The great question that has never been answered and which I have not been yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?” (Sigmund Freud)
Ana is stifled by
the claustrophobic life that is deemed appropriate for her as a little girl and
later on as a woman. She longs for freedom from the confines of Vetusta but she
is forced to live vicariously through her imagination which is also ultimately
snuffed out by society. Understanding the environment in which she lived is
also useful in understanding the stem of her desires and the confusion she
faces in later life. Ana is described by Gerrad as “an imaginative woman
interested in the mind and spirit in a world that values neither.”[1] She was an aspiring artist but there was no
creative outlet for her talent. Her attempts to write religious poetry as a
form of escape are frowned upon due to society’s overwhelming hostility towards
literary women and their education.[2] A female write was unfeminine, “una cosa hombruna”[3] and even associated with prostitution and
degradation, “en una mujer hermosa, es imperdonable el vicio de escribir”[4]. While she is reprimanded for her writing, her
critics acknowledge that her poetry shows “gran habilidad”.[5] She is a gifted poet and she might have been
successful under different circumstances. Ana also wants to earn independence
by working but convention one again restrains her. According to social constructs
at the time, a working woman belonging to the upper middle class as she does would
only shame her family. Apart from marriage or becoming a nun, the only
acceptable form of work for women was philanthropy but some even disapproved of
these activities.[6] Throughout the plot, Alas directly engages and
criticises the problem that women faced inside such closeted societies which
limited their freedom and independence, leading Ana to lament about the intense
boredom she suffers from.
It is important to
note that even at the height of his liberalism, Alas still maintained a
conservative streak in regards to feminism and the female role within society
which is relevant to female desires and the ways in which he interprets them. His
description of the nervous attacks suffered by Ana is an in-depth psychological
study of ‘hysteria’ during the nineteenth century. Hysteria was widely
considered to be a gendered disease ascribed to women whose behaviours failed
to meet the male-generated expectation of normalcy and is identified by
“nonsense, inarticulate cries and speechless fit”.[7] Hysteria originates from the Greek word
meaning womb.[8] According to medical knowledge at the time,
it was an example of the weakness of the female body because it drove them to
such perceived madness. The concept of this free-floating womb coupled with the
conviction that women were organically unstable due to menstruation[9] meant that Ana was still considered the inferior
sex. Men were associated with rationality and logic whereas women were still
defined by emotional outburst and insanity. Zizek describes this instability as
“the stance of permanent questioning of one’s symbolic identity”[10] because it led to question of self- identity
which is a concept that Ana struggles with throughout most of her life. And is
a concept that is further explored within the essay. Ten years after La
Regenta was written, Alas’s conservatism was solidified into the
anti-feminist article ‘psicologia del sexo’ which explores the biological
justifications for traditional gender roles that relegate women to the domestic
sphere after marriage. He goes even further to voice doubts about their
intellectual power and suggests their purpose is to raise children and maintain
the household which were common place thoughts within the patriarchal society.[11] An excerpt from Alas’s essay claims: “La
hembra es más misoneísta, guarda la tradición, los rasgos adquirido”.[12] Alas
was ultimately a male author writing about the desires of the female character
who maintained his own feminist perspectives and therein lies the limitation of
interpreting the novel in terms of female desire.
Ana’s upbringing was
devoid of affection and nurture, repeatedly showing society’s failure to view her
as a women and as a human being who are in need of such basic comforts. Her
father, a self-proclaimed feminist, treats Ana “como si fuese ella el arte”.[13] To
him, she is an inanimate object “sin sexo”[14] rather than a human being and his daughter.
This shows a deep reluctance to deal directly with female sexuality which led
to later sexual confusion for Ana as a young girl which will be further
explored within the essay. By ‘neutering’ his daughter’s education and her
upbringing, he has cushioned her in ignorance, making her much more vulnerable to
sexual manipulation later on in life. Ana’s desire for affection is later translated
with her relationship to Don Alvaro, the town’s serial seducer. Ana is so
desperate for love due to her own husbands failings that she is willing to
overlook Don Alvaro’s faults. To Ana, their affair is an affair of the heart but
Don Alvaro merely sees it as an opportunity to add another notch to his already
long list of previous conquests. Men are allowed much more freedom in terms of
having affairs than their female counterparts and it is here that one can see
the difference between the desires and the attitudes of both genders. Don
Alvaro describes Ana’s “hambre atrasada”[15] when they begin their relationship which
summarizes the lack of physical affection and sexual attraction she has
suffered from throughout her life. Labanyi goes as far as to call Ana an “egoista”[16] and perhaps there is a touch of vanity in
Ana’s belief that she would be able to change Don Alvaro’s ways after so many
years of womanizing, but the fundamental desire to be loved and shown affection
is understandable.
Ana is childless and
she deeply wants to have her own children. It was expected from her from
society and so that she would have another human being whom she could show
affection and love towards. Women’s role in society were to look after the
family and producing children, “un hijo hubiera puesto fin a tanta angustia”[17] because it would preoccupy her idle life.
Ana’s sexless marriage to Don Victor means she is unable to fulfil such a duty
and so she has been denied one of the most important roles in the house. In
this way she is no longer needed, yet she wants to be needed. When Ana looks at
herself in the privacy of her own bedroom mirror, she sees herself the way
others see her and as what she does not have: a child. When she looks in the
mirror, she sees herself as “la virgin de la silla pero le faltaba el nino”.[18] The use of the mirror is an effective
narrative technique used by Alas to present the characters view of themselves. In
this scene, subconsciously, Ana’s mind shifts from the idea of not having a
child to Don Alvaro and back again to having children. Her association with Don
Alvaro with the thought of a child suggests her true interest is in his ability
to allow her to bear children and not only in his character. In the mirror she
also sees her eventual downfall and the solution to her conflict. According to
the critic Frank Durand, Don Alvaro represents the only way Ana can become a
mother[19] because he is the only one able to impregnate
her but her virtue and by extension the social laws of society forbid her from
having an extra-marital affair with him. Due to her circumstances, at times she
feels as though her desire to have children is ridiculous and she is able to
acknowledge the tragic nature of the situation she finds herself trapped in.
Ana’s desire for children is never outwardly expressed to others but the
readers shares the knowledge of her desire because of Alas’s use of point of
view. In this passage the reader is able to experience Ana’s desires from
within her own consciousness and perspective which further adds to the reality
of her desire for children.
It is at this point
within the essay that one also begins to explore Ana’s conflicting identity
within herself as a result of the impositions of society and her childhood and
the influences it holds over her later desires. Ana is victim to the whore/
virgin dichotomy[20] due to the circumstances of her birth and
her upbringing which eventually manifests within her adolescent as self-hatred.
She lives in a patriarchal society that is obsessed with the nature of female
sexuality and seeks to control it which leads to later confusion in regards to the
understanding of her desires. At the age of four she is suspected of being a
sexual deviant: her mother, now dead, had been a dressmaker and Ana’s governess
are convinced that she would inherit the promiscuity that was associated with
her mother’s lower social class. When Ana is ten, she goes boating with a
fourteen year old boy and they get grounded in shallow water and are forced to
spend the evening there. The ensuring scandal sees Ana’s governesses using the
event as proof of her sexual deviancy. Sexually ignorant, Ana was too young to
understand the nature of her crime and she learned only that she was evil. Thus
she is raised with a deep, internalized sense of shame of her own sexuality that
she has been taught was inherent within her. There is no way of satisfying the
misogynistic society in which she lives. Gerrad explains that “Ana lives in a
community that both defines women as sexual creatures and regards female
sexuality as a crime”.[21] Women are always on the edge of committing a
crime in this regard, even if they are only a young child as Ana had been. She
suffers from the loss of self-identity and a fractured sense of identity based
on the confusion over her sexuality. She has been treated as a sexual deviant
for most of her life, so during her adult life she comes to mistrust her sexual
feelings and attempts to repress them. At one moment she is luxuriating in the
feel of the tiger skin under her feet in her bedroom, “hundiendo los pies
desnudos[22]”. In the next moment she is seeking
religious guidance. She alternates
between sensuality and the next moment self-denial. Ana refuses to acknowledge
her access to womanhood after puberty after being traumatized by the boat
accident due to outside pressure from society.
Ana searches for a religious
identity as a way of escaping from her self-hatred and social condemnation as a
woman. She fashions herself into the model wife, “la perfecta casada[23]” and a model Catholic by engaging in charity
work with the encouragement of her new confessor and priest, Don Fermin. She
creates such an identity because she wants to vindicate herself from her
previous reputation as a sexual sinner. Mysticism also fulfils her desire to be
adored by a ‘lover’- unlike Don Alvaro- who remains at a safe distance from
her. Ana herself recognizes that she is merely acting in her search for
spiritual perfection because she believes that is what is expected from her. By
conforming once more to society’s ideal of womanhood by staying in the domestic
sphere, she has once more become an object. Instead of being seen as a sexual
object, Gerrad instead calls her a “religious relic”.[24] She has been treated as a non-person
throughout most of her life. Ana has come internalize these Vetustan values and
treat them as her own desires. She assumes a stereotyped passive persona that
she thinks is expected of her and even comes to view herself as an object,
suggesting that she would never be able to escape such a label. Engaging in
such a religious role also requires Ana to deny her sexuality, leading once
more to issues of self-denial and self-deception and the complication between
the two conflicting desires. Ana’s true desire is to do the right thing, but
society continues to impose conditions upon her as a woman that makes it
difficult for her to do so.
Ana is constantly
trying to become what others wish her to be and therein lies the dilemma of
interpreting she truly wants. Throughout hr life, the outside world has
constantly imposed their own desires upon her and neglected to even consider
her own feelings. Due to Ana’s constant belief that she is insufficient and
shameful after the boating incident, she discovers what is expected of her by
her aunts, by her father or by her confessor and tries her best to become this
ideal. She truly believes that she is what others think of her, however untrue
that may be, and acts accordingly. She is constantly in a state of inner
turmoil because her true self – the one that longs for all the previous
mentioned desires such as love, freedom and purpose – is rebelling against the
strangling force of society that is trying to bend her to conform to their
standards. As Reininger puts it, “her subconscious is constantly searching for
more than the completion of her expected duties as a woman”.[25] In her trapped position in the high society
of Vetusta, she is trying to find a way to reconcile with herself and the self
which she must represent to society. Ana’s desires are not simple because they
are often conflicting with each other, society and even with her inner self
because they are difficult to achieve in the world she lives in.
In the context of
Alas’s writing career, La Regenta represented a brief moment when he was
sensitive to the struggles of a talented woman living in a sexist and
patriarchal society. Some critics have even gone as far to call it a “feminist
novel”[26] for the way it presents the frustrated desires
of such a woman. Ana’s personality has been destroyed in her pursuit of
fulfilling the ideal role of a woman, culminating in her downfall and
adulterous affair with Don Alvaro. Ana merely wanted to be accepted by society,
followed closely by her desire to have a purpose in her life- whether that be
achieving spiritual perfection, having children or writing her own poetry as a
form of passing the time. The claustrophobic society she lived in had allowed
her to do little with her life and her childhood had been devoid of affection
and love which turned Ana into a lonely character later in her life.
Bibliography:
Alas Clarín, Lopold, La Regenta
(Alicante : Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000) <http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmcht2k4 > [accessed: 07/05/2020]
Botrel, Jean-François, Clarín y La regenta en su tiempo: actas del
simposio internacional (Oveido: Universidad de Oveido, 1987)
Durand, Frank,
‘Characterization in La Regenta: Point of view and theme’, Bulletin of
Hispanic Studies, 41.2 (1964), p.86-100.
Gerrard, Lisa, ‘The
Feminist Dimension of La Regenta’, Letras Femeninas, 13.1/2 ( 1987),
p.91-99.
Labanyi, Jo,
‘Mysticism and Hysteria in La Regenta: The problem of the female identity’ in Feminist
readings on Spanish and Latin American literature, ed L.P Conde and S.H.
Hart (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991)
Nunn, Gary, ‘The
feminisation of madness is crazy’, The Guardian, 8 March 2012, <https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2012/mar/08/mind-your-language-feminisation-madness> [accessed: 07/05/2020]
Reininger. R. Molly,
Social vs. Sensual: The Struggle for Identity within the Characters of Clarín’s
La Regenta (Master thesis. University of North Carolina, 2016)
Scanlon, Geraldine, La polémica feminista en la
España contemporánea 1868-1974 (Madrid: Akal, 1986)
Zizek, Slavoj, Butler,
Judith and Laclau, Ernesto, eds, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality:
Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000)
[1]
Lisa Gerrard, ‘The Feminist Dimension of La Regenta’, Letras Femeninas,
13.1/2 ( 1987), 91-99 (p. 96)
[2] Geraldine Scanlon, La polémica
feminista en la España contemporánea 1868-1974 (Madrid: Akal, 1986), p. 56.
[3] Leopold Alas Clarín, La Regenta
(Alicante : Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000) p. 149. < http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmcht2k4 > [accessed: 07/05/2020]
[4]
Ibid, p. 151.
[5] Ibid, p. 150.
[6] Scanlon, La polemica feminista, p.
58.
[7] Jo
Labanyi, ‘Mysticism and Hysteria in La Regenta: The problem of the female
identity’ in Feminist readings on Spanish and Latin American literature,
ed L.P Conde and S.H. Hart (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991) p. 38.
[8]
Gary Nunn, ‘The feminisation of madness is crazy’, The Guardian, 8 March
2012, https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2012/mar/08/mind-your-language-feminisation-madness
[accessed: 07/05/2020]
[9]Molly
R. Reininger, Social vs. Sensual: The Struggle for Identity within the
Characters of Clarín’s La Regenta (Master thesis. University of North
Carolina, 2016) p.13.
[10] Contingency,
Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left ed Slavoj Zizek,
Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau (London: Verso, 2000) p. 115.
[11] Jean-François Botrel, Clarín y
La regenta en su tiempo: actas del simposio internacional (Oveido:
Universidad de Oveido, 1987) p. 491.
[12] Ibid, p. 491.
[13] Alas, La Regenta, p. 113.
[14]
Ibid, p. 113.
[15]
Ibid, p.489.
[16]
Labanyi, ‘Mysticism and Hysteria in La Regenta’, p. 39.
[17] Alas, La Regenta, p. 300.
[18] Ibid, p. 299.
[19]
Frank Durand, ‘Characterization in La Regenta: Point of view and theme’, Bulletin
of Hispanic Studies, 41.2 (1964), 86-100 (p.97)
[20]
Gerrad, ‘The feminist dimension’, p.94.
[21] Ibid, p. 92.
[22] Alas, La Regenta, p. 29.
[23]
Ibid, p. 95.
[24]
Gerrad, ‘The feminist discourse’, p. 93.
[25] Reininger, Social vs Sensual, p.
20.
[26] Ibid, p. 97.
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