Gender, Casticismo and Imperial Nations in Spain's Fin De Siècle: Blanca De Los Ríos's Sangre Española (1899)

Abstract

Blanca de los Rios (1859-1956) was among a number of fin-de-siecle Spanish writers who used the context of the War of Independence (1808-14) for diverg-ing national agendas. Her little-studied novella, Sangre espanola (1899), demonstrates the inseparability of nineteenth-century constructions of the Spanish nation from its imperial identity. Like the War of Independence, the Spanish-American War (1895-98) fuelled a fear of foreign imperialism that spilled over into cultural realms, giving rise to debates on what constituted a “pure” Spanish nation and literature, as exemplified in Miguel de Unamuno’s En torno al casticismo (1895). I read Sangre espanola against Unamuno’s work to highlight de los Rios’s engagement with paradigms of cultural inclusion and exclusion. I posit that the novella’s displacement of fin-de-siecle concerns around Spain’s identity, national and imperial, onto the War of Independence attempts to affirm an enduring essence untouched by imperial loss. While existing studies have identified some aspects of Sangre espanola’s imbrication with empire, I address issues pertinent to both colonization and women’s subjection—resistance, consent, and contract—and the novella’s vindication of women as actors in the masculine domain of war.