Arranged Marriages and Imprisonment: The Domestic Gothic Horrors of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s La baronesa de Joux (1844) and Dolores (1851)

Abstract

Cuban writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–73) produced a number of texts that show clear Gothic characteristics as part of Hispanic Romanticism in the mid-nineteenth century. Utilizing La baronesa de Joux and Dolores, two of her tradiciones (traditions), which are stories or short novels with fantastic elements, I examine how Gómez de Avellaneda employs techniques and tropes associated with women’s Gothic writing to communicate proto-feminist messages and to reveal the potential dangers of marriage and domesticity. The stories are set in medieval castles, incorporate features such as spirits, patriarchal violence, malaise, and incarceration and have not been previously analyzed using theoretical approaches associated with female Gothic writing popularized by critics such as Anne K. Mellor and Abigail Lee Six. Through these tradiciones with Gothic features, Gómez de Avellaneda details surprising events and questions societal norms for women’s roles in matrimony.