The Battle of the Widows: La Montálvez versus Clemencia

Abstract

Abstract Their liminality in a patriarchal society and the cultural apprehensions surrounding widows explain why literature has rarely been sympathetic to them. This has been particularly the case with the seductive ones, the viudas alegres who are perceived as a threat to the social order. With a didactic and ideological purpose in mind, José María de Pereda condemns Madrid’s viudas verdes in La Montálvez (1888), while in Clemencia (1852), Fernán Caballero combats the backlash against widows by creating an impeccable role model and representative of Spain’s periphery. This article reads both novels as counternarratives of widowhood and examines how their authors develop two very different narratives to control and confine female excess –sexual in one case, intellectual in the other– within a conservative gender and national paradigm.