The Poet(isa) and the Queen: The Paradoxes of Royal Patronage in 1840s Spain

Abstract

The article indicates the significance of the relationship between Cuban poet, dramatist and novelist, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–73), and Queen Isabel II of Spain (1830–1904), Isabel, some sixteen years younger than Gertrudis, reigned for thirty-five years until she was deposed by the Revolution of 1868. It was during her reign that liberal Constitutionalism and a liberal economy, based on private property and the freedom of exchange, was finally established in Spain. Avellaneda was the most celebrated woman writer of the mid-nineteenth-century Spanishspeaking world. How did she achieve such celebrity? What were the conditions of her phenomenal success? Avellaneda owed her acclaim to the small circle of Spanish liberal letrados operating in Madrid, many of whom were politicians and military officers recently returned from exile, and in particular to the royal court and royal patronage. The young queen contributed to Avellaneda's social and symbolic capital in a very real sense. However, in the final instance the poet's success was not considered indicative of the potential of womankind but an unnatural exception and an aberration. Her social and symbolic capital was amassed during Isabel's reign but, when the queen was toppled from her pedestal, Avellaneda fell too.