Anticlericalism’s struggle over social reproduction labor: Galdós’s Electra (1901) and the Ubao affair
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[1] Cornell University
Cornell University
City of Ithaca, Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, ISSN 1463-6204, ISSN-e 1469-9818, Vol. 23, Nº. 3, 2022, págs. 251-263
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This article contends that the violent anticlericalism of Galdós’s Electra (1901) stems from the Church’s usurpation of the title character’s labor in the home. Electra’s domestic duties enable the hero, an electrical scientist, to perform his work – that is, until a priest coerces her into joining a convent. In this conflict, the authority priests and husbands share over women crumbles. Refracted in this story is the real-life polemic surrounding Adelaida Ubao, a woman whom the courts removed from a convent against her will, setting a legal precedent for the exception to familial authority as only available to husbands rather than the Church. My reading of Electra reveals that at stake in the debate over who has authority over women is the capture of their energies for the purposes of producing labor itself. The play stages this process through the lovers’ experiment with electrical conductivity and in the priest’s violent interruption of the electrical circuit they develop. His attempt to prevent their marriage effectively disrupts the circuit of labor production made possible by life-making work. This reading challenges analyses of anticlerical misogyny as unrelated to political economy and instead proposes an understanding of it as a struggle over social reproduction labor.
