la esfera pública, ya que se afirmó ad nauseam que carecía de la racionalidad necesaria para el ejercicio de la ciudadanía. Esta desconfianza era por supuesto uno de los postulados de la ideología doméstica, que aseguró que la mujer carecía de la racionalidad del sujeto masculino del discurso liberal.’

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peligrosa en manos de un niño. Claro que no por ser mujer, sino por ser ignorante. Lo mismo sucede con el sufragio en los hombres. Desde que los ignorantes votan, cada elección es un escándalo; se compran los sufragios, se anda á tiros por las calles y hay que lamentar toda clase de inmoralidades. ¿Para qué aumentarlas? (Burgos 1906: 46-47).8

A few points are noteworthy here. Burgos links education (or lack of it) inextricably to the right to vote and in this she is egalitarian in that neither women nor men should have the vote unless they are educated. Her fear is obviously election rigging. Stranger still is her statement that if women were educated, this would mainly be for the educación cívica of the children. Both statements are early manifestations of two convictions Burgos will carry right through to her main feminist essays La mujer moderna y sus derechos: her belief that any political issues ought to be driven by gender equality and that women ought to enter the public sphere for altruistic motives. As outlined in my introduction, by 1906 Burgos nevertheless launches a public survey about suffrage. By then redactora of the liberal newspaper Heraldo de Madrid, she used this medium to gauge public opinion. In her chapter on suffrage in La mujer moderna y sus derechos she states: Tengo, necesariamente, que hablar de mi labor al tratar de la historia del sufragio en España ya que tuve que ser precursora de este movimiento. En 1907 abrí en el Heraldo de Madrid una encuesta para conocer la opinión pública. Es preciso confesar que el resultado no fué muy lisonjero. La mayor parte de los hombres públicos y la mayor parte de las damas evitaron comprometerse (Burgos 1927a: 266).9

According to this survey 3,640 readers were against suffrage and 922 in favour. Burgos summarised (with hindsight in 1927): El fruto estaba aún verde, pero al menos el Heraldo consiguió un movimiento de opinión acerca de este asunto olvidado. [...] Sin desanimarme continué interesándome por la consecución de los derechos políticos. Fortalecida en mi

8 See also Fagoaga (1985: 115), where she quotes Burgos's newspaper articles of August 1906 with the same views. 9 Concha Fagoaga (1985: 115) confirms Burgos’s self-evaluation: ‘La ausencia de colectivos sufragistas en esta década hace adquirir relieve a figuras individuales que se ocupan de esta causa. Destaca, entre ellas, la maestra Carmen de Burgos Seguí [...] que ejerce una presión continuada durante varios años, a través del Heraldo, con comentarios informativos sobre la evolución del movimiento.’ Both Burgos herself and Fagoaga get the date slightly wrong. Burgos launched the survey in 1906. See Heraldo de Madrid 22 and 29 October; 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 25 November, 19 December 1906. See also later articles about the vote in which she has considerably changed her attitude to more militant feminism: 17 October 1919, 6 May 1924.

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opinión, en mis largos y continuos viajes, por los ejemplos de los países que tenían el sufragio, veía con pena que sólo la mujer española no se preocupaba de vindicar su derechos (Burgos 1927a: 269-270).10

By 1911 Burgos herself had modified her views about the vote and was now in favour of limited suffrage in order to make women more active participants in society: Es verdaderamente absurdo que tengan derecho á emitir el sufragio los ignorantes sólo por ser hombres, y que se niegue ese derecho á las mujeres cultas sólo por ser mujeres. Entre nosotras no se agita aún la idea de reclamar los derechos políticos, tal vez porque no comprendemos toda la importancia y porque nos repugna la farándula, recordando la frase de la célebre escritora francesa: “Cuando la manzana está podrida es mejor no hincar el diente en ella.” Y sin embargo eso mismo nos obliga á no ser indiferentes en una cosa que puede mejorar la situación de nuestra patria, ó mejor dicho, de nuestros semejantes. No debe sernos indiferente el modo de hacer las leyes que nos afectan y á las cuales están sujetos los que amamos. No podemos ignorar las ciencias políticas si hemos de educar en ellas á nuestros hijos para que sean ciudadanos honrados y libres. Naturalmente que sólo la mujer ilustrada debe tener derecho al sufragio, no íbamos á ir á engrosar las filas de los que en cada elección andan á tiros por las calles y cometen todas las inmoralidades. Sería electora sólo la mujer culta; pero sólo también los hombres en idénticas condiciones (Burgos 1911b: 2122).

Burgos identifies the advantage of suffrage as its ability to shape the political future of women, that is, to use the law as a means of social change. Again she argues that women should get involved in politics for their children’s sake and, finally, falls short of calling for outright suffrage. Instead, she limits it to educated citizens whether for tactical reasons or out of conviction. In 1920 she organised another survey in the Heraldo de Madrid, which attested to a moderate change in favour of female suffrage. Nevertheless, the main objections given in the survey were: 1ª Que el voto de la mujer entregaría el poder a los partidos reaccionarios. 2ª Que la mujer sufriría las sugestiones del marido o del padre. 3ª Que la mujer perderá su gracia y abandonará los cuidados de la casa y de los hijos.

10 See also Burgos (1927a: 269), where she gets the figures completely wrong: ‘hubo 30.640

votos en contra el sufragio y 20.025 en favor.’ For the original figures, see Heraldo de Madrid 25 November 1906.

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4ª Que la mujer no tiene condiciones intelectuales y morales como el hombre. 5ª Que no está preparada para la vida pública. 6ª Que no hace servicio militar y es siempre pacifista. (Burgos 1927a: 274).

While the first reason is of a utilitarian nature, reasons 2 to 6 are mere rationalisations. Two of these objections deserve closer examination, since they tap into the biological difference discourse: the issue of women’s intelligence and the topic of military service. As already mentioned, Burgos gives a detailed account of why women are by no means intellectually inferior. Francos Rodríguez even produces empirical evidence in support of women’s intelligence by comparing exam results in the Escuelas Normales of the academic year 1916/1917 in which twice as many women scored the highest marks of sobresalientes and notables. Pointing out that these statistics are the only ones available to prove women’s intellectual capacities, Francos Rodríguez concludes: Pero la actividad intelectual de las españolas tiene signos externos bien notorios. Con que nos asomemos a las redacciones de los periódicos y de las revistas, con que nos detengamos a examinar la vida interna de muchas oficinas particulares, con que en los círculos íntimos o en las relaciones sociales oigamos cómo discurren y se expresan las personas del sexo femenino que las frecuentan, se arraigará en nuestro espíritu el convencimiento de que para negar el voto a nuestras compatriotas, habrá que aducir motivos que no sean los de cultura o los de capacidad, pues en nuestro país no son las mujeres las que pueden temer ciertas comparaciones (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 230).

Another comparison between men and women — and one of the more gratifyingly stupid rationalisations of male dominant discourse — is the topic of military service. The postulation that women should not be given the vote, because they do not participate actively in the defence of their country, is refuted easily by means of the legal principle of equity: Si negáis a las mujeres el sufragio, por su incapacidad para el servicio de las armas, negadlo también á todos aquellos individuos que por no reunir las condiciones adecuadas, ya por enfermedad, falta de estatura, etc., se encuentran excluídos (Romera Navarro 1910: 179).

Romera Navarro here appeals to the internal logic of the argument: if women, because of their ‘natural’ incapacity to serve in the armed forces, should not be given the vote, all other citizens who are ‘naturally’ incapacitated should not be able to vote either. Using internal logic and the principle of equality, Romera Navarro demands that if corporeal differences are established and used as a reason against an innate right, then by sheer logic this ought to apply to all citizens with corporeal differences. Hence, by establishing a discourse of equality Romera Navarro lays bare the inconsistency in the use of dominant difference discourse.

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Francos Rodríguez and Burgos, however, responded to the creation of dominant difference discourse by propagating their own version of positive difference. In a synecdochic move from maternal reproductive functions to a social utility principle, women are made into natural suppliers of soldiers. Francos Rodríguez explains that: Para negar derechos políticos a la mujer se ha recordado que está excluida del servicio militar; [...]. La mujer no defiende a la Patria con las armas, pero sí mediante la maternidad. Para cumplir con tan augusta función, sufre dolores. Vierte sangre y soporta penas, y en cambio, cuando llega la hora de acordar si lo más florido de la juventud debe sacrificarse a un compromiso de Estado, a resoluciones de gobierno, para nada se cuenta con el voto de quienes a costa de sus vidas dan cuantas se piden para nutrir las filas de los ejércitos (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 230).

Burgos goes even further than that when she melodramatically states that: El argumento de que no pagan contribución de sangre es absurdo. En tiempo de guerra, la mujer, como ya se ha demostrado, aporta su esfuerzo, sufre peligros y daños como el hombre [...]. Relegadas a no tener más misión que la maternidad, han puesto en ella toda su vida. Su amor a los hijos, donde se concentra todo su horizonte, es más apasionado. No se les ha dejado más que el hijo y se les quita de los brazos. Por eso ellas sufren más que el hombre (Burgos 1927a: 281).11

According to Burgos, women suffer more than men, because their whole life revolves around their children. The logic here appears to be that because women’s main social function is motherhood and their whole life revolves around it, women actually suffer more during wartime than men. Hence Burgos’s own difference discourse plays dangerously into the hands of the dominant difference discourse. She colludes with patriarchal arguments by admitting that women’s only social role is motherhood. To be fair to Burgos and looking at the entirety of her work, she propagates a more active role in public life for women, while not denying their role as mothers. My concern here is not that Burgos dangerously plays into the hands of patriarchy by believing in the value of motherhood. It is rather that by creating her own difference discourse of melodramatic proportions, as in the example above, she evokes the very stereotype she tries to escape from, namely that women are inextricably, and emotionally, linked to their reproductive functions and hence, according to male dominant discourse, cannot reasonably perform public office. To my mind, in this particular example Romera Navarro’s strategy of equality discourse to

11

For a discussion of Burgos's views on militarism, see Zaplana Rodríguez (2000).

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combat dominant difference discourse works more effectively and suffices through legal and logical reasoning. As already mentioned, the legal writers in favour of equality feminism in general and female suffrage in particular played the morality card. Writers like Romera Navarro and Francos Rodríguez argued on two levels: firstly, it is the natural right of any citizen to be able to contribute to society actively and passively; and secondly, it is in society’s interest to integrate women as active agents of change. Romera Navarro argues that: El advenimiento de la mujer á la vida política de los Estados, abrirá una nueva era de paz colectiva y de bienestar social; veremos iniciarse una moralidad cada día creciente y germinar en todo el sexo femenino aspiraciones vivísimas hacia una superior vida intelectual; nuevas y poderosas energías se sumarán al progreso humano con la inteligencia y las virtudes del corazón femenino, en quien parece que Dios quiso depositar todos los dones morales en justa compensación á los dones sociales que el hombre había de usurparle. Los intereses de la civilización y los altos intereses de la humanidad reclaman la colaboración femenina en la obra del progreso (Romera Navarro 1910: 209211, my emphasis).

Romera Navarro uses difference discourse to illustrate how women’s moral superiority would be an enrichment for politics and, very much like difference feminism today, proposes that traditional female virtues would add value to political life. He considers it not only a female right, but also a female duty to participate in public life (Romera Navarro 1910: 210). Francos Rodríguez, however, spins difference discourse slightly differently. Using Concepción Arenal as an intellectual model, he argues at length that women’s participation in public life should be in terms of adding feminine values to public organisations rather than politics: ‘En el gobierno de la Beneficencia pública faltan las notas de ternura, de perspicacia, de competencia, que sólo podía dar el elemento femenino’ (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 293). Charity organisations, the prison service, asylums and other social institutions are supposed to be women’s issues. Francos Rodríguez promotes the idea that feminine compassion should enter the public sphere: ‘Convertir en sentimiento real lo de puro instinto y razonar el amor al prójimo para que tenga eficacia y sus efectos no se pierdan en generosidades estériles, representa un positivo programa de acción social’ (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 299). He also assures his readers that: Cuando se habla de la intervención de la mujer en la vida política española no se pide que los Comités y la urdimbre actual de nuestros partidos sean de ambos sexos; que en el Senado y en el Congreso haya faldas. [...] no se desea una simple suma de voluntades alojadas en cuerpos de sexo distinto, sino algo más trascendental. Se persigue que la mujer no se halle ociosa en nuestra vida colectiva, que influya en ella directamente y la modifique y transforme de manera profunda (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 301).

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Denise Riley aptly observes, regarding British feminism, that in the nineteenth century naturalised femininity was used as a weapon of women’s elevation: If woman’s sphere was to be the domestic, then let the social world become a great arena for domesticated intervention, where the empathies supposedly peculiar to the sex might flourish on a broad and visible scale. If ‘women’ were a separate species, then let them make a separate contribution to the world, and let their efforts humanise the public. If the subjection of women had been secured by their very designation as ‘women’, then let that be seized and, refashioned, set to work (Riley 1988: 46-47).

Evidently, the same tactics were used by both Francos Rodríguez and Burgos. What is more, there was a redefinition of the old distinctions between the private and public sphere. In order to justify a female engagement in public matters, a distinction was drawn between the ‘social’ (philanthropic) work, and what Riley calls ‘high politics’ (legal and governmental power) (Riley 1988: 51). Francos Rodríguez uses this redefinition when he analyses the programme of the Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas, which, amongst other things, demands civil and commercial rights for women, patria potestad for mothers, equal pay for equal work, female suffrage, and equality in all legal codes. This, he argues, makes it crystal-clear that women do not actually want to participate actively in governmental power: Los términos diáfanos de la petición desvanecen cualquier motivo que quieran aducir los antifeministas; no se trata de que las mujeres se mezclen en nuestra política ordinaria. Se trata de hacer una política donde quepa, donde sea indispensable el concurso de la mujer (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 305).

Francos Rodríguez does not argue in favour of women’s active role in high politics. By attempting to promote women’s more active role in the broader public sphere, he creates a difference discourse based on moral superiority. Using women’s nurturing capacities for a wider public good instead of just the nuclear family, Francos Rodríguez seems to slide uncomfortably into a difference feminism of the worst kind, promoting the idea that women’s capacities can be used favourably for society, instead of arguing that women have the natural right to be equal partners of men. This, however, would be a strangely inappropriate conviction, if we compare this to his earlier remarks about women’s innate right to the vote (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 199-200), as well as his long-winded sarcastic tirades against the absurd rationalisations of conservative legal writers who invent counter-arguments against female suffrage (Francos Rodríguez 1920: 199-230). It is therefore safe to assume that Francos Rodríguez, while believing in equality feminism, used difference discourse as a tactic to promote the cause of women. By trying to show ‘what is in it’ for men, he inadvertently reduces women to their allegedly natural capacities. This seems to have been done not on account of his own convictions,

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but for tactical reasons to achieve the main goal of female franchise. Playing the morality card was by no means an uncommon thing to do in the struggle for female franchise. As Richard Evans explains: The feminists abandoned their original position of asserting the absence of any innate differences in reason or ability between men and women and retreated to a position in which innate differences were not only accepted but were also made the basis for feminist demands. The argument had long been present in feminist propaganda that women’s moral behaviour was superior to men’s. [...] Women’s moral superiority was now thought to be inborn, a consequence of their function as mothers. The suffrage was demanded so that women could help curb immorality and disorder not by education and moral suasion but by legal enforcement and government coercion (Evans 1977: 233).

In fact, looking at the historical examples Evans gives, we can conclude that the female franchise was enacted earliest in those parts of the world where it was most needed, that is in Australasia and the American (Mid)west. One example is the American state of Wyoming, which gave women the vote in 1869, although there was no feminist pressure to do so. The measure was intended to both attract women to migrate there and to impose moral orderliness on a world of corruption and disorder. Advocates of social change, like Francos Rodríguez, Romera Navarro and Burgos, used these early examples of female franchise to add empirical evidence to their cause. The latter quotes governors at length in order to give historical examples of successful implementations of female suffrage: Mr Wells, gobernador del Utah, dice: “Los legisladores parecen asustados del sufragio femenino, a causa de la influencia destructora que la política puede tener sobre la feminilidad. Nosotros podemos afirmar que las mujeres no han degenerado en bajos políticos descuidando su hogar y perdiendo sus nobles emociones femeninas. Al contrario, las mujeres siguen igualmente respetadas. La pura verdad es que la influencia de las mujeres en la política en este Estado ha sido netamente moralizadora” (Burgos 1927a: 319).

Governor Wells reassures those who doubt the use of female suffrage that firstly it does not make women more corruptible and secondly that women have a moralising effect on politics. Better still is her quotation of the words of Joseph Ward of New Zealand: Nosotros hemos comprobado que el trazar un nombre en una papeleta de voto una vez cada tres años, no hace perder a las mujeres la gracia, la belleza y el amor a sus deberes domésticos. Al contrario, el voto de las mujeres es moralizador (Burgos 1927a: 319).

Here the absurdity of counter-arguments (‘women would lose their femininity through the vote’) is wittily heightened by means of ironically creating a

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correlation between the act of marking a ballot paper and feminine beauty. As we have seen in this chapter the concepts of equality and difference depend on a variety of factors, both in terms of their definition as well as regarding their usage. Concerning the practical consequences of the law for women’s lives, both positions reduce differences between men and women to the latter’s reproductive role. Motherhood, then, is the crucial issue and this holds true in today’s debate as much as at the beginning of last century. Biological difference, even when reduced to Laqueurian simplicity — ‘[...] the one gives birth and the other does not.’ (Laqueur 1992: 9) — keeps the debate in a deadlock, and on the particular issue of motherhood it appears to have advanced little since the time of Carmen de Burgos. We have also seen that the concepts of equality and difference change meaning according to the legal reality at a particular time and place. To campaign for equality at a time when inequality was enshrined in the law seems as obvious a strategy as today’s call for a much more differentiated approach. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Burgos’s equality feminism, as much as that of liberal legal writers like Francos Rodríguez and Romera Navarro, resisted its own politics and slid into difference discourse in order to further its aims. As Laqueur argues, and as Burgos’s particular historical example confirms, by rejecting the dominant male difference discourse, feminists created their own female difference discourse, which portrayed women as morally superior. The issue for Burgos here was not that women’s bodies were superior because of their reproductive functions, as some strands of today’s difference feminism suggest. It was rather that women’s social role as mothers makes them morally superior, since they tend to be more altruistic. What is more, the idea of female altruism was positively used as an argument by Burgos. Suffrage was not only seen as an advantage for women in general, but also for mothers in particular in order to educate their children better. Again motherhood was the distinguishing factor and this issue was used by everybody: male dominant discourse used it to establish the ángel del hogar concept to keep women in the private sphere, while equality discourse used motherhood as a proof to argue that women’s involvement in the public world was advantageous to society. The latter is an argument not uncommon in today’s difference feminism, with its debates about women’s caring functions and how these could change the fabric of society. However, using arguments of moral superiority stemming from motherhood, and hence biological difference, at a time when women did not yet have the safe haven of at least formal equality (no matter how debatable a notion the latter may be) could be seen as a questionable tactic, since it could play all to easily into the hands of the opposition.

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Rights versus Care While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality — that everyone should be treated the same — an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence — that no one should be hurt (Gilligan 1993: 174).

INTRODUCTION In the course of the previous chapters it has become evident that female selfishness is one of the crucial issues in the debates about divorce and women’s rights: in Chapter 1 the historical debate showed that for some divorce was a selfish female pursuit, while Chapter 2 dealt with the female ‘selfishness’ in demanding suffrage as well as female altruism which was portrayed as a form of moral superiority. This chapter deals with selfishness and moral reasoning. While the first chapter of this study raised questions about justice from a legal point of view, examined the intersection between society and morality, and asked what intersections there are between justice and law, this chapter looks at justice from a moral viewpoint, examines the intersection between the individual and morality, and asks how the individual arrives at a sense of justice. When people have to explain to themselves (or to each other) what they mean by justice, how to act in a just manner or how what they do is fair to all concerned, how do they reason and is this reasoning gendered? The theoretical framework of this chapter is Carol Gilligan’s seminal text In a Different Voice (1993), since Gilligan’s theory is a useful framework for appreciating the complexity of what — at first sight — are the simple narratives of Burgos. The seemingly inferior sense of justice of the four heroines discussed in this chapter can not only be rescued but also be given a ‘different voice’ when examined through the prism of Gilligan’s assertions. In order to put Gilligan into context I will first review Carol Pateman’s analysis of contract theory and then concentrate on two of Gilligan’s studies: her critique of Kohlberg’s ‘Heinz dilemma’ and her abortion study. While the former is employed to illustrate the opposing concepts of an ethic of care and an ethic of rights, the latter questions

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the usefulness of the ethic of care approach. Gilligan’s analysis of the decisionmaking process of the women in the abortion study lends itself to be applied to interpretation of the narratives of El abogado, El hombre negro, El artículo 438 and La malcasada. The theoretical discussion is followed by a contextualisation of the ethic of care in Spanish legal discourse at the time of Burgos. Finally, my findings from both sections are applied to the above four literary texts. A few words regarding terminology are needed: I will make a clear distinction between moral behaviour (when a person behaves in a morally better way in the sense that the behaviour is less selfish and does less harm to others) and moral reasoning (the way in which a person arrives at a (just) decision). ‘Moral reasoning’ is used interchangeably with ‘a sense of justice’ given that they are synonyms in the literature consulted, although the former is a more recent term, while the latter has been used throughout centuries of philosophical enquiry. I also distinguish between the dominant ethic of rights of a legal system and the ethic of rights used by a private person, in order to differentiate the kind of moral reasoning employed by society from that employed by an individual.

THEORIES OF MORAL REASONING It is a common philosophical contention that women have an inferior sense of justice. Carole Pateman, in her excellent book, The Disorder of Women (1989) gives an overview of how contract theorists, and in particular Rousseau, argue their case in order to ‘prove’ that women have an inferior sense of justice. It is a widely-held conviction even today, Pateman argues, that women lack, and cannot develop, a sense of justice (Pateman 1989: 17). Historically, women start to become a ‘problem’ with the development of liberal individualism, when the premodern conception of individuals as part of a natural order of subordination was replaced with revolutionary ideas of individual and inalienable rights of equal citizenship. She argues that given this supposed female inability to develop a sense of justice: Women have a disorder at their very centres — in their morality — which can bring about the destruction of the state. Women thus exemplify one of the ways in which nature and society stand opposed to each other. Moreover, the threat posed by women is exacerbated because of the place, or social sphere, for which they are fitted by their natures — the family (Pateman 1989: 18).

The family being the natural basis of social life is, as an intersection of public and private, the space in which the crucial questions of morality come to the fore. The family is ‘naturally social’, based on love, and opposes the ‘conventionally social’ public sphere with its impersonal and universal concepts of justice (Pateman 1989: 20). Why then is a sense of justice needed? Quite simply to organise social life in a more orderly fashion. Pateman enlightens us about the function of a sense of justice:

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Individuals will more readily uphold the rules of civil association if they develop a sense of justice or a morality of order. Individuals must ‘internalize’ the universal rules of the socio-political order [...]. However, if individuals exist who, like women — according to Rousseau and Freud — are naturally incapable of developing a sense of justice, the basis of civil association is threatened; it contains within itself a permanent source of disorder. The threat is all the greater because the natural morality, or deficiency in moral capacity, of women fits them only for the ‘natural society’ of domestic life. But the family itself is a threat to civil life. Love and justice are antagonistic virtues; the demands of love and of family bonds are particularistic and so in direct conflict with justice which demands that private interest is subordinated to the public (universal) good. The family is thus simultaneously the foundation of the state and antagonistic to it (Pateman 1989: 21).

As we will later see in my discussion of Gilligan, it is precisely the dichotomy between public/private and hence society/family that poses the crucial question for Gilligan’s research findings. In the preface to the 1993 edition of her book, Carol Gilligan explains to her readers that after the 1973 US Supreme Court decision, commonly known as the Roe v. Wade decision, to make abortion legally available, women suddenly became aware of: the strength of an internal voice which was interfering with their ability to speak. That internal or internalized voice told a woman that it would be “selfish” to bring her voice into relationships, that perhaps she did not know what she really wanted, or that her experience was not a reliable guide in thinking about what to do (Gilligan 1993: ix).

In the immediate aftermath of the Roe v. Wade decision, many women started questioning the morality of the ‘angel of the house’ discourse, which had haunted them for over a century. Women suddenly realised that this discourse was immoral, since it demanded an abdication of their own voice (Gilligan 1993: x). Given that Gilligan’s point of departure is a complete refutation of Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, I will now give an overview of Gilligan’s analysis of Kohlberg’s ‘Heinz dilemma’, a study that concentrates on children’s moral development. In 1958 Lawrence Kohlberg of Harvard University began a study about the development of moral reasoning from childhood to adulthood based empirically on a study of 84 boys whose development Kohlberg followed for a period of over twenty years. As a result of that study he devised a six-stage scale of moral development. He then studied the moral development of both sexes, and women, when measured against this scale, usually display judgements that seem to fit into the third stage — at which morality is based on interpersonal terms and goodness is defined as helping and pleasing others. This conception of goodness is considered by Kohlberg to be functional in the lives of mature

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women insofar as their lives take place in the home. The way Kohlberg’s scale of moral development is structured implies that only if women enter the public (male) sphere will they realise the inadequacy of their moral perspective and progress like men toward stages 4 to 6, where relationships are subordinated to rules (stage four) and rules to universal principles of justice (stages five and six) (Gilligan 1993: 18). As Gilligan rightly points out: Yet herein lies a paradox, for the very traits that traditionally have defined the “goodness” of women, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them as deficient in moral development. In this version of moral development, however, the conception of maturity is derived from the study of men’s lives and reflects the importance of individuation in their development (Gilligan 1993: 18).

Echoing contract theorists, Kohlberg makes women’s private realm and lack of public experience responsible for their lack of a sense of justice. Yet, for Gilligan, Kohlberg’s research results do not prove that women have an inferior sense of justice but rather show that there are gender differences in moral development. Gilligan arrives at this assertion through a re-evaluation of Kohlberg’s ‘Heinz dilemma’. Two eleven-year old children, Jake and Amy, are told the story about a man called Heinz, whose wife suffers from a lifethreatening disease and needs a very expensive drug in order to survive. Heinz cannot afford to buy a drug that costs $2000 and the druggist refuses to lower the price of the drug. The crucial question the moral dilemma poses is: should Heinz steal the drug? (Gilligan 1993: 25-26). Jake immediately decides that Heinz should do so. In line with Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, the boy sees the dilemma as a conflict between the values of property and life. Naturally he gives life priority over property and thus justifies his choice: For one thing, a human life is worth more than money, and if the druggist only makes $1000, he is still going to live, but if Heinz doesn’t steal the drug, his wife is going to die (Gilligan 1993: 26).

His judgement rests on the assumption of a social consensus of moral values that allows each individual to recognise what is ‘the right thing to do.’ Jake considers the moral dilemma to be ‘sort of like a math problem with humans’, he looks at it like an equation with one possible solution. Given that his solution is derived through reason, he supposes that anyone using the power of logic would arrive at the same conclusion (Gilligan 1993: 26-27). In contrast, Amy’s response defies logic. It portrays an inability to think for herself, appears insecure and evasive: Well, I don’t think so. I think there might be other ways besides stealing it, like if he could borrow the money or make a loan or something, but he really shouldn’t steal the drug — but his wife shouldn’t die either (Gilligan 1993: 28).

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Amy completely fails to see the dilemma as a self-contained problem of moral logic (Gilligan 1993: 29). She sees it as a problem of human relationships. Just as Jake is positive that his answer is the only right answer, Amy is sure that ‘if Heinz and the druggist had talked it out long enough, they could reach some solution other than stealing’ (Gilligan 1993: 29). Gilligan takes Jake’s and Amy’s answers to establish her theory about women’s sense of justice, arguing that the different voice that Amy displays subscribes to an ethic of care while Jake follows the traditional ethic of rights. Her analysis of Amy’s voice highlights the difference in approach of Jake and Amy: Scored as a mixture of stages two and three, her [Amy’s] responses seem to reveal a feeling of powerlessness in the world, an inability to think systematically about the concepts of morality or law, a reluctance to challenge authority or to examine the logic of received moral truths, a failure even to conceive of acting directly to save a life or to consider that such action, if taken, could possibly have an effect. As her reliance on relationships seems to reveal a continuing dependence and vulnerability, so her belief in communication as the mode through which to resolve moral dilemmas appears naive and cognitively immature (Gilligan 1993: 30).

It is also noteworthy here that Amy’s response (and the interviewer’s problem in dealing with it) attests to the fact that Amy is in fact answering a question different from the one the interviewer had asked. Amy does not ask whether Heinz should steal the drug, but rather whether Heinz should steal the drug. Amy transgresses the boundaries of Kohlberg’s moral philosophy and devises her own. She refuses to make a dilemma of rights out of the question posed and seeks a different solution altogether. The interviewer fails to discern the different logic in Amy’s response, staying within Kohlberg’s parameters, and therefore marks her down. Kohlberg’s theory gives a clear response to Jake’s solution to the dilemma and thus he scores a full stage higher than Amy in terms of moral maturity. Kohlberg’s study does not even consider the possibility of asking if her logic is merely different but not inferior. According to Kohlberg, most of her answers appear to lie outside the moral domain (Gilligan 1993: 31). Gilligan explains Jake’s moral reasoning as follows: Jake relies on theft to avoid confrontation and turns to the law to mediate the dispute. Transposing a hierarchy of power into a hierarchy of values, he defuses a potentially explosive conflict between people by casting it as an impersonal conflict of claims. In this way, he abstracts the moral problem from the interpersonal situation, finding in the logic of fairness an objective way to decide who will win the dispute. But this hierarchical ordering, with its imagery of winning and losing and the potential for violence which it contains, gives way in Amy’s construction of the dilemma to a network of connection, a web of relationships that is sustained by a process of communication. With this shift, the moral problem changes from one of unfair domination, the

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imposition of property over life, to one of unnecessary exclusion, the failure of the druggist to respond to the wife (Gilligan 1993: 32).

These different perspectives Jake and Amy display are reflected in two different moral ideologies: the ethic of rights is based on separation and promotes equality, centring on the understanding of fairness, while the ethic of care is based on attachment, resting on an understanding that gives rise to compassion and care (Gilligan 1993: 164-165). As described above, Gilligan’s abortion study attests to another dilemma for women. Here we find the questionable usefulness of the ethic of care approach (to help and not to hurt others), since the price for helping others could be hurting the self. Since the age of birth control and legal abortion and with it the effective means for women to control their lives, the dilemma of choice enters into the debate. Although society publicly gives women the right to choose for themselves, the exercise of such choice brings them privately into conflict with a traditional feminine role, i.e. the concept of feminine goodness as self-sacrifice (Gilligan 1993: 70). An analysis of the abortion study shows that women, when faced with the decision to have an abortion or not, go through three stages of moral reasoning. An initial focus on the self and sheer survival is followed by a second phase in which this focus is considered selfish. This self-criticism attests to a new understanding of the relationship between self and other, brought out by the concept of responsibility (Gilligan 1993: 74). Stage one (selfishness) and stage two (responsibility for others) are followed by a third stage three in which the voice of the self is uncovered: The transition begins with reconsideration of the relationship between self and other, as the woman starts to scrutinize the logic of self-sacrifice in the service of a morality of care. In the abortion interviews this transition is announced by the reappearance of the word selfish. Retrieving the judgmental initiative, the woman begins to ask whether it is selfish or responsible, moral or immoral, to include her own needs within the compass of her care and concern. This question leads her to reexamine the concept of responsibility, juxtaposing the concern with what other people think with a new inner judgment (Gilligan 1993: 82).

In stage three, then, women recognise that the activity of care must, of necessity, include both others and self and ultimately enhance the relationships concerned. Put at its simplest, the abortion decision centres on the feminine self. The self travels from an immediate display of instinctual self-preservation, over a complete denial of the self prompted by the internalised patriarchal voice obliging women to perform their duties, to a painful and deliberate recovery of the self which accepts responsibility to self and other (Gilligan 1993: 74-75). While Gilligan talks about a new moral language, she also claims that it is not a new morality that women come up with, but a morality disentangled from overpowering male voices and the recognition that ultimately female

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selflessness enriches no one. In the abortion study, more than any of the others discussed in her book, Gilligan analyses the distinctive female voice that women have had to rescue from oblivion. Being legally entitled to abortion, women found themselves in the position of being able to reformulate moral reasoning by putting choice before biology. Both the Heinz dilemma and the abortion study have shown that women’s moral reasoning is different from men’s. Through a juxtaposed analysis of Amy and Jake’s responses Gilligan attempts to illustrate the different forms of moral development, demonstrating that, if society listened more to Amy’s voice, it would construct moral dilemmas according to an ethic of care rather than an ethic of rights. Amy’s answer also quite clearly shows how moral dilemmas constructed in an abstract fashion, like those of Kohlberg, invariably deal with an unfortunate situation in that its either/or binary opposition leaves little scope for a solution that does not do harm. ‘The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth,’ Gilligan argues, ‘has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life’ (Gilligan 1993: 104). Amy’s solution of ‘just talking it out’ basically suggests a kind of out-of-court settlement.1 Amy does not need any recourse to the law for dispute resolution, her answer points intelligently to the fact that ‘Should Heinz steal the drug?’ is the wrong question to begin with. Her answer, then, breaks through male legal and moral discourse and her insecurity attests more to a position of moral relativism than to the failure of her cognitive faculties. Jake, on the other hand, prioritises the values of property and life and puts them into a hierarchy. He needs legal parameters for his moral reasoning and therefore fares better in a study in which the evaluative bias is towards legalistic thinking. However, as Gilligan’s refutation of Kohlberg shows, abstract moral dilemmas are in themselves fraught with problems: Hypothetical dilemmas, in the abstraction of their presentation, divest moral actors from the history and psychology of their individual lives and separate the moral problem from the social contingencies of its possible occurrence. In doing so, these dilemmas are useful for a distillation and refinement of objective principles of justice and for measuring the formal logic of equality and reciprocity. However, the reconstruction of the dilemma in its contextual particularity allows the understanding of cause and consequence which engages the compassion and tolerance repeatedly noted to distinguish the moral judgments of women (Gilligan 1993: 100).

The abortion study, then, deals much more with real life dilemmas and, what is more, focuses on women when they are in a situation in which they actively have

1 An out-of-court settlement or, more precisely a ‘settlement of action’, is a ‘process whereby parties to an action come to terms voluntarily. Settlement may be made without the court’s consent by notice of withdrawal before trial.’ (Curzon 1994: 350)

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to make a decision which arguably is the most selfish ‘crime’ against patriarchy. The abortion study highlights the crucial question in women’s moral reasoning: the relationship between self and other. These conflicting principles in every human relationship are at the core of women’s ethics. Gilligan claims that this stems from the different relationship children have with their mothers: while boys opt for individuation, girls opt for attachment. The passage through childhood in which identity is partly formed by primary relationships with the parents results in completely different perspectives. Females never separate from the mother in order to form their gender identity and thus in adult life they concentrate on relationships with others. Men, however, who have a selfconcept of individuation and separateness, are able to detach their reasoning from others, and base their moral judgement on abstract principles of justice. Gilligan summarises her theory as follows: As we have listened for centuries to the voices of men and the theories of development that their experience informs, so we have come more recently to notice not only the silence of women but the difficulty in hearing what they say when they speak. Yet in the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection. The failure to see the different reality of women’s lives and to hear the differences in their voices stems in part from the assumption that there is a single mode of social experience and interpretation. By positing instead two different modes we arrive at a more complex rendition of human experience which sees the truth of separation and attachment in the lives of women and men and recognizes how these truths are carried by different modes of language and thought (Gilligan 1993: 173-174).

SPANISH LEGAL DISCOURSE Despite an extensive survey of Spanish legal discourse at the time of Carmen de Burgos, I have encountered only one legal writer who explicitly discusses moral reasoning. Similar to Gilligan’s attempt to refute the prevalent views on moral reasoning in the US of the 1970s, Romera Navarro, in his book entitled Ensayo de una filosofía feminista (Refutación de Moebius) (1909), takes as a point of departure the misogynist work of the German psychiatrist P.J. Möbius, originally published in Germany in 1900 as Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes, and translated into Spanish by Carmen de Burgos in 1904 as La inferioridad mental de la mujer: la deficiencia mental fisiológica de la mujer. It seems an almost inexplicable contradiction that, at around the same time as she published her El divorcio en España (1904a), Burgos should have translated such a misogynist text. Worse still, although she writes a prologue to the work, she is very diplomatic, obviously trying to justify her translation; after declaring that she has suspicions about middle-class feminism she even states

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that: ‘Las mujeres del pueblo, [...] no son nunca feministas, sino esencialmente anarquistas, no piden jamás la identidad absoluta de los sexos; desean sólo la igualdad humana dentro de la justicia equitativa’ (Burgos 1904c: 7). True as that might be, it seems a strange thing to say in a prologue to one of the most misogynist works of the time. However, she also concludes in the same prologue that: No discutiremos á qué sexo corresponde la superioridad mental; el autor no logra llevar al espíritu un completo convencimiento, sin duda porque la antropología y la biología no se hallan aún asaz adelantadas para sentar principios absolutos. [...] La diversa aptitud de los dos sexos no indica inferioridad en ninguno de ellos, sino modalidades diferentes, armónicas y necesarias para la marcha de la humanidad (Burgos 1904c: 10).

In sum, while Burgos falls short of a complete refutation of Möbius’ work, she does raise enough doubts about his truth claims to alert the attentive reader. Nevertheless, as a result of the translation Möbius’ views on the intellectual inferiority of women not only became famous in his native Germany, but also had far-reaching influence in Spain. Romera Navarro attempts to put women’s sense of justice on a par with men’s and it is noteworthy that he does so in an almost Gilligan-style argumentation. He distinguishes between moral behaviour and moral reasoning and celebrates women’s moral superiority, highlighting both women’s ability to self-sacrifice and care-based justice: Siempre aparece la mujer, efecto de su exquisita sensibilidad moral, como caritativa y abnegada hasta lo sublime; y esa criatura tan tierna y tímida llega en defensa de sus ideales religiosos ó impulsada por su ardiente amor á la familia ó la patria, hasta los más horribles sacrificios y hasta los más sublimes excesos. [...] Nadie beneficia tanto á la sociedad como ella, en el orden del sentimiento; nadie se afana como la mujer en fomentar la beneficencia, en promover toda clase de obras de caridad y filantropía, en crear hospitales, hospicios. [...] Criatura que da su vida por salvar la de un extraño, que sólo vive para consolar al desgraciado, que renunciando á las comodidades y al bienestar acude donde el dolor y el luto la reclaman. Poseedora de un corazón inmenso cuya grandeza ni siquiera sospechamos, se encuentra dispuesta siempre al sacrificio por el menesteroso, por el desgraciado (Romera Navarro 1909: 105-106).

Unlike contract theorists, who consider the private sphere of the family the origin of women’s inferior sense of justice, Romera Navarro portrays love for the family as evidence of women’s superior moral behaviour as well as portraying the private space as an obvious site to display such altruistic actions. What is more, for Romera Navarro it follows logically that this altruism is carried over into the public sphere, where women perform charity work. It is

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also interesting in this context that Romera Navarro constructs his portrayal of a care-based approach under the guise of ‘ideales religiosos’, the very extreme of self-abnegation. As we have seen in Chapter 1 in the analysis of La malcasada, this is a double-edged sword. While in the above quotation it suits Romera Navarro’s argumentation to provide evidence for female moral superiority, Dolores in La malcasada is at the receiving end of the dominant morality of religious self-abnegation. Her in-laws, in the name of religious duty, demand precisely that from the dissenting wife. Predictably, echoing contract theorists, Möbius also claims that women are only interested in the family (‘lo que es extraño á la familia, no les interesa á las mujeres’ (Möbius 1904: 45)). Romera Navarro counters this with two arguments: Inexacto, porque bien puede observarse que paralelamente á su mayor intervención en la sociedad aumenta la beneficencia; [...] ella fué siempre la más fecunda promovedora de instituciones dedicadas á mejorar la suerte del desvalido; con prodigalidad extrema ha repartido siempre el tesoro de su caridad, y si no ha hecho mayores bienes, débese al estrecho campo de acción que le han dejado las costumbres (Romera Navarro 1909: 122).

Firstly, they do participate actively in society and this participation usually has advantageous results for the community they live in. Secondly, Romera Navarro argues that even if it were the case that women were only interested in their families, this would surely be a man-made scenario — an argument ‘conveniently’ omitted by contract theorists: Pero de existir en la mujer tal defecto, deberíamos achacarlo, no á ella, sino al hombre que la ha educado en ese principio erróneo y mezquino de que el sexo femenino ha nacido exclusivamente para dedicarse á las ocupaciones caseras, sin que tenga incumbencia ni deba preocuparse de lo que ocurra fuera del hogar; se les ha hecho creer que su personalidad entera debe dedicarla á la familia; que sólo al bien particular de la misma ha de encauzar sus sentimientos y actividades, y á que sus intereses únicamente debe sacrificarse. [...] Se le ha educado para ser madre y esposa, y no del todo bien, para individuo de la familia, pero no para miembro útil de la sociedad; se le ha inculcado un estrecho espíritu de familia, y no un sentimiento ampliamente social (Romera Navarro 1909: 122-123).

Another, more concrete, proof of women’s moral superiority Romera Navarro puts forward are the crime figures. Looking at the statistics, the overwhelming majority of delinquents are male: Sujeta á mayores tentaciones que el hombre, sabe sin embargo, dominar los impulsos malévolos de sus pasiones — menores siempre que los de aquel — y aparecer en las estadísticas criminales en una proporción insignificante. Su moralidad, que supera en mucho á la del hombre, no debe explicarse, como

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pretende Moebius [...], por sus condiciones de vida, sino por su mayor capacidad ética (Romera Navarro 1909: 131-132).

In an attempt to take issue with Möbius’ principal ideas, Romera Navarro establishes counter-evidence and theories of moral reasoning of his own. Möbius echoes the stock reasons usually given to explain why women have an inferior sense of justice: ‘Justicia, sin reparar á quién, es para ella un concepto vacío de sentido. [...] En el fondo no tiene el sentido de lo justo’ (Möbius 1904: 45). Whereas Möbius criticises women’s attempt to make justice contingent upon real life scenarios, Gilligan’s theory clearly rebuts this assertion. Similarly, in order to refute Möbius, Romera Navarro distinguishes between subjective and objective justice: La justicia subjetivamente considerada, no requiere de la idea pura, pues tiene existencia en el espíritu como sentimiento; aunque en cierto modo pueda parecer esto inexacto, porque el sentimiento al fin y al cabo, no es más que una potencia que nace con el espíritu y sobre la cual se va formando un sedimento de ideas. Aquella potencia y estas ideas que á medida que transcurre el tiempo van haciéndose inconscientes, constituyen el sentimiento (Romera Navarro 1909: 124-125).2

In order to explain to his readers that a sense of justice need not be based on intellectual faculties, Romera Navarro uses the concept of subjective justice, an idea reminiscent of Gilligan’s ethic of care. What interests me is Romera Navarro’s implied aim, i.e. his endeavour to demonstrate theoretically that women can have an equal sense of justice despite their inferior intellectual abilities. The following quotation illustrates his desire to juxtapose objective justice, as a theoretical entity, and subjective justice, as a common-sense, practical form: La justicia en el terreno especulativo, considerada como objetivo de estudio ó como fuente creadora de una ciencia, requiere de gruesos volúmenes y de enrevesadas disquisiciones metafísicas; pero en la realidad práctica, y como medio de mantener los principios de equidad entre los hombres, es muy sencilla, muy comprensible, de facilísima ejecución. Por todo esto, no puede admitirse que la justicia sea para las mujeres un concepto vacío de sentido, puesto que, al contrario, si en ellas el elemento objetivo es igual que en el hombre, el subjetivo es muy superior, porque, como queda dicho, este se halla integrado por el sentimiento, que es mucho más abundante en el corazón femenino que en el nuestro (Romera Navarro 1909: 127).

Women’s subjective sense of justice is superior — in one sweeping statement Romera Navarro rebuts social contract theory and basically turns their

2

On the topic of subjective and objective justice, see also Polo Reyrolón (1911: 9-11).

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argumentation on its head: women’s superior sense of justice stems precisely from the fact that makes their moral reasoning inferior according to centuries of Western thought: superiority stems from emotional involvement. Interestingly, at this point he goes beyond the theory of Gilligan, who is careful not to privilege the care voice over the rights voice.

BURGOS’S FICTION El abogado In this analysis I will examine how Gilligan’s opposing concepts of the ethic of care versus the ethic of rights manifest themselves in Carmen de Burgos’s novella El abogado (1986a), in which a single mother sues the father for maintenance for her child. I will argue that while the heroine’s moral behaviour is presented as superior to that of her ex-lover as well as that of her lawyer, her moral reasoning, in the decision-making process about how to fight for maintenance for her child, is clearly that of a ‘different voice’, a striving for carebased instead of rights-based justice. Finally, through an analysis of El abogado I also hope to demonstrate how Gilligan’s opposing concepts when manifested in the narratives of daily lives fall short of supplying a reliable guide for women as soon as they are tested against the workings of a legal system. The story of El abogado is that of the struggle of a private individual against the legal machinery. Manolita, the heroine, is the innocent victim of two representatives of patriarchal power: Santiago, her lover, and don Federico, the lawyer. The former first date-rapes her, and then, while living with her, maltreats her. Shortly after leaving her for somebody else, he stops paying maintenance for their child and finally, when the lawsuit looms, blackmails her. Don Federico talks her into a lawsuit for the maintenance of her child in order to make money out of her. He uses Manolita’s naivety regarding legal matters to deceive her completely and can be regarded as the epitome of a legal system that perverts justice. Manolita, when juxtaposed to her ex-lover and the lawyer, clearly displays a moral behaviour that is superior to that of her male opponents. She does not do anybody any harm and opts, in the first instance, for an ethic of care. Despite the injustices done to her, she keeps caring for her ex-lover and tries to avoid a legal confrontation. In what follows I will argue that, in this particular fictional example, both the moral behaviour as well as the sense of justice of the female protagonist is — in Gilligan’s terms — superior to that of her male counterparts. Carol Pateman explains that a sense of justice is fundamental to the maintenance of the social order. According to contract theorists, as we have seen, women are naturally incapable of developing such a sense of justice since they would always put private life (love and family) before the public good (Pateman 1989: 21). Superficially speaking, this is proven by Manolita who does not even understand the workings of the law, let alone have a theoretical

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understanding of the legal system. However, she does not, in the first instance, put love and family (in this case her son) first. She wavers between compassion for her ex-lover and love for her son and is not sure (as Amy was unsure in the Heinz dilemma) which way to proceed. The obvious solution of putting her son first is arrived at by social pressure from her lodgers (‘¡Pero usted puede obligarlo a reconocer a su hijo y señalarle una renta! — exclamó la señora —. Tiene usted el deber de hacerlo, de no dejar sin nombre al niño.’ (79)) and finally from the lawyer. More importantly, both Santiago and don Federico prove that it is men who are incapable of developing a sense of justice. They do not display a morality of order, unless patriarchal egotism can be considered a kind of ‘order’. The juxtaposition of Manolita and her male opponents demonstrates that the binary opposition of private life and public good, which contract theorists construct, makes little sense in this particular narrative. The so-called ‘public good’ that only men are capable of discerning in this example is quite clearly the phallocratic good of egotistical values and the legal organisation of a male-dominated society. Pateman also demonstrates that, for contract theorists, love and justice are antagonistic virtues; the demands of love and of family bonds are particularistic and so in direct conflict with justice which demands that private interest is subordinated to the public (universal) good. The family is thus simultaneously the foundation of the state and antagonistic to it (Pateman 1989: 21). For Carmen de Burgos, however, love and justice appear to be complementary virtues, which, of necessity, go together. She has the heroine of El abogado reflect about the legal machinery: Sobre todo, le daba miedo aquel espectáculo teatral de la administración de la justicia. Aquellos hombres, armados del poder de juzgar, que podían dictar fallos inapelables, ¿por qué no se inclinaban siempre a la benevolencia? No comprendía que nadie aceptase los papeles de Fiscal y de Acusador. Ella había concebido la abogacía y la magistratura en general como el más alto ministerio. No comprendía al abogado defensor de malas causas, patrocinador de injusticias, buscador de sofismas y subterfugios, y no comprendía tampoco al abogado acusador, ensañándose en aumentar la culpa y la responsabilidad de infelices reos vencidos. Para ella, el ministerio del togado debía ser de verdadera justicia, de verdadera paz: de amor (93).

Burgos here argues that true justice is equal to love and diametrically opposes contract theories of justice. By applying love, or in Gilligan’s terms an ethic of care, to a project of finding justice, Burgos not only leaves the sphere of rightsbased justice, but also places women in a situation in which their female sense of justice (love and care) is deemed superior to that of men. Men, by contrast, make a theatrical spectacle out of the administration of justice and perform injustices in the name of justice. Burgos here argues that the family — which is considered at once the basis of as well as a threat to civil life by contract theorists —

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is by no means an inferior foundation for a sense of justice, but that the contrary holds true. The failure of contract theory when applied to this particular narrative goes hand in hand with the pertinence of Gilligan’s theory. El abogado is a fictional ‘proof’ that women’s moral reasoning is different from and more complex than the usual binary opposition of a rights-based approach. Manolita, like the women in the abortion study, faces a critical situation: she needs to get maintenance payments from the father of her child in order to be able to care for the latter. Her legal entitlement to that can only be assured if Santiago publicly acknowledges that he is the father of the child. Under Article 135 of the Código Civil (1889) the father of an illegitimate child has a duty to recognise his paternity, if there is written evidence to that effect.3 Privately Santiago has acknowledged his paternity twice in writing: firstly, by giving ‘una crucecita de brillantes dedicada al niño. “A mi hijo de mi alma, su padre, Santiago Aledo.”’ (76); and secondly, in a letter to Manolita in which he states that: ‘“Mujercita mía, mi alma está contigo; besa a nuestro hijo por los dos”’ (76). Manolita thus has prima facie evidence, which is why the lawyer, don Federico, constantly assures her that this a clear-cut case. The dilemma for her is how to reconcile good family relations between Santiago, her son and herself with the harsh reality of her need for the money. The very fact that Manolita poses this dilemma to herself attests to a care-based, relationship-based, sense of justice. Her ethic of not wanting to hurt anyone makes her want to find a solution that accommodates both getting money for Santiaguito and not falling out with Santiago. This ‘ethic of not hurting anyone’ is then by definition part of a private endeavour for an out-of-court settlement. As already stated above, the decision-making process of the women in Gilligan’s abortion study go through three phases: the self travels from an immediate display of instinctual self-preservation, over a complete denial of the self, to a painful and deliberate recovery of the self which accepts responsibility to self and other. Manolita’s decision-making process mainly consists of two phases: after an initial bout of self-preservation and consequently her asking a lawyer for help, she has doubts about her right to take Santiago to court. In this second phase, as with the women in the abortion study, Manolita’s reasoning is characterised by assuming responsibility for others. At the very moment she makes first contact with don Federico, the lawyer, the late payment of maintenance arrives: Cuando le mostró sus pruebas, el abogado exclamó, con entusiasmo: ¡Bravo! Es un negocio ganado, clarísimo. Este niño tendrá nombre y un capi-

3 For interesting real-life examples on what constitutes written evidence, see Clemente de Diego and Miñana y Villagrasa (1928).

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tal de cien mil duros. En este momento apareció la criada con una carta en la mano. — Tenga la señorita la bondad de firmar el sobre. Manolita había palidecido. La pensión de su hijo, que le enviaba Santiago. Le pareció que cometía una traición con él. — Después de todo el pobre cumple cuando puede... no sé si debo... — Es una locura recibir como un favor aquello a que se tiene derecho. ¡Quién sabe el día de mañana lo que le pueda ocurrir! Tiene usted la obligación de velar por su hijo, de asegurarle una fortuna y un nombre; será usted culpable si no lo hace. Manolita ofreció meditarlo. Los consejos de sus huéspedes la decidieron al fin. Estaba ante todo su deber de madre (79).

Manolita uses a care-based approach, in this instance caring for the very person that, moments before, she was going to take to court. Her sense of justice manifests itself in terms of an emotional reaction and a sense of betrayal against her ex-lover. Momentarily, she is more worried about hurting Santiago than about insisting on her rights for herself and the child or, to be precise, she is unsure (as Amy was in the Heinz dilemma) about the best way to proceed. Such doubts, however, are not shared by the lawyer who, couching his arguments in legal language tries to convince Manolita that she is doing the right thing. The legal reasoning used by the lawyer is clearly that of a rights-based approach, as he creates a discourse of rights and duties in a strictly legal sense without taking human relationships into account. His reference to the future attests to the function of law as a tool of dispute resolution between two private individuals. While Manolita would prefer to resolve the dispute between Santiago and herself by means of private negotiations, the lawyer, true to his professional and egotistical interests, wants to drag the dispute into the public sphere of law. In the end, it is her lodgers who convince her to sue, arguing that it is her duty as a mother. Interestingly, it is not the voice of the law, personified by the lawyer, that ultimately convinces her to file a lawsuit, but the voices of her lodgers, her extended family, that she succumbs to, thus attesting to a relationship-based approach. What is more, it is the appeal to her maternal instincts rather than the rational demand for rights that persuade her to sue her ex-lover. The two phases of the decision-making process are repeated twice throughout the narrative. Manolita doubts her actions twice before being completely swallowed up by the legal machinery. Both situations revolve around an offer of a one-off payment of 20,000 duros which Santiago offers Manolita in return for her denial of his paternidad. Before this offer and waiting for Santiago’s arrival in a café, Manolita reflects upon the whole case: ¿Acaso no debía desear él también asegurar la suerte del niño ante aquella mujer intrusa con quien se había casado? Manolita hubiera deseado ver a su antiguo amante, disculpar ante él su conducta, que no la creyera ambiciosa.

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Ella sabía ser honrada y rechazar la nube de amadores que la seguía con tentadores ofrecimientos. Pero tratándose de su hijo ya era otra cosa. [...] Deseaba hacerle ver su derecho, su razón... asociarlo, por decirlo así, a su obra; salvar a su hijo, su Santiaguito; el hijo de los dos (81-82).

Manolita feels uncomfortable with the idea of taking her ex-lover to court and prepares herself for a confrontation in which she will try to justify her actions. Like Amy in the Heinz dilemma, Manolita firmly believes that if they talk it through long enough, they could reach some kind of agreement. She operates with an ethic of care and, unsurprisingly, as soon as Santiago appears on the scene, she feels sorry for him. Despite this being the point of departure for Manolita, the discussion turns nasty immediately, since Santiago fails to understand what the problem is and says so in aggressive terms: — Lo que haces conmigo es indigno, inicuo — empezó él —. No puedes tener queja de mí. No he dejado de pagar ninguna de las mensualidades a... tu hijo. ¿Qué es lo que te propones? Habló ella nerviosa, balbuciente, para repetir los argumentos con que la habían convencido. Sus deberes de madre, la suerte de su hijo... un nombre. Se irritó él. Valiente falta hace un nombre... el dinero era lo preciso, y eso nadie se lo negaba. — Sí — repuso Manolita, irguiéndose con dignidad —, pero yo no quiero que ese niño al que llamas mi hijo tenga que mendigar de su padre, y tú tampoco debías quererlo. Es nuestro hijo. — Déjate de músicas — dijo él con gesto displicente —. Hijo de quien quieras, da lo mismo... ya que yo hice la estupidez de escribirte llamándole hijo mío... tendrá que ser... — ¡Santiago! ¿Puedes tú hablarme así? No recuerdas ya al niño... cuando dormía con nosotros... cuando te llamaba papá... — Valientes cosas oirá de su papá la criatura... Aquello está todo olvidado... La vida manda... Es inútil ir contra ella y tratar de resucitar lo pasado. — Pero si yo no quiero resucitar nada, ni nada para mí — exclamó la infeliz —. Es para mi hijo... para mi hijo que no tiene padre... para quien quiero tu apellido... y tu dinero. — Y tienes el cinismo de confesarlo. ¡Cinismo! ... ¿No he sido yo tu víctima, tu esclava?... ¿No me has engañado miserablemente? ¿No me has llamado tu esposa... tu mujercita? (82-83)

This discussion — one of the central scenes in the story — juxtaposes female and male senses of justice. Santiago’s stubborn insistence that he has been wronged with this looming lawsuit defies all reason. His warped sense of justice stops him from feeling the least bit guilty and makes him assume only a limited amount of responsibility. Linguistically distancing himself from the problem by calling the son ‘tu hijo’ instead of ‘nuestro hijo’, he paradoxically does acknowledge his financial responsibility. Yet his assertion that he never failed to pay any of the monthly instalments is simply untrue. On the contrary, his failure

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to pay was the catalyst for the lawsuit. Hence it could be argued that Santiago’s moral reasoning is a rights-based justice only to a very limited degree: while he indirectly grants his illegitimate son the right to receive maintenance payments, the acknowledgement of the paternidad and — following from that — the son’s right to his father’s name, is denied by Santiago.4 In short, Santiago’s moral reasoning is basically egocentric and characterised by complete denial of the part he played in creating this situation in the first place, in date-raping Manolita, and his subsequent living and having a child with her. Manolita, obviously irritated by Santiago’s complete denial of any wrongdoing, at the beginning does not argue from the position of an ethic of care, but uses a rights-based approach to convince her ex-lover of his duties (‘los argumentos con que la habían convencido. Sus deberes de madre, la suerte de su hijo... un nombre...’ (82)). Only after that approach fails does she change from a rights-based and more abstract way of argumentation to a relationship-based approach, contextualising the claims she made and reminding Santiago of his family ties to his son. Manolita tries various tactics and appeals to her ex-lover’s sense of justice, only to find that he has none. Although shortly afterwards she feels sorry for Santiago again (‘No... No... Yo no te he hablado de amor... te quiero por compasión... porque me das lástima. Pero lo primero del mundo es mi Santiago... Yo no desistiré de esa demanda.’ (84)), by now she has worked out her priorities and her relationship-based approach is now centred only on her son. Here her moral dilemma is momentarily resolved and her priority of affection becomes clear. The story changes yet again, when Santiago offers her the one-off payment of 20,000 duros in return for a signed document that denies his paternidad — an offer that is nothing short of blackmail. Nevertheless, this offer poses the biggest dilemma for Manolita in the whole narrative. At the beginning of the story the factor complicating Manolita’s dilemma is the uncertainty of the future maintenance payments. Manolita’s lodgers talk her into seeking legal advice precisely because the maintenance payments have stopped. As the plot develops and once the lawyer gets involved an out-of-court settlement becomes increasingly unlikely, simply because it is not in the lawyer’s interest to avoid a court case. Paradoxically then, Santiago’s offer of a one-off lump-sum payment of 20,000 duros can be interpreted ambivalently: it is both the direct result of the lawyer’s intervention and threat of a lawsuit (and hence a rights-based settlement) while at the same time it could resemble the amicable, and relationship-based, arrangement that Manolita is looking for. Vacillating between accepting the money and a lawsuit Manolita seeks advice from her lawyer. Again Manolita’s state of mind is that of doubt and confusion

4 See Código Civil (1889: art. 134): ‘El hijo natural reconocido tiene derecho: 1. A llevar el apellido del que le reconoce. 2. A recibir alimentos del mismo, conforme al artículo 143. 3. A percibir, en su caso, la porción hereditaria que se determina en este Código.’

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and hence she seeks professional advice. By now she is trapped in a whole web of relationships, which adds to her sense of insecurity. Her friend Bonifacia advises her to take the money, but having promised the lawyer not to do anything without his knowledge, she feels morally obliged to consult him. In a theatrical, melodramatic, lawyer-like fashion Federico proclaims his view: Se pasó la mano por la melena, chupó su pipa, miró hacia sus cejas, y luego, solemne, dejando caer una a una sus palabras, dijo: — Están ustedes ofuscadas... Si yo no tuviese un interés especial y noble por esta señorita... porque veo su inocencia y su desgracia me inhibiría del asunto... pero ella... y más que ella su hijo... su hijo abandonado cobardemente por el que le dio el ser... yo también tengo hijos... Ya ven ustedes... Yo en este asunto nada gano... mi desinterés es completo... pero mi deber... deber sacratísimo de hombre honrado... de la toga que visto, es decirle a usted la verdad, hacerle reflexionar. Las dos mujeres escuchaban medrosas, como quien espera una sentencia. — Esta señora — siguió él, dirigiéndose a Bonifacia — ve las cosas como el vulgo... con el interés material del vulgo, para quien el dinero lo es todo... Pero demos por sentado que ese interés material se satisficiera con esa mezquina cantidad... ¿Está usted autorizada ante Dios y ante su conciencia para dejar a su hijo sin padre, Manolita?... — Yo... — exclamó la joven sin saber qué contestar. — Es que... — tartamudeó la portera [Bonifacia]. El abogado sonrió. Eran ya suyas. — Hay en el mundo — siguió, poniéndose de pie, con la voz hueca de los mitins — hay en el mundo algo que vale más que el dinero, que no se cotiza... que no se puede vender ni comprar... que vale más que la misma vida... ¡El honor! [...] — Usted no puede querer que el día de mañana su hijo se vea postergado, humillado, que se avergüence de no tener un nombre... que no se le reciba en ninguna parte... que... es muy fuerte lo que voy a decir, señora... ¡que se avergüence de su madre y la maldiga! — ¡Jesús! Manolita lloraba con desconsuelo. [...] Manolita estaba vencida. — No, no hay que pensar eso — exclamó —. Me da vergüenza de haber dudado... yo estaba loca. — No, cabeza de mujer, — repuso, evangélico, el abogado —. Hay que hacerles pensar (89-90).

Don Federico here subscribes to a melodramatic mode of rhetorical excess and strong emotionalism. He pretends he is on the side of the innocent and the oppressed, as is his duty as a representative of the law. He bipolarises the celebration of right (suing Santiago) and the condemnation of wrong (trying to

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find an alternative solution). Surprisingly, however, despite implicitly claiming the right of the child to have a father (and with it a name and social status) he wraps it up in a relationship-based discourse. Appealing to Manolita’s conscience as well as her honour, he focuses entirely on her relationship with her son knowing that this will win her over. His focus on the mother-son relationship is nothing but rhetoric and another tactic in his sly plot to make Manolita file the lawsuit. Nevertheless it is interesting that he should use this tactic when talking to a female client. It is also noteworthy that in his last statement in this dialogue he implicitly subscribes to a rights-based approach thinking that his answer is the only right answer (even when assumed for mere tactical reasons). Manolita, on the other hand, fails to see the dilemma as a self-contained problem of moral logic. For her it is a problem of human relationships and not a hierarchy of rights-claims. Her doubts are valid, as the plot later on proves, yet her understanding of ‘justice’ is portrayed as female and hence constructed by the lawyer as being inferior. The corrupt lawyer talks her out of taking the money appealing to her ‘deber de madre’ and assuring her that she will get more money if she sues. He simply uses his position of being a legal expert in order to deceive a woman who is full of doubts and increasingly desperate. This passage invites the reader to reject the lawyer’s positioning of Manolita as inferior, which forces her to consider herself inferior. What is more, as outlined in my introduction, here melodrama activates the reader’s desire to warn the heroine of the dangers that are looming all too predictably over her life. Sadly, Manolita as the classic innocent victim of melodrama, learns only at the end of the story what the reader had suspected all along: that don Federico himself pocketed the 20,000 duros from Santiago in return for making sure that the court case failed. Both the lodgers and then the lawyer (albeit for egotistical reasons) establish a hierarchy of rights and values: the right of the child to receive maintenance and a surname is valued more highly than the right of the mother to choose not to want to hurt and jeopardise the relationship with her ex-lover. In short, the value of name and honour is higher than the value of good family relations between mother, son and father. Manolita’s third phase is not the synthesis of self and other, as with the women in the abortion study, but the sad conclusions she comes to vis-à-vis the workings of law. During the long court case she starts reflecting upon the legal system: Todas aquellas cosas en que no había pensado nunca la inquietaban ahora, la hacían reflexionar, la inducían a un nuevo orden de ideas en aquel mundo en que su desgracia le había hecho penetrar. No tenía en él más salvaguardia que la buena fe de don Federico. Su existencia se agotaba en aquella lucha de temores y de desconfianza, tan infundada unos días como la loca esperanza de los otros días. La fiebre, la preocupación del pleito la ganaba. Iba poco a poco entendiendo en aquel dédalo de trámites y disposiciones, sin llegar nunca a ver con claridad lo que era tan claro. ¿No estaba en el ánimo de todos la verdad de su demanda? ¿Cómo se podía tardar tanto tiempo para hacerle justicia?

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Manolita no se explicaba cómo don Federico, que con tanto aplomo hablaba de su valer y de sus influencias, no había ya ganado aquel pleito tan sencillo y tan justo (95).

As times goes by she becomes increasingly critical of the legal system and starts questioning the prudence of law. Manolita’s trajectory vis-à-vis the law can be divided into four different phases: at the beginning of the narrative Manolita’s state of mind is characterised by sheer desperation due to her precarious financial situation, while her naivety regarding the law is mere lack of knowledge: ‘[La inquilina] explicó a Manolita, la cual no tenía la menor idea del derecho, todo lo que debía hacer’ (79). Once she has consulted with the lawyer, her mind-set wavers between hopeful and doubtful, while her knowledge as regards the law is still non-existent (phase two). This she resolves by just taking legal advice but neglecting her female sense of justice (phase three). During the court case, then, both her doubts as well as her understanding of the intricacies of the law increase rapidly (phase four). Her female (and hence different) sense of justice, up to now ignored, becomes stronger and increasingly opposes the legal system. Still linguistically portrayed as naivety, it consists now more of a kind of moral purity and sheer disbelief that a system of justice could possibly be so unjust: A Manolita, la impresionaban todos aquellos asuntos. Eran la representación, el clamar de una serie de injusticias que no siempre podían tener reparación. La ley, como un espíritu muerto e inflexible, no podía amoldarse a juzgar en cada caso distinto. No bastaba el convencimiento, la verdad, la evidencia de las cosas; se necesitaba la prueba. Veía que los jueces tenían que sentenciar contra su conciencia, si ésta y los textos legales se hallaban en desacuerdo, y veía cómo muchas veces la ley no era más que la legalizadora de lo injusto (93, my emphasis).

After sitting through her own court case as well as hearing about many others in the endless hours in court, Manolita comes to the conclusion that the legal system lacks context-based justice and that the judges are too restricted by the legal codes. This criticism comes astonishingly close to the core of Gilligan’s theory and the juxtaposition of a female care-based and contextualised sense of justice and a male rights-based and abstract sense of justice. As the story develops towards its catastrophic ending, Manolita also becomes increasingly irritated by the theatricality displayed in court by the various representatives of law. In the first instance she mainly blames the system rather than the individuals who she considers to be just cogs in the law machine: Le parecía tan fácil deshacer la mayoría de los pleitos con una poca de buena voluntad. No eran los abogados los que sustentaban todo aquel mecanismo, aquel engranaje, aquel mundo aparte fatigante, oscuro, donde se movían los curiales y en el que ella misma se acostumbraba a vivir (93).

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However, once she realises that she has been the victim of a corrupt lawyer, her attitude changes. After losing the first court-case and in a state of complete desperation Manolita seeks advice from a judge, who, after looking into the case, has to convey to her the bad news that her lawyer in return for 20,000 duros made a deal with Santiago to make the court case fail. Manolita is distraught: Manolita lloraba. — Dios mío, ¿Qué va a ser de mí? A ese hombre deben ahorcarlo o no hay justicia en la tierra. — Es que muchos crímenes quedan impunes... La ley no es la justicia y los hombres que interpretamos las leyes no podemos tener pretensiones de más alto sacerdocio... La justicia es superior a nosotros... Pero al menos, ya que se habla en su nombre, se debía tener buena voluntad... exigir garantías a los que intervienen en nuestro magisterio. Los antiguos eran más sabios al exigir que los magistrados fueran todos sexagenarios... y yo iría aún más lejos: todos los abogados tendrían que ser ricos, instruidos, morales... y los jueces serían de los dos sexos, a la edad en que todos son de uno mismo... y no fallarían más que juntos siempre. Pero Manolita no escuchaba la utopía del buen viejo. — De modo que la culpa de mi desgracia es sólo debida al abogado. Sí... Un hombre hambriento, ambicioso, sin conciencia, y que tiene bastante hipocresía para engañar a unos y bastante audacia para hacerse temer de otros (103).

Burgos here levels severe criticism at the legal profession. The law should clearly have been supportive of Manolita. It is a prima facie case and the injustice in this particular story does not stem from injustices intrinsic to the legal codes themselves, but from a corrupt individual who uses the law’s mechanisms and its opacity to enrich himself. In this sense El abogado can be interpreted as a critique of the legal profession rather than of the law itself. Don Federico capitalises on the law and its proceedings and exploits Manolita’s unworldliness. Unsurprisingly, Manolita ends up a broken woman: La habían desmoralizado, la habían corrompido todos aquellos años de litigante, mezclada a todas aquellas gentes maleantes, que rondaban por los juzgados para legitimar injusticias. [...] Aquellas lecciones de cinismo, de hipocresía, habían labrado en su espíritu. Había perdido la pureza, la inocencia, la buena fe nativa y que tan seria raigambre habían tenido en ella. Parecía que toda su fe se había desvanecido con su creencia en la santidad de la Justicia. Estaba tan abandonada, tan perdida, tan sin refugio moral dentro de sí misma, que experimentaba temor de su propia transformación. [...] Sin ella darse cuenta la había desmoralizado la acción ruin del abogado aquél que había marchitado su buena fe, sus creencias más arraigadas. Ante su negrura, todo lo demás le parecía menos negro, explicable, lógico. Porque hay cosas que desmoralizan la vida de una mujer más que el pecado del amor (105-106, my emphasis).

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Again in these final comments of the narrator we encounter an implicit juxtaposition of a female and ‘natural’ (uneducated) sense of justice and manmade law. As already mentioned, at the beginning of Manolita’s trajectory her care-based justice comes across as naivety and doubt. The recurring theme of doubt is the most prominent in her characterisation and is all the more poignant, in that her doubts as well as her seemingly inferior sense of justice turn out to be right. Manolita succumbs to a rights-based discourse because she is unsure (as Amy was in the Heinz dilemma) about the best way to arrive at a just situation for all concerned. The fact that Manolita does her best to settle out of court means that she is striving to redefine the dominant morality of her time. She is not integrating another moral voice into an existing moral discourse but redefining the moral realm itself. This endeavour literally ends in tears due to the lawyer’s criminal actions and Santiago’s recklessness. Neither of them will be brought to justice; their moral behaviour is supported by an overpowering legal system that does not fail women by the letter of the law but by allowing itself to be manipulated by men with an inferior sense of justice. Gilligan’s theory when manifested in the narratives of daily lives fall short of supplying a reliable guide for women as soon as it is tested against the workings of a patriarchal legal system. Then as now, care-based justice remains a lofty ideal to be aspired to. El abogado is based on a true story and caused an immediate scandal, since one of Burgos’s acquaintances, the lawyer Eduardo Barriobero, felt he had been portrayed in it. On 13 July 1915 the Heraldo de Madrid announced that Colombine had to appear in court because of a libel action filed by Barriobero (Heraldo de Madrid 13 July 1915: 3). The latter explained his actions the following day in a letter to the editor: Mi distinguido amigo y compañero: Para que nadie deduzca del suelto publicado en el HERALDO de anoche bajo el epígrafe ‘Colombine en los Tribunales’ que yo quiero atropellar caprichosamente a la ilustre escritora, le ruego encarecidamente aclare que sólo trato de presentar contra ella una querella criminal, porque en uno de sus trabajos literarios me atribuye varios crímenes. No es suspicacia mía, pues el protagonista del cuento se llama D. Edgardo, ha pasado hambre, ha llevado melenas, fuma en pipa, es republicano, es alto y delgado, lleva sombrero blando, habla en los mítines y defiende causas ruidosas. En cuanto a mi reclamación, es bien modesta: unos meses de cárcel y unos años de destierro; no quiero dinero de “Colombine” ni de sus cómplices, ni he de estimar a la ilustre perseguida los medios de probar las... cosas que me imputa. Siempre de usted buen amigo, compañero y s.s.q.b.s.m., E. Barriobero. (Barriobero 1915: 2).

According to Núñez Rey, it was precisely the hard evidence that Burgos would have been able to supply which made Barriobero withdraw the charges in the end (Núñez Rey 1992: 69). Burgos herself tried to justify the

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publication of El abogado as follows: Distinguido amigo y director: Como en el número de anoche aparece una carta en la que, refiriéndose a mí, se habla de crímenes y cómplices, me veo obligada a molestarlo con estas líneas, no en contestación al firmante de la carta, sino como aclaración para nuestros lectores. En mi cuento “El abogado” inventé la fábula de un abogado que vende a su cliente, una pobre mujer, haciéndole perder el pleito, y que de ese modo medra y es personaje, mientras la desgraciada sufre las consecuencias. Esos crímenes sórdidos que quedan impunes siempre quise yo, llena de pasión justiciera, sacarlos a pública vergüenza, resarciendo un poco de su dolor a las pobres víctimas desconocidas. Nunca pensé que ningún abogado se pudiese dar por aludido, ni que Edgardo tuviese nada que ver con Eduardo, y, que el fumar en pipa fuese privativo de un solo hombre, así como todas las vulgares y comunes condiciones que rodean al personaje de mi novela. No obstante todo esto, el Sr. Barriobero no sólo se da por aludido, sino que ha fallado antes que el juez, y se contenta caballerosamente con mi prisión y mi destierro, [...]. De usted afectísima amiga y compañera, Colombine (Burgos 1915b: 3).

Interestingly, despite the fact that Burgos won the case, in the 1925 reprint of the novella — in a collection entitled Mis mejores cuentos (1925b) — the name of the lawyer was changed to don Federico. This is likely to be due to the fact that Barriobero had filed a libel action against Burgos. It is conceivable that Burgos, using melodramatic modes of exaggeration, invented parts of the story such as the corruption of don Federico by Santiago. This would have assured even greater outrage amongst her readers, a tactic that evidently worked with the reader called Barriobero. More interesting still is the fact that Burgos wrote this novella because the ‘real-life’ Manolita came to see her in despair and asked for help (Núñez Rey 1992: 70). Hence this can be considered a case of a woman’s narrative feeding back into popular culture which, in turn, is used as a tool of legal critique as well as literally giving women a voice. In this way Burgos constructs proximity and interaction between the intellectual debates of her time and women’s lived experiences. El hombre negro As the title suggests, ‘blackness’ is a recurring motif in this novella. It is a case study of manichean proportions using the binary oppositions good/bad and female/male. It makes a fictional claim that women are indeed morally superior to men and yet again it is the story of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, a woman who is the innocent victim of a vile man. But unlike most of Burgos’s female protagonists, this time the heroine manages to beat the phallocratic

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system and repudiate her husband. Bernardo, the husband, is a white-collar criminal, who enriches himself through his management of other people’s affairs: Sabía cómo Bernardo faltaba a la confianza de los que le encomendaban asuntos que solventar en algún terreno: patentes que dejaba que caducasen para venderlas a otros; marcas que falsificaba; documentos inutilizados; transacciones con los contrincantes de sus clientes; avisos para poner a cubierto a estafadores; influencias para lograr que se permitiese el juego en algunas provincias; relaciones con tahúres con los que ella sospechaba que partía el producto de los robos, y amistades secretas con policías, a los que delataba los planes de los que se le habían confiado. Y aquel hombre engañaba a la gente; tenía la tutoría de un niño rico, la administración de las fincas de una dama respetable y la representación de un centro industrial importante. Lo acaparaba todo (9).

His wife Elvira, once she realises the nature of his ‘business’, is in a state of complete shock: ‘Se veía sola en un completo abandono moral, sin encontrar a quién quejarse. Había adquirido la certeza del encallamiento del hombre a quien estaba unida’ (9). She feels isolated and trapped in a marriage to somebody she morally despises and whose emotional cruelty she has to endure: Sentíase Bernardo, a pesar de su cinismo, humillado por aquel desprecio de su mujer. En el fondo la odiaba por el mismo motivo que ella lo odiaba a él. Se veía en Elvira, se reconocía en el pensamiento de ella. En el retorcimiento que aquello le producía, hallaba un goce perverso en someter a su mujer a los caprichos más abyectos: lastimarla, martirizarla, como si ese fuese el único medio de probarle su superioridad. Tenía siempre para ella la palabra grosera, el concepto mortificante, el desdén. Elvira lloraba, sin energía para rebelarse. Era aún la muchacha pueblerina, acostumbrada a contemplar el respeto que se tributa al hombre en el hogar y la sumisión ciega de su despotismo (10).

Right from the start Bernardo’s morally bad behaviour is displayed through his white collar crimes as well as the emotional cruelty towards his wife. Female superiority in El hombre negro, then, can be quite easily proven, not because Elvira is flawless, but because Bernardo is a classic example of a morally bad man. In fact, Elvira is far from flawless: trapped in this unhappy marriage she starts a love affair with Antonio, a friend of her husband (20-21). While her behaviour is, of course, morally questionable, it is precisely in her confession to her friend Rosa that her sense of justice manifests itself: Su vergüenza llegó a tanto, que un día no pudo resistir más, y le dijo a Rosa: — No vengas más a esta casa..., no debes venir. — ¿Por qué, loca? — preguntó su amiga con calma. Y ella tuvo el atrevimiento de confiárselo todo, de contarle toda su culpa,

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como si quisiera sentir su castigo; pero la santa mujer la escuchó con la serena tranquilidad de su pureza, la compadeció y la estrechó entre sus brazos sin hacerle una sola reconvención. Al despedirse le dijo con ternura: — No hablemos más de esto. Y volvió como de costumbre, y la trató con la misma afectuosa sencillez. Aquello fué un alivio para Elvira. [...] Ella comprendía que una pasión no la hubiera hecho culpable. Pero había caído vulgarmente, con un hombre vulgar también, sin pasión, sin un móvil grande. Le parecía que todo aquello lo había preparado el hombre negro con algún fin que ella no conocía, que había querido desmoralizarla, hacerla hipócrita como él, tenerla más indefensa, más a merced de su capricho (24).

Elvira’s sense of justice manifests itself through her feeling of guilt regarding her extra-marital affair. Despite the fact that her adultery is, morally speaking, by no means worse than her husband’s emotional cruelty or his white-collar crimes, she thinks she has lowered herself to the same level of immorality as her husband. Her friend Rosa teaches her otherwise. Elvira’s behaviour is condoned by Rosa (and by extension by the reader), for three reasons: firstly, her husband is maltreating her and she is trapped in that marriage; secondly, her husband knows about the affair and condones it (so she does not deceive anybody); thirdly, and most importantly, the very fact that she feels guilty about her affair with Antonio attests to a higher moral standard than that of her husband, who happily deceives at any opportunity. Elvira’s sense of justice comes to the fore in a variety of ways: as already mentioned, she is disgusted by her husband’s criminal activities and finds it difficult to live with a man whose moral standards are non-existent; more importantly though, she is disgusted by her own moral behaviour, by her affair with Antonio: Ella hubiera querido confesarse con los dos [amigos de su marido]: contar sus pecados y los pecados que la llevaron a delinquir; pero su respeto y el miedo al desprecio la contenían, aunque sufría un martirio para desempeñar su papel de inocente y de buena esposa en presencia suya. Un elogio dirigido a ella la exasperaba. Su sentido moral no estaba muerto; tenía aún la recia savia inculcada por la madre en las sanas costumbres de su pueblo, donde la vida guarda un sentido recto tan distinto de ese sentido de la vida falso y sinuoso, propio de la lucha de las grandes capitales. En algunos momentos aborrecía por igual a Antonio y a Bernardo. Eran como dos amos, dos yugos, a cuyos caprichos se sometía con pasividad de hembra, para salir cada vez más deshecha, más asqueada, más avergonzada de sí misma (25, my emphasis).

Her morality, characterised as upright rural education, is juxtaposed to her husband’s devious and hypocritical urban behaviour. As in El abogado in which Manolita was said to have ‘pureza’ (105) and ‘buena fe nativa’ (105), Burgos

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here constructs female morality as pure, untainted and almost innate. What is more, Elvira does not ‘fall’ in her native rural community, but in Madrid and next to a man whose moral behaviour is abysmal. With these assertions she echoes Romera Navarro’s ideas that women’s behaviour, in general, is morally superior to that of men. While her disgust for her husband’s behaviour and her own demonstrate that her moral standards and her moral reasoning are intact, neither situation makes her take any action to remedy the immorality. She does not do anything to stop her husband from committing any crimes nor does she stop seeing her lover. This lack of action changes radically as soon as an innocent third party is involved. Elvira’s protective maternal instincts are awoken, when Bernardo plans to ruin a child who is under his guardianship: Aquellos dos hombres [Antonio y Bernardo] siniestros se repartirían la fortuna del niño. Una tarde escuchó su conversación amistosa cuando se creían solos. Los dos tocaban despiadadamente a todo lo que a ella le era querido: aquel niño, que en cierta manera le parecía su hijo, y Federico, hombre honrado y digno, que admiraba sobre todos los demás. A fuerza de pensar en él, de compararlo con los otros, había acabado por amar a Federico. No podía decir si es que lo amaba ahora o si lo había amado siempre. Era la realización de su ideal, lo que ella había creído que sería su marido, la figura que iba en ella siempre que pensó en el amor. ¡Y aquel hombre era el más remoto a ella, porque era el enemigo de su marido! (30)

To be precise, it is both her love for the child as well as her love for another man that makes her decide to oppose her husband actively. Love is the motive for her seeking justice. She does not do it for herself, but only acts in order to protect an innocent child as well as her platonic ‘love’ Federico, a friend of her husband and the epitome of decency. Unlike Manolita whose moral dilemma was precisely the conflicting love for ex-lover and son, Elvira does not have to choose between such conflicts of interest. She can easily exercise a care-based approach, since the obvious solution of bringing her husband to justice suits both parties closest to her heart. Arguably, the love for Federico is only a figment of her romantic imagination, but the fact that she is easily able to opt for action remains. It is this clarity of decision that was lacking in Manolita, due to her moral dilemma, and which makes it so much easier for Elvira to proceed on the path of seeking justice. Motivated by love, then, and not beset by a moral dilemma, Elvira becomes the ‘mano de la justica’ (33). The dénouement is precipitated by Federico, who, despite being a friend of Bernardo, challenges him about his crimes: La ruptura de Federico con Bernardo había sido ruidosa. Los indicios dados por Manuel a Federico acerca de la conducta de Bernardo le habían servido de guía para buscar, e indagó en silencio, con frialdad, con desapasionamiento, hasta lograr tener la certeza, la convicción moral de la abyección de aquel

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hombre, aunque no pudo tener las pruebas materiales, puesto que Bernardo había sabido revestir todos sus actos con las condiciones de legalidad, hábilmente buscadas para engañar a la justicia. Pero Federico no necesitaba eso; su espíritu de verdadera equidad no necesitaba esa prueba tangible: le bastaba su certeza moral. El, que había creído en aquel hombre negro y siniestro, que había sido su defensor, que lo había garantizado, por decirlo así, se sintió en el deber de desenmascararlo. Le parecía que era un cómplice suyo, porque tal vez el amparo de su prestigio había sido lo que atrajo a los incautos, lo que hizo creer en él a sus víctimas (25).

Bernardo cunningly counter-attacks and sues Federico for slander (‘Entonces se dió un caso raro. El hombre negro acudió a los tribunales contra Federico, presentando una querella por injurias: el caso estupendo de que el culpable persiguiese al inocente.’ (27)), knowing that his white-collar crimes cannot be proven, ‘ya que en los tribunales sólo las pruebas materiales pueden ser elementos de juicio’ (27). Proud of his actions and the moral antithesis to Bernardo, Federico personifies the noble ideals of justice: Yo no quería más que quitarle la cara, su cara hipócrita; que se le conociera, que se desconfiara de él; lo he hecho, no por odio ni por venganza, sino por cumplir un deber de justicia. Porque si soy verdaderamente libertario, mis actos deben ser así: revelaciones, sin otro móvil que la sinceridad. Como Manuel y don José le hablaban con inquietud de lo que pudiera resultar del fallo, ya que en los tribunales sólo las pruebas materiales pueden ser elemento de juicio, Federico respondía inmutable: — ¿Qué más da? El fallo no me inquieta. Yo cumpliría mi condena con una gran felicidad... ¡Oh, el destierro después de haber sido justo! ¡El destierro, que puede escoger cualquier paisaje, es un medio de gozar más la naturaleza, de verla con la claridad con que los hombres negros no la podrán contemplar nunca! [...] La integridad de Federico, lo inquebrantable de sus principios, no admitían que pudiese jamás, por ningún móvil, estrechar la mano del hombre negro; y éste, en su odio, no podía acomodarse a la idea de no destruir a su enemigo (27).

With Bernardo’s ‘negrura’ out in the open and Federico in legal trouble, Elvira decides to get the necessary evidence to bring Bernardo down and hence save Federico and the child. Elvira, unlike Manolita, uses the law to achieve justice and what is more she succeeds. This justice is threefold: she brings Bernardo to justice and rescues all the innocent victims, most of all the boy; she does justice to Federico by proving he is innocent of slander; and most importantly, she does justice to herself by being able to separate from this vile man. However, the latter is a distortion of legal reality. ‘Indignity’ was not a cause for separation under Article 105 of the Código Civil (1889). One permissible cause was a lifesentence of the spouse, but it is unlikely that Bernardo would have got a life-sentence for fraud. Burgos here uses poetic licence and misinterprets the Código Civil:

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Cuando lo tuvo todo ella, con una energía de que no se la hubiera creído capaz, compareció ante los tribunales pidiendo su separación de aquel hombre por causa de indignidad. El golpe había sido decisivo. Los jueces y la opinión habían hecho justicia. Federico, absuelto, libre de las asechanzas de Bernardo, y éste envuelto en el proceso incoado por su misma mujer, y condenado por la opinión, desacreditado, perdido. Elvira sentía una especie de satisfacción en perderse realizando su venganza, ofrendando aquella prueba de amor a Federico. Era como una rehabilitación de haber sido la esposa de Bernardo, como si quisiera así librarse de la repugnancia que inspiran esos hombres de los que una mujer que les ha pertenecido se avergüenza toda su vida (31).

Elvira’s motivation is clearly relationship-based. She tries to protect the child and what is more, she is in love with Federico: ‘[...] y quiero que usted sepa que yo he sido la mano de la justicia... y que usted me ha impulsado...; lo he hecho todo por usted.’ (33) The juxtaposition of Elvira and Federico is also noteworthy: both are moral equals, but while she acts out of love, or in Gilligan’s terms out of a care-based approach, he acts out of principle, i.e. he uses a justicebased approach. The fact that her approach is successful, e.g. he would have gone to prison without her intervention, can be interpreted as an indirect evaluation of the author. Elvira remains the outright victor in this legal battle and thus frees herself of her abusive and morally inferior husband: Aquel hombre, aunque quisiera ocultarlo, era un hombre separado de su mujer, de su mujer legítima, por voluntad de ella, por fervoroso odio de ella. Entre todas sus amadas sentiría siempre el abandono, la clase de abandono, en que le había dejado su mujer legítima. [...] Un hombre negro de la tribu de los hombre negros, a los que los hombres blancos no repudian lo bastante, había sido repudiado por una mujer (34).

As with all of Burgos’s women Elvira is innocent and naive at the beginning of the story (‘Elvira había creído de buena fe que Bernardo vivía de su profesión de agente de negocios como rezaba la placa blanca con letras azules clavada sobre la puerta, y que apenas se leía en la obscuridad de la escalera.’ (5)),5 and develops considerably throughout the narrative. Yet unlike most of Burgos’s heroines in general and those treated in this study in particular, Elvira portrays the most active image of a woman. She uses law as a tool against patriarchy and frees herself from being trapped in a marriage. Analysing El hombre negro through the prism of Gilligan’s theory also

5 It is noteworthy here that she is not the only one who believes in good faith what she sees: ‘Aparte aquellos pocos amigos ciegos en su buena fe, todos los otros eran un atajo de cobardes o de ciegos.’ (10)

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illustrates Burgos’s viewpoint on a gendered sense of justice. Federico’s ethic of rights is presented ambiguously. His failure to bring Bernardo to justice can be interpreted as a critique of law and its obsession with hard evidence. His noble ideals of justice are not recognised by the law if there is no material evidence. In the light of this the possible opposition between law and justice, personified by Bernardo and Federico’s quarrel, questions the former’s legitimacy. If law protects ‘el hombre negro’ and endangers the freedom of an innocent man by means of a lawsuit for slander, then law quite simply perverts justice. However, Federico’s failure also attests to the author’s indirect critique of the ethic of rights. Federico acts out of the abstract principle of ‘cumplir un deber de justicia’ (27), and is not interested in the least in any human relationships. Elvira’s ethic of care, however, is more successful. Motivated by a care-based approach and wanting to protect two innocent people (the child and Federico), not only does she literally bring her husband to justice, she also fulfils what is a vital function of any legal system, the protection of innocent people. Admittedly, she does so by adhering to law’s code of practice: she provides the vital and concrete evidence (in the form of letters and other written evidence) to prove Bernardo’s criminal activities as well as Federico’s innocence. She beats the phallocratic legal system with its own weapons while at the same time administering an ethic of care. In conclusion, in El hombre negro Burgos celebrates — with melodramatic excess — the victory of woman over man, justice over law and care over rights. Law, so often represented as a patriarchal tool of injustice in the work of Burgos, is here depicted as a woman’s instrument of justice against patriarchy. This novella, then, obeys a dual impulse, displaying women’s ethic of care at the same time as it contains that ethic within a phallocentric form. El artículo 438 In El artículo 438 (1921a) the heroine María de las Angustias Lozano — like her more famous fellow-sufferers Emma Bovary, Effi Briest and Anna Karenina — commits two fatal errors: firstly she marries the wrong man, secondly, and more importantly, she tries to rectify her mistake by starting a relationship with another man. Marriage ending in adultery and then in death; this is a story of a woman whose natural sense of justice costs her her life. The issue here is literally a female sense of justice versus male law: the latter, under Article 438 of the Código Penal (1870), condones manslaughter, or, arguably, even murder.6

6 Manslaughter is defined as: ‘unlawful homicide which cannot be classified as murder, e.g. where X kills Y as a result of grossly negligent conduct. May be classified as (1) voluntary, as in the case of a killing which would have been murder, but is considered manslaughter because the accused successfully pleads diminished responsibility or provocation; (2) involuntary, as where the actus reus of homicide is unaccompanied by

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It is a story about the perversion of justice enshrined in law. In the first chapter I have argued that María de las Angustias’ moral position is justifiable and based on equality and freedom of the person in a Rawlsian sense. In this chapter I will examine the moral behaviour as well as the moral reasoning of the main characters (Alfredo, María de las Angustias and Jaime), and argue that María de las Angustias has a superior sense of justice. Alfredo’s moral behaviour defies description. Being an opportunist from the start by marrying María de las Angustias for her money, once her parents die, he assumes full control over her life. Like Bernardo in El hombre negro, he first attempts to make his wife a partner in his lowlife activities; like Bernardo he fails: En cuanto se vio dueño había cambiado de conducta. Primero quiso que ella lo siguiera en su vida de depravación y de lujo. Todo cuanto podía hacer para corromper su espíritu lo ensayó cínica y meditadamente; hasta que, convencido de la incorruptibilidad de su mujer, se desentendió de ella para alternar libremente con amigos degenerados y mujeres de baja estofa (15).

As demonstrated in Chapter 1, one of the crucial legal issues is the bienes parafernales, that is the legal necessity of María de las Angustias’ signature to administer the conjugal property. This becomes a topic of dispute whenever Alfredo runs out of money: Mientras duraba el dinero, él la dejaba en paz. Al acabarse, volvía, se fingía apasionado, reclamaba sus derechos de esposo y, exasperado por sus negativas, la maltrataba, la insultaba, le hacía sufrir sus borracheras, de alcohol unas veces y otras de éter y de morfina. Luchaba por corromperla, por hacerla partícipe de sus vicios, y ante la triste serenidad de la joven se desesperaba y llegaba á todas las violencias (16, my emphasis).

In the one case when by law she would have a limited amount of independence, he uses physical force to get his way. At the climax of his coercion and intimidation Alfredo even threatens to rape his wife: María de las Angustias retrocedió. Había comprendido. Alfredo le iba á imponer la mayor de las torturas. Era mejor acceder á sus deseos de firmar la venta del cortijo. Que se fuera, que la dejase en paz, pasase lo que pasase; todo, menos aguantar aquellas caricias. — No, Alfredo... Es imposible... Tú lo sabes... Yo no te amo. — Yo te amo á ti... Me gustas... Eres mi mujer... Tengo derecho.

malice aforethought, resulting from an act performed with criminal negligence (Curzon 1994: 239). By contrast, murder is the ‘unlawful homicide with malice aforethought’ (Curzon 1994: 254).

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— Escucha Alfredo. Tú deseas irte á Londres... Quieres mi firma para vender el cortijo de la Vega... Estoy pronta á dártela..., si me dejas en paz. El tuvo una sonrisa de satisfacción, y cambiando de aspecto, dijo: — Bien. Como tú quieras. Pero ya ves que yo había desistido. Eres tú quien me arroja de tu lado (27, my emphasis).

While the right to rape his wife is the most extreme case of male supremacy in this novella, Alfredo also exercises control in more subtle ways: he threatens to change their residence (‘Tú olvidas que yo soy el marido, el hombre. Tengo derecho de administrar los bienes y de elegir el domicilio que me acomode.’ (5), my emphasis), and, most importantly, he has the patria potestad (‘No es quitártela. Soy el hombre, el marido, el padre, y tengo el derecho de educarla [a la niña] como me plazca.’ (8), my emphasis) and thus not only can he exert control over his wife’s life, but he can also use the daughter as another weapon of emotional blackmail. Even the legislation regarding adulterio, as outlined in Chapter 1, can be used by Alfredo to control his wife further and entrap her into infidelity. In short, Alfredo is in absolute control of his wife’s life, with the only exception of the bienes parafernales, a ‘problem’ that he solves by resorting to brute force. Superficially speaking, it follows that his sense of justice is non-existent and throughout the narrative there is not one redeeming feature to be found about Alfredo Sánchez. His moral standards are those of a criminal who uses and abuses people at his leisure. Looking at his moral reasoning, however, a few points are noteworthy: firstly, unlike Bernardo in El hombre negro, he does actually justify his actions; and secondly, looking at these justifications we find that all he does is insist on his rights. As discussed in detail in Chapter 1, Alfredo assumes the legitimate rights he has as a father and husband and, worse still, he abuses the legitimate atenuante as stated in Article 438 (Código Penal 1870) in order to commit uxoricidio. His vile behaviour is not only condoned by custom, but his phallocratic rights are also protected by man-made legal codes. His moral reasoning, or sense of justice, is therefore not particularly surprising, since it is simply in accordance with positive law. This is also reflected in his selfjudgement: ‘Soy un buen marido que no hace ni más ni menos que lo que hacen los demás hombres en mi caso’ (8). His ethic — if one can use such term — is an ethic of rights, a rights-based approach with a clear hierarchy of rights reflected in the legal codes: men quite simply have more rights than women in any walk of life. His ethic is an ‘ethic of rights’ of a kind, where ‘rights’ are those of the phallocentric law and ethic means subscribing to such a warped idea of justice. The example of Alfredo’s phallocentric sense of justice attests to the function of law as a powerful index of social attitudes. Law here acts as a signal to men that they are literally able to get away with murder. María de las Angustias Lozano predictably provides the melodramatic opposition to Alfredo. Having the welfare of her child at heart, she starts opposing Alfredo’s spendthrift ways:

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Fué la madre la que tuvo perseverancia para revisar papeles y cuentas mientras él se entregaba á sus diversiones, y así pudo darse cuenta del estado de su fortuna. [...] ¿Tenía derecho, por aquel egoísmo suyo de paz y de sosiego, á dejar que arruinasen á su hija? ¿No era su deber luchar por aquella criatura, de la que no se ocupaba el padre? (16-17, my emphasis)

This is in fact the catalyst for the whole plot: Alfredo’s egotistical desire to get more money out of María de las Angustias is opposed by her maternal desire to protect her child: En cinco años de casados ha desaparecido cerca de la tercera parte del capital que me dejaron mis padres. Yo tal vez podría resignarme á sufrir la miseria; pero tengo una hija y no tengo el derecho de arruinarla. No cuentes con mi firma en absoluto para nada (4, my emphasis).

It is interesting to note the difference in rights-approaches between Alfredo and María de las Angustias: while Alfredo keeps claiming all the phallocentric rights he has by law, María de las Angustias questions her moral right to do something out of egotistical considerations. She perceives her actions as relevant to the human environment she lives in and takes her primary relationships, in particular to the daughter who is completely dependent on her, into account. This juxtaposition itself speaks volumes about the latter’s emphasis on an ethic of care. Nevertheless, María de las Angustias is both victim and culprit, at least before the law and according to social standards. Yet even the way she starts the affair and then embarks on a serious relationship with Jaime testifies to her superior moral behaviour. After Alfredo introduces Jaime to his wife, María de las Angustias sees through his ulterior motives: No quiero que te vayas de mi lado ahora. Le lanzó una mirada altiva, desdeñosa, y él, á pesar de su cinismo, no se atrevió á insistir. Se veía descubierto en la intención que le había hecho llevar á Jaime á su casa. No era ya la primera vez que presentaba á su mujer amigos que pudiesen interesarla. Le estorbaban su pureza, su dignidad, el buen concepto social de que disfrutaba, para imponerle mejor su capricho y dominarla más. Si delinquiera estaría completamente á merced suya (25).

Admittedly, María de las Angustias’ motive here is partly self-preservation. However, we can note the characterisation of purity and dignity, suggesting that it is both in her own interest as well as because of her moral conviction that she does not to commit adultery. The following quotation clarifies her moral intentions even further: Sentía que le interesaba Jaime; que si se quedaba sola al lado suyo no tendría fuerzas para dominar su pasión, y se asustaba de que llegase un día en que, cediendo á una sugestión cualquiera, pudiese perder aquella fuerza moral, en

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la que se refugiaba y se escondía, dentro de su propio corazón, como un consuelo supremo (25).

Nevertheless she commits adultery and, although this is undoubtedly morally questionable, the narrator gives a clear indication as to how we are supposed to judge the affair: Luego, el deseo, más fuerte que su voluntad, les había obligado á buscarse, y desde el primer momento había mediado entre ellos una explicación franca, leal. Habían caído el uno en los brazos del otro de un modo natural, como esposos enamorados que se encuentran después de una larga separación. Desde aquel día la vida se convirtió para María de las Angustias en un ensueño de felicidad. No sentía remordimiento alguno por entregarse á aquella pasión, moralmente desobligada de su marido. Se sentía alegre, tranquila, confiada, satisfecha de su felicidad y del amor profundo y honrado de que la rodeaba Jaime (29, my emphasis).

María de las Angustias gets into the affair by desire rather than design, but once she has fallen for Jaime she feels no remorse, given that her husband is a serial adulterer. On the contrary, the comparison of adulteries shows that he is a person who seeks only carnal gratification, while her single affair becomes a serious relationship based on true love. For María de las Angustias it is the only way out of an abusive marriage and she does not want to deceive her husband. In a dialogue with Jaime she states her intentions: — Yo no quiero el engaño. Sería incapaz de acariciar á mi marido y venderlo por la espalda. No le amo, y no lo oculto. — Haces mal. Estamos en un mundo en que la lealtad se considera cinismo, impudicia. — Y, sin embargo, la verdadera moral es la nuestra. — ¿Quién lo duda? (31)

Unlike Manolita, who has a considerable amount of time for her decisionmaking process, María de las Angustias’ rational decision is overtaken by sheer desire for Jaime and thus a moral dilemma (should she or should she not commit adultery?) is non-existent. Moral reasoning sets in when the deed is done and her main argument for having committed adultery is that it is a consequence of her unhappy marriage. Her sense of justice is such that all she wants is happiness for everybody concerned, even including her estranged husband (‘Quería que fuese feliz, que todo saliera bien, que se divirtiera y amara á otras que borrasen su recuerdo.’ (39-40)). This is based on her conviction that marriage should be based on love and free will: — Pero es absurdo que sea delito amarse y darse libremente. No ya sólo en este caso, sino en todos. No se puede consentir que las personas sean propiedad unas á otras por toda la vida, que lazos que crea el amor se impongan si el amor pasa.

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— Claro. Tú llegas por la pasión al conocimiento de todas esas verdades; pero las gentes han legislado contra la Naturaleza, han creado intereses que la libertad ataca, y todo lo que estás diciendo asusta á los hipócritas como la cosa más inmoral del mundo (37-38).

Jaime’s reply is noteworthy, since it reflects Gilligan’s attempt to demonstrate how, for women, morality is not only care-based but also situation-based. As outlined above, Gilligan demonstrates that it is often through extreme personal experiences, such as abortion or euthanasia, that women realise that there is no black and white, no right answer to moral dilemmas, but only infinite shades of grey (Gilligan 1993: 87). Jaime points out to María de las Angustias that her moral reasoning is situation-based, that it is her personal experience of a happy relationship that makes her reason in this way. The trajectory of her decisions, then, can be described in two phases: first, she has the moral conviction that it is wrong to commit adultery; second, in discovering a true alternative to her marriage when starting an affair with Jaime, and going against the moral judgement that formerly she considered absolute, she makes a U-turn and — based on this personal experience — changes her moral reasoning. What on the surface appears an opportunistic move, is explained rather well by Gilligan’s theory: María de las Angustias does not change her mind because it suits her, but because moral reasoning is based on personal experience. She now realises that adultery is not necessarily immoral, but just a logical consequence of the legal situation of the time. In any case, by no stretch of a just imagination can she be considered more immoral a person than her husband and, what is more, she even includes her husband in her wish for happiness for all concerned. As we have seen, María de las Angustias’ sense of justice is at once care-based, relationshipbased and situation-based. It is not her own unhappiness but care for her daughter that makes her start opposing her husband — a decision that ultimately she pays for with her life. Her sense of justice is also relationship-based in that she takes her love to Jaime into account and does not consider this a moral dilemma. The latter also attests to her moral reasoning being grounded in situation-based personal experience. Looking at El artículo 438 through the prism of Pateman’s assertions, we will also find that Burgos here tries to rebut the common philosophical contention that women have an inferior sense of justice. As outlined above, contract theorists like Rousseau have argued that women are naturally incapable of developing a sense of justice since they would always put private life (love and family) before the public good (Pateman 1989: 21). María de las Angustias, following her heart instead of the (public) duty of remaining a faithful wife, seems to be doing exactly that. However, it is in comparison to her husband that her superior sense of justice and duty becomes obvious: firstly, if she could, she would legally divorce him, and secondly the duty of caring for their daughter is entirely performed by María de las Angustias. Alfredo, in contrast, has not the

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slightest sense of duty, either private or public, but uses the injustices of patriarchal law — the rights that it gives him — to rid himself of his wife. Angustias’ superior sense of justice also means that she simply does not understand the workings of this unjust legal system. Time and again Jaime has to explain to her how patriarchal law works — a device used by Burgos to explain the legal situation to the reader. Interestingly, her use of a male voice criticising the law can be read ambivalently: it reinforces the author’s critique of phallocratic law, which makes women the helpless victims of their overpowering husbands, while at the same time it implies that only men can understand the law. María de las Angustias appears too naive and helpless to work it out herself. When Jaime tries to explain to her that she cannot separate from her husband, she replies in disbelief: — Pero tú sabes, todo el mundo lo sabe, que se emborracha, que me martiriza, que me arruina. — No es bastante para probar la sevicia. — Tiene una querida. — No vive con ella. — Está siempre con mujeres. — Eso lo hacen todos los hombres, según dicen ellos. ¿Y no es motivo el que yo te ame? — Sería motivo para que él procediera en contra tuya. Te podría llevar al convento ó al manicomio, que en los tiempos modernos ha venido á substituirle. — Pero tú me defenderías. — No lo dudes; te defendería hasta morir ó matar por ti... Con la ley no podría defenderte. ¿Por qué? Porque la ley la hicieron los hombres y es toda contraria á las mujeres; aunque en algún caso como éste sea yo, hombre, la primera víctima. — ¿De modo? — Que tu marido es un inocente y un hombre honrado contra el que nada puedes intentar, á pesar de arruinarte, envilecerte, y maltratarte, pasando la vida entre borracheras y mujeres de todas clases. — ¡Es terrible! — Y en cambio tú tienes el desprecio de la sociedad, porque rechazas á un hombre indigno y correspondes á un amor honrado. Estás á merced del capricho de tu marido, que puede hacerte condenar por adúltera, llevarte á un manicomio, arrancarte tu hija y tu fortuna, y hasta matarte, sin responsabilidad, acogiéndose al artículo 438 del Código Penal, que absuelve á los asesinos de sus esposas si ellas les son infieles (31-32).

María de las Angustias’ problem of not understanding the law is not so much naivety as the simple disbelief that her natural (and superior) sense of justice is in stark conflict with positive law. Unlike Manolita in El abogado who could not believe that a legal system could be so opaque and give room for injustice, María de las Angustias’ disbelief stems from the fact that law was unashamedly

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gendered. While Manolita criticises the legal machinery in general and its professional practitioners in particular, María de las Angustias’ indirect criticism (manifested as disbelief) goes to the very core of law, since her sense of justice opposes the injustices intrinsic to positive law itself. Jaime is the most outspoken critic of positive law in this novella. Like the judge in El abogado, he represents those men who understand the workings of the law and can thus give an informed criticism of the same. As already stated, he repeatedly explains to the heroine the absurdity of the ethic of rights of the current legal system. He clearly attributes the state of the legislation to the fact that men have legislated according to their self-interest. When María de las Angustias envies nations which have a proper divorce law, his answer shows that he is doubtful as to what good that would do: — ¡Qué felices deben ser las naciones donde existe el divorcio! — Se cae en otros abusos; porque no hay ley mala si los hombres son buenos, y viceversa. Pero en todo caso es mejor que entre nosotros. — ¿Por qué no puedo yo pedir la separación? — Ya te lo he dicho: no hay pruebas. — Vicios, malos tratos, queridas, prodigalidad. — Nada puede probarse en el grado suficiente. — Pero tú puedes hallar algo, tienes talento, conocimientos. — Que sólo me sirven para ver más claramente el peligro que corres (37-38).

Here María de las Angustias stubbornly insists on the fact that law ought to be a means of dispute resolution. Like Manolita in El abogado, she assumes that her lack of legal knowledge is the only cause of her dilemma and that somebody with more knowledge will be able to solve the problem and ‘save’ her. In this situation she regards Jaime as a representative of the ethic of rights, that is, of the dominant legal system, and to a certain extent he can indeed be considered that, although he undoubtedly does not share those values. Jaime is, in a way, the most complex character of the novella. While Alfredo and María de las Angustias subscribe, respectively, to an ‘ethic of rights’ of a kind and an ethic of care, Jaime resists such easy (and manichean) categorisation. His behaviour certainly attests to an ethic of care: he lovingly cares for both María de las Angustias and her daughter, despises Alfredo’s phallocentric rule of law and is the most open critic of law in general. However, at the most critical moment of the narrative, when Alfredo catches Jaime and María de las Angustias in the latter’s bedroom, Jaime cannot rid himself of the dominant ethic of rights: No era un hombre lo que tenía frente a sí. Eran la ley y la sociedad toda hecha carne. ¡Era el marido! Sin darse cuenta, de aquel modo intuitivo y embrionario, en el que los pensamientos acudían en tumulto sin la serenidad del juicio, sentía la influencia de verse ante el marido. No era un hombre que lo atacaba y contra el que podía defenderse. Aquel hombre calmoso y frío, con el revólver en la mano, tenía la fuerza de la Guardia Civil, contra la que no puede

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defenderse el criminal. No había defensa posible; el marido fusila, no se desafía. [...] Aquellos momentos en que se ha planteado la vida de ese modo precipitado, confuso, pero preciso, con que se plantea la vida en los momentos graves, le hace ver todo el horror de su situación. No tiene armas, no está prevenido y preparado para la escena, como lo está el público que después lo ha de juzgar; pero es inútil defenderse, está irremisiblemente perdido. Si él matara no mataría en legítima defensa, resultaría un asesino con agravantes. [...] Le acomete un miedo cerval, inevitable... El instinto de conservación imponiéndose á todo... Siente salir su sangre y cree que su rival lo ha matado... Entonces se vuelve, huye atropelladamente, como el ladrón que se ve sorprendido en casa ajena, loco de dolor y de vergüenza (52-54).

Despite the fact that he assured María de las Angustias earlier that he would defend her ‘hasta morir ó matar por ti’ (32), at the crucial moment he fails her. He cannot free himself from the ethic of rights enshrined in the Código Penal (1870), i.e. that the husband has the right to kill his wife as well as the adúltero if they are caught in flagranti. He considers himself a criminal, a thief who has robbed the husband of his property and thus has to flee like a coward. Admittedly, the legal carte blanche that husbands have under Article 438 does not exactly make a defence easy. The point I am interested in here, however, is not that Jaime is a deplorable coward. It is rather that his behaviour demonstrates that, while rationally he subscribes to an ethic of care, in this particular situation of crisis (when he has to decide within seconds on what to do), the fabric of his psyche clearly shows that he has internalised the values and norms of the Código Penal (1870) and thus, in the decisive moment, cannot but powerlessly subscribe to an ethic of rights. El artículo 438 is undoubtedly one of Carmen de Burgos’s most militantly feminist novellas. It is also one of her most pertinent legal critiques for the simple reason that it attacks the very dogma of law: the legal codes themselves. The analysis of this narrative has raised a number of interesting issues: firstly, the perversion of justice enshrined in law; secondly, the gendered senses of justice as manifested by the three main characters; and thirdly, the dangers inherent in an ethic of rights. As outlined in Chapter 1, Article 438 of the Código Penal (1870) is by far the most gendered article in the Spanish legal codes of the time. Hence, a critique of the legal system is made fairly self-evident simply through the statement of facts and Burgos certainly gets her message across in melodramatic proportions. Yet she also takes the opportunity to paint a much more complex picture of her characters and displays in some detail their moral behaviour as well as their moral reasoning. While María de las Angustias’ apparent naivety can temporarily be interpreted as arising from her lack of legal knowledge, her stubborn disbelief despite repeated explanations from Jaime, however, testifies to a clash between positive law and her own sense of justice. From today’s viewpoint this is not a

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particularly surprising narrative: a story about a woman whose sense of justice strongly opposes a legal system with unashamedly phallocentric laws is nothing out of the ordinary. To my mind Burgos’s most valuable contribution to the public debate about Article 438 lies in the fictional explanation of how a woman, despite her self-professed intention not to commit adultery, is driven to it by her vile husband and, more importantly, how her adultery can be considered just. In the characterisation of Jaime, Burgos succeeds in portraying an adúltero who resists the manichean bipolarisation of the leading characters, being at once the most fervent critic of the law as well as a law-abiding citizen. As argued in my introduction, the internalisation of group norms due to socialisation is an important element of the function of social control carried out by the law. Jaime has internalised the moral values of the Penal Code against his better judgement. Burgos here demonstrates that social change does not come easily, particularly not when people’s lives are at stake. Finally, Alfredo’s egocentric behaviour demonstrates that the ethic of rights, when taken to an absurd extreme of becoming an ‘injustice of rights’ has dangerous consequences, since it is entirely dependent on what kinds of rights a person has by law. The rights of life versus private property which were at stake in the Heinz dilemma are generally considered indisputable rights of any person and hence the ethic of rights can more easily establish a hierarchy of rights in such a case. In El artículo 438, Alfredo makes full use of the rights men had under the Spanish legislation of the time and the moral dilemma the story poses to the reader is that of his positive right to exert full control over his wife versus her tacit moral right to happiness with another man. This would be the moral dilemma if we apply a rights-based approach. María de las Angustias, however, just like Amy in the Heinz dilemma, transgresses the boundaries of these rights claims and refuses to stay within the parameters of dogmatic legal thinking. She seeks a different solution altogether and proposes happiness for all concerned. While this answer is likely to have been outside the moral domain in Burgos’s time, today’s readers will more easily consider this kind of moral reasoning to be, if not a superior, then at least a different sense of justice. La malcasada In La malcasada (1923d), Burgos creates a positive, active answer to María de las Angustias’ powerlessness. Dolores actively tries to rectify her error of marrying the wrong man by filing for divorcio. As outlined above, according to Carol Gilligan, it was in the immediate aftermath of the Roe v. Wade decision that many women suddenly realised that the ‘Angel of the House’ discourse was immoral, since it demanded an abdication of their own voice. They needed to silence internalised male voices in order to speak for themselves (Gilligan 1993: x). This concept of the recovery of their own voices is apposite to the narrative of La malcasada: Dolores makes a brave attempt to recover her own voice in the

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course of the novel and, what is more, she tries to act upon it. In what follows I will argue that there are a high number of continuities between El artículo 438 and La malcasada. My main focus, however, will be on the discontinuities between these two stories, since this will illustrate the limits of Gilligan’s ethic of care as well as demonstrate how it can actually be counter-productive for women. Hence the second issue that concerns me here is the trajectory of Dolores’ decision-making. Arguably, divorce at the time of Carmen de Burgos was as much of a ‘crime against phallocracy’ as abortion is today. I will therefore use the decision-making process as outlined by Gilligan as a framework to analyse Dolores’ path to potential freedom. Antonio’s moral behaviour, like Alfredo’s in El artículo 438, defies description. He uses all the liberties and rights given to him by law and custom to control his wife fully. As already stated in Chapter 1, Dolores endures a long list of curtailments of rights, such as freedom of the person and freedom from psychological oppression. There is one notable difference between Alfredo and Antonio: Antonio does not live off Dolores’ money. Antonio maltreats his wife just for kicks, or more precisely, just because she dares to rebel against his complete domination. If it were not for Dolores’ refusal to obey, the marriage would not have had such a catastrophic ending. Her refusal to be submissive results, with startling regularity, in domestic violence and attempted rape. Like Alfredo, Antonio just assumes the many rights given to him by law. Unlike Alfredo, and to add injury to insult, he commits domestic violence. There are four incidents of domestic violence (76, 107), of which one is in front of witnesses (166), and one leads to the final manslaughter (269). He also causes a public scandal when he is caught in a compromising situation with a woman of doubtful repute, a reason deemed sufficient by the Código Civil (1889) to grant the right to separate from one’s husband (135). Yet none of those incidents are identified by Antonio’s sense of justice as being particularly unjust towards his wife. His attitude and complete lack of a sense of justice are best summarised in his self-judgement shortly before he is killed. In his last marital fight with his wife he is still unrepentant: — Sí... yo te he amado... te he querido con toda la ilusión de mi alma... No quiero negarlo ni en estos momentos... Bien lo sabe Dios... Has sido para mí todo en el mundo... ¡Considera cuánto me has debido hacer sufrir para cambiar de este modo!... ¡Para que me des asco! — ¡Cualquiera que te oiga dirá que he sido contigo un mal hombre, un criminal! ¿Dime qué te he hecho yo? Se quedó muda. ¿Para qué entrar en una penosa explicación? Aquel hombre no era capaz de comprender los mil detalles con que la había martirizado, las faltas de delicadeza que hirieron sus sentimientos, las pequeñas cosas en que miles de veces había pisoteado su corazón; sin contar las francachelas, la disipación, las orgías con otras mujeres en que la había humillado y le había causado una sensación de repugnancia (268, my emphasis).

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Another scene in which Antonio’s moral reasoning becomes most obvious is when his friend César informs him that Dolores has left him. Antonio has just lost one of his cocks in a cockfight when César breaks the news to him: — ¡Déjate ahora de eso, que ocurre algo muy grave! El abrió los ojos con asombro. ¿Más grave que matarle su gallo? No comprendía. Como no fuese algo de las elecciones. [...] — Escucha, Antonio. He ido a tu casa y Petrilla me ha contado que tu mujer acababa de marcharse, en un coche, con el juzgado. — ¿Pero cómo? — Ha pedido el divorcio, y el niño Pepito Suárez ha presentado la demanda. Se tornó lívido Antonio. — ¡A ese niño y a ella les echo yo las tripas al aire! — dijo. — ¡Ya te guardarás de hacer tonterías! No merece una mujer que te pierdas por ella. — ¡Pero de mí no se ríen! — ¡Qué han de reír! Nosotros tendremos influencia y la demanda no prosperará... te la volverán a llevar a tu casa. — ¿Pero en qué se funda esa mala mujer para quejarse de mí? — En sevicia. — ¿Qué es eso? — Malos tratos. — ¿Y será capaz? ¡Malos tratos yo! ¡Que me he pasado de bueno! ¿Cuándo le ha faltado a mi lado de comer y vestir y todo lo que ha querido? — Las mujeres son así. — ¡Mala ralea! ¡Hay que tratarlas a puntapiés y no como yo lo he hecho! Pero te juro que me las ha de pagar (174-175).

This complete lack of understanding of the magnitude of his emotional cruelty and domestic violence is a recurrent theme throughout the novel. As the above quotations show, Antonio is genuinely at a complete loss as to what he is supposed to have done wrong. While Alfredo maliciously uses all the statutory advantages of the various legal codes, Antonio’s main offence of domestic violence only ever occurs after Dolores refuses to obey. Hence his lack of empathy for the position of his wife. From his point of view he is merely reacting to his wife’s rebelliousness. Nevertheless, Antonio’s sense of justice can also be considered an ‘ethic of rights’ of a kind, where justice means phallocentric law and custom and ‘ethic’ means subscribing to such a warped idea of justice. Again, the example of Antonio’s phallocentric sense of justice attests to the function of law as a powerful index of social attitudes. Interestingly, unlike Alfredo, Antonio does not ‘get away with murder’, but is killed himself. Pepe Suárez, the lawyer who represents Dolores’ case, is, like Jaime, the unsuccessful saviour of the wronged heroine. He is also the most outspoken critic of positive law. Like Jaime, Pepe repeatedly explains to the heroine the

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absurdity of the ethic of rights of the current legal system (137-147, 220-223, 234-235). He attributes the state of the legislation to the fact that men have legislated according to their self-interest. Pepe is also the most ambivalent character of the novel: while caring for Dolores and wanting to help her out of her situation (thus displaying an ethic of care), he is also painfully aware of the limits of law. He is visibly moved by her narrative of malos tratos and at the same time worried about his own position: Pepe, acostumbrado a los relatos artificiosos, pesados, de las mujeres que llevaban preparada la relación y el capítulo de cargos contra el marido, apreciaba la diferencia de aquel relato espontáneo, en el que no había ninguna torpeza de pasión de mujer, sino desencanto, dignidad herida, nobleza desconocida y pisoteada. Pero él tenía un deber que cumplir. Hizo un esfuerzo para dominar su emoción, y contra lo que ella esperaba, en vez de darle la razón y alentarla en su rebeldía, tomó un aspecto sereno y le dijo: — Está usted irritada con lo sucedido y piensa usted que no quiere ya a su marido; pero en cuanto deje de verlo ocho días, no podrá usted vivir sin él. — ¡Oh! Yo le aseguro a usted que no — exclamó Dolores con vehemencia, como si la suposición de poder amar a aquel hombre encerrase algo de injurioso. — Aunque llevo pocos años de práctica en la abogacía, estoy ya habituado a ver mucho — insistió el joven —. En la mayoría de los casos, las mujeres que parecen más seguras de sí mismas son las que primero se arrepienten. Somos los abogados los que quedamos en ridículo, un poco en la actitud de amantes engañados, cuando los esposos se reconcilian, y, en muchos casos, hasta se pelean los dos con nosotros, como si fuéramos los culpables, sin acordarse de que hicimos todo lo posible por disuadirlos. — Yo le ruego a usted que no se deje influir por esas ideas y me ampare en mi demanda. No conozco a nadie más que a ustedes que me puedan ayudar (140-141).

Yet the problem is not that Dolores wavers in her decision to accuse her husband publicly. By the time she asks Pepe for help, she is determined to file for divorcio. Throughout the novel Dolores is also aware of Pepe’s difficult position in helping a woman to commit a ‘crime against phallocracy’ by filing for divorcio. She cares for him as much as he cares for her. Nevertheless, at the decisive moment Pepe fails her. When he has to tell Dolores that their lawsuit has failed, she begs him not to make her go back to her husband: — ¡Ocúlteme usted!... ¡Lléveme de aquí!... Mañana ya será tarde... — ¡Cálmese usted, Dolores!... ¡Hay que resignarse ante la crueldad del Destino! — ¡Resignarse! — Es preciso. Fuéramos donde fuéramos, nos alcanzaría la ley... Nos perseguirían... Es imposible escapar (250-251).

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He is incapable of disregarding the ubiquity of law and despite his declaration of love he stays within the framework of the dominant ethic of rights: — Sí, te amo, te adoro; pero sería un villano si me aprovechase de tu confianza. — ¡No comprendo! — Sería imposible lo que tú quieres, sin envilecerte ante todos. — ¿Qué me importa el mundo? — Sin destruir mi vida toda. El grito de egoísmo que su sinceridad le arrancaba hizo retroceder a Dolores. Pepe avanzó hacia ella: — Perdóname... Mira que sufro como un condenado, Dolores... yo te adoro... Daría mi vida por ti... te lo juro... Pero hay que pensar... Soy el hombre y debo ser el fuerte... La vida tiene sus exigencias... tu nombre... mi madre... mi carrera... ¡Ayúdame! ¡Ayúdame a ser fuerte! ¡Eres tan hermosa! ¡Te amo tanto!... ¡Yo no quiero perderte! ¡Dolores! ¡Dolores mía! La estrechó entre sus brazos y sorbió sus labios en un beso apasionado, en el que estallaban todos los deseos contenidos. [...] Su amor luchaba con su egoísmo, su miedo de comprometer su vida, de sacrificar su tranquilidad. La amaba; si fuese libre no vacilaría en arrostrarlo todo por ella, pero la mujer casada lo asustaba. Veía la reprobación de su madre, las dificultades que se le crearían, las necesidades a las que no podría atender (252-253).

The moral dilemma an ethic of rights poses for him is to choose between his career and reputation versus sending the woman he loves back to the man who maltreats her. He opts for the former and lets Dolores down. Despite caring for her and loving her, he cannot rid himself of the internalised value of this maledominated legal and social system. As outlined earlier, he harshly criticises the absurdities of the legal system, but cannot disregard it enough to start a relationship with the woman he loves and adores. It can thus be argued that he colludes with the patriarchal legal system he so outspokenly despises. This ambivalence in the character of Pepe is representative of the conflicting ethic of rights and care and the difficulties in resolving this conflict in a society in which the ethic of rights is predominant. It would both suit him on a personal level to ‘run away’ with Dolores and he would also do ‘the decent thing’ of ensuring that Dolores does not have to go back to her husband. As the above quotation as well as the whole narrative shows, Pepe struggles with these conflicting approaches: should he proceed according to a relationship-based approach and start a relationship with Dolores in order to help her, or should the ethic of rights prevail and limit him within the boundaries of a patriarchal legal system. The moral dilemma can, however, also be constructed differently: as Pepe rightly points out, it is partly his care for Dolores that stops him from starting a relationship with her. The fact that he only kisses her once for example can be interpreted as much as a sign of decency as it could be seen as evidence of his not wanting to succumb to his feelings for a woman who would ruin his career.

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Thus the lack of adultery could also be interpreted as an ethic of care regarding Dolores. Pepe more than anybody else in the novel knows the legal and hence social implications that adultery would have. Like the women in the abortion study, he assumes a position of the third phase: to care for the self and the other on equal terms. Interestingly, the narrator in La malcasada leaves room for this ambivalence in the character of Pepe. Pepe, unlike Jaime,7 does not get absolved by the narrator for his lack of character, and this adds to the lesson the reader learns about the complexity of the dilemma and the complexity of moral reasoning. In sum, while my first construction of Pepe’s moral reasoning illustrates an ethic of care that, if followed, would transgress the dominant ethic of rights of the legal system, the second construction attests to an ethic of care which remains within the current legal system. Dolores, unlike María de las Angustias, does not commit a single crime, apart from not wanting to obey her husband. She does not commit adultery and in general her moral behaviour is superior to Antonio’s and to that of any other man in the novel, apart from Pepe. Her good character is vouched for by aunt Pepita, who, when Dolores is criticised by her devout sisters-in-law, defends her (as a kind of character witness): ‘[...] es muy buena, hay que encauzarla. [...] es un alma pura’ (38). While María de las Angustias resists her husband’s spendthrift life-style mainly out of care for her daughter, Dolores — not having any children — has nobody to care for apart from herself. She wants the separation only for ‘egotistical’ reasons. At least that is how her in-laws consider the case. Dolores’ care-based approach, if one can call it that, is mainly based on care for herself, which, arguably, makes her quite an egotistical character. Admittedly, she does care for Pepe and is always worried about the implications of the case for him. Whenever she wavers throughout the separation proceedings, it is her care for Pepe that stops her from retracting: ‘— No — se decía para darse fuerza — yo no debo ceder. Sería hacerle ofensa a Pepe que es tan bueno’ (183). While her moral behaviour is irreproachable, her moral reasoning cannot be considered that of an entirely care-based approach. As the various discussions quoted in Chapter 1 of this study have shown, once Dolores has decided to file for divorcio, she spends all her time trying to convince her various in-laws of the legitimacy of her position. In these discussions it transpires that all she cares about is herself. This analysis asks why Dolores seems to care only for herself and suggests that the narrative questions the usefulness of the ethic of care approach: to help and not to hurt others here comes at the price of hurting the self. As Gilligan argues, in the abortion study the dilemma of choice enters into

7 Jaime in El artículo 438 gets absolved by the narrator. See Burgos (1921a: 58): ‘Su huída, tan justificada y tan humana, en el momento de peligro, lo hacía más impopular. Las gentes vulgares tal vez se hubiesen dejado seducir por un acto de temerario valor’ (my emphasis).

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the debate. Since there is legislation that allows women to have abortions, women have free choice in the public sphere, while privately they are faced by the moral dilemma of now having to choose by themselves how they want to conduct their lives. In what follows I will examine to what extent Dolores has a real choice. Although the divorcio legislation at the time of Burgos only allowed separation in extreme cases, as demonstrated in Chapter 1, Dolores’ case is a prima facie one: legally Dolores is in the right. The domestic violence as well as the public scandal Antonio caused by being seen with a woman of doubtful repute are two reasons deemed sufficient to grant separation (Código Civil 1889: art. 105). Privately, however, there still remains a moral dilemma for Dolores at least at the beginning of the narrative. As the following analysis of Dolores’ decision-making process shows, Dolores needs a rights claim to be able to file for separation. She subscribes to an ethic of rights, i.e. an ethic of equality before the law, although she consistently, and progressively, settles for less. As stated above, the decision-making process of the women in Gilligan’s abortion study went through three phases: a focus on the self and sheer survival is followed by a second phase in which this focus is considered selfish. Stage two is characterised by responsibility for others, while stage three uncovers the voice of the self. The self travels from an immediate display of instinctual selfpreservation, over a complete denial of the self, to a painful and deliberate recovery of the self which accepts responsibility to self and other. In a comparison between Gilligan’s theory and Dolores’ narrative it is important to note that, in the case of the former, legislation actually allows for these three stages, while Dolores’ decision-making process is somewhat impaired by the Spanish legal codes. Dolores’ decision-making process can be divided into four different stages. In stage one Dolores thinks she has no right to complain: Su rebeldía se apagaba ante lo general de su caso. Aun tenían envidia de ella casi todas las mujeres. A su marido no se le conocía querida, allí donde las queridas eran una especie de institución; ni la humillaba yéndose a buscar de noche a las criadas, que se gozaban en rivalizar así con sus señoras, y se dejaban tomar agradecidas. El amor propio de Dolores estaba a salvo y ella se acogía a aquel débil asidero para buscar disculpa a su marido. ¿De qué podía quejarse? No le faltaba nada de lo necesario; se hubieran reído de ella si hablase de los matices que torturaban su espíritu. En algunos momentos ella sola, frente a la hostilidad de todos, llegaba a convencerse de que era exigente, inadaptada, romántica; que era culpa suya el no saber acomodarse al gusto de su marido y crear mayores simpatías (33).

One of Gilligan’s observations is apposite in this context. She argues that: ‘When uncertainty about her own worth prevents a woman from claiming equality, selfassertion falls prey to the old criticism of selfishness’ (Gilligan 1993: 87). At the beginning of the marriage Dolores is too insecure to claim equality. She blames herself for the failure of her marriage and for two still-born children:

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Dos veces había dado a luz hijos muertos, uno de ellos abraquio y deforme. [...] Ni por un momento le ocurrió la idea de que Antonio pudiese ser el causante de la amargura en que se desvanecía su ilusión de madre. [...] Se consideraba culpable de robarle a su marido los goces de la paternidad. Era aquello lo que le quitaba fuerza moral y le hacía encerrar la protesta de su naturaleza noble en lo más íntimo de su corazón para seguir adormilada en aquella vida embrutecedora y enervante. Y esa era su vida, día por día, con la misma monotonía desagradable; sin nada de íntimo ni afectuoso (33-34).

Burgos here is making a case study of a woman who has only herself to care about. Unlike the other heroines, Dolores has no children to consider. However, this is not due to selfishness, but due to a history of two still-born children. Stage one in Dolores’ decision-making process is characterised by an absolution of the other: she blames herself, while making allowances for Antonio’s behaviour. This changes drastically as soon as Dolores encounters Antonio with two women of doubtful reputation. This transition from stage one to stage two is the most important transition in the process: Dolores experimentaba una extraña mezcla de ira y de dolor. Se arrepentía del momento de ingenuidad que le había hecho ocuparse tan afanosamente de su marido. Ella disculpaba siempre en el fondo de su espíritu a Antonio, creyendo que eran las costumbres, la educación y el ambiente, los que influían para ser brusco y desagradable; pero se creía amada a la manera que él podía amar. Creía no tener más rival que la pasión política. Jamás se le había ocurrido la idea de que la engañase con otra mujer. Se le revelaba así, de pronto, toda la verdad. Veía a su marido olvidado de ella, envuelto en la crápula, entre mujerzuelas [...]. Ante aquel desengaño, que la hería tan vivamente, Dolores sentía una gran vergüenza de haberlo sorprendido, de haberse visto frente a frente de aquellas mujeres. Se sentía humillada como si fuese ella la culpable (74-75).

This scene is the beginning of a transition from the absolution of the other, the condoning of Antonio’s behaviour, to an awakening of a sense of self-worth. Gilligan describes this state as follows: Then the morality that condones self-destruction in the name of responsible care is not repudiated as inadequate but is rather abandoned in the face of its threat to survival. Moral obligation, rather than expanding to include the self, is rejected completely when the failure of response leaves the woman unwilling any longer to protect others at what is now seen to be at her own expense (Gilligan 1993: 87).

While at the beginning of her marriage ‘el amor propio de Dolores estaba a salvo’ (33), she now feels ‘humillada’ (75) and her self-esteem is hurt. Dolores

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now struggles for emotional survival and is no longer willing to condone Antonio’s behaviour at the expense of her own dignity. It does not come as a surprise, then, that this is followed by a marital fight and the first incident of domestic violence (75-76), given that Antonio cannot cope with his wife’s newly-acquired rebelliousness. Shortly thereafter she starts distancing herself emotionally: Ahora todo cambiaba. Pasaba de reo a juez. Sentía una gran alegría al liberar su espíritu de la responsabilidad que había aceptado. Le parecía que su matrimonio estaba anulado, porque se había realizado sobre la base de un engaño. Se resignaría a vivir al lado de aquel hombre, pero no podría considerarlo como marido (106).

It now also occurs to her that the death of their children might be his fault: ‘Era un crimen que se uniera una muchacha sana e inocente a un hombre pervertido, gastado por los vicios, incapaz de cumplir los fines de la reproducción.’ (105) — another suggestion that she now rejects moral responsibility. The final straw, and hence her decision to leave her husband, result directly from the public scandal Antonio is involved in (‘No tuvo más que mirar a la peinadora para darse cuenta de que el escándalo se sabía ya en toda la ciudad.’ (138-139)): Le parecía imposible no sentir ya aquellos arrebatos de pasión, que la volvían loca sólo con la idea de que su marido pudiera mirar a otra; ya no era el amor lo que la preocupaba, era la repugnancia, el horror de permanecer al lado de aquel hombre. — Es preciso que yo me divorcie, que yo huya de aquí — se repetía —. Y si no puedo lograrlo, siempre será mejor morir que soportar esta existencia (138).

Once the divorcio proceedings are under way, she has to justify her behaviour to two of her husband’s aunts: — Pero tía — decía la joven atajando aquella letanía —, yo no hago nada malo en no querer continuar al lado de un hombre que me maltrata y... [...] — ¡Quiero defender mi vida, sin dejar que nadie se crea con derecho a intervenir en ella! [...] — Yo tengo derecho a ser feliz, tía — se atrevió a decir la joven—. Yo creo que mi felicidad es tan respetable como la ajena. — Sin duda, pero el divorcio, la separación de los matrimonios, ofende a Dios. — Más lo ofendería mi deseo de ser feliz sin el divorcio; porque ese deseo envolvería el de la muerte de mi marido (179-182, my emphasis).

These three statements illustrate the exact point in time when Dolores starts subscribing to an ethic of rights. After the transition from phase one to phase two Dolores needs to justify her position. Unlike the situation in the abortion study in

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which sheer survival (stage one) is followed by responsibility for the other (stage two), Dolores’ decision-making process goes from self-denial and responsibility for the other to a concentration on the self and sheer survival. The concentration on the self here is supported by an ethic of rights. As the above quotation shows, Dolores assumes three positions: firstly, she has done no wrong; secondly, nobody has a right to intervene in her life; thirdly, and most importantly, she has a right to be happy. At this juncture of her life Dolores desperately needs a rights discourse not only in order to justify her actions but also to entitle her to some happiness. Hence the representation of her character as selfish by her in-laws is opposed by her claim of rights in order to demonstrate that she is not at all selfish, and certainly less selfish than her husband. The ethic of rights in its either/or juxtaposition of conflicting rights claims also provides the necessary binary opposition for Dolores to formulate her desperation: it is either freedom/separation or death of either spouse. Interestingly, Gilligan’s claim that the ethic of rights runs the danger of being an ethic abstracted from life does not hold true at all in this case: Dolores’ ethic of rights is situation-based, it is a lifebelt in the hostile waters of her in-laws and her suffering is very real. What is more, Amy’s solution of ‘just talking it through’, that is, not having recourse to the law for dispute resolution, is not an option that is open to Dolores. In fact, ‘out-of-court settlements’ of various kinds (discussions with the aunts, sexual blackmail of the uncle and cousin, a letter from Antonio telling her he would forgive her) are tried at various times throughout the narrative, always coming from Antonio and his family. However, the positions of both parties are so extreme that ‘just talking it through’ would be futile. An out-of-court settlement in this narrative would come at the price of Dolores’ happiness. Gilligan states that an ethic of rights is a manifestation of equal respect and proceeds from the premise of equality, while the ethic of care rests on the premise of non-violence (Gilligan 1993: 173-174). Interestingly, Dolores’ behaviour is a manifestation of both these ethics: she certainly wants equal respect and aspires to equality (although she consistently settles for less), while at the same time she follows a philosophy of non-violence in that she does not want to hurt or harm her husband. The narrative of Dolores illustrates as much the failure of the ethic of care as it attests to the usefulness of the ethic of rights in certain situations of women’s lives. The limitations of an ethic of care become obvious in cases that cannot be settled without hurting someone. Gilligan herself relates this at length in her chapter entitled ‘Women’s rights and women’s judgment’ when she explains that formal rights empower women to work through the problems imposed by the ethic of care: the self-denial that can be implicit in an attempt not to hurt others. Women’s rights, then, can be considered a welcome protection for the female self when women’s moral reasoning is a conflict between self and other. Gilligan also observes that changes in women’s rights alter women’s moral judgement and admits that the concept of rights adds a second perspective to the consideration of moral problems.

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Stages three and four of Dolores’ decision-making process, then, are only a logical consequence of the lack of a public ethic of rights (the legal system) that involves equality or even only a modern divorce law. Stage three is characterised by almost total abandonment of concern for self: after Dolores has to move back into the marital home she resigns herself to a life imprisoned in the house of the husband she despises, as long as she does not have to perform el débito conyugal. While in stage three she settles for the ownership of her body, stage four forces her to opt for sheer survival. Her instinct of self-preservation sets in and she kills her husband in self-defence (267-271). It is ironic that a woman so eager not to harm her husband should be let down by the legal machinery to the extent that she has to commit a crime in order to have the one right that she had finally decided to settle for: ownership of her body. It is this tension between the ethic of care and the ethic of rights within the character of Dolores that makes her, arguably, the most interesting of the four heroines discussed in this chapter: caring for Pepe and not wanting to hurt Antonio (ethic of care), while equally insisting on her right to (limited) freedom and happiness (ethic of rights). At the beginning of my analysis I asked whether Dolores had a real choice, in the same way that the women in the abortion study had a real choice between keeping a child or aborting it. The comparison is more complex than may seem at first sight. The Roe v. Wade decision awarded women the right legally to abort a child and yet, as Gilligan’s abortion study shows, they still ask themselves if they have the moral right to do so. Hence it follows that, although legislation is not only the conditio sine qua non but also assists in a wider social context by giving women a public signal about their rights, women still have the private moral problem when facing this decision, given that they construct moral dilemmas in terms of conflicting responsibilities. Yet the story for Dolores is a different one: the only option for her to get out of her marriage is a rights-based approach, both public and private: publicly she needs to resort to the law to file for separation and privately she has to justify her decision using a rights discourse in front of her in-laws. Dolores has no moral problem once she has decided to leave her husband and her moral reasoning, of necessity, uses a rights-based approach. In this sense the rights discourse helps Dolores morally and would get her out of the marriage, were it not for the political manipulation of her husband. The law, despite its phallocentrism, does actually allow for extreme cases like Dolores’. According to the letter of the legal codes she should have been granted separation. It is the legal system that is to blame here for falling prey to political manipulation. This is, then, a victory of law over justice: phallocentric manipulations of the law as a means of social control win over a justice system that should, in theory, be a means of dispute resolution. Both parties (Dolores and Antonio) use the law for their own ends and it is ultimately due to the latter’s lack of a sense of justice and male egocentrism that he successfully manipulates the legal machinery. In the Roe v. Wade decision the law provides a means of social change and empowers women to make their own

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choices. By contrast, Dolores, in turning to the law to provide dispute resolution, encounters instead an instrument of social control and of complete male domination.

CONCLUSION In the introduction to this chapter I argued that the application of Gilligan’s theoretical framework to Burgos’s work allows interpretative complexity. After the above analysis I think it is fair to state that Burgos’s narratives also illustrate Gilligan’s theory. Gilligan argues that the discussions of moral dilemmas should be based on real-life situations, and not be separate from the social contingencies of a concrete scenario. Romera Navarro has also suggested that hypothetical legal thinking is only useful for the refinement of objective principles of justice, while subjective, contextual, justice requires emotional involvement. Carmen de Burgos’s work, then, exemplifies both Romera Navarro’s and Gilligan’s claims, the latter of whom argues that only when substance is given to hypothetical people is it possible to consider the injustice and individual suffering that their moral problems may reflect (Gilligan 1993: 100). As the above examples have shown, Burgos, by turning to fiction as a vehicle, allows the reader to judge moral dilemmas in their contextual particularity, showing the causes and consequences of women’s moral reasoning. What is more, the works analysed above juxtapose the theoretical legal thinking of the Spanish legal codes (which provide laws that are far-removed from real-life situations) with singular examples of the possible consequences of these laws in women’s lives. Just as lawyers have to interpret the legal texts, so Carmen de Burgos interprets the law and fictionalises its malfunctioning. She gives substance to hypothetical scenarios and delivers a sweeping blow to all things legal. Her legal critique goes further than straightforward criticism of the Spanish legal codes and a conclusion is somewhat difficult to formulate, because the texts discussed in this chapter defy easy categorisation. Nevertheless a few points can be established. El artículo 438 is the most extreme case of phallocentrism enshrined in positive law and here Burgos constructs a ‘show trial’ of how a man can take advantage of rights tacitly given to him by law. While this novella can be seen as the most severe criticism of positive law, in two other cases the legal critique is more complex since women’s (limited) rights are actually provided for in the legal codes: Manolita’s case is a prima facie case as is Dolores’ attempt to separate from her husband. Hence it is not always the legal codes that provide a tool of patriarchal power. Manifestations of all-encompassing male domination are to be found elsewhere. In El abogado it is the corrupt and selfish lawyer who ultimately ruins Manolita’s life and Burgos’s critique here is mainly aimed at the legal profession. In La malcasada it is the political influence of her in-laws that puts Dolores in the position of having to kill in self-defence. It follows, then, that in these instances the legal system fails women, not by the letter of the law, but

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by allowing itself to be manipulated by men with an inferior sense of justice. While these three texts depict law as a tool of patriarchal power, El hombre negro is the only example of the law employed as a tool against patriarchal power: the victory of a female sense of justice over a man’s lack of the same. Throughout the narratives studied in this chapter, the legal critique manifests itself mainly through a clash between the law and a female sense of justice. The four heroines in their ‘naivety’ and with their natural sense of justice are at a complete loss as to why the law is so unashamedly gendered. Their ethic of care conflicts with the ethic of rights of the dominant legal system. However, on closer examination it becomes clear that there is a lot more fluidity in women’s moral reasoning than the opposing concepts of ‘rights versus care’ suggest. Carmen de Burgos creates heroines who, in the first instance, subscribe to an ethic of care, only when this fails, do they subscribe to an ethic of rights. Dolores more than anybody else needs a rights discourse to get her out of her marriage, but the other three women also use a rights-based approach at some stage of their moral reasoning. Manolita uses an ethic of rights by suing her ex-lover, because she thinks listening to the rights discourse of other people is her only choice. María de las Angustias mainly uses an ethic of care which is intertwined with a rights discourse and Elvira’s ethic of care is contained within the phallocentric ethic of rights of the dominant legal system. It follows then that, in these narratives of abuse against women, the latter, of necessity, abandon a position of care and turn to an ethic of rights in the vain hope that this will further their legitimate claims. Gilligan’s approach suggests that morality is particular, contextual, and socially constructed. Gilligan is not integrating another moral voice into an existing moral discourse but redefining the moral realm itself (Hekman 1999: 94). The fact that María de las Angustias attempts to find a solution which would bring happiness for all concerned and that Manolita does her best to settle out of court means that these women are striving to redefine the dominant morality of their time. However, there is one overall shortcoming in Burgos’s texts. To my mind it is detrimental to a feminist legal critique that the one woman who beats the patriarchal system of her time (Elvira in El hombre negro) should also be the only one who does not even attempt to transgress the boundaries of the dominant ethic of rights. The only woman who claims victory is the one whose ethic of care is completely contained within the phallocentric form of law.

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Melodrama and Law Meanwhile, you and I will try to put infinite shades of grey into black and white (Kavanagh QC, 22 March 1999).1

The title of this concluding chapter suggests a correlation between melodrama and law, and yet at first sight nothing could be more divergent: the former is a literary genre associated with the feminine because of its concern with the display of emotion, while the latter is a system of social control, using apparent rationality as its most crucial characteristic. Why would one want to compare such diametrically opposed fields? When writing the previous chapters it became increasingly apparent that an analysis of these dis/continuities would not only be pertinent but also mutually enriching to two disciplines with ostensibly unrelated aims. Both melodrama and law operate on binary oppositions and are decried for this reductionism. Both law and melodrama also converge in their potential for social change and their focus on the conflict of human relationships. It is these convergences, amongst other things, that this chapter examines. Using melodrama theory, in particular Peter Brooks’ The Melodramatic Imagination (1985), and the law and literature debate as my theoretical framework, I will take the fiction of Burgos as a paradigmatic case to draw conclusions about the relation between law and melodrama. I will also draw on feminist critics as appropriate. It is my aim to show how two disciplines with disparate aims share important matters of common concern, and how transgressing the boundaries that separate them has a certain necessity. If law — supposedly the epitome of academic logic — is based on the same thought system as melodrama — purportedly the essence of emotional drivel — what does that tell us about the former’s sophistication in argument? Does the very

1 This quotation is taken from an episode of the court-room drama series on ITV television entitled Kavanagh QC in which the barrister Kavanagh talks to one of his colleagues complaining about law’s simplifications.

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comparison and the subsequent findings of continuities between the two diametrically opposed fields condemn the former and/or elevate the latter? It is these questions that the following chapter tries to shed light on. In his seminal text The Melodramatic Imagination (1985), Peter Brooks argues that the origins of melodrama go back to the French Revolution, ‘the moment that symbolically, and really, marks [...] the dissolution of an organic and hierarchically cohesive society, and the invalidation of the literary forms — tragedy and comedy of manners — that depended on such a society’ (Brooks 1985: 14-15). Daniel Gerould, while admitting that melodrama of revolution is a minor sub-genre, argues that there is a distinct subversive potential intrinsic to the genre. Its focus on the disadvantaged meant that audiences suffering similar victimisation could identify with the heroes and heroines (Gerould 1994: 185). This has frequently been used by the theatrical left to express subversive ideas to the audience in an attempt to agitate the masses and incite rebellion. It is not surprising, then, that another peak period of melodrama came after the Russian Revolution. In the 1920s melodrama was politically promoted through funding by the Soviet state, while intellectually it was furthered by debate and theorizing by leading writers in the Soviet performing arts (Gerould 1994: 191). In 1919 Anatolii Lunacharsky, playwright and drama critic, wrote an influential article in which he argued that melodrama is a superior dramatic genre and, following his lead, other influential writers became interested in this genre which could best represent revolutionary ideology (Gerould 1994: 192). Writers and theorists, like Viktor Shklovsky and Adrian Piotrovsky, experimented with its themes and techniques in the 1920s and modelled their popular propaganda theatre on French melodrama, targetting a similarly radical new society and identifying many of the same opponents: the aristocracy, the clergy and former rulers (Gerould 1994: 191-194). In voicing the same need for heroes and villains conveying simplistic messages, this propaganda theatre simply replaced a Christian worldview with dialectical materialism to ensure the ultimate triumph of the working class (Gerould 1994: 191-192).2 However, the history of melodrama also includes its use in popular fiction of the mid-nineteenth century, and its recycling in classic Hollywood cinema of the 1940s. Both cases are generally interpreted as a means of instilling bourgeois values that underpin stereotypical female roles. In both cases the audiences were assumed to be largely female. In mid-nineteenth century fiction at least the dramatization of female virtue threatened but rewarded frequently articulated a class agenda aimed at empowering the middle classes or even the labour aristocracy by depicting the nobility as unscrupulous villains. The genre’s denigration of the nobility through advocacy of superior middle-class virtues is

2

For more details regarding melodrama in the Soviet theatre, see Gerould (1980).

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empowering for the middle class (or artisanal) male, but imposes on the heroine the role of angel of the house confined to the private sphere. Melodrama’s historical association with the rise of the bourgeoisie can thus, at this particular historical juncture, make it progressive in class terms while simultaneously disempowering women — whose role is often relegated to that of virtuous victim. Melodrama could thus serve the purposes of the late nineteenth-century novel of domesticity and of 1940s Hollywood films, articulating the anxieties about male disempowerment — the threat no longer comes from the aristocracy but from women — by reinforcing bourgeois gender roles. The point I am interested in here is that melodrama’s radical potential in political terms has tended to be at odds with its representation of women. The general debate over the revolutionary versus the conservative in melodrama is commonplace by now, as is the more specific question of whether it reinforces or subverts the patriarchal gender regimes. Burgos’s fiction demonstrates that melodrama can also reveal an interpretative space that can work against the seemingly conservative textual surface. The point that needs stressing here is that it may precisely be this apparent conservatism which could conceivably convert it into a tool of social critique and change. Burgos appropriates the subversive potential of the genre for her feminist purposes and is acting in consonance with feminist demands of the time, namely that civil rights extended to male citizens by political liberalism should also be extended to women. Through women’s daily-life narratives she illustrates the horrific consequences of the contemporaneous legal system and draws attention to the injustices of law. It appears then that melodrama functions either in a subversive or reactionary way relative to the socio-historical context and can be used as a cultural tool of social change as well as control. Equally, throughout the history of law we can trace the application of law as a tool of social transformation or manipulation. As elaborated in the introduction, the question of whether law changes society or, conversely, social change alters law is one of the major debates of legal thought. Some argue that law is determined by the morality of the population and legislation can only achieve change by staying relatively close to social norms. Others, however, perceive law as a tool of programmed social change (Vago 1997: 287). Both contentions are likely to be correct; the more interesting question is under what precise circumstances does law entail social change. More interestingly still for the discussion of this chapter is the question of how melodrama feeds into the change of cultural values that in turn inform legislative change. How effective is melodrama in guiding its readers to evaluate the moral climate of their time? It seems pertinent here to examine the affective power of the melodramatic text. Burgos’s use of emotionalism to turn affect into moral sentiment is particularly noteworthy in the case studies examined in the previous chapters. As already stated, Burgos, by turning to fiction as a vehicle, allows the reader to judge moral dilemmas in their contextual particularity, showing the causes and

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consequences of women’s moral reasoning. An ethic of care so strongly promoted by the heroines is matched by equal care on the part of the reader. The question of the emotional power of popular texts is particularly interesting in the realm of feminism. Excessive emotion is often used as a distinguishing factor between high and low culture, the latter being decried for its appeal to ‘cheap emotionalism’, seen as the response of those who are not educated enough to be capable of a detached, ‘aesthetic’ reading. Jane Shattuc suggests that this position should be taken to task. In her excellent article ‘Having a good cry over The color purple’ she argues that feminists have had a constant love/hate relationship with melodrama and advocates a different approach: We too need to look to how ‘the intellectual feminine voice’ has served to undercut the political power of melodrama texts that invoke the pleasure of tears and political change, rather than the policing effect of intellectual distance. What is it that middle-class feminists fear that causes them to support intellectual distance over emotion? Is it fear of blacks and working-class women being ‘out of control’ and therefore outside ‘our’ control? […] We need to begin to rewrite the terms of the debate where emotion can be reasoned and tears mean active involvement, not disregarded as trite responses (Shattuc 1994: 149, 154).

The linking of femininity (and tears) with a political agenda suggests why feminism might adopt a genre that gives a voice to women who have hitherto been silenced. As already stated, the relation between emotions and morality does not necessarily have to be a dispassionate one. In his discussion about moral positions Dworkin argues that moral positions must be distinct from emotional reactions, not because moral positions are supposed to be dispassionate, but because the moral position is supposed to justify the emotional reaction, and not vice versa (Dworkin 1978: 250). In other words, the reader is likely to be outraged by the glaring injustices depicted in Burgos’s fiction, because their sense of justice is discriminatory and hence sides with the heroine, although the anthropological surface morality of most texts — El hombre negro is the notable exception – allows for a conservative conclusion ending in death, probable prison or misery for the deviating women. The devices of melodrama — extremes of emotional experience, unlikely coincidences, a compression of time, the desire to express everything — have usually given rise to melodramatic works failing to be highly valued. Peter Brooks, however, argues that this attitude blocks an understanding of the very premises of the genre: What we most retain from any consideration of melodramatic structures is the sense of fundamental bipolar contrast and clash. The world according to melodrama is built on an irreducible manichaeism, the conflict of good and evil as opposites not subject to compromise. Melodramatic dilemmas and choices are constructed on the either/or in its extreme form as the all-or-

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nothing. Polarization is both horizontal and vertical: characters represent extremes, passing from heights to depths, or the reverse, almost instantaneously. The middle ground and the middle condition are excluded (Brooks 1985: 36).

Melodramatic dilemmas are constructed on the basis of an either/or dichotomy. Interestingly, so is law with its obligation to construct truth in categories of right and wrong. Melodrama, given that it focuses on the oppressed and disadvantaged, needs of necessity to portray heroes and heroines who are victimised. Law, in its principal function of dispute resolution, becomes — almost by definition — only operable if there is a victim and a conflict of good versus evil. In the classic legal scenario of a court case, these parties are not willing to compromise, which is why the legal system intervenes as a means of dispute resolution. The verdict of such a court case is invariably built on binary oppositions of right or wrong, guilty or not guilty. The middle ground at this stage of legal arbitration is excluded. What is more, an analysis of the rhetorical features also shows continuities between melodrama and law. As Brooks rightly points out: The fundamental manichaeism of melodrama [...] should alert us that further analysis must be directed to the bipolar relation of its signs and their presentation. We must attend to melodramatic rhetoric. This will have the advantage of permitting us to confront what much criticism has simply dismissed from embarrassment: the overstatement and overemphasis of melodrama, its rhetorical excess. These are not accidental but intrinsic to the form (Brooks 1985: 36).

Characters in melodrama say what they think, clearly, directly and explicitly. They launch into their moral judgements of the world and characterise themselves and others with moral epithets: people are honest and virtuous or false, terrible, cruel and tyrannical. Epithets testify to a concern to be clear and unambiguous and relate to an audience that is unused to subtleties (Brooks 1985: 36-37). Despite the simplicity of melodramatic manicheism, moral epithets become a useful means of easy recognition: the reader can take a side and accept its credo. The genre’s very raison d’être is the possibility of saying everything, of expressing emotions that are almost overwhelming. Women in Burgos’s melodrama are not silenced: they speak out with dramatic clarity, even though society (as portrayed in the texts in which these women occur) clearly wants to silence them. More importantly, the omniscient feminist narrator, by explicitly intervening to question phallocratic society’s written or unwritten rules, makes the reader aware of its absurdities. Such interventions complement the emotionalism of the characters’ rhetorical excess by requiring an intellectual response on the part of the reader. In El artículo 438, for example, in a kind of

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summing-up3 the feminist narrator sits in judgement of the law: Alfredo estaba incluido, por entero, en el artículo 438. Había matado para lavar su honor mancillado, en el paroxismo de la pasión y de los celos, exasperado al descubrir la traición de su mujer y de su amigo. Era un gesto gallardo y simpático en un país que conservaba el espíritu calderoniano. [...] La ley promulgada por hombres, favorecía siempre a los hombres y humillaba a las mujeres. Ningún artículo del Código les daba a ellas aquella facilidad de asesinar a los infieles; ni siquiera el funesto artículo 438 decía: “Cualquiera de los dos esposos que sorprendiera en adulterio al otro”, sino: “El marido que sorprendiese en adulterio a su mujer”. [...] Era sólo un privilegio masculino. Los jueces se cuidarían mucho de no quebrantar aquel principio de autoridad que era como su privilegio, la lección indirecta que daban ellos mismos a sus propias mujeres (55).

This preoccupation with clear messages stems from having an audience or readership that is unused to subtleties. Hence also the frequent use of rhetorical figures like hyperbole, antithesis and oxymoron; again a sign of the genre’s denial of nuance and its determination to operate in bipolar relations stating unambiguous messages (Brooks 1985: 40). The melodramatic message is not only ‘cried out aloud’, but also communicated through music, gesture or the mise en scène. Although these means are less immediate in prose texts, the mise en scène can be described effectively by the narrator. In El abogado for example the courthouse is depicted in lugubrious terms: [Manolita] volvía a sentir un escalofrío de temor y repugnancia al pisar de nuevo el pavimento de aquella “Casa de Canónigos”, en la que tanto había sufrido durante los crueles días de la prueba de su pleito hasta la notificación de la sentencia. Sentía un ambiente de frío, de humedad, de algo desolado y amenazador en aquellos largos pasillos, entre el ir y venir de las gentes que pasaban casi siempre apresuradas, con un aspecto receloso, hablando en voz baja, como si todos estuviesen atemorizados y la casa de la Ley no fuese la casa de la Justicia (92).

After reading the above passage we are left with little doubt about the hopelessness of Manolita’s case. The courthouse itself, which is supposed to be a temple of justice representing the virtues of law, a visual metaphor for social equality, is described as a place that inspires fright and terror to those who seek legal help. And if that was not bad enough, this description is closely followed by an equally critical description of the legal profession:

3 The ‘summing-up’ is ‘the judge’s summary of a case made following the closing speeches. It usually includes a direction on points of law’ (Curzon 1994: 369-370).

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[Manolita] se arrimó paciente a la pared como todos aquellos individuos que hacían sus largas esperas viendo pasar apresurados a los dependientes de las escribanías con los legajos de papel sellado bajo el brazo, y la mirada alta y perdida, como si no quisieran ver ni oír lo que pasaba a su alrededor. Del mismo modo pasaban los Jueces, revestidos de togas, tocados de birretes, con su aspecto de incomunicatividad de todo, y un aire fosco. Unos señores atrabiliarios y secos, que en nada se recuerdan a la plácida Temis, y que no sonríen jamás y se apartan de las pasiones humanas que tienen que comprender y juzgar; las pasiones en las que está la ley verdadera. Los abogados y procuradores se distinguían por su aire de aplomo y lo familiar que les era el andar por aquel laberinto e introducirse en los despachos de los jueces, acompañados de clientes, casi siempre vacilantes y asustados. De las salas en que se celebran juicios llegaban hasta ella ruido de voces, acalladas por campanillazos. Más de una vez veía salir personas de aire amenazador, que se las juraban a jueces y abogados (92).

Again a metaphor is used to juxtapose law in theory and practice: Themis, the goddess of divine justice and law, is held up as an ideal that is to be aspired to. The juxtaposition of the legal profession and their clients is particularly noteworthy. The former appear to be the holders of the holy grail of legal power while the latter appear small, ignorant and insecure. Rhetorical excess, so familiar to us in melodrama, is also to be found in law. This is not particularly surprising given that historically the classical tradition of rhetoric was not understood as something foreign to law, but seen as organically related to the practice of it. Yet while language in literature is overtly artificial, language in law has discursive power. Legal writer Maria Aristodemou compares literary and legal language and argues that: While the artist, [...], admits, and sometimes draws attention to the contingency and artificiality of her constructions, legal language aims to conceal its artificial origins. While the artist confesses to the fact that his creations are arbitrary, incomplete, hypothetical, and provisional, the lawyer persists in pretending that they are natural, inevitable, and can provide not only all the answers, but also all the right answers. [...] Writing and reading, in law or literature, temporarily provide the illusion of anchors in a world devoid of foundations. [...] Theories of the origin and ends of law, theories of justice, freedom, rights, adjudication, and interpretation, all participate in the attempt to order our world, reducing its potential chaos into manageable categories. [...] Ideas, theories, myths have a special role to play in this search: they are the result of the human, (perhaps [...] the male), craving for order, generality, and origin and aim to reduce the chaotic, heterogeneous, and different to the known, one and identical (Aristodemou 2000: 2).

Thus as Aristodemou puts it, the male craving for (social) order manifests itself through the patriarchal tool of law, as, for example, in the male opposition to the legalisation of divorce or female suffrage. In law, unlike in literature, reading

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 and hence interpretation  requires giving normative meaning to legal texts

which has practical consequences for people’s lives. Despite the aim of concealing artificiality that Maria Aristodemou attributes to legal language, an analysis of the legal writers contemporary to Burgos shows that their style of writing is in fact not necessarily more dispassionate than that of Burgos’s essays (or even her fiction) and indeed at times it is positively melodramatic. Yet to say that law is always melodramatic is obviously a distortion. The more interesting question here is that of where we can find melodrama in legal writing. The legal codes themselves are unlikely to show any melodramatic mileage, since here the laws are laid down in neutral language. Looking at legal commentaries regarding adultery laws, however, we find an astonishing amount of rhetoric and emotionalism. Legal commentaries, that is legal analyses by legal practitioners, are usually published alongside the legal codes and hence have a lot of discursive power.4 This is closely followed by legal writers (be they practitioners or academics) engaging in debates of the utmost importance like divorce or suffrage. As demonstrated in the previous chapters, these debates show an alarming scarcity of a calm and reasoned discussion, attesting to the high stakes for patriarchy and its irrational anxieties of losing control over women. If we consider legal texts published in Spain between 1909 and 1920, we find that legal writers make full use of the power of the word and their rhetorical tools are often those of melodramatic excess. In a long introduction to his chapter Derechos políticos de la mujer Romera Navarro, for example, gives a melodramatic overview of the historical background to the status quo of women’s (lack of) political rights. He situates the beginning of all evil within the French Revolution: El siglo XIX vino a consolidar en los comienzos de su reinado, con todo el brío de la juventud, los derechos del hombre, que su antecesor había proclamado, y que por falta de vida no pudo conquistar. Y cuando sonó la hora de saludable reacción contra la monarquía patrimonial de derecho divino y contra todos los despotismos del viejo mundo político; cuando se proclamó la soberanía nacional, como fuente de donde emana el poder y la función gubernativa, y paralelamente a la teoría de los derechos innatos del hombre, fue desenvolviéndose la teoría de sus derechos políticos; cuando de ese agitado mar de revoluciones sin fin, brotó en el pasado siglo, un nuevo mundo, con su democracia ideal, con sus sentimientos de fraternidad y de progreso y libertad; cuando, finalmente, pasó la tormenta revolucionaria, pudo verse una cosa muy inexplicable y muy desconsoladora: se pudo ver entre los escombros del viejo mundo desplomado, destacarse una figura monolítica colosal, que subsistía a través del tiempo y de las revoluciones y de los progresos, y que el hombre no quería destruir. Y era ella la encarnación de todos los prejuicios,

4

The equivalent in literary studies would be a critical edition.

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de todos los errores y de todas las injusticias que el hombre había acumulado contra su compañera. Lucharon juntos en la demolición de una sociedad, y juntos construyeron los cimientos de la moderna. Y la mujer, que no vaciló en derramar su sangre pura y generosa en la lucha por la libertad y la fraternidad humana, vióse excluida, negada como miembro social, escarnecida; continuó esclava, oprimida, y sin derechos, porque los políticos, únicos que sirven de garantía a los demás, le fueron negados (Romera Navarro 1910: 155-156, emphasis mine).5

Melodramatic rhetoric is achieved in this passage by repetition (“cuando…”, “todo…”, “junto…”) as well as various figures of speech (see my emphases), such as hyperbole, metaphor and bombastic language in general, all of which are emotively disproportionate to the subject matter. The indulgence in strong emotionalism and the rhetorical excess is employed to highlight the inequality of denying women the same political rights as men. Romera Navarro also ridicules the evident lack of logical consistency, and hence lack of rationality, in dominant male politics at a moment in history when mankind was striving for universal human rights. The recourse to melodramatic rhetoric is not particularly surprising in conjunction with law. In his foreword to Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies, Judge Alex Kozinski compares moviemakers to lawyers and comes to the conclusion that: Both must capture, in a very short space, a slice of human existence, and make the audience see a story from their particular perspective. Both have to know which facts to include and which ones to leave out; when to appeal to emotion and when to reason; what to spoon-feed the audience and what to make them work out for themselves; when to do the expected and when the unexpected; when to script and when to improvise (Kozinski 1996: xi).

In the last few years critical legal studies has witnessed the advent of a new movement called ‘legal storytelling’. According to ‘storytellers’ the emotive and non-rational aspects of narratives are much more persuasive than rational argument. Storytelling, in the form of personalised accounts of plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses, is seen as a fundamental device to challenge racist, sexist and homophobic structures of society. Peter Brooks argues that: Narrative has the unique ability to embody the concrete experience of individuals and communities, to make other voices heard, to contest the very assumptions of legal judgment. Narrative is thus a form of countermajoritarian argument, a genre for oppositionists intent on showing up the exclusions that

5 For other legal discourse of melodramatic proportions, see also Espinós (1915), González de Echávarri y Vivanco (1912), Góngora Echenique (1918), Francos Rodríguez (1920), Crehuet (1920), López Vives (1914), Romera Navarro (1909).

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occur in legal business-as-usual — a way of saying, you cannot understand until you have listened to our story (Brooks 1996: 16).

Narratives are closer to concrete lived reality than an abstract system of thought such as law. Stories also often have a strong emotional effect and this is, of course, diametrically opposed to the legal faith in reason. Critics of legal storytelling indicate that personal stories might distort the legal debate, particularly if those stories are atypical, inaccurate or incomplete. Storytelling, they argue, can make no superior ethical claim, since it is not morally neutral. Some radical feminist scholars, however, have rejected the abstraction and scientific objectivity of rational argument and Catharine MacKinnon, in particular, has tried to rescue storytelling as method, arguing that it originated in powerlessness: The systematically excluded accounts, the pervasively silenced voices have been of certain people: the unequal. […] It is thus no coincidence that storytelling — bearing witness, giving account as we know and practice it — took shape within civil rights movements. Since 1968 the women’s liberation movement has contributed distinctively to this tradition through its speakouts and consciousness-raising. Women produced their analysis of women’s condition in this form because there was no choice. It was women’s experience, most crucially of sexual abuse, that had been left out of account. […] Women’s accounts have been more commonly called anecdotes, impressions, although they are at the very least testimony and, as such, evidence (MacKinnon 1996: 233-234).

What interests me here is that melodrama insofar as it is a narrative genre has the capacity to represent marginalised experiences of daily lives. As already stated in Chapter 3 and in line with Gilligan’s theory, Burgos reconstructs moral dilemmas in their contextual particularities and makes the reader understand cause and consequence of women’s behaviour. Such narratives can in general be considered a vehicle of dissent from the discursive power textuality has in law, since it conveys meanings that are marginalised by mainstream legal thinking. Burgos tells stories of how the law, the legal system and the legal profession form an unholy alliance with men whose moral reasoning is — at best — egotistical. The possibility of saying everything with almost overwhelming emotional expression (which according to Brooks is melodrama’s very raison d’être), was used by Burgos in two different ways. Firstly, it allowed her to explain law to readers in a factual kind of way and, secondly, it gave her an opening for overt legal critique. In addition to this quality of narrative the rhetorical excess of melodrama is part of the advocate’s (or writer’s) art of persuasion that permits him or her to send out unambiguous messages to judge, jury and reader. In law it is the judge and jury who are the ‘readers’ of the lawyer’s narrative of a particular case. In literature the reader is put equally into the position of judge

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and jury and decides for her/himself what the verdict should be. In Burgos’s novel La malcasada for example the heroine kills her husband in self-defence at the end of a long narrative of domestic violence and sexual abuse. The open ending of the novel invites the reader to sit in judgement on this woman who is arguably displaying some of the symptoms of Battered-Woman Syndrome.6 Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) is a collection of psychological symptoms, often considered a subcategory of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, recognised by the World Health Organisation in its classification of mental disorders. BWS is a psychological reaction that can occur when one is exposed to repeated trauma, such as domestic violence. According to the American Judges Association it includes at least three groups of symptoms, the most relevant of which in this context is the so-called “fight” response mode, in which: the body and mind prepare to deal with danger by becoming hypervigilant to cues of potential violence, resulting in an exaggerated startle response. The automatic nervous system becomes operational and the individual becomes more focused on the single task of self defense.7

After the court case in which Dolores, the heroine, had filed for legal separation has failed, she has to return to her marital home. Shortly after she settles in, her husband resumes his physical advances. These she resists initially, provoking him to both rage and pleasure: El sintió un placer brutal en la resistencia llegada a un extremo tan grande. Era mejor así. La tendría a fuerza. ¡La humillaría sin amor! [...] — No... no... no... Volvió a enfurecerlo la resistencia. — ¡No me hagas que te dé un golpe, Dolores! — ¡Déjame! — ¡Soy tu marido! El había llegado al colmo de la rabia. Se lanzó contra ella, dispuesto a hacer valer el derecho de su fuerza y la cogió de los brazos, retorciéndoselos sin piedad. [...] — ¡Socorro! ¿Socorro? ¿Se atrevía aquélla mujer a gritar para que la defendiesen de su marido? Se separó de ella, sujetándola brutalmente por el hombro con la mano izquierda, y la miró, queriendo influenciar con sus ojos coléricos. [...]

6 7

For an extensive bibliography on the subject, see Sheila Noonan (1996). American Judges Association at http//aja.ncsc.dni.us/domviol/page6.html, accessed January 2005.

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— ¡No! Entonces él la soltó y le descargó con la mano derecha un bofetón que le hizo tambalearse. Antonio fué a sostenerla, quizás asustado de su brutalidad, pero ella tuvo aún fuerzas para repetir: — ¡No! Entonces perdió el freno, ciego, excitado, comenzó a golpearla gritándole injurias: ¡Perra! ¡Perdida! ¡Mala hembra! [...] Caían las sillas, las mesas, se rompían los vasos y los objetos de tocador. Perseguida, acosada, Dolores cogió el alabastrón, colocado en la mesilla de noche, y lo arrojó a la cabeza de su marido. Antonio, al sentir el dolor perdió por completo la razón. Alzó la silla de la costura para aplastarla con ella de un golpe. Dolores vió el peligro, se amagó, queriendo escapar; estaba allí la canastilla de los hilos... el dedal... las tijeras... No se dió cuenta de nada... Fué un segundo... aleteó el odio, el deseo de librarse del único modo que podía hacerlo... gracias al crimen... [...] Tuvo un grito de terror: — ¡Lo he matado! Lo veía allí, a sus pies, lívido, con los ojos vidriosos, [...], y no sentía piedad de él, ni arrepentimiento de lo que había hecho. La habían obligado al crimen, negándole todo medio de separarse de aquel hombre. Pero tuvo la rápida intuición de que iban a venir a prenderla... La cárcel se le presentaba con todo su horror y toda su promiscuidad. Se veía vilipendiada, despreciada de todos. Nadie sería capaz de comprender el crimen pasional en una mujer. Nadie se daría cuenta jamás de que la mujer casada pudiese llegar al crimen para defender su castidad, el derecho a la posesión de sí misma, frente a su marido (267-271).

The reader asks her or himself if it was reasonable for Dolores to assume that Antonio, due to his history of domestic violence and his humiliation as a result of the court case, would lose his temper and try to kill her? Was her life really in danger, bearing in mind that self-defence, resulting in the death of the assailant, is only reasonable if the woman’s own life is at stake? Given that Antonio’s loss of self-control throughout the narrative increases in both frequency and venom, the reader is likely to absolve Dolores of her crime. What is more, the narrator, overtly sympathetic to feminist causes, can be considered the heroine’s defence lawyer with the result that Burgos’s fiction reads like casestudies. Burgos literally is a ‘storyteller’ who highlights the emotive aspects of personalised accounts of the powerless, in this case women. Burgos’s work reveals her as engaged in such a consciousness-raising exercise: the events in her fiction encapsulate many of the ideas presented in her theoretical works, attesting to her aim to write fiction which combined her theoretical feminist ideas with narratives of the daily lives of women. Her stories are by no means

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morally neutral, nor should they be considering the blatant legal and moral injustices women had to endure at that time. Interestingly, reading real case-studies of the time shows that the difference between law and literature is virtually non-existent: law and melodrama become indistinguishable narratives of bipolar excess and outrageously unlikely plots. In Cincuenta pleitos de divorcio fallados por la audiencia de Madrid the lawyer José Luis Castillejo tells the following about a divorce case which he entitles “¿De quién era hijo?”: Mientras el marido [...], decía que no era suyo, porque a la fecha de la concepción él no había estado con su mujer, ella, en cambio, contestaba muy resuelta que era suyo y muy suyo, pues lo que sucedía era que su marido cada día estaba peor de memoria. [...] El marido se fundaba ahora para decir que su mujer era adúltera y observaba conducta inmoral, en que tenía relaciones amorosas con una persona muy conocida, que entraba en su casa en cuanto de ella salía el marido, y, sobre todo, por el hecho singular de haber quedado ella en estado interesante en época en que no había estado reunido el matrimonio. La mujer se opuso a la demanda, diciendo que el adúltero era su marido, a quien por esta causa lo habían declarado divorciado los Tribunales eclesiásticos, y no ella, pues las relaciones de que hablaba con aquella persona conocida eran totalmente inexactas. En período de prueba declaró, entre otros testigos, una criada que tuvo el matrimonio varios años, y la cual no dudó en afirmar que la señora tenía relaciones amorosas con aquel personaje, el cual entraba en la casa en cuanto el marido se iba a la oficina, y con el cual también hizo la señora un viaje a Barcelona, ocupando de día los dos juntos el mismo coche cama. El médico encargado de dictaminar en la prueba pericial se vio negro para decir que no podía derivarse el adulterio del hecho de haber dado a luz la demandada, porque la concepción pudo tener lugar en época muy incierta. Y cuando le llegó el turno al Juez, informó que no procedía la demanda por el adulterio, pero sí por la causa octava de la ley del Divorcio, o sea por la conducta inmoral de la esposa (Castillejo 1934: 75-76).8

Again it is not particularly astonishing that by the time the law intervenes in people’s lives as a means of dispute resolution we find that narratives of human interaction, in particular those concerning family law, have invariably reached melodramatic proportions. The morality of melodrama is another pertinent intersection between the genre and law, if the latter has any inherent moral value. For Brooks, morality in melodrama is unambiguous and assures the reader that:

8

For case-studies in general, see Clemente de Diego and Miñana y Villagrasa (1928).

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the universe is in fact morally legible, [that] it possesses an ethical identity and significance. This assurance must be a central function of melodrama in the post-sacred universe: it relocates and rearticulates the most basic moral sentiments and celebrates the sign of the right. From its very inception during the Revolution — the moment when ethical symbols were patently, convulsively thrown into question — melodrama addressed itself to this relocation and rearticulation of an occulted morality (Brooks 1985: 43).

The celebration of right and condemnation of wrong, the binary constructions of virtue/villainy, justice/law and woman/man in its either/or exclusivity are intrinsic to the moral manicheisms of melodrama as well as to the law. One of the central functions of melodrama is to give an uncomplicated moral reading of the universe: it ought to assure us that ultimately there is a victory of good over evil; it ought to affirm that love and fair treatment are the proper human values that eventually succeed. However, exactly the opposite happens in the work of Carmen de Burgos: law at the time was so overtly gendered that her melodrama depicts the victory of evil over good and shows that an ethic of care is futile when faced with an overpowering legal system. Burgos not only subverts the conventions of melodrama, but also uses a genre based on manichean worldviews in order to criticise a legal system of melodramatic proportions, using the very construction of reality that is criticised. By using the genre of melodrama and its modes of excess she attempts to educate a readership that is not au fait with the intricacies of positive law. In both El artículo 438 (1921a) and La malcasada (1923d) law is explained to the reader by means of dialogues between the helpless heroines and their supposed saviours. In the former, for example, María de las Angustias exclaims: ‘¡Qué felices deben ser las naciones donde existe el divorcio!’ to which her lover Jaime replies: ‘Se cae en otros abusos; porque no hay ley mala si los hombres son buenos y viceversa. Pero en todo caso es mejor que entre nosotros’ (38). ‘There is no bad law amongst good men’ is a shorthand condemnation of a legal system that defies logic and serves the egocentric values of a patriarchal society. According to legal theorist Nicola Lacey it is not particularly surprising that law succumbs to cultural engineering. By interpreting the law, and hence a text, one introduces the cultural context into the debate and it is this contextualisation which can be marked by stereotyped assumptions about sex differences (Lacey 1998: 6). Lacey’s vantage point is the Anglo-American legal system of today, that is, she speaks from within an age of formal equality, in which the introduction of cultural values can only occur through the interpretation of legal texts, not the legal text itself. Women at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, were faced with the worst-case scenario: the lack of very basic human rights was codified, the legal text itself was phallocratic. In both cases, then and now, the claim of dominant legal discourse is that law is rational and objective. Yet this rationality, the most crucial characteristic of Western law, is itself a powerful marker of discourse. Susan Hekman argues that in epistemology

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difference has mainly been defined in terms of rationality. Women are labelled inferior, precisely because they are deemed incapable of rationally finding the truth that is easily accessible to the ‘rational’ man (Hekman 1999: 91). Using Max Weber’s analysis, Hekman illustrates that it was the academisation of the law that resulted in the uniquely abstract character of our legal system, a notion that is echoed by the Spanish legal writer Romera Navarro. The hegemony of law lies in its blind desire for logical consistency, found both in its generalisability and systematisation. The hegemony of the ethic of rights is almost unquestioned and other legal practices, which would be more in line with an ethic of care, are marginalised and devalued (Hekman 1999: 102-103). It is this abstract character and seeming logic of law that Burgos’s heroines struggle against. In these texts women appear naive, lack simple legal knowledge and are certainly emotional. Yet Burgos demonstrates that they possess a moral reasoning at any one time superior to that of their male counterparts and, more importantly, to that of the phallocratic legal system. Both law and melodrama use binary oppositions as their system of logic and their worldview, respectively. However, this ‘black-and-white’ view of the world is opposed by the infinite shades of grey of female moral reasoning. Women are able to see and act upon the complexity of moral dilemmas, not despite the fact that they are unversed in legal thinking, but precisely because of that fact. Their natural sense of justice has not been put through a legal education which would indoctrinate them with the logical system of binary oppositions. Burgos can also be interpreted in the tradition of writers who understood melodrama as a mode of experience. Thomas Elsaesser aptly observes that: These writers [Hugo, Balzac] understood melodrama as a form which carried its own values and already embodied its own significant content; it served as the literary equivalent of a particular, historically and socially conditioned mode of experience. Even if the situations and sentiments defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally unlike anything in real life, the structure had a truth and a life of its own, which an artist could make part of his material. This meant that those who consciously adopted melodramatic techniques of presentation did not necessarily do so out of incompetence nor always from a cynical distance, but by turning a body of techniques into a stylistic principle that carried out distinct overtones of spiritual crisis, they could put the finger on the texture of their social and human material while still being free to shape this material. For there is little doubt that the whole conception of life in nineteenthcentury Europe and England, [...] [was] often viewed in categories we would today call melodramatic — one can see this in painting, architecture, [...] the oratory in parliament, the tractarian rhetoric from the pulpit as well as the more private manifestations of religious sentiment (Elsaesser 1987: 49-50).

Two points are noteworthy here. Firstly, according to Elsaesser, melodrama is not a literary form used by incompetent writers, but by skilled ones who intentionally make full use of its codes of representation as a mode of social

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criticism. Hence the criticism levelled at Burgos by literary historians like Eugenio de Nora is a fine example of misinterpretation and ignorance of the complexity of her work as well as a complete error of judgement when he claims that: ‘La vigencia actual de una obra tan voluminosa (y tan útil en su momento) es desde luego escasa’ (Nora 1973: 49). Secondly, and more importantly, melodrama can also be read as fitting the Zeitgeist of a particular period. As already mentioned, legal discourse at the time of Burgos displays an astonishing amount of melodramatic rhetoric. Burgos, as a proponent of first wave feminism, took legal discourse as a necessary point of reference in order to analyse and denounce the impediments that stopped women from leading as independent a life as men. She employed melodrama as a vehicle of propaganda of first wave feminism, precisely because of its potential to incite rebellion against patriarchal oppression. Burgos exploited the affective power of melodrama in two ways: firstly, given that melodrama very strongly activates an audience’s participation, her texts were designed to anger readers so much that, as a result, they could not avoid engaging in the debate; secondly, she wrote about private moral dilemmas and could, by subverting the conventions of melodrama yet again, most poignantly illustrate the complexity of women’s moral reasoning. More importantly, as Elsaesser pertinently argues: The persistence of melodrama might indicate the ways in which popular culture has not only taken note of social crises [...], but has also resolutely refused to understand social change in other than private contexts and emotional terms. In this, there is obviously a healthy distrust of intellectualisation and abstract social theory — insisting that other structures of experience (those of suffering for instance) are more in keeping with reality. But it has also meant ignorance of the properly social and political dimensions of these changes and their causality, and consequently it has encouraged increasingly escapist forms of mass-entertainment (Elsaesser 1987: 47).

By no stretch of the imagination can Burgos’s fiction be considered an escapist form of entertainment. The extent to which Burgos’s fiction has been effective as an incitement to social change is, of course, equally debatable. Catharine MacKinnon provocatively argues that ‘dominant narratives are not called stories. They are called reality’ (MacKinnon 1996: 235). Dominant legal discourse is likely to exert much more social control over women than Burgos’s stories could possibly counteract. As already mentioned, the question of whether the law changes society or whether social change leads to modifications in the law has been one of the most contested issues in legal history. According to legal writer Steven Vago, changes in law may be induced by a voluntary and gradual shift in society’s morality. These shifts in social attitudes can be caused by a variety of factors such as changing social and economic conditions, politics and technology. In such cases, law is reactive and follows social change (Vago 1997: 287). Analysing both law and

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melodrama as tools of social change, the following observations can be made: if changes in the law may be induced by society’s changing morality, then literature can be instrumental in producing this shift in morality through its discussion of controversial issues. Indeed, Burgos’s work illustrates that one of the crucial issues in legal discourse at the time was the prevalent morality that prohibited such ‘revolutionary’ behaviour as divorce, adultery, remarriage or single motherhood. In this sense her fiction can be interpreted as a consciousness-raising exercise. The point here is not that melodrama is as effective a means of social change as law. It is rather that literature can feed into a public debate and change public morality, which in turn has an influence on the law. In fact, in the law and literature debate this is one of the perennial questions: how much influence can literature possibly have on law? It seems therefore pertinent to end this study by pointing out that Burgos’s efforts to work towards a modernisation of the divorce law were so acclaimed in her time that the legal expert Francisco Delgado commended her work in his official commentary on the law of 2 March 1932, when Spain finally adopted one of the most liberal divorce laws of the twentieth century (Delgado Iribarren 1932).

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WORKS CITED I WORKS OF CARMEN DE BURGOS Burgos, Carmen de (1903) ‘Lecturas para la mujer’, Diario Universal (6 October), 1 — (1904a) El divorcio en España, Madrid: Viuda de Rodríguez Serra — (1904b) Moderno tratado de labores, Barcelona: Elzeviriana — (1904c) ‘Prólogo’, in Paul Julius Möbius (1904) La inferioridad mental de la mujer: la deficiencia mental fisiológica de la mujer, Valencia: Sempere, 5-11 — (1905) ‘La protección á la mujer’, ABC (22 August), 4-5 — (1906) La mujer en España: conferencia pronunciada en la Asociación de la Prensa Italiana en Roma el 28 de Abril de 1906, Valencia: Sempere — (1907) El tesoro del castillo (El Cuento Semanal, 25), Madrid: J. Blass — (1908a) ‘Autocrítica’, Revista Crítica 1.1, 18 — (1908b) Cuentos de Colombine, Valencia: Sempere — (1908c) Senderos de vida (El Cuento Semanal, 81), Madrid: J. Blass — (1909a) ‘Autobiografía’, Prometeo 2.10, 42 — (1909b) En la guerra (El Cuento Semanal, 148), Madrid: J. Blass — (1909c) Modelos de cartas, Valencia: Prometeo — (1909d) La mujer en el hogar, Valencia: Sempere — (1911a) El honor de la familia (El Cuento Semanal, 238), Madrid: J. Blass — (1911b) Misión social de la mujer, conferencia pronunciada en la Sociedad “El Sitio”, 18 de febrero de1911, Bilbao: José Rojas Núñez — (1912a) La indecisa (El Libro Popular, 10), Madrid: López de Horno — (1912b) Influencias recíprocas entre la mujer y la literatura, Logroño: La Rioja — (1913) Al balcón, Valencia: Sempere — (1915a) El abogado (Los Contemporáneos, 340), Madrid: Alrededor del Mundo — (1915b) ‘La literatura ante los Tribunales: una carta de Colombine’, Heraldo de Madrid (15 July), 3 — (1916a) El arte de seducir, Madrid: SGEL — (1916b) El hombre negro (La Novela Corta, 27), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1916c) Villa María (La Novela Corta, 8), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1917a) Confidencias de artistas, Madrid: Sociedad Española de Librería — (1917b) Ellas y ellos ó ellos y ellas, Madrid: Alrededor del Mundo — (1917c) Pasiones (La Novela Corta, 81), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1917d) El perseguidor (La Novela Corta, 59), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1917e) ¿Quiere usted conocer los secretos del tocador?, Barcelona: Sopena — (1917f) La rampa, Madrid: Renacimiento — (1918a) La mejor film (La Novela Corta, 155), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1918b) ¡Todos menos ese! (La Novela Corta, 117), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1918c) Vademecum femenino, Valencia: Prometeo — (1918d) Venganza (La Novela Corta, 137), Madrid: Prensa Popular — (1919) Dos amores (La Novela Corta, 180), Madrid: Prensa Popular

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INDEX

El abogado, 19, 100, 110-21, 123, 133-4, 147, 154 Ackelsberg, Martha A., 27 Adultery, 11, 18, 22-3, 25, 29, 30, 39, 40, 51, 53-65, 123, 127, 1302, 136, 141, 156, 165 Aguirre, Luis, 27, 29, 30, 32 Álvarez Bustos, Arturo, 4 Álvarez Cid, José, 59 Amancebamiento, 56 Ángel del hogar, 72, 78, 98, 101, 136, 151 El arte de seducir, 7 El artículo 438, 3, 18-9, 24, 28-9, 30, 53-5, 61-5, 100, 127-37, 141, 147, 153-4, 162 Ashcroft, Bill, 12 Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas, 96 Balzac, Honoré de, 163 Baroja, Pío, 8, 37 Battered-Woman Syndrome, 10, 159 Benavente, Jacinto, 8 Bienes parafernales, 61-2, 128-9 Bischoff, Theodor von, 77 Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 37 Brooks, Peter, 19, 149-154, 157-8, 161-2 Campoamor, Clara, 3, 6, 34 Cañals, Salvador, 36, 37 Capel Martínez, Rosa María, 86 Castañeda, Paloma, 5 Castillejo, José Luis, 44, 161 Clemente de Diego, Felipe, 112, 161 Cleminson, Richard, 27 Código Civil, 14-6, 22, 26, 40, 42-3,

49-50, 56-8, 60-4, 112, 115, 125, 137, 142 Código Penal, 16, 48, 52-3, 55-61, 127, 129, 133, 135 Constitución, 6, 13, 15-6, 31, 42-3, 60, 85, 89 Crehuet, Diego María, 157 Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas, 3-6, 61 El Cuento Semanal, 7, 8 D’Arrast, Abbadie, 88 Davies, Catherine, 5-7 Delgado Iribarren, Francisco, 165 Destierro, 58-60, 64, 120-1, 125 Diario Universal, 5, 34 Difference feminism, see Feminism Divorce, 4-5, 7, 10-11, 16-9, 22-40, 44-8, 52-6, 61-66, 70, 99, 132-4, 137, 146, 155-6, 161-5 El divorcio en España, 18, 34, 106 Domestic violence, 28, 48-51, 64, 134, 137-9, 142, 144, 159-60 Durante, Francisco, 35, 36 Dworkin, Ronald, 21-6, 38, 44-5, 48, 53, 152 Elsaesser, Thomas, 17, 163-4 En la Guerra, 8 Enlightenment, 1-3, 12, 15 Enríquez de Salamanca, Cristina, 16-17, 60, 65, 72, 78-80, 89-91 Equality Equal basic liberties, 23, 33, 56 Equal rights, 1, 3, 23, 33, 41, 43, 48,56, 68-74, 87-8 and difference, 60, 68, 88, 98 Equity, 33, 85, 93

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180 Espinós, Víctor, 29, 47, 157 Ethic of care, 99-111, 114-5, 127, 130, 134-5, 137, 139, 141, 145, 146, 148, 152, 162-3 Ethic of rights, 99-100, 103-5, 110, 127, 129, 134-7, 139, 140-2, 1446, 148, 163 Evans, Richard J., 1-3, 73, 97

INDEX

27, 128-9, 148, 152 El honor de la familia, 8 Hoyos y Vinent, Antonio de, 8 Jagoe, Catherine, 78-80 Jiménez de Asúa, Luis, 54-5 La justicia del mar, 53 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 99-105

Fagoaga, Concha, 2, 6, 86, 91, 92 Fawcett, Millicent, 76 Feminism Difference, 19, 67-73, 76, 88, 956, 98 Equality, 19, 67-72, 83, 85, 88, 95, 96, 98 First wave, 1-2, 4, 22, 41, 69-70, 73, 164 Second wave, 69 Folguera Crespo, Pilar, 2-3 Foucault, Michel, 12 Franco Rubio, Gloria Angeles, 2 Francos Rodríguez, José, 71, 76, 803, 86-8, 93-8, 157 Fuller, Lon, 21 García Sanchiz, Federico, 8 Gilligan, Carol, 19, 99-114, 118-20, 126, 132, 136-7, 141-8, 158 Gómez de la Serna, Ramón, 5 Góngora Echenique, Manuel, 2730, 157 González de Echávarri y Vivanco, José María, 27, 31, 32, 157 Gouges, Olympe de, 1, 75 Granjel, Luis S., 8 Groizard y Gómez de la Serna, Alejandro, 55, 57, 60 Grotius, Hugo,15 Hart, Herbert L.A., 21 Heilbrun, Carolyn, 9-10 Hekman, Susan, 148, 162-3 Heraldo de Madrid, 5-6, 91-2, 120 Hobbes, Thomas, 15 El hombre negro, 19, 53, 100, 121-

La que se casó muy niña, 53 Lacey, Nicola, 21, 45, 68-70, 162 Langle Rubio, Emilio, 54-5, 58-60 Laqueur, Thomas, 19, 67, 71, 74-9, 83, 86, 88, 90, 98 Law Legal discourse, 11, 13-4, 17, 19, 23, 25-6, 34-6, 54, 60, 65, 67, 6971, 78-9, 80, 83, 85, 100, 106, 157, 162, 164-5 Legal personality, 2 Legal reform 2-4, 13, 69 Legal subjectivity, 1, 9, 12-15, 39, 42, 60, 65, 74, 78 Legal system, 13, 15, 18, 44, 4950, 71, 75, 100, 110-1, 117-8, 120, 127, 133-6, 139, 140-1, 1468, 151, 158, 162-3 Natural law, 15-6, 32, 34, 82 Positive law, 15-6, 22, 47, 60, 71, 129, 133-5, 138, 147, 162 Ley de enjuiciamiento civil, 50, 51 Ley electoral, 89 Liga Internacional de Mujeres Ibéricas e Hispanoamericanas, 4, 6, 61 Locke, John, 15 López Vives, Manuel, 157 López-Rey, Manuel, 55 Magnien, Brigitte, 8 Mala in se, 11, 25 Mala prohibita, 11, 25, 53 La malcasada, 18-9, 24, 28-9, 4460, 61, 100, 108, 136, 136-47, 159, 162

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181

INDEX

Malos tratos, see domestic violence Manicheism, 17-8, 121, 134, 136, 152-3, 162 Manslaughter, 63, 127, 137 Marañón, Gregorio, 81, 85 Martínez Sierra, Gregorio, 8 Maura, Antonio, 61 Medical discourse, 19, 71, 74-9, 81-4 Melodrama, 1, 4-7, 17-8, 19-20, 512, 64-5, 94, 116-7, 121, 127, 129, 135, 149-65 Mens rea, 13 Miñana y Villagrasa, Emilio, 112, 161 La misión social de la mujer, 18, 38-40 Moderno tratado de labores, 7 Monlau, Pedro Felipe, 78 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de, 15 Morality, 10-1, 18, 21-28, 34, 36, 38, 44-5, 47-8, 54, 57, 61, 64, 77, 95, 97, 99-101, 103-4, 108, 111, 120, 123-4, 128, 132, 143, 148, 151-2, 161-5 Moscucci, Ornella, 71, 76, 77, 79 Motherhood, 48, 68, 85, 94, 98, 165 La mujer en el hogar, 7 La mujer en España, 18, 38, 39, 90 La mujer moderna y sus derechos, 1, 7, 18-9, 23, 40, 44, 55, 71, 74, 79, 82-3, 90-1 Murder, 11, 25, 63, 65, 127-9 Nash, Mary, 3 Nelken, Margarita, 3 Nora, Eugenio de, 164 La Novela Corta, 8 Núñez Rey, Concepción, 7, 120-1 Out-of-court settlement, 105, 112, 115, 145 Pardo Bazán, Emilia, 8, 37 Parricidio, 59 Pateman, Carol, 99-101, 110-1, 132 Pérez de Ayala, Ramón, 8 Pérez Galdós, Benito, 8-9 Picón, Jacinto, 8

Positivism, 21 Prima facie, 49, 112, 119, 142, 147 Property, 2, 15, 17, 23, 45, 48, 61-2, 102-105, 128, 135-6 Provocation, 63, 127 ¿Quiere usted conocer los secretos del tocador?, 7 Quiero vivir mi vida, 53 Raciborski, Adam, 77 Rape, 11, 25, 45, 47, 50, 62, 110, 128-9, 137 Rawls, John, 12, 18, 22-3, 28, 33, 42, 45, 47, 50, 56, 61, 128 Resnik, Judith, 9-10 Rights Civil rights, 2, 41, 43, 70, 83, 151, 158 Equal, see Equality Human, 16, 42-3, 157, 162 Roe v. Wade, 101, 136, 146 Romera Navarro, Miguel, 28, 30-3, 41, 71, 75-6, 86, 91-8, 106-9, 124, 147, 156-7, 163 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 15, 100-1, 132 Sáinz de Robles, Federico C., 8-9 Scanlon, Geraldine, 3, 13, 14, 61, 79 Self-defence, 48, 146-7, 159-60 Senderos de vida, 8 Shattuc, Jane, 152 Simmel, Georg, 73-4 Smart, Carol, 9, 69 Social change, 3, 10-2, 36-8, 42, 65, 71, 76, 86, 92, 97, 136, 146, 149, 151, 164-5 Social control, 9, 11, 49, 50, 61-2, 65, 71, 79, 136, 146-7, 149, 164 Suárez de Figueroa, Augusto, 5 Suffrage, see vote El tesoro de la belleza, 7 El tesoro del Castillo, 8

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182 Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf, 32 Unamuno, Miguel de, 8, 37 Urquía, José de, 8 Uxoricidio, 63, 129 Vago, Steven, 10-1, 36, 79, 151, 164

INDEX

Valle-Inclán, Ramón María del, 8 Vote, 2, 4, 5-7, 9, 13, 16, 19, 23-4, 70-1, 76, 79, 83, 85-99, 155-6 Weber, Max, 163 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1