Disabled Housewives: Impairment in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s “Las medias rojas” and “El revólver”

Abstract

Abstract In both “Las medias rojas” and “El revólver,” the young female protagonists begin as beautiful vibrant women until disabling older men restrict their movement through violence and intimidation. Whereas the peasant girl in “Las medias,” brutally beaten by her father, becomes permanently disfigured and partially blind, the upper-class woman, in “El revólver”, ultimately heals from post-traumatic anxiety through a form of narrative therapy at the spa. This paper argues that the differential treatment of female poverty and affluence illustrates how classist nineteenth-century society sanctions the punishment of the peasant woman while fostering the wellness of the well-to-do señora. Permanent disability is reserved for the poor.