The ideal of feminity spread by 'La Guirnalda' (1867-1883)

Abstract

Spanish women’s magazines, especially from the reign of Isabel II on, acted as a significant means of expressing the social image of women and transmitting the predominant bourgeois female archetype. However, the turbulent Spanish stage of the final decades of the 19th century will lead to this apparently immutable model being redefined under the influence of the debates and initiatives surrounding the female question. The aim of this article is to present as a case study La Guirnalda (Madrid, 1867-1883), which allows the model of femininity propagated by the dominant strata of society to be reconstructed, the tools employed to this end and the adaptation of the ideal in the face of the influence of counter-models.