Beyond Witchy Women: Rewriting Narratives of Rural Feminine Senescence and Superstition in "La santa de Karnar" and "En el castillo de Sobroso" by Emilia Pardo Bazán

Abstract

Abstract:This essay analyzes positive representations of superstition and aged femininity in Emilia Pardo Bazán's travel narrative "Enelcastillo de Sobroso" (1888) and her short story "La santa de Karnar" (1891). These works rewrite negative narratives of aging popular in Galician folksongs, which frequently targeted elderly peasant women (vellas) as objects of satire and ridicule. I argue that the positive framing of feminine senescence in these texts reflects the Galician author's desire to incorporate both regional and feminine discourses into her articulation of the Spanish nation. Through her authorial intervention, Pardo Bazán positions herself, not unproblematically, as a privileged arbiter of Galician popular traditions, coopting the vellainto her cosmopolitan self-fashioning as a cultural elite.