For centuries, the correct destiny of every good young woman was marriage. Through it, women were supposed to find the true meaning of their lives by caring for their husbands and children.
The wedding day was, in most traditional societies, the most important day of a woman’s life, as her future seemed to be closely linked to finding the right husband. That moment also marked the transition from youth to adulthood: from submission to the father to submission to the husband.
Literature, written primarily by men, has played a key role in the perpetuation and legitimation of this model. In countless novels, poems and plays, the representation of the married woman as a virtuous, submissive and self-sacrificing being is common. Servant to her man and whose well-being is always subordinated to that of the rest of the family.
In these literary works, the domestic and emotional sphere was that of women, while the public and rational space was reserved for men. Women who dared to deviate from the norm were often punished or marginalized in those stories, as was often the case in the real world.
However, there was also other literature that, with great difficulty and little editorial support, was dedicated to denouncing the situation of inequality, injustice and pain in which many women lived, especially within the institution of marriage. This literary tradition, which was buried by the male voices of the canon despite the artistic quality of its works, continues trying to come to light.
In this sense, the recent publication of Like a ring around the neck. Marital oppression in women’s literaturewritten by the professor at the University of Valencia Purificació Mascarell, where she is dedicated to analyzing, and surely discovering for some readers, works such as Whose fault is it? of Sofia Tolstoy, wife of Tolstoy, a woman, by Sibilla Aleramo, hidden path, by Elena Fortún, or A woman in front by Alaine Polcz, as well as many others by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand (Amantine Aurore Dupin), Mercedes Pinto, Caterina Albert or Aurora Bertrana, to name a few examples.
“My goal in writing this book was to trace a constellation of female voices that, at first, may seem disconnected from each other because they belong to different literary traditions, eras or countries,” explains the author. “However, if listened closely, these voices are connected by their feminist consciousness and their defense of human dignity. “I wanted to recover them and put them in relation, to offer readers a springboard towards unknown texts or towards texts that are worth revisiting from another perspective.”
A journey that also shows how literary discourse was ahead of legal, political and media discourse when it came to denouncing female oppression and requesting laws to protect women. “Literary writing was a mechanism for criticizing patriarchy when neither justice nor society assumed the pain of female victims. It served to record the suffering, but also the solutions to oppression,” says Mascarell.
An open and ongoing investigation
The author herself is also very present, through her own experiences, in a book whose objective is not so much to establish a literary canon of the authors who have spoken about the relationship between women and marriage, but rather seeks to trace “a personal and critical journey through authors that I consider significant for their commitment to the cause of female freedom, but also, of course, for their commitment to the creation of works of first-class aesthetic quality.”
Therefore, Like a ring around the neck It is a book about committed female art that, according to the author, could continue to be expanded with other voices and other female experiences: an open and ongoing investigation.
Fortunately, our times also make it easier to read these authors whose works have been relegated to the most remote shelves of used bookstores for decades. According to Mascarell, it is now much easier to find books by these authors than it was ten or twenty years ago. “Apart from the work done from the academy by researchers, especially by younger ones, we now have publishers that have rescued and published texts that were difficult to find,” he says. “I think of all the female voices of the Silver Age that the Renacimiento publishing house, with which I myself collaborate, has recovered for the reading public. Or in the rescue work being carried out by publishers that only publish women, such as Bamba, Espinas, Torremozas or Ménades. The entry of independent publishers into the literary scene has favored this rescue.”
In the same sense, the book is also a kind of exorcism: talking openly about what has happened so that it never happens again. “Narrating the different violence that women have suffered and suffer within marriage is the first step to identifying them and fighting against them,” says Mascarell. “Patriarchy has always destined us to silence, as theorist Hélène Cixous explains well. The simple fact of breaking that silence and daring to speak or write is already a radical gesture of subversion.”
A whole catalog of oppressions
By covering such a wide variety of periods and cases, the range of calamities recounted by the authors is very wide. From the mansplainingthat paternalistic and condescending treatment that places women in the position of minors ad eternalumeven sexual violence, that is, rape within marriage. A practice normalized for centuries and silenced by the same women who have suffered and still suffer from it.
“Abuse of power, control, contempt for female intellectual abilities, objectification… And, of course, physical violence of all kinds,” Mascarell details. “And the corseting in the figure of home angel either motherwife. Under the idea that there is no greater happiness for a woman than dedicating herself body and soul to her husband, children and home. A hoax that Betty Friedan already dismantled with her study The mystique of femininity”.
An optimistic book despite everything
Finally, the author does not hesitate to describe the message of her book as purely optimistic. In fact, she very briefly exposes the marital experience of her ancestors to contrast it with her own life and the freedom she has had. “It would be an absolute lie to say that we have not improved compared to our mothers or grandmothers: of course we have made a lot of progress in a century,” he acknowledges. “Which does not mean that we are in an ideal stage by any means.”
For the teacher, the future of human relationships involves tolerance and respect at the highest level. Also for mutual support. “Men who do not understand this, who are not willing to share their ancestral privileges, are destined to be left alone—women can tolerate them less and less—and, therefore, to be increasingly angry,” he reflects. “And I don’t like living in a world with angry people, really. I would prefer that there be more pedagogy of what feminism really is (a dignified life for every human being in the world, regardless of their sex) and that men understood that by oppressing or subjugating 50% of the population, as is happening in Afghanistan, Apart from harming women, they do it to themselves: they create a hell of injustice and pain instead of a full society where each person can develop their free life project,” he concludes.
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