Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

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Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (March 23, 1814 - February 1, 1873), was a Cuban writer. At 22 years of age, she left Cuba to continue her work in Spain, where she died.

The most controversial novel she wrote, Sab, was published in 1841. This novel can be compared to Uncle Tom's Cabin in that both novels are literary protests against the practice of slavery. Sab is about a Cuban slave, named Sab, who is in love with Carlota, his master's daughter. Carlota(the heroine) marries a rich white (Jewish) Englishman, Enrique Otway. The book stresses Sab's moral superiority over the white characters. This is because his soul is pure while the Englishman's business interests are his primary concern. The enterprises of Enrique and his father are juxtaposed against the Carlota's family hacienda (farm) which is in decline. The farm is in decline because Carlota's father is of a good nature, which means he cannot be a good business man.

It was banned in Cuba for its unconventional approach to society and its problems. Avellaneda's works were considered scandalous because of her recurrent themes of interracial love and society's divisions.

In fact, Sab could be considered an early example of negrismo, a literary tendency when white creole authors depicted black people, usually with a favorable stance. This kind of writing was oftentimes cultivad by women authors who might have been arguing, as Gómez de Avellaneda was, that there was a parallel between the black condition and the female condition. Two other Creole women who cultivated negrista fiction were the Argentine Juana Manuela Gorriti (Peregrinaciones de una alma triste & El ángel caído) and the Peruivan Teresa González de Fanning whose Roque Moreno paints a less than sympathetic stance toward blacks and mulattoes. Of course Harriet Becheer Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin could also be understood in this light.

Another famous writing by Avellaneda was "Una carta de Amor," which reflected her frustrated love with Cepeda, a Spaniard.

In her poetry "Al partir" is a notable poem because it reflects the emotion of leaving her patria behind when her new stepfather, a Spanish military man, brought the family to Spain. In Spain Avellaneda had a number of tumultuous love affairs, some with prominent men of letters associated with Spanish Romanticism.

Source: John Charles Chasteen, "Born in Blood and Fire, A Concise History of Latin America"

[edit] Aditional Reading

Castagnaro, R. Anthony. The Early Spanish American Novel. New York: Las Americas, 1971; "The Anti-Slavery Theme", 157-168.

Fox-Lockert, Lucía. "Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda: Sab (1841)". Women Novelists in Spain and Spanish America. Metuchen, N.J: The Scarecrow Press, 1979.

Gold, Janet N. "The Feminine Bond: Victimization and Beyond in the Novels of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda". Spanish American Literature: From Romanticism to "Modernismo" in Latin America. Eds. David William Foster & Daniel Altamiranda. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1997: 91-98.

Harter, Hugh. A. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981.

---. "Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda". Spanish American Women Writers. Ed. Diane E. Marting. Westport: Greenwood Press 1990, pp. 210-225.

Hart, Stephen M. "Is Women's Writing in Spanish America Gender-Specific?" MLN 110 (1995): 335-352. Examines Gómez de Avellaneda in a context with other Latin American women authors.

Kirkpatrick, Susan. "Feminizing the Romantic Subject in Narrative: Gómez de Avellaneda". Las Románticas: Women Writers and Subjectivity in Spain, 1835-1850. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Kirkpatrick, Susan. "Gómez de Avellaneda's Sab: Gendering the Liberal Romantic Subject". In the Feminine Mode: Essays on Hispanic Women Writers. Eds, Noel Valis and Carol Maier. Lewisburg: Bucknell University press, 1990: 115-130.

Lindstron, Naomi. Early Spanish American Narrative. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004; sobre Gomez de Avellaneda, 99-103.

Mata-Kolster, Elba. "Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873)". Latin American Writers. Vol. I. Ed. Solé/Abreu. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989, pp. 175-180.

Miller, Beth. "Gertrude the Great: Avellaneda, Nineteenth-Century Feminist". Women in Hispanic Literature, Icons and Fallen Idols. Ed. Beth Miller. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Pastor, Brígida. "A Romance Life in Novel Fiction: The Early Career and Works of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXXV, No. 2 (1998): 169-181.

Santos, Nelly E. "Las ideas feministas de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda". Spanish American Literature: From Romanticism to 'Modernismo' in Latin America. Eds. David William Foster & Daniel Altamiranda. New York & London: Garland, 1997: 100-105.

Schlau, Stacey. "Stranger in a Strange Land: The Discourse of Alienation in Gomez de Avellaneda's Abolitionist Novel Sab." Hispania 69.3 (September 1986): 495-503.

Scott, Nina. "Introduction". Sab and Autobiography. By Gómez de Avellaneda. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Scott, Nina. "Shoring up the 'Weaker Sex'. Avellaneda and Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideology". Reinterpreting the Spanish American Essay. Women Writers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Ed. Doris Meyer. Austin: University of Texas, 1995: 57-67.

Solow, Barbara L., ed. Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Sommer, Doris. "Sab C'est Moi". Foundational Fictions. The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Various authors. "Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, 1814-1873". Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Volume 111. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2002: 1-76.