Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Fashion, Gender, and Modernity in Galdós, Pardo Bazán, and Picón

Dorota Heneghan

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781612494319
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria europea

The importance of fashion in the construction and representation of gender and the formation of modern society in nineteenth-century Spanish narrative is the focus of Dorota Heneghan's Striking Their Modern Pose. The study moves beyond traditional interpretations that equate female passion for finery with symptoms of social ambition and the decline of the Spanish nation, and brings to light the manners in which nineteenth-century Spanish novelists drew attention to the connection between the complexities of fashionable female protagonists and the shifting limits of conventional womanhood to address the need to reformulate customary ideals of gender as a necessary condition for Spain to advance in the process of modernization. The project also sheds light on an area largely unexplored by previous studies: men's pursuit of fashion. Through the analysis of the richness of sartorial subtleties in Benito Pérez Galdós's and Emilia Pardo Bazán's portraits of their male characters, this book brings forward these writers' exposure of the much-denied bourgeois men's love for self-adornment and the incoherencies and contradictions in the allegedly monolithic, stable concept of nineteenth-century Spanish masculinity. While highlighting the ways in which the art of dressing smartly provided nineteenth-century Spanish novelists with effective means to voice their critique of conventional gender order, the book also lends insight into these authors' methods of manipulating sartorial signs to explore and to envision (as in the case of Pardo Bazán and Jacinto Octavio Picón) alternative models of masculinity and femininity. Threading through all chapters of the study is the idea propagated by all three of these writers that Spain's full integration into modernity required not only the redefinition of the feminine role, but the reconfiguration of the masculine one as well.

Chapter One

Fashioning Womanhood
and Making Modernity in
Galdós’s La desheredada

“¡El lujo! ¡Cuánto se puede escribir sobre este fenómeno de la vida moderna! … En Madrid es raro encontrar una mujer que no vaya bien vestida. … Los establecimientos … de objetos de gusto … se han generalizado tanto aquí que es incomprensible cómo viven y cómo encuentran despacho para tantos y tan variados artículos” (124–25), wrote Galdós in his 1893 article, “Vida de sociedad,” about the sartorial splendor of the Spanish woman and the development of the modern commercial world in Madrid. ¹ In the same year, Galdós also penned a social sketch, “El elegante.” In it, while complaining about the lack of variety, discomfort, and drabness of men’s clothing, he portrayed Spaniards as consumers of fashion. Additionally, while disapproving of their blind adherence to sartorial etiquette (“se asa en verano con sus chalecos inverosímiles y sus cuellos de cartón y en invierno se muere de frío dentro de los gabanes” [236]), the writer disclosed the importance that the Spanish male attached—whether willingly or not—to the rules of dressing.

The modishness of Madrilenian bourgeois society and the skillfulness with which both women and men deployed the sartorial art to manipulate their outward appearance was no surprise to Galdós at the end of the nineteenth century. As the richness of the voguish details in his portrait of Isidora Rufete in the first of his contemporary novels, La desheredada (1881), suggests, the author relied on fashion a decade earlier as an effective medium for addressing major concerns of his time. Yet the sartorial portrayal of Isidora, despite attracting a great deal of scholarly attention (Blanco Carpintero, “El siglo fetichista”; Hoffman, “¿Qué era?”; Martinell), has not been explored fully. Similar to other fashionable female protagonists in Galdós’s narratives such as Rosalía Bringas in La de Bringas (1884) and Eloísa Raimundo Bueno de Guzmán in Lo prohibido (1884–85), Isidora’s delight in elegant dresses and accessories mainly has been explained as a cause of her moral downfall and an example of rapacious consumerism motivated by her delusions of grandeur and social ambition (Collins 13–17; Jaffe 36–39; Anderson 57–62).²

Undeniably, Isidora’s moral downfall and social aspirations have much to do with her extravagant consumption of modish goods and shopping sprees. However, the author’s depictions of his protagonist’s love for fashion are, at the same time, too recurrent and too meticulous for one to believe that he included them in the novel merely to corroborate the century-old association between female penchant for sartorial luxury and lust or simply to voice his disapproval of the main character’s excessive consumerism. Indeed, for some time now, a number of critics have related the protagonist’s fondness for dressing stylishly to her resistance to the dominant nineteenth-century ideal of womanhood—the angel of the household—and her endeavors to assert her subjectivity in the public sphere. Fernández Cifuentes examined Isidora’s bid to assume agency through her self-construction as a luxurious commodity for sale (308–11). Sieburth emphasized the protagonist’s qualities as an artist who fashions her own destiny and subjectivity (27–48). Moreover, Tsuchiya discussed the main character’s consumption of finery in the context of her attempts to forge a new space of subjectivity in the public sphere (Marginal Subjects 28–45).

I agree with the insights of these scholars who linked Isidora’s pursuit of fashion to her defiance of conventional ideals of womanhood and her attempts to assume agency in the public sphere. However, I believe that the connection between the protagonist’s consumption of finery and the problematic notion of femininity is worth further exploration as Galdós tied it to issues beyond gender. In what follows, I expand on the role consumerism played in Galdós’s presentation of the uneven formation of modern womanhood and on the implication of this link for his stance on Spain’s transition to modernity. More specifically, I will demonstrate how the novelist’s manners of weaving the arguments of pro-consumerists and those who sought to reconcile consumerism with the dominant ideals of femininity into Isidora’s portraits enabled him to point to alternatives to the traditional paradigms of womanhood and, concurrently, to call attention to the superficial and, therefore, limited ways in which women could adopt them. Isidora’s ability to develop partially as subject and to participate to a certain extent in the public sphere—as critics have implied or explicitly stated in previous studies—is of particular interest here. Drawing on Celia Amorós’s observations that a truly democratic project requires engagement of fully autonomous subjects of both gender (24–27), in this study I reveal how Galdós’s use of Isidora’s pursuit of fashion to dramatize the need to reconfigure the traditional limits of womanhood relates to the author’s position on the country’s slow modernization and, simultaneously, to his wish for Spain to become a modern nation.

The nineteenth-century moralists’ and conservative intellectuals’ arguments against women’s consumption of sartorial goods are well documented by scholars. Although female overspending on fashion was a subject of strong criticism already prior to the nineteenth century (Aldaraca, El Ángel del Hogar 88–100), it was after the confiscation of ecclesiastical assets in 1836 and again in 1854 that the Spanish clergy and the conservative sector of the bourgeoisie launched a vigorous campaign against women’s consumption of finery (Andreu 19–22). In 1869, in “La moralidad en España,” the conservative intellectual J. Jimeno Aguis directly related the increasing number of illegitimate children between 1858 and 1864 to the female penchant for modish goods (Andreu 22). In the same year, the economist Antonio María Segovia, in his lecture “Del lujo,” linked women’s proclivity for sartorial ostentation to illness by referring to it in terms of fever and infection (Jagoe 88). Additionally, in 1875, Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical “Concerning Women and Luxury,” warned that women’s excessive spending lead to economic disorder and idleness and was considered, therefore, a sin (Aldaraca, El Ángel del Hogar 102).

Of course, since all of the disastrous consequences of the female love of luxury addressed in the writings by the aforementioned moralists—illegitimate sexual activities, idleness, economic disorder, and disease—are dutifully recorded in Isidora’s story, to some critics the portrait of Galdós’s protagonist fits like a glove the classic anti-consumerist example of a fallen woman. “No le gusta trabajar, no hace más que emperifollarse … y lavarse” (186), doña Laura complains to her husband about Isidora’s laziness and the amount of water that the young woman spends on her baths. Later, the narrator also confirms that taking care of her toilette and her out-of-wedlock son’s external appearance is how the protagonist fills her idle hours: “Entre bañarse, peinarse, vestir y arreglar a Riquín, se le iba la mañana. Por la tarde … solía matar el fastidio en las iglesias” (317). The economic disorder (“¿En qué había gastado? … no lo sabía” [243]) is a result of Isidora’s overbuying of luxuries: “En perfumería había adquirido lo bastante para tres años” (243). In addition, by the main character’s own admission, it is “este defecto de volverme loca con el lujo” (489), in other words, her incurable addiction to finery that engages her in the illegitimate sexual activities with men who are willing and able to pay her bills.

However, Galdós’s sartorial presentation of Isidora and the world around her suggests more than meets the eye. As Kathleen E. Davis has claimed, “concentration on the works of the anti-consumerists has tended to obscure the fact that there was social debate about the ethics of consumerism, both in journalism and in fiction” (12–13; Davis’s italics) and that “fashion writers, as well as popular and literary authors, answered the charges of anti-consumerists by attempting to reconcile consumer values with domesticity” (13). In support of her argument, Davis examines the pro-consumerists’ logic as outlined during the late 1880s and 1890s in articles by the Spanish fashion critic Blanca Valmont and the echoing of this reasoning in Galdós’s Lo prohibido.

Yet voices of those who expressed a viewpoint about consumer values different from the common anti-materialist and created an image of an acquisitive female other than that of a fallen woman marked their presence (at least in nonfiction works) prior to the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Valis, The Culture 141–49). As for Galdós’s narratives, the author examined different types of femininity that emerged in the context of the debate of female consumption of fashion as presented not only from the perspective of the anti-consumerists, but also from the standpoint of their opponents and those who sought to reconcile modern consumer values with domestic ideology already in La desheredada. As early as the first part of the novel, in his account of Isidora’s observations on the elegance of the Madrilenian crowd, the narrator laid out some of the pro-consumerists’ arguments and characteristics of a modern, urbane type of woman that was promoted in their discourse. Consider the description of Isidora’s veneration of the sophisticatedly attired couples in El Retiro during her tour with Miquis.

Aquella naturaleza … despertaba en su … espíritu instintos … de candoroso salvajismo. Pero … comprendió que aquello era un campo urbano … Por allí andaban damas y caballeros … con guantes, sombrilla … se acostumbró … a considerar el Retiro … como una … adaptación de la naturaleza a la cultura; comprendió que el hombre que ha domesticado a las bestias, ha sabido también civilizar al bosque. … Para otra vez … traeré yo también mis guantes y mi sombrilla. (118)

Underlying the protagonist’s admiration is the idea (and at the same time one of the major pro-consumerist arguments in the debate) that luxury is “alma del progreso y de la civilización” (1), as Fernando Garrido put it in his essay, “El lujo,” published in 1857 in El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia.³ What enraptures Isidora, who had arrived only a few days before in the capital from La Mancha, is the cultured appearance of El Retiro crowd and the chic of the urban, modern woman who exhibits, as she was encouraged to do in the pro-consumerists’ discourse, her fashionable accouterments. “[Q]ue ostentáis diamantes, que os cubrís de encajes, pisáis terciopelo y arrastráis sedas … Alzad la voz, y decidles … que ya es tarde para contener vuestra vanidad excitada … Si la virtud os condena, ¡qué importa!; la civilización os absuelve” (108), wrote social commentator José Selgas in his 1871 article “El lujo de las mujeres.”

That Isidora lays her eyes precisely on the gloves and parasol is, of course, scarcely a coincidence here. Although, as the contemporary fashion historian Pena González noted, already in the early decades of the nineteenth century both items constituted “accesorio imprescindible de señorita cuya principal función era la de preservar la tez del bronceado” (“Indumentaria” 101), as time moved on, these posh accessories became the hallmarks of cultural progress and sophistication. More than any other articles of fashion, they attested to the celebration of female taste and beauty in the urban space and emphasized women’s participation, however limited, in public life. “Se llevan puestos los guantes para salir a la calle, para el paseo, la iglesia, el jardín y el teatro … los guantes deben usarse siempre, y por todos los que frecuentan el mundo social” (279–80), counseled well-known Catalonian journalist and playwright Alfredo Pallardó writing under the pseudonym of Viscountess Bestard de la Torre in La elegancia en el trato social: Reglas de etiqueta y cortesanía en todos los actos de la vida (1898).⁴

Additionally, the narrator’s description of Isidora’s excitement over the mind-boggling variety of articles of clothing, styles, and colors displayed by the smartly dressed throng in the Castellana correlates with the pro-consumerists’ stance that the proliferation of goods stimulated female creativity and with the image of a fashionable, modern woman conversant in employing sartorial items as a means of artistic self-expression.

Los bustos de las damas … los variados matices de las sombrillas, las libreas, las pieles, producían ante su vista un efecto igual al que en cualquiera de nosotros produciría la contemplación de un magnífico fresco … —¡Qué variedad de sombreros! ¡Mira éste, mira aquél … ! … (134–35)

Commenting on this scene, Collin McKinney points to Isidora’s failure to note “lo que todo el mundo ve” (133) and what Miquis observes in the Castellana spectacle, namely, the parade of social aspirants. While “Miquis identifies them as ‘cursi’” (60), wrote McKinney, “Isidora, on the other hand, accepts the spectacle at face value”(60). Yet the main character’s ignorance is not all that this scene reveals. Given the statement “Isidora, para quien aquel espectáculo, además de ser enteramente nuevo, tenía particulares seducciones, vio algo más de lo que vemos todos” (133), which points to the disparity in perspectives and, more importantly, as the use of the first person plural of the verb ver in conjunction with the word todos implies, to the limitation of others’ vision (besides that of the protagonist), it remains questionable whether the main character, indeed, is the only one who takes the Castellana spectacle at face value.⁵ While Isidora refuses to acknowledge what Miquis describes as “trampas, fanatismo, ignorancia, presunción” (135) of the passing society, the young doctor proves to be equally unwilling and/or unable to notice anything else beyond the tackiness, vanity, and social ambition of the richly adorned crowd.

There is no doubt that social aspiration and vanity are at the heart of the narrator’s depiction of Isidora’s enthrallment with the sartorial splendor in this scene. After all, at this point, the young woman firmly believes herself to be part of the marquesa de Aransis’s family. However, the narrator’s meticulous account of pattern, fabrics, and colors and his repeated references to Isidora’s astonishment and excitement over the originality of items foreground the idea that there is something more than mere social distinction that the protagonist associates with the modish crowd. By drawing attention to the variety of fashionable goods (underscored through the use of the demonstrative pronouns éste and aquél) and Isidora’s amazement with them (reinforced through the presence of imperatives), the narrator takes pains to show that she is equally, if not more, awestruck by the wide assortment of stylish toilettes. “Isidora no volvía de su asombro”; “sus ojos maravillados”; “¡Vaya un vestidito!” (133; 134; 135). What the main character admires, thus, parallel to class distinction, are the multiple and creative manners in which a bourgeois woman could arrange her look outside her domestic walls. She is flabbergasted, in other words, by the agency and autonomy that the richness of fashionable commodities and the plethora of styles could render a woman (if only in limited ways) in terms of her artistic self-expression in the public space.

Lastly, there is the pro-consumerist argument of democratization of fashion that Galdós explores in Isidora’s story. Already in 1852, an anonymous writer for El mensajero de las modas commented that dressing à la mode was no longer an exclusive privilege of upper-class ladies, but a prerogative of all women in Spain. “En otro tiempo solo inspiraba la moda sus caprichos a las clases elevadas de la sociedad … Al presente puede asegurarse que ha invadido todo el dominio social. … la gracia y el lujo pertenece hoy por derecho de conquista a todas las mujeres” (qtd. in Pena González, Traje 47). As the century progressed and articles of clothing became mass-produced, pro-consumerists further developed their claim that fashion was now available to all by insisting that dressing stylishly was a matter of elegance (which they equated, paradoxically like their opponents, with simplicity) and not opulence. Some of them went as far in their argument as to contend that a woman’s sense of style and her talent for dressing could alone qualify her to aspire to move in the highest circles of society (K. E. Davis 56; 67–68).⁶

The resonance of this logic, as well as the skepticism toward it, is easily detectable in Isidora’s story. At the end of the first part of the novel, the protagonist’s uncle wrote: “Por más que aseguren que esta igualdad se ha iniciado ya en … el vestido … a mí no me entra eso. … ¿Los salones de la aristocracia se abren a todo el mundo … ? A otro perro con ese hueso” (283). As for Isidora, she shares her uncle’s elitist views as long as she believes in her claim to be part of the marquesa de Aransis family. However, as winning her lawsuit and gaining admittance to society via the traditional route—through noble lineage and wealth—becomes increasingly problematic, she turns to the pro-consumerist idea of equality.

Contemplóse en el gran espejo, embelesada de su hermosura. … Isidora encontraba mundos de poesía en aquella reproducción de sí misma. ¡Qué diría la sociedad si pudiera gozar de tal imagen! ¡Cómo la admirarían, y con qué entusiasmo habían de celebrarla las lenguas de la fama! … Ella era noble por su nacimiento, y si no lo fuera, bastaría a darle la ejecutoria su gran belleza, su figura, sus gustos delicados, sus simpatías por toda cosa elegante y superior. (401; my italics)

One could attribute the presence of verbs in the conditional form in this excerpt to the narrator’s skeptical attitude toward Isidora’s wishful thinking that her sophisticated taste in dressing and grace alone would qualify her to become, as pro-consumerists implied, and as was the case of the Modern Parisian woman, “the new ‘aristocrat’ in a bourgeois capitalist world” (Steele, Paris 75). However, the use of the conditional, particularly in combination with reference to France through the setting of this scene—Madame Eponina’s shop—suggests more than the narrator’s distance from sharing the protagonist’s personal hopes. “Pues vete a París. Allí encontrarás tu puesto. … Aquí no las gastamos de tanto lujo como tú. … Aquí te degradarás demasiado” (404), Miquis tells Isidora during their conversation in the French dressmaker’s establishment. In France, as Steele wrote, drawing on Balzac’s essay “La Femme comme il faut” (1839), the ideal of the Modern Parisian “embraced women across the social spectrum” (Paris 75) and “was a representative of both Society and modern society” (Paris 75). In Spain, however, the situation was different. While even prior to the Revolution of 1868, as Benedetto Croce and David Ringrose have shown, the country “was making meaningful progress toward a modern economy, society, and standard of living” (Ringrose 64), contradictions between tradition and modernity still persisted in various aspects of life.⁷ Consequently, it was more problematic for a Spanish bourgeois woman to develop fully into a figure similar to the “Parisienne” than it was for a middle-class female in Madame Eponina’s homeland. Hence, this is what Galdós appears to convey through his narrator’s skeptical attitude and his allusion to France in this scene and in his exploration of the characteristics of the modern urban type of woman promoted in the pro-consumerist discourse in general. Although the progressive type of femininity endorsed by the pro-consumerists was appealing to bourgeois women in Spain, in reality, this ideal was dif...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Fashioning Womanhood and Making Modernity in Galdós’s La desheredada
• Chapter Two: What Is a Man of Fashion? Manuel Pez and the Dandy in Galdós’s La de Bringas
• Chapter Three: Fashion and Feminity in Pardo Bazán’s Insolación
• Chapter Four: The Sartorial Charm of the Modern Man in Pardo Bazán’s Insolación
• Chapter Five: Dressing the New Woman in Picón’s Dulce y sabrosa
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Book
• About the Author