Gabriela Mistral, Virginia Woolf, and the Writing of the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

This chapter traces the cultural intersections between Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral and Virginia Woolf, particularly through their aesthetic responses to the Spanish Civil War. A search for pacifist visions during the Spanish War led to the creation of transatlantic women’s modernist networks marked by anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchal ethical engagements. It argues that Mistral and Woolf were part of a web of transnational cultural communities within metropolitan centres such as London and Buenos Aires that were instrumental in the development of an international network of women’s writers preoccupied with the rise of fascism in Europe and the rest of the world.