Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-de-Siecle Spain

In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spain, the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nymphomania was part of a project to suppress the female emancipation movement. Emilia Pardo Bazán rejected the hysteria diagnosis and promoted mysticism as a path for women's personal development and self-realization.

Format: Hardback
Length: 244 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2021
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-de-SiÈcle Spain delves into a compelling argument that the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nymphomania in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spain was part of a broader effort to suppress the burgeoning female emancipation movement. This archival-historical study uncovers the phenomenon through medical, social, and literary texts of the time, revealing that despite the hostility of many liberals towards the Church, secular doctors and intellectuals employed strikingly similar paradigms to those used by the early modern Spanish Church to condemn female mysticism as demonic possession.

Author Jennifer Smith also directs modern historians to the insightful writings of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), a thinker whose work highlights the subversive potential of mysticism in challenging the patriarchal order. Pardo Bazán, the sole woman author examined in this study, stands out as she rejected the hysteria diagnosis and embraced mysticism as a transformative path for women's personal development and self-realization.

Through her analysis, Smith sheds light on the complex interplay between female mysticism, medical discourse, and societal attitudes towards gender and power in late nineteenth-century Spain. She challenges the conventional narrative that portrays women's spiritual experiences as pathological and undermines the efforts of women to assert their autonomy and seek spiritual fulfillment. Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-de-SiÈcle Spain offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of women's history, spirituality, and the broader social and cultural contexts of late nineteenth-century Spain.

Weight: 333g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780826501875