Abstract

HUAMAN ANDIA, Bethsabé. La belleza es un corsé de acero: Los pazos de Ulloa y La Desheredada. Rev. interdiscip. estud. género Col. Méx. [online]. 2016, vol.2, n.3, pp.51-72.  Epub Apr 09, 2021. ISSN 2395-9185.  https://doi.org/10.24201/eg.v2i3.3.

The Spanish novels of nineteenth century presented feminine characters entrapped by the extreme demands of honor, an ideal which was impossible to realize for beautiful women. Beauty was understood as the opposite of virtue, with virtue being understood as submission and obedience to men. This article will analyze feminine characters in Los pazos de Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán and La desheredada by Benito Pérez Galdós to focus on the ways by which women are constructed as objects of male desire and how the destructive prejudices of the male gaze kill, literally and symbolically, any possibilities for women to exist and survive in society. I will try to show how in these discourses the only acceptable woman is the dead one.

Keywords : Beauty; Women; Pérez Galdós; Pardo Bazán; Spanish 19th-century.