Costumbrista Description, Romantic Gaze: The Insufficiencies of Literary Discourse in Sab

Abstract

Published in Madrid in 1841, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab is a remarkable novel often read for its anti-slavery and proto-feminist messages. Indeed, it allows us to glimpse the genesis of ideas regarding both the emancipation of slaves and women in nineteenth-century Cuba. However, I argue that, despite the novelty of its subject matter, the combination of the literary languages of costumbrismo and romanticism, particularly in its sentimentalist form, are insufficient for mounting a critique of either slavery or patriarchy in this novel. Though these languages do indeed advance these positions in the novel, my analysis shows that the mixture of these two literary styles, one that requires a superficial reading through character types and another that needs a deep reading of surface phenomena, only exacerbates Cuba’s condition as a colony. In this way, Gómez de Avellaneda points out that the emancipation of slaves and women could be imagined at the time of the novel’s publication, but a literary language did not exist yet that could properly advocate the freedom of slaves and women. Indeed, any such attempt could commodify even further Cuba and its people.