Overview

"How was the female body perceived in the popular culture of late 19th-century Spain? Using an array of images from popular magazines of the day, this text finds that women were typically presented in ways that were reassuring to the emerging bourgeois culture. The author has organized the 190 images reproduces in the text into six broad categories, or ""fictions of the feminine"": she reads women's bodies as a romantic symbol of beauty or evil; as a privileged link with the natural order; as a font of male inspiration; as a mouthpiece of bourgeois mores; as a focalised point of male fear and desire; and as an eroticised expression of Spanish exoticism and political ambitions. These imaginary visions of femininity, argues the author, were a response to, and also helped create, gendered stereotypes by suggesting ideal feminine behaviour and poses."

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9780271019130

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Reviews

Time will come when students of Spanish literature and culture will ask the librarians of their institutions to ensure that they have 'the Charnon-Deutsch trilogy.' Although not overtly billed as being a companion volume to Lou Charnon-Deutsch's two landmark books of the 1990s which deal with late nineteenth-century fiction (Gender and Representation: Women in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Realist Fiction and Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction by Women , Penn State), this handsomely illustrated volume forms a complementary third corner to them. -Alison Sinclair, Modern Language Review Fictions of the Feminine is a well-conceived and eloquently argued book that breaks new ground in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural studies. Each chapter forms a cohesive unit, with the illustrations, numerous and well chosen, facilitating the understanding of the overall project of the book. The thoroughness of the research involved in its preparation (over two thousand images were consulted by the author), together with her original commentaries on these images, is indeed impressive. Charnon-Deutsch should be commended for a superb job in combining her knowledge of nineteenth-century history, politics, and culture (including a variety of representational media, from 'high' literature to popular magazines) with the critical insights of contemporary feminist, psychoanalytic, and cultural theories. Fictions of the Feminine represents the best in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural criticism and will be indispensable reading for all those interested in nineteenth-century literary, cultural, and gender studies. -Akiko Tsuchiya, Washington University, St. Louis

Fictions of the Feminine is a well-conceived and eloquently argued book that breaks new ground in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural studies. Each chapter forms a cohesive unit, with the illustrations, numerous and well chosen, facilitating the understanding of the overall project of the book. The thoroughness of the research involved in its preparation (over two thousand images were consulted by the author), together with her original commentaries on these images, is indeed impressive. Charnon-Deutsch should be commended for a superb job in combining her knowledge of nineteenth-century history, politics, and culture (including a variety of representational media, from 'high' literature to popular magazines) with the critical insights of contemporary feminist, psychoanalytic, and cultural theories. Fictions of the Feminine represents the best in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural criticism and will be indispensable reading for all those interested in nineteenth-century literary, cultural, and gender studies. --Akiko Tsuchiya, Washington University, St. Louis

Fictions of the Feminine is a well-conceived and eloquently argued book that breaks new ground in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural studies. Each chapter forms a cohesive unit, with the illustrations, numerous and well chosen, facilitating the understanding of the overall project of the book. The thoroughness of the research involved in its preparation (over two thousand images were consulted by the author), together with her original commentaries on these images, is indeed impressive. Charnon-Deutsch should be commended for a superb job in combining her knowledge of nineteenth-century history, politics, and culture (including a variety of representational media, from high literature to popular magazines) with the critical insights of contemporary feminist, psychoanalytic, and cultural theories. Fictions of the Feminine represents the best in nineteenth-century Spanish feminist and cultural criticism and will be indispensable reading for all those interested in nineteenth-century literary, cultural, and gender studies. Akiko Tsuchiya, Washington University, St. Louis

Author Information

Lou Charnon-Deutsch is Professor of Hispanic Languages at the State University of New York–Stony Brook. Her previous books include The Nineteenth-Century Spanish Short Story: Textual Strategies of a Genre in Evolution (1985), Gender and Representation: Women in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Realist Fiction (1990), and Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction by Women (1994).

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