Homoeroticism and Gender Role Confusion in Pardo Bazán's Memorias de un solterón

Abstract

Emilia Pardo Bazán often vocalized her rejection of natural gender roles for men and women. At the same time, she adhered to the belief in social class distinctions based on inherent value and birth. In her 1896 novel Memorias de un solterón her views are outlined as she focuses on the ambiguously gendered protagonist, the bachelor Mauro Pareja, and his struggle to define himself along heterosexual, bourgeois lines. His success and subsequent marriage to the New Woman Feíta Neira underscore the middle class's privileged position and pins the success for national progress squarely on its shoulders. The novel likewise proposes increased equality between the sexes as the partners contribute equally to managing the household. The crossing of gender and class in this work allows Pardo Bazán to examine the future of her nation, which depended on a revision in gender roles as a necessary component of the country's modernization of social structures at the end of the nineteenth century.