Women, costumbrismo, hispanism and national character in Las mujeres españolas, portuguesas y americanas

Abstract

In this article we presented and we problematized the collection Las mujeres españolas, portuguesas y americanas, published in the decade of 1870 in Spain. This publication was composed by three volumes of texts approaching territorial spaces in Spain, America and Portugal and for lithographs, and made use of the feminine symbology to represent such spaces. This collection was molded by the aesthetics costumbrista, gender that stood out for describing social types, habits, custom and traditions. On the feminine theme, the starting point of the presupposition that women’s idealized images were used to play the imaginary social for what they represent - love, submission, honors, fecundity, education, self-denial - and also as symbols of the new social types that appeared in scene in the national spaces that were configured before the European transformations. The hispanism, ideological speech lined in the common experiences and Spanish spirit, permeated all the publication. Finally, it was taken as well as a hypothesis that as much the textual language as the iconographical they located and they pointed out elements that form the Spanish societies, revealing origins, tradition, peculiarities and singularities of those people - under the feminine sign - that sent to the problem of the Spanish national character.