Lamenting the State of Science and Feminism

Abstract

In contrast to Lina and Nazarín’s alternative epistemology of mysticism and its attendant isolation from the material world, the protagonists of Pío Baroja’s El árbol de la ciencia (The Tree of Life) and Carmen de Burgos’s El Perseguidor (The Pursuer) convey the difficulty of the early twentieth-century Spanish subject with the uneven advancements of science and feminism in Spain. El árbol de la ciencia and El Perseguidor represent the stark contrast between the concerns of the male scientist and the independent upper-class woman. The nature of these protagonists’ psychological struggles represents the different sectors of Spanish society still very much dominated by the gender dogma of the nineteenth century, which associated men with science and progress and women with maternity and domesticity. Baroja’s male protagonist confronts disillusion from the standpoint of science and the meaning of life, while de Burgos’s female protagonist experiences disillusion in her role as a woman in a society in which neither the role of the woman nor the discourse of feminism is fixed in any way. Both characters’ disillusion develops from unease with ambiguity, but Baroja’s El árbol de la ciencia deals with an existential uncertainty, while de Burgos’s El Perseguidor deals with the varying nature of the woman’s place in society.