El desafío a la dicotomía mujer caída vs. ángel del hogar en “Doña Berta”

Abstract

Literary Realism and Naturalism, developed in the nineteenth century, are two literary trends usually taken as an example of a faithful representation of reality, to the point that some critics use the metaphor of this literature as a mirror of its society. In this type of literature, women are reduced to two fixed models: angel in the house or fallen woman. Every woman who didn’t follow the principles of the first one, are automatically represented as fallen women. In this way, female characters in are limited to an extremely rigid dichotomy. In the context of the “Guerras Carlistas”, in a Spain of deep confrontation between liberals and conservatives, Leopoldo Alas  “Clarín” assigns the cruelty and moral depravation in the text not to the protagonist Berta, even if she is clearly identified as a fallen woman, but to her brothers, who are ideologically linked to the conservative discourse. In order to follow the principles of that discourse they will kidnap their own nephew and lock up their sister. The writer, thus, shows a positive image of this transgressor woman who goes beyond the limits that the conservative ideology imposes upon women, highlighting thus a very limited and simplistic view of that society. It is when Berta gets rid of all those impositions of this conservative dichotomy when she manages to escape her confinement and decides to look for her son in the public and urban space of Madrid, and this breaking up with previous boundaries is achieved by the protagonist only after the liberal ideology has entered the private sphere of her house.