"""Con Un Soplo Se Quiebra"": Narrative Approaches to the Problem of Honor in the Short Fiction of Pardo Bazan"

Lepeley, Cynthia Jean

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Description

Title

"""Con Un Soplo Se Quiebra"": Narrative Approaches to the Problem of Honor in the Short Fiction of Pardo Bazan"

Author(s)

Lepeley, Cynthia Jean

Issue Date

1997

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Tolliver, Joyce

Department of Study

Spanish

Discipline

Spanish

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Women's Studies

Language

eng

Abstract

While the concept of honor is one that usually evokes images of dramas from the Golden Age in Spanish literature, it is also a deep vein which has run through the culture of Spain for centuries. Critics who have considered honor as a cultural and not just literary phenomenon often link its predominance in Spanish culture to the issue of social control and, more recently, the gendered form of control imposed by patriarchal social structures. Much of the short fiction of Pardo Bazan focuses on the problem of honor, as her characters struggle to acquire, preserve, or restore it. Pardo Bazan approaches the honor code critically, subverting many of its central components either by graphically portraying their tragic consequences for the individual or by creating fictional characters who refuse to comply with them. The five stories selected for analysis in this study represent a variety of honor-related dilemmas, each of which underscores different aspects of the code. We shall see that despite Pardo Bazan's repeated rejection of the use of fiction for didactic purposes, her short stories nevertheless contain a strong dose of social criticism, much of which revolves around the problems of honor and shame in nineteenth-century Spain.

Graduation Semester

1997

Type of Resource

text

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