Fictions of the Feminine in the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Press

Abstract

How was the female body perceived in the popular culture of late 19th-century Spain? Using an array of images from popular magazines of the day, this text finds that women were typically presented in ways that were reassuring to the emerging bourgeois culture. The author has organized the 190 images reproduces in the text into six broad categories, or fictions of the feminine: she reads women's bodies as a romantic symbol of beauty or evil; as a privileged link with the natural order; as a font of male inspiration; as a mouthpiece of bourgeois mores; as a focalised point of male fear and desire; and as an eroticised expression of Spanish exoticism and political ambitions. These imaginary visions of femininity, argues the author, were a response to, and also helped create, gendered stereotypes by suggesting ideal feminine behaviour and poses.