Vision y ceguera de Concha Espina: Su obra comprometida

Abstract

Vision y ceguera de Espina: su obra comprometida. By Elizabeth Rojas Auda. Madrid: Pliegos, 1998. 152 pages. Espina, a runner-up to Gabriela Mistral for the Nobel Prize in 1945, has suffered recently from a lack of deserved attention. Consequently, Rojas Auda's criticism is a timely addition to the studies of this author. In fact, perhaps the timeliness of Visi6n y ceguera de Espina is best explained in the following manner: only one of all the entries in Rojas Auda's bibliography and only eight from the MLA International Bibliography, date from the 1990s and deal exclusively with the novelist. Chapter i of Vision y ceguera is a biographical and literary introduction to the writer, in which the critic notes that although it is very difficult to situate Espina within a particular literary school, her writings can be basically divided into two parts: up to, and after, 1936. The beginning of the Spanish Civil War marks profundo cambio in her writings in that after that point adopta retorica e ideologia falangista (10). Chapter ii treats the theme of feminism, as found in La esfinge maragata and La virgen prudente. Rojas Auda states that feminismo es un analisis de cuestion economica (39), but then says that in the first novel Concha Espina plasma sus ideas respecto al como una union de amor mutuo y no una solucion economica (57). To the critic's credit, she does extensively detail how the educational preparation ha restringido a mujer a que su preparation sea para el matrimonio (41). La virgen prudente is a call-to-arms, la necesidad de un despertar femenino ante resignation pasiva (66), where dos personas . se comprometen el uno al otro a compartir ideales comunes (71) and tradition is actively rejected. After a historical discussion of socialismo cristiano, and the author's identification of said movement, the critic, in chapter iii, examines the aspects of the social novel as found in El metal de los muertos and Singladuras (Viaje Americano). Here again, the author states the right of the woman to choose her own life and presents her arguments on how the Church has failed. Additionally, in El metal, [la autora] nos muestra al gobierno espanol como complice en explotacion de los mineros (97). A relatively short examination of Singladuras, only one-half the average pages dedicated to the preceding novels, is summed up by the statement that the escritora aboga por reivindicacion de raza negra y su total integracion a sociedad (107). …