Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s ‘La Mujer’: A Writer’s Plea for Gender Equity in the 1860s

• In Event: The Relevance of Latin American Philosophy Today

Abstract

The question of including women’s voices in philosophy is very much alive today. This has not been easy because much of what is recognized as Latin American philosophy has been the work of men. So far Latin American philosophical feminism has been largely interdisciplinary and/or has pursued a philosophical analysis of authors known in other fields. The incorporation of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz into the philosophical canon some decades ago shows that this great writer, whose work cuts across disciplines, elicited genuine interest among philosophers. Defending women’s equal participation in the arts, sciences, politics, and religion continues to be a challenge in our times.

In this paper I explore the argument on behalf of women’s capabilities and merits presented by the nineteenth-century writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-73),focusing on Avellaneda’s essay, “La Mujer.” Taking as a point of departure some of the conventional views on women that were a part of her age, Avellaneda performs an axiological shift by means of which the apparent inferiority and weaknesses attributed to women are re-signified, emerging as strengths. I analyze Avellaneda’s bold discursive strategies, keeping in mind the limitations of the romantic idealist tenets framing her argument. Step by step, her argument destabilizes and deconstructs women’s perceived weaknesses, displacing the masculinist gaze that subordinates women and re-creating women’s social and intellectual identities as strong cultural and moral subjects. Although Avellaneda’s defense of women writers invites a comparison with that of Sor Juana, I show that their respective premises and approaches were different. Sor Juana grounded her defense on the premise of the gifted individual deriving her rights from natural law as created by God, whereas Avellaneda, while initially invoking religious imagery, opted rather for a revaluation of conventionally understood gender differences as these applied to women in society.

Author

• Ofelia M Schutte, University of South Florida