Women on War in Spain’s Long Nineteenth Century

Drawing on feminist theories and cultural histories, this book interweaves historical and literary contexts of Spanish female writers and their works on war.

Christine Arkinstall is a professor of Spanish at the University of Auckland.

"Christine Arkinstall charts the cultural representation of war by Spanish female writers by exploring the work of major recognized authors (Concepción Arenal, Emilia Pardo Bazán, and Carmen de Burgos) and those that are lesser known today (Rosario de Acuña, Blanca de los Ríos, and Consuelo Alvarez Pool). This book is quite simply groundbreaking. Not only does Arkinstall encompass　the most significant texts produced by these authors, but brilliantly demonstrates the ways in which women’s depictions of war challenge masculine conceptions of the private and domestic spheres, a masculine war canon, and, importantly, masculine valorizations of what and whose experiences count in times of war."

Lou Charnon-Deutsch, Emeritus Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature, Stony Brook University:

"Women on War in Spain’s Long Nineteenth Century is unrivalled in studies on war in relation to Spanish women writers, drawing on a wide panorama of sources to reveal women’s unrecognized preoccupation with war. What readers will take away from this book is that Spanish women writers challenged the knotty problem of conventional gender roles and the modern thrust for women’s rights embedded in their war stories and essays."

Silvia Bermúdez, Professor of Literature and Iberian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara:

"Women on War in Spain’s Long Nineteenth Century is a groundbreaking examination of how ‘the boundaries of war and gender’ were radically transformed by six Spanish women authors writing on war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This meticulously researched, incisively written book is a fundamental contribution to the field and to the historiography of Iberian feminisms."