You are on page 1of 14

images of the femme fatale in two

short stories by emilia pardo bazÁn

susan walter

scholars have explored many aspects of pardo bazán’s writings that exam-
ine the plight of women in nineteenth-century spain, in particular the ways
that her fictional works employ unique narrative designs and contestatory
strategies to subtly question the hegemony of patriarchal culture. in this
study i will focus on a curious pair of stories from pardo bazán’s corpus of
short stories that seems to do just this but in an unusual way, by engaging
with the paradigmatic figure of the femme fatale. pardo bazán repeatedly
employs innovative representations of the femme fatale in her later novels,
tellingly the titles of her last three published novels are: la quimera (1905),
la sirena negra (1908) and Dulce dueño (1911). in an important study of a
femme fatale figure from this last novel Dulce dueño susan Kirkpatrick
asserts: “women who adopted the contestatory stance of feminism were
obliged to contend with the active and generally negative reinscription of
feminine difference in order to intervene in the cultural conversation about
the significance of gender” (“gender” 119). this dynamic seems especially
relevant in the stories that i analyze in this study, since the femme fatale is
normally interpreted as a misogynistic archetype, although, as i will show,
pardo bazán’s representations of these female characters highlight their
inherent power and require that the reader actively interpret their roles in the
stories. while i do not believe that the female characters in these stories are
archetypal femme fatales, i do believe that they engage with this literary
model, and therefore a closer analysis of how these characters are shaped can
elucidate our understanding of the tales.
in erika bornay’s study las hijas de lilith, in which she analyzes the
representations of the femme fatale in western european literature and art,
the key characteristics of this paradigm are highlighted:

Romance Notes 55.2 (2015): 177-89


178 romance notes

una belleza turbia, contaminada, perversa. incuestionablemente, su cabellera es larga y abun-


dante y, en muchas ocasiones, rojiza. su color de piel pone acento en la blancura, y no es nada
infrecuente que sus ojos sean descritos como de color verde. (. . .) en lo que concierne sus más
significativos rasgos psicológicos, destacará por su capacidad de dominio, de incitación al mal,
y su frialdad, que no le impedirá, sin embargo, poseer una fuerte sexualidad, en muchas ocasio-
nes lujuriosa y felina, es decir, animal. (114-15)

as i will show in the following pages, the representations of women in the


short stories analyzed here consistently reference certain aspects of the para-
digmatic femme fatale, especially their assertive stares and their long flowing
locks, which underscore their search for subjectivity and physical allure. on
the other hand, other typical traits, specifically the femme fatales’ animalistic
sexuality and their controlling nature, are not present in pardo bazán’s char-
acterizations.
much has been said regarding the femme fatale’s presence as a represen-
tation of male anxiety about women’s changing roles in society in the fin de
siglo. as Jess sully notes: “the exotic, sexually promiscuous ‘otherness’ of
the femme fatale threatens to destabilize the established cultural order” (47).
likewise, Virginia allen asserts that the femme fatale’s rejection of mother-
hood is one of her most threatening qualities since by denying his immortali-
ty and his posterity it leads to the ultimate destruction of the male (193).
indeed the femme fatale figures studied here align with this aspect of the
model – they have no children and do not have carnal contact with their part-
ners, thus eliminating the possibility of producing offspring. along these
same lines, teresa gómez trueba shows how hegemonic cultural phenomena
of the period were tied into artists’ concerns regarding the many changes that
were taking place in society during the turn of the century: “al tiempo que se
echa mano de la ciencia para demostrar de manera infalible la inferioridad
intelectual de la mujer, el artista decadente del fin de siglo representa su
angustia y su temor ante la amenaza de los nuevos tiempos que se avecinan a
través de la imagen de una poderosa, perversa y devoradora mujer fatal, pre-
sente en infinidad de manifestaciones del arte finisecular” (2). indeed, the
concerns that arose from encroaching modernity were many, with the flux in
gender roles being one of the primary threats to the status quo that many per-
ceived. nevertheless, in the tales analyzed here it seems unlikely that pardo
bazán’s impetus for creating these femme fatale characters relates to a fear of
social and political changes associated with modernity because she often
advocated for these very reforms and felt that spanish modernization was
essential for its prosperity. in particular, pardo bazán supported social
changes that would expand women’s roles in society, often looking to spain’s
northern european neighbors for models. because of pardo bazán’s progres-
images of the femme fatale 179

sive ideas regarding women’s roles in society, i believe that these stories pur-
posefully juxtapose the femme fatales with their angelic female counterparts
in order to highlight the artificiality of the madonna/eve dichotomy that is so
prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, while also drawing attention to
the inherent power and autonomy that the femme fatale possesses, an agency
similar to that of other women who transgressed the traditional boundaries of
proper womanhood, such as women writers.
while few critics would disagree with the idea that the figure of the
femme fatale is a product of the male literary tradition, in order to fully
understand the power and mobility of these representations, one must consid-
er the nuanced way in which a feminist writer such as emilia pardo bazán
employs them in her writings. gilbert and gubar have asserted: “the woman
writer’s self-contemplation may be said to have begun with a searching
glance into the mirror of the male-inscribed literary text” (15). in the stories
studied here, it does seem as though pardo bazán relies on her readers’ famil-
iarity with the femme fatale figure from the male literary tradition, while, at
the same time, she creates unique representations of these female characters,
which highlight how their rejection of certain patriarchal social norms allows
them to claim autonomous positions as subjects. in her landmark study
Women and the Demon, nina auerbach suggests that these paradigmatic
images of evil women contain an inherent power:

i want to resurrect the central female paradigms that presided over the Victorian imagination
and structured its apprehensions, abandoning domestic confinement to unfurl their awesome
capacity for self-creation. seen together, these interdependent and mutually sustaining charac-
ter types infuse restrictive social categories with the energy of the uncanny. once we restore the
integrity of these types, we see that they intensify power rather than limiting it. the very rigidi-
ty of the categories of victim and queen, domestic angel and demonic outcast, old maid and
fallen women, concentrates itself into a myth of transfiguration that glorified the women it
seemed to suppress. (9)

thus, auerbach asserts that what have often been interpreted as limiting and
misogynistic paradigms should be reevaluated, and in the process these mod-
els’ formidable authority can be revealed. indeed, i believe that the power
these images hold is central to pardo bazán’s engagement with them, regard-
less of the impetus for their creation by male artists.
in the following pages, i will show how pardo bazán creates unique rep-
resentations of femme fatales in two of her short stories, and in the process
highlights how these characters’ choices to reject patriarchal social norms
gives them agency and the ability to define themselves outside of these
restrictive roles. in particular, i will highlight the representation of the female
180 romance notes

protagonists of pardo bazán’s tales who dare to narrate their own stories and
the representations of these same characters as femme fatales. the two stories
that i will analyze were both published around the turn of the century, “po-
sesión” in 1895 and “el rival” in 1902. through my discussion of these
female characters’ subversion of the subject/object duality and their claim to
discursive authority, i will show how these tales open up a space for female
subjectivity by highlighting the plight of female authors, albeit in a rather
indirect way.
“posesión” published in 1895 tells the story of dorotea, a noble and
chaste girl from a good family who has made a pact with the devil and, as a
result, has been entirely transformed into a haggard. as the tale opens the fri-
ar who has been sent to take dorotea’s confession the night before her execu-
tion by the inquisition finds her in the corner of a cold, dark cell. one of the
first details that the third-person, omniscient narrator shares with the reader is
that the friar is completely repulsed by dorotea’s disheveled appearance
because she is so unkempt and wearing only rags. the tale then shifts back to
the period before dorotea’s encounter with the devil and explains that she
almost became a nun as one of her cousins had, but shortly before taking her
vows she decided that she couldn’t share god’s love with all of the other
nuns who had also devoted their lives to him. she explains that one night
while she is at the convent in her cell she receives an unexpected visit from a
handsome young man who tells her that he is a great prince who was ban-
ished from his father’s kingdom for one rebellious act. it quickly becomes
obvious to the reader that dorotea is describing the devil. she then explains
that she starts to love the mysterious visitor once she realizes how alone he is
and believes that her love might compensate for all that he has lost. from this
night on dorotea and her beloved see each other nightly, yet they decide that
they will only share a spiritual bond.
one curious aspect of this story is dorotea’s decision to abandon the path
she was on to become a nun because she is unwilling to share god’s love
with the thousands of other nuns that are also his spiritual partners. ultimate-
ly her pride will not allow her to accept what she sees as an inequitable rela-
tionship: “desprecio lo que no es solo mío” (i, 396). it is her desire to be
unique that makes her choose the devil as the focus of her devotion rather
than god. in the story dorotea is not manipulated by the devil nor is she
characterized as being gullible, as is usually true in depictions of female
characters suffering from demonic possession. on the contrary, dorotea’s
decision to devote herself to the devil is one that she makes independently,
and even as she faces the ultimate consequence for her decision, she contin-
ues to affirm that she believes she made the right choice. carlos ramos
images of the femme fatale 181

reaches a similar conclusion regarding dorotea’s role in the narrative: “es


dorotea de gúzman quien organiza narrativamente la historia y quien con-
vierte al demonio y al dominico en personajes subordinados a su voluntad.
en una historia que juega con la inversión de los valores dominantes,
dorotea se sirve de demonio-seductor, que no es en este caso instigador, sino
instrumento” (223).
during the short, three-page story there are three references to the fact
that dorotea had been a perfect, pure and proper girl from a respectable fami-
ly but that she had given everything up in order to serve the devil.1 in the sec-
ond paragraph of the tale the narrator describes dorotea: “había sido orgullo
de una hidalga familia, alegría de una casa, gala y ornato de las fiestas” (i,
395). dorotea’s own description of her former self reiterates the pure nature
of her character: “en el mundo fui mujer de calidad, ensalzada por linda,
respetada por noble, codiciada por rica, aplaudida por discreta” (i, 396). later
in the tale as the friar tries to convince dorotea to repent for her sins he
states: “eras hermosa y eres horrible; eras dama principal y pudiente, y eres
menos que las mujerzuelas de la calle; eras buena y honrada, y eres ludibrio
y vergüenza de tu sexo” (i, 395). the opposition that is created by this last
description in which the girl’s current state contrasts so sharply to her condi-
tion previously underscores the polar opposition of these two archetypal
female figures – the madonna/eve dichotomy of the eternal feminine.
moreover, their juxtaposition in this tale highlights the objectification of
women inherent in these stereotypical models that are found in so many
works of fiction by male authors of the modernist period.2 what makes pardo
bazán’s representations of these two characters stand apart from those of her
male counterparts is the agency that dorotea’s character is given, which is
highlighted by contrasting the “possessed” dorotea with her former self.

1
in a compelling study carolyn durham proposes that dorotea did not in fact have any
contact with the devil, but rather the socially-imposed repression of her sexual desires lead her
to: “attribute a sense of evil to her feelings and consequently (she) experiences them as a devil
that needs to be exorcised. her description of a visit to the devil’s headquarters shows the con-
nection between sexuality and demonic possession” (58). durham ultimately proposes that
“posesión” censures the social norms that demanded the repression of female sexuality in turn-
of-the-century spanish society.
2
susan Kirkpatrick notes that the madonna/eve dichotomy is presented with the characters of
clara and espina in pardo bazán’s novel la quimera (1905) and suggests: “como han sostenido
dijkstra y otros críticos, el efecto de estas imágenes es deshumanizar y objetificar a la mujer, exal-
tando la pasividad y la enfermedad, y representando el deseo y el poder femenino como monstru-
osos. pardo bazán mantiene en esta novela un precario equilibrio entre la propagación de estas
imágenes femeninas debilitantes y su transformación, puesto que dota a las dos mujeres de una
subjetividad paralela a la del artista/protagonista masculino” (mujer 108). in a similar way,
dorotea’s agency is one of her key traits in “posesión,” and one that sets her apart from the more
one-dimensional femme fatale figures found in many other works during this period.
182 romance notes

in a way similar to the opposing views of dorotea that are presented, the
perspective of the first half of this story, in which the friar describes the
disheveled and untidy appearance of the young woman, juxtaposes with the
second half of the tale in which dorotea narrates her story firsthand. in the
beginning of the narration the young, possessed girl is objectified; this part of
the tale is focalized through the friar’s perspective by a third-person omni-
scient narrator. in the second half of the story, however, dorotea is afforded a
voice to tell her own story, which in turn gives the reader a unique account of
her experiences, and a somewhat unexpected one, since it contrasts dramati-
cally with the friar’s perception of her as a woman who has given into tempta-
tion. the narrative structure of this tale in which the focalization shifts from
the frair’s perspective to dorotea’s in the second half of the story highlights
how dorotea gains agency as the story unfolds. in this regard it is important to
note that the purpose for the friar’s visit is to convince dorotea to repent so
that he can hear her confession and absolve her of her sins before she is
burned at the stake by the inquisition the following morning. nevertheless,
dorotea refuses to give her confession and instead offers to tell the story of
how she came to love the devil, in which she narrates the tale of their bond
with no regret, and it is this narration that replaces the confession for which
the priest had asked. therefore, dorotea takes the daring stance of narrating
her story on her own terms regardless of the consequences, an especially bold
action given the circumstances, but one that allows her to gain subjectivity.
ultimately this decision may have very dire consequences, even leading her to
eternal damnation according to catholic doctrine rather than the salvation that
would have been available to her had she decided to repent.
the protagonist’s shift from the position of object to that of subject in the
story is underscored by the third-person omniscient narrator’s use of eight
different names to reference her in the first half of the story, he refers to her
as: “la reo,” “la endemoniada,” “la posesa,” “la sentenciada,” “la pecadora,”
“la pobre oveja,” “la esclava del demonio,” and “la poseída.” in contrast to
these pejorative labels that the narrator uses in the first half of the story when
the tale is focalized from the friar’s perspective, in the second half of the sto-
ry after the focalization shifts and dorotea tells her story, the narrator then
refers to her simply and consistently by her first name. this shift parallels the
narrative perspective of the second half of the story as well, since it is here
that dorotea’s role as an acting subject is highlighted when she narrates her
life experience without showing any regret for her decisions.
the narrator’s description of dorotea’s powerful and daring gaze also
asserts her position as subject: “la posesa clavaba en el religioso sus grandes
pupilas color de humo, donde, de cuando en cuando brillaba fosfórica chis-
images of the femme fatale 183

pa” (i, 394). the power that emanates from her assertive stare aligns with her
rebellious attitude during her interview with the clergyman as she narrates
her story on her own terms, regardless of the cost. she is not scared by the
friar’s ultimatum, that she confess or face eternal damnation, indeed she
embraces her impending descent into hell as a consequence that she has cho-
sen openly, and as a way to reunite with her beloved.
the female protagonist of “el rival,” a story penned by pardo bazán in
1902, is a psychic who more closely aligns with the femme fatale archetype,
although she too has unique qualities worthy of note. this story gives the
account of a young man named tresmes who describes to his friends the one
woman who “le ha trastornado inspirándole algo espiritual, algo dominador”
(iii, 91). the story is a framed narration in which tresmes tells the story of
how meeting this clairvoyant changed his life to a group of friends several
years after the events had taken place. tresmes opens the narration by
describing the object of his obsession: “para mí, virtuosa fue, o dígase inex-
pugnable; y acaso sea ésa la verdadera razón de mi sinrazón, porque, créanlo
ustedes, estuve loco” (iii, 91).3 then tresmes gives the account of the day he
and his cousin celia, whom he describes as his “doña perpetua,” went to a
fortuneteller in search of a little excitement in their otherwise mundane and
routine lives. the clairvoyant reads celita’s palm that day and tells her that
there will be a big change in her life soon, perhaps involving death. she also
tells tresmes that he will have blood on his hands. celita is obviously dis-
turbed by this news while tresmes does not seem at all effected by it;
instead, he devotes all of his energy from this moment on to the attraction he
feels for the exotic and beautiful psychic.
shortly after their visit to the clairvoyant tresmes and celita break up
and stop seeing each other. meanwhile, tresmes is utterly enamored with the
fortuneteller and continues to visit her regularly. on his second visit he con-
fesses to her that he is positively obsessed by her, he explains to the reader
(and his friends that are listening to the story he is telling) “algo emanaba de
aquella mujer que no había hallado en ninguna . . . encontraba allí ‘lo nuevo,’
y nada escasea en amor como la novedad” (iii, 93). this telling description
imbues the fortuneteller with a key characteristic of the femme fatale figure,
namely an enigmatic quality that entirely fascinates men; likewise, tresmes’s
reference to her “new” qualities evinces the changing gender roles in fin de
siglo culture that critics have linked to the femme fatale. the clairvoyant’s

3
tresmes is a frequent character in pardo bazán’s short fiction, appearing in eight different
stories penned by the author. he is consistently characterized as a don Juan figure, who places
his own personal pleasure above all other concerns. paredes núñez describes him as: “(un) don
Juan del madrid mundano, ‘dandy’ ocioso y vividor” (iV, 422).
184 romance notes

long, dark and thick locks and her brilliant and fascinating yellow eyes that
appear to be giving off sparks of light are the other traits that clearly align
her with the femme fatale archetype.
the narrative perspective of the story then shifts and the reader is given
more insight into the clairvoyant’s situation – she explains that she’s only
seen her husband once and that he is unfaithful to her. tresmes concludes
from what she tells him that she is married to the devil. after hearing this
tresmes states: “llegué a creer lo que dicen de la posesión diabólica” and
he also notes that when he touches her he feels “como una fuerte corriente
eléctrica” (iii, 93). this description of her effect on him underscores her
position of power over tresmes; he seems to have lost all self-control, and
can think of nothing else beyond his fascination with her. Jess sully sug-
gests that it is the femme fatale’s innate power that is her most important
quality:

the threat posed by the fatal woman lies ultimately not in her feminine beauty or eroticism but
rather in the way in which she established rule over men by utilizing the apparently ‘masculine’
qualities of power and authority. the female fatale, popularly perceived as a fundamentally
feminine archetype, should more accurately be regarded as a figure in which feminine beauty
and masculine power combines. (57)

one significant way in which dorotea and the psychic of “el rival” demon-
strate this masculine power is that they both dare to tell their own stories,
thus claiming their right to discursive authority and in the process asserting
their influence as storytellers. in this way, one can discern a connection
between pardo bazán’s characterizations of these femme fatale characters
and the figure of the female author: they both display masculine power in the
same way – by narrating their own stories. moreover, this connects well with
the idea that the femme fatale is a representation of male anxiety regarding
changing gender roles, since a woman’s choice to be an author is one that
directly challenges the traditional role that society has relegated her to – that
of wife and mother.
after tresmes meets the mysterious clairvoyant, his girlfriend celita is
never the same in his eyes. he explains that after their first encounter he can-
not help but think of her as “una muñeca” – she was always impeccably
dressed and seemed almost unreal to him in comparison to the exotic for-
tuneteller. the purity and innocence of celita’s character contrasts markedly
with the enigmatic and exotic qualities of the psychic. the dramatic contrast
between the depictions of these two women references the madonna/eve
dichotomy that was also prevalent in “posesión,” as it is in many male-
images of the femme fatale 185

authored texts of spain’s nineteenth century.4 on the one hand, i believe that
the prevalence of this trope in the stories underscores the objectification of
female characters that is commonplace in these dichotomous representations
of them. on the other hand, the strong contrast that is established between
these two female figures also serves to highlight the degree of autonomy and
agency that the femme fatale character has.
towards the end of “el rival” tresmes finally frees himself from the psy-
chic’s powerful grasp, but in the end the clairvoyant does claim one victim –
sweet, innocent celita. after the fortunteller tells celita that death is in her
future her health rapidly declines and she eventually dies of a broken heart,
which is a direct result of her beloved’s infatuation with the palm reader. it is
noteworthy that the femme fatale figure in this tale does not cause the down-
fall of her male victim, as is often the case in other artistic representations of
her, but rather, the psychic’s victim is the angelic female character. critics
have theorized that the danger inherent in the femme fatale figure is an essen-
tial part of this cultural representation, and one that often leads to the death
of a male character, thus showing the ultimate consequence of the femme
fatale’s authority. in a similar way to what we see in “el rival” with celita’s
death, in the first story i analyzed, “posesión,” dorotea’s victim is her former
self, who is also described as a wholly chaste and innocent young woman.
thus, it is the femme fatale who destroys the angel in these narrations, creat-
ing an interesting twist to this traditional paradigm. in “el rival” what causes
the death of the angel is the mystic’s decision to disregard traditional female
cultural norms, and instead choose her own autonomous destiny based on her
own desires, which includes narrating what the future will hold for others,
and thus asserting her own subjectivity. this suggests that the potential result
for all women who reject the traditional cultural norms that encourage them
to be docile objects, like celita, is the ultimate eradication of this stifling
model of ideal womanhood. as gilbert and gubar have suggested: “a woman
writer must examine, assimilate, and transcend the extreme images of ‘angel’
and ‘monster’ which male authors have generated for her” (16). in this case it
is the psychic who kills the angel, showing the power and authority that are
inherent in a female character’s choice to elect her own unique path while
she speaks as an autonomous subject.
another intriguing twist on the traditional femme fatale paradigm that
pardo bazán incorporates into these stories is the characters’ lack of sexual

4
the critic Virginia allen notes that the two halves of the eternal feminine certainly exist-
ed before the end of the nineteenth century but at this point in history, “the two poles of this
dichotomy were pushed further apart – to their farthest extremes. eve goes from sinner to posi-
tive and devouring evil” (13).
186 romance notes

desire. in “el rival” the psychic holds great appeal for tresmes but they do not
consummate their relationship (nor does she appear to have done so with her
husband) while dorotea in “posesión” insists on the purely spiritual bond that
she and her husband share. perhaps the depictions of characters without sexual
appetites signals pardo bazán’s choice to avoid the public scandal that these
representations may have created for her, as the character asís’s open expres-
sion of desire did in her 1889 novel Insolación (mayoral 14-20).5 or, perhaps
these two female characters were a sort of case study for lina mascareñas, the
femme fatale character of her 1911 novel Dulce dueño who, as critics have not-
ed, sublimates her sexual desires in order to maintain her autonomy. according
to susan Kirkpatrick: “al experimentar por primera vez la excitacion sexual
con un primo andaluz (. . .) se vuelve consciente de que la sexualidad consti-
tuye una amenaza a la autonomía femenina” (mujer 118).6 maryellen bieder
observes the importance of this dynamic in the novel as a whole: “lina se li-
bera de la subordinación – no solo corporal, sino también económica y psíquica
– que parece acompañar el deseo sexual en la mujer. (. . .) tal vez lo más ines-
perado de esta novela sea la inviolabilidad del cuerpo de lina (. . .) (lina) no
renuncia a su libertad interior, a su derecho de autodefinirse y a su placer sexu-
al y espiritual, independiente de los hombres” (15).7 one can draw similar con-
clusions in the two short stories studied here, that these characters’ lack of sex-
ual desire serves to affirm their autonomous roles as women who determine
their own fate, largely outside of the limitations imposed by patriarchal society.
the profession of the psychic in “el rival” is an essential part of her char-
acter. having been endowed with a special gift as a clairvoyant, she earns her

5
carlos ramos asserts that dorotea’s asexual nature serves two purposes: “la explicación
a este insólito recatamiento hay que buscarla en dos dimensiones externas al devenir narrativo:
primero, en la decision de pardo bazán de no ser de nuevo blanco de criticismos. ‘tenía
guardadas las espaldas’ escribió en el prólogo (. . .) en segundo lugar, su estrategia de
ocultación es de gran astucia, puesto que al negar el carácter sexual de la posesión evita el
escándalo, pero refuerza la desestabilización: la castidad de su relación sublima y subvierte a
un tiempo la tradicional superioridad del amor no carnal en el imaginario cristiano” (220-21).
6
there are other interesting points of comparison between these two stories and Dulce
dueño, including the shifting narrative perspectives that all of them contain, and the opportunity
that the female protagonists are given to tell their own stories (to different degrees in each text).
notably, lina mascareñas is the only female protagonist of a novel penned by pardo bazán
who narrates most of the narrative in the first-person (the only other female autodiegetic narra-
tor in pardo bazán’s novelistic production is asís in Insolación, however she only narrates
about one-third of the text).
7
charnon-deutsch takes this assertion one step further: “el giro repentino desde la tercera
persona, que relata la historia de santa catalina, hacia la primera persona narrativa de lina, en
el cuerpo de la novela, nos hace conscientes de la ausencia casi total de la primera persona
femenina en la ficción realista, planteando la pregunta ¿qué diferencia implica el que, por una
vez, una mujer tenga el control tanto de su cuerpo como de la historia en torno a su cuerpo, así
como de su deseo de trascender ese cuerpo a toda costa?” (328).
images of the femme fatale 187

living by telling others what their futures hold. moreover, she seems to do
her work well, as is demonstrated when she accurately foresees celita’s
future. the psychic’s profession is akin to being an author, but it is an even
more daring vocation for a woman since she displays supernatural powers as
she foretells others’ futures. in a fashion similar to dorotea’s account of her
life in “posesión,” the primary narration that the psychic tells in “el rival” is
not the foreseeing of celita’s future, but rather the telling of her own story, a
narration that affords her a level of autonomy as she defines who she is on
her own terms.8
it is not the first time that the link between demonic representations and
women’s writing has been established. gilbert and gubar in their landmark
study the madwoman in the attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-
Century literary Imagination have noted that the history of lilith,9 the devil
woman par excellence from hebrew mythology, has close ties to female
authorship:

what her history suggests is that in patriarchal culture, female speech and female ‘presump-
tion’ – that is, angry revolt against male domination – are inextricably linked and inevitably
daemonic…the problem that lilith represents has been associated with the problems of female
authorship and female authority. even if they had not studied her legend, literary women . . .,
bemoaning the double bind in which the mutually dependent images of angel and monster had
left them, must have gotten the message of what lilith incarnates: a life of feminine submis-
sion, of ‘contemplative purity’ is a life of silence, a life that has no pen and no story, while a
life of female rebellion, of ‘significant action,’ is a life that must be silenced, a life whose mon-
strous pen tells a terrible story. (36)

pardo bazán seems to be aware of this “double bind” that gilbert and gubar
reference here since she juxtaposes angelic figures in each of these stories
with the femme fatales that disregard the limiting social codes that the angels
respect at all costs. thus, in each tale the angelic characters have no story to
tell, no subject position to occupy, while the femme fatales all demand a
voice, and it is through their narrations that they subvert the standard dynam-

8
indeed, these tales have other similarities beyond those that i have highlighted here, one
could even argue that “el rival” is a modern reworking of “posesión” because of the parallels
between these two female characters’ experiences. likewise, the inquisitorial context that is
explicit in “posesión” (dorotea will be burned at the stake by the inquisition the following
morning) is also alluded to in the second story when tresmes notes the street on which the psy-
chic lives: “calle de la cruz Verde, nombre fatídico que recuerda la inquisición” (iii, 91).
9
according to hebrew myth, lilith is adam’s first wife who refuses to take a subordinate
position and lay beneath her husband during the sexual act, and ultimately disobeys god’s
orders when she abandons adam to live with the devil. the legend says that she has several
children with the devil, and spends many hours strangulating human babies and children (bor-
nay 25-26).
188 romance notes

ic of female submission to male authority and begin to forge their own sub-
jectivities, much like pardo bazán does when she writes.
phoebe porter studies the representations of femme fatale characters in
pardo bazán’s last three published novels and comes to conclusions similar
to those that i have presented here. in particular, she determines that our
author creates individualized and psychologically complex characters, and
that ultimately her treatment of the femme fatale shows her “own process of
self-definition which is complicated by the patriarchal definitions which
come between herself and her art” (269). in her 1931 essay “professions of
women,” Virginia woolf highlights two primary obstacles to her success as a
writer: (1) social restrictions on what were considered to be “proper” topics
for women to address in their writings, and (2) the “angel in the house” mod-
el for appropriate female behavior. she describes the fight that ensued as she
attempted to eradicate the influence that the angel had over her:

i did my best to kill her. my excuse, if i were to be had up in a court of law, would be that i act-
ed in self-defence. had i not killed her she would have killed me. she would have plucked the
heart out of my writing. for, as i found, (. . .) you cannot review even a novel without having a
mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations,
morality, sex. and all these questions, according to the angel in the house, cannot be dealt with
freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must – to put it bluntly –
tell lies if they are to succeed. thus, whenever i felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of
her halo upon my page, i took up the inkpot and flung it at her. she died hard. her fictitious
nature was of great assistance to her. it is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. (59-60)

Just as woolf had to contend with the angel in her writings, pardo bazán also
had to battle with this same paradigm since the gendered social mores in spain
during her lifetime were not unlike those in woolf’s english society of the ear-
ly twentieth century. nevertheless, in her own life pardo bazán managed to
largely disregard this angel mold as she forged her own path as an important
writer and intellectual. in these stories a similar scenario unfolds as the femme
fatales obliterate the angels, and in the process they show that the discursive
authority that they assert holds much more promise for an autonomous future
than the prescribed role of angel does. in this way, we can see that the stories
also allude to the power and agency that pardo bazán and other female authors
found as they too express themselves in the public sphere and through these
daring actions created their own more autonomous futures.

uniVersity of denVer
images of the femme fatale 189

worKs cited

allen, Virginia. the femme fatale: erotic Icon. troy: whiston publishing, 1983.
auerbach, nina. Woman and the Demon. cambridge: harvard up, 1982.
bieder, maryellen. “divina y perversa: la mujer decadente en Dulce dueño.” Perversas y Di-
vinas. la representación de la mujer en las literaturas hispánicas: el fin de Siglo y/o el fin
de milenio actual. ed. carme miera, meri torras & isabel clúa. Valencia: ediciones excul-
tura, 2000. 7-19.
bornay, erika. las hijas de lilith. madrid: cátedra, 1990.
charnon-deutsch, lou. “‘tenía corazón’: Dulce dueño de emilia pardo bazán.” arbor: Cien-
cia, Pensamiento y Cultura 182. 719 (2006): 325-36.
durham, carolyn richardson. “subversion in two short stories by emilia pardo bazán.”
letras Peninsulares 2.1 (1989): 55-64.
gilbert, sandra m. and susan gubar. the madwoman in the attic: the Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century literary Imagination. new haven: yale up, 2000.
gómez trueba, teresa. “imágenes de la mujer en la españa de finales del xix: ‘santa, bruja o
infeliz ser abandonado.’” Ciberletras 6 (2002). web. 12 march 2012.
Kirkpatrick, susan. “gender and modernist discourse: emilia pardo bazán’s Dulce Dueño.”
modernity and Its margins: Reinscribing Cultural modernity from Spain and latin ameri-
ca. ed. a. geist and J. monleón. new york: garland publishing, 1999. 117-39.
––––––. mujer, modernismo y vanguardia en españa (1898-1931). madrid: cátedra, 2003.
mayoral, marina. introducción. Insolación. emilia pardo bazán. madrid: espasa calpe, 1995.
9-39.
pardo bazán, emilia. Cuentos completos. 4 Vols. ed. Juan paredes núñez. la coruña: fun-
dación pedro barrie de la maza, 1990.
porter, phoebe. “the femme fatale: emilia pardo bazán’s portrayal of evil and fascinating
women.” Selected Proceedings of la Chispa Conference 1987. ed. gilbert paolini. tulane:
tulane up, 1987. 263-70.
ramos, carlos. “poseídas y desposeídas: a propósito de un cuento de emilia pardo bazán.”
Brujas, demonios y fantasmas en la literatura fantástica hispánica. ed. Jaume pont. llei-
da: universitat de lleida, 1999. 217-26.
sully, Jess. “challenging the stereotype: the femme fatale in fin-de-siècle art and early cin-
ema.” the femme fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts. ed. hanson and o’rawe. new
york: palgrave-macmillan, 2010. 46-59.
woolf, Virginia. “professions for women.” Women and Writing. ed. m. barrett. new york:
harcourt brace Jovanovich, 1980. 57-63.
Copyright of Romance Notes is the property of University of North Carolina, Department of
Romance Languages and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted
to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may
print, download, or email articles for individual use.

You might also like