Propuestas para (re)construir una nación

Reviewed by: Propuestas para (re)construir una nación: el teatro de Emilia Pardo Bazán by Margot Versteeg Joan Hoffman Versteeg, Margot. Propuestas para (re)construir una nación: el teatro de Emilia Pardo Bazán. Purdue UP, 2019. Pp. 312. ISBN 978-1-55753-848-2. Covering the years between 1898 and 1909, Margot Versteeg’s Propuestas para (re)construir una nación: el teatro de Emilia Pardo Bazán (volume 76 of Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures) is the first extensive study of Emilia Pardo Bazán’s theatrical output (38). Versteeg posits that it is in no way merely fortuitous that Pardo Bazán’s foray into theater coincides with the Desastre de 1898 and the loss of the last remnants of the Spanish empire; indeed, it is precisely in this moment of “la debacle colonial” that Pardo Bazán purposely chose to write in a new way, in a different genre, in order have a more direct conversation with her public about the current state of the nation (9). Thus, across seven chapters and an epilogue Versteeg examines many of Pardo Bazán’s works that made it to the stage—El vestido de boda (1898), La suerte (1904), La muerte de la Quimera (1905), Verdad (1906), Cuesta abajo (1906), and El becerro de metal (1906)—as well as some that were published but never staged—Más/Juventud and Las raíces. Finally, in an epilogue Versteeg compares La Malinche—a theater-piece that exists only as a fragment—with Pardo Bazán’s 1914 children’s book, Hernán Cortés y sus hazañas. Versteeg declares Pardo Bazán to be one of the first women to take a leading role in “el proyecto nacional español” (38). Through careful analysis, then, she shows how in these plays Pardo Bazán presents her ideas about a reconstructed Spanish nation in the wake of the colonial crisis. That is, the dramatist dialogues with “la leyenda negra,” and “la leyenda dorada” (the myth of Spain’s glorious past); she de-centralizes many of her works, moving them from Castile to Galicia, in an effort to show that regional issues are inextricable from national issues; and she critiques timeworn patriarchal models, offering new paradigms of masculinity and femininity, and equating “nacionalismo cultural” with “solidaridad femenina” in an effort to place women front and center in the nation-(re)building exercise (133). Through her analysis, as well, Versteeg is successful in widening the context in which Pardo Bazán should be viewed and understood, reminding us that she was not only a writer of nineteenth-century naturalist prose. Indeed, this study invites a reevaluation of Pardo Bazán’s theater, often dismissed as flawed and inferior to her other output. Arguing that this theater is “mucho más que un fracaso interesante,” Versteeg labels her subject “una dramaturga innovadora,” who presaged twentieth-century theatrical innovations (38, 100). Similarly, Versteeg asserts that Pardo Bazán “tuvo una singular capacidad . . . para adaptar su talento a los tiempos y tendencias reinantes” that places her squarely within an international literary and intellectual milieu that includes the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Henrick Ibsen, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Maurice Maeterlinck, and the Symbolists (61). In addition to Margot Versteeg’s comprehensive analysis of Pardo Bazán’s theatrical works, Propuestas para (re)construir una nación: El teatro de Emilia Pardo Bazán also includes copious notes comprising almost a third of the volume, two helpful appendices, an alphabetical index, and an extensive bibliography; it is a complete package. I am inclined to agree with David T. Gies’s assessment, as printed on the back cover of the volume: “This is a terrific book” about a long-overlooked subject. It needs to be in the library of any scholar of Emilia Pardo Bazán, gender, or the function of literature in nation-building. [End Page 435] Joan Hoffman Western Washington University Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · CONQUEST · Empire · Humanities · Architecture, Art, Education · Historical and Modern Theater Studies · History · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies