Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura

In the first part of the nineteenth century major transformations occurred in Spain: the loss of most American colonies and internal political instability considerably weakened its international image. Changes shaping Spain at the time were also prominent in the realm of letters: the Romantic Movement provided an aperture for women’s debut in literature on a larger scale than ever before in history. Spain’s international position and women’s roles in society were hotly debated topics for most of the nineteenth century. Carolina Coronado (1820–1911), a prominent romantic writer, addressed both issues in her poetry and prose. In what follows, I analyze the representations of nation, gender, and modernity in her travel narrative “Un paseo desde el Tajo al Rhin, descansando en el Palacio de Cristal” from her less studied period.¹ My purpose in this essay is to foreground the tensions of Coronado’s contrasting representations of France and Spain, and of modernity at large. Indeed, even as Coronado interrogates France as a paradigm of modernity in “Un paseo,” pitying its supposed lack of spirituality against the integrity of Spain, numerous inconsistencies of the text point to her anxiety about the cultural makeup and “purity” of Spain itself. Ultimately, Coronado’s critique shifts from the questioning of Spain’s supposed backwardness and France’s alleged superiority to a critique of modernity itself as it played out in both France and Spain. Such a shift is particularly noticeable in Coronado’s discussion of women’s roles in society: in spite of the differences in the form of government (monarchy versus republic), the degree of technological modernization, and religiosity, both nations are equally oppressive towards women.

Coronado’s poetry has been lucidly analyzed by Susan Kirkpatrick most notably in her landmark study Las Románticas: Women Writers and Subjectivity in Spain, 1835–1850 dedicated to women’s romanticism in Spain. Kirkpatrick convincingly demonstrates that Coronado and other female romantic poets of her time were complexly positioned in respect to the Romantic Movement, unable to identify with either one of the movement’s most salient paradigms (of the rebel and of the solitary), or with the objectified and muted female other. This lack of identification created tensions in their poetic production and led to the appearance of a women’s Romantic Movement, torn between women poets’ aspirations to conform to societal expectations on the one hand and on the other, to assert their subjectivity and agenda. The present essay dovetails with Kirkpatrick’s classic [End Page 13] study in that it foregrounds the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies of Coronado’s discourse. My analysis diverges from Kirkpatrick’s in that Coronado’s representations of Spain, France, and modernity are the focus of the essay rather than her subjectivity. This work also aims to fill in gaps in our evaluation of Coronado’s prose published in leading Madrid and Extremadura press outlets. Currently, critical analysis of her novels is rather scant and that of her travel narrative “Un paseo,” non-existent.² Thanks to the work of Kirkpatrick and others, Coronado is presently widely appreciated as a lyrical poet. It is also important to acknowledge and highlight her achievements as an essayist in order to better understand her professional development and place in the domain of Spanish letters.

“Un paseo,” written in 1848 and published in 1851–52 (September-February) in a popular Madrid journal La Ilustración. Periódico universal, has seventeen entries written in the form of personal letters directed to the writer’s younger brother Emilio. The letters describe Coronado’s travel from Madrid through various Spanish and French cities to Paris. The first four entries describe her travel through Burgos, Vitoria, Tolosa, and Irún in Spain; entries 5–11 depict French provincial cities Vidart, Bayona, Biarritz, Burdeos, Poitiers, Tours, and Orleans.³ The remaining six entries are dedicated to her impressions of Paris.