Matilde Cherner and the Ambiguities of a Pioneering Speech The Articles from La Ilustración de la Mujer (1875) and the Novel María Magdalena (1880)

Abstract

Matilde Cherner (1833-1880) published under her male pseudonym – Rafael Luna – María Magdalena, a novel about prostitution that was silenced despite the concealment of her authorial identity. This is a pioneering reflection, but it contradicts the ideologically more ambiguous discourse of her series of articles titled Women Painted by Themselves and published under her name in La Ilustración de la Mujer in 1875. This article aims to analyse these ambiguities, so frequent in the authors of the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as the opacity in the treatment of violence against women.