Forty Lost Years by Rosa Maria Arquimbau

Abstract

Reviewed by: Forty Lost Years by Rosa Maria Arquimbau Estefanía Tocado Arquimbau, Rosa Maria. Forty Lost Years. Translated by Peter Bush. Fum d’Estampa Press, 2021. Pp. 156. ISBN 978-1-913744-01-4. The revival of several twentieth-and twenty-first-century female authors, whose literary production has been ignored or disregarded due to the Spanish Civil War and Francoism, has become predominant in the last few years. The work of Rosa Maria Arquimbau i Cardil (Barcelona, 1909–92), mostly unknown until quite recently, has experienced a growing interest by scholars and students in the Catalan literary field. The nowadays well-known Catalan writer, a [End Page 642] contemporary of Mercè Rodoreda, has been brought back into the light thanks to the work of several academics whose efforts to underline Arquimbau’s feminist and political literary production have finally been rewarded. Among those, the detailed work of Julià Guillamon’s L’Enigma Arquimbau: Sexe, feminisme i literatura a l’era del flirt has been a milestone to make her work available to a broader audience, underlining her engagement with women’s rights as a journalist, feminist, and suffragist. Along these lines, Arquimbau’s Quaranta anys perduts (1940) has found its way to English-language readers through Peter Bush’s translation Forty Lost Years (2021). Bush’s straightforward translation makes the reading easy while capturing the spirit of the informal dialogues that are both abundant in the novel and still relevant. In a direct way, Bush facilitates the reader to enter Arquimbau’s world while he opens the door to the early years of the Republic in Barcelona through to the establishment of Francoism, all through the eyes of its protagonist Laura Vidal, a working-class seamstress. As the war and the fall of the Republic starts, Laura chooses exile since her views of an independent and feminist woman clash with the Francoist patriarchal and restrictive views of women’s role in society. The reduction of women’s rights and the acute class differences are prevalent throughout the novel that, despite starting as a bildungsroman, evolves into a more complex narrative where politics, sex, and social climbing surround the life of the protagonist. Once Laura decides to return to Barcelona to open her own business as a seamstress, her new clientele are the women of Catalan high society whose lifestyle is far from following the dogmatic control that Francoism and the Feminine Section used to impose on working-and middle-class women. The high-class women show a more liberal attitude towards sexuality, and it is often used as a social ladder, while most women suffer the coercive control of a fascist society. As those long forty years of Francoist government pass by, she grows older and often she feels disconnected from her modest origins as well as those who support her leftist political views, being critical with both sides. Clearly, Laura’s criticism of capitalism, politics, and social hierarchy are not far from those we encounter today making this novel still significant to the world we live in since she deals with universal issues. Forty Long Years is a novel that scholars as well as the general audience will enjoy for its up to date look at unresolved problems that are still prevailing since its first publication in 1940. Many of her reflections are as contemporary and as pertinent as they first were through the eyes of her protagonist, pointing out the importance of rediscovering the work of silenced women writers, such as Arquimbau, that were once forgotten and now are newly revived. Estefanía Tocado Georgetown University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc