Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera

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Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera

Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (born February 7, 1845 in Moquegua , Peru , † October 12, 1909 in Lima ) was a Peruvian writer and journalist .

Life

Mercedes Cabello was born in the small Peruvian town of Moquegua; her father and uncle had traveled widely and brought a well-stocked library with them from France around 1830. She herself also learned French well with private tutors, which later contributed to the fact that she was able to absorb new trends from France so quickly. At the age of 20 she came to Lima, where she lived with her uncle who was interested in science and was well educated and became a member of Juana Manuela Gorriti's literary salon ; the older writer is always characterized by her as a motherly friend and supporter. During these tertulias , the budding author also came into contact with Clorinda Matto de Turner , who later became the founder of the indigenist novel .

At the age of 22 she married the doctor Urbano Carbonera, who had a private practice in Lima; the marriage was childless and unhappy, the man a notorious gambler and Don Juan type; they later separated, he moved to Chincha , where he started his own household. Mercedes made her debut with a series of articles on the situation of women, in which she very clearly worked out the subordinate position of women in society at the time, no matter what stratum or class they might belong to; she was, so to speak, the first Peruvian to take a decidedly gender-critical approach.

After the end of the Saltpeter War (1879-1884) between Chile and Peru and the death of her husband (1885), Cabello also began to write novels . Regarding the medical topics that frequently appear in it, it is said again and again that she owed her versatility in positivistic questions to a lively exchange of ideas with her husband (cf. Küppers: 217). But for her attacks on the establishment , which were very sharp at the time , the author received the bill in the form of sexist personal attacks; z. B. gave her a critic the nickname "Mierdeces Caballo de la Cabronera", which is extremely insulting in Spanish. They also criticized “large formal defects” in their work (cf. Küppers: 217) and denigrated them as blue stockings .

In 1900 she was admitted to the asylum of Cercado by her brother, with whom she lived, because of depression and melancholy , because she had tried to set fire to the common house. There she died 9 years later, on October 12, 1909, mentally deranged (it is assumed that she contracted syphilis from her husband and that her mental illness was a long-term consequence of it).

Prizes and awards

For the novel Sacrificio she received a gold medal from the “Ateneo de Lima”.

plant

Work characteristics

The novels by Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera move within the positivist , realistic and naturalistic orientation: she wrote socially critical texts in the succession of Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola , accusations against the urban middle class with their hypocrisy and political corruption . Cabello described the precarious position of women in Peruvian society, who could only be viewed either as an inviolable wife and mother or as a whore, without any nuances or tolerance for individual, unconventional lifestyles. Within the literary scene in Peru, she turned against the romantic current under the leadership of Ricardo Palma . Since Cabello also campaigned for the Roman Catholic Church as a patriarchal institution to be excluded from women's education , a wild polemic flared up over her texts, and she incurred many bitter hostilities from representatives of the conservative direction. She also campaigned for women to be allowed to work in order to earn a living.

Production method

The novels of Cabello de Carbonera were consistently first as serials (Spanish: folletines or novelas por Entregas ) in newspapers and published later in book form; most of them were a great sales success because the problems and characters were simply "recognizable" for the readers.

Phases of their work

By and large, Cabello's novels can be classified into two phases:

  1. Phase: sentimental-romantic, until approx. 1888
  2. Phase: naturalistic, from 1889

Publications

Novels

  • Sacrificio y recompensa (1886)
  • Eleodora (1887)
  • Los amores de Hortensia (1888)
  • Blanca Sol (novela social) (1889)
  • Las consecuencias (1892)
  • El conspirador (autobiografía de un hombre público) (1892)

Essays

  • "La novela realista" (1887)
  • La novela moderna (1892)
  • "Importancia de la literatura"
  • "Estudio comparativo de la inteligencia y la belleza de la mujer"
  • "Perfeccionamiento de la educación y la condición social de la mujer"
  • "El conde Tolstoy"

See also

literature

  • Arango-Ramos, Fanny. “Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera: Historia de una verdadera conspiración cultural”. Revista Hispánica Moderna 47 (1994): 306-324.
  • Arambel-Guiñazú, María Cristina & Claire Emilie Martin: Las mujeres toman la palabra: escritura femenina del siglo XIX . 2 volumes. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001. ISBN 84-8489-008-2 , ISBN 3-89354-133-0
  • Fox-Lockert, Lucía. "Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera". Women Novelists in Spain and Spanish America . Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1979.
  • Gonzales Ascorra, Martha Irene. La evolución de la conciencia femenina a través de las novelas de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda , Soledad Acosta de Samper y Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera . New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
  • Higgins, James. A History of Peruvian Literature . Liverpool: Francis Cairnes, 1987: 77-78.
  • Küppers, Gabriele: Peruvian women authors before the turn of the century: literature and journalism as an emancipation project with Clorinda Matto de Turner. Frankfurt / M .: Peter Lang, 1989. (European university publications; 24.30)
  • Masiello, Francine. "Melodrama, Sex, and Nation in Latin America's Fin de Siglo". Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History 57.2 (June 1996): 269-78.
  • Mathews, Cristina. "The Masquerade as Experiment: Gender and Representation in Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera's El Conspirador: Autobiografía de un hombre público". Hispanic Review 74.3 (Autumn 2005): 467-489.
  • Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, "Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (1845-1909)". Spanish American Women Writers . Ed. Diane E. Marting (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990): 94-104.
  • Peluffo, Ana. "Bajo las alas del ángel de caridad: Indigenismo y beneficencia en el Perú republicano". Revista Iberoamericana 70 206 (Jan-Mar 2004): 103-15.
  • Torres-Pou, Joan. "Positivismo y feminismo en la producción narrativa de Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera". Estudios en honor de Janet Pérez: El sujeto femenino en escritoras hispánicas . Eds. Susana Cavallo, Luis A. Jiménez y Oralia Preble-Niemi. Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1998: 245-256.
  • Ward, Thomas. " Matto , Cabello y Prada : Rumbos modernistas hacia una teoría de la literatura". La teoría literaria: romanticismo, krausismo y modernismo ante la 'globalización' industrial . University, MS: University of Mississippi, Romance Monographs, 2004: 120–123.
  • ___. "Perú y Ecuador". La narrativa histórica de escritoras latinoamericanas . Ed. Gloria da Cunha. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2004: 271-305.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cabello de Carbonera, Mercedes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Peruvian writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Moquegua, Peru
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1909
Place of death Lima