Una visión ecofeminista de "Los pazos de Ulloa" y "The Awakening"

Resum

Ecofeminist theories have supposed a new way of understanding feminism from the moment in which the relation of domination women and nature have suffered during the history of the humanity, has been exposed. In this doctoral thesis, an ecofeminist theoretical basis has been used, consolidated in the theories of the most relevant ecofeminists such as Karen Warren and Val Plumwood to make an exhaustive analysis of two of the most emblematic works of nineteenth-century in Spanish and American literature such as Los pazos de Ulloa and The Awakening. In the course of this research, I have illustrated how patriarchal society has established multiple mechanisms of repression, always based on a misconception about gender ideology, with the intention of underestimating the importance of women and everything related to their world, thus, among other prohibitions, justifying the impediment of their access to a formal education in both countries. In addition, I have exemplified how different theories related to different fields of study such as medicine and psychology, among others, have been used to justify inequalities between both genders. The influence of the Church, whose model of femininity was represented by the Virgin Mary, and legislation that marginalized the importance of women through the deprivation of legal rights was added to these assumptions. Thus, women were immersed in a rigid and inflexible social structure that augured for difficulties in changing the status of women. Domestic work, understanding motherhood as an obligation within these tasks, was the only universe in which women could be fulfilled. On the basis of these conditions, any deviation from the norm in these matters was described as an affront to the system and punished accordingly. I have also prepared an analysis of the relationship between women and hysteria, concluding that the relationship between the two is purely arbitrary and that female mental problems do not stem from their biology but from a situation of confinement and restriction of fundamental rights. Thus, the whole society represented in the works was conspired to maintain a stereotype of woman in which submission and obedience were the summum of virtue. Emilia Pardo Bazán and Kate Chopin have been referents as guardians of the feminist cause, documenting in their novels an unjust situation and grounded in gender stereotypes. Both writers, who have suffered in their person the ingratitude of an androcentric society that has underestimated their literary work, have tried to testify through their novels the reality of women in the second half of the 19th century in both countries. Finally, I must highlight the testimonial importance of both works as literary documents that show the representation of women under a logic of domination protected by patriarchal discourses normativized and legalized by institutions and society. For this reason, concepts related to ecofeminisms have been shredded in this argumentation, while multidisciplinary sources have been used to elaborate a cursory analysis of the selected works.