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(2014) Gender and modernity in Spanish literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
As the nineteenth century progresses in Spain, men confront the new tenets of liberalism continuing to question previous social hierarchies and political and religious structures, and women become more and more entrapped in the discourse of domesticity. Women languish as ángeles del hogar1 (angels of the house), and bourgeois men navigate the influx of modern ideas as they replace the former idols of the monarchy and the Church with new idols of private property and economic exchange. Intellectual and lower-class men, on the other hand, wonder what exactly their role is in a society that does not value intelligence and manual labor as much as profits. Spain may lag behind other European countries in its development as an industrial nation in the nineteenth century, but its liberal reforms cannot escape the attendant identity crises plaguing its men. Mariano José de Larra and Rosalía de Castro represent the struggles of the erudite and laboring man as marginalized figures of modernity.
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Smith Rousselle, E. (2014). Masculine extremes, in Gender and modernity in Spanish literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 59-84.
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