Flower Power: Cultivating Creativity in Spanish Women’s Press Writings, 1845–1866

AbstractIn keeping with a long tradition, nineteenth-century poems and poetic anthologies across Anglo-American and European cultures privileged flower tropes. Within Spain a plethora of periodicals and anthologies from 1845 onward bore titles allusive to flowers and gardens, while a number of Spanish women published under floral pseudonyms or represented themselves and each other as flowers. Floral symbolism, however, not only gave female authors license to write within sanctioned codes that identified femininity with nature rather than culture. Importantly, their reworking of floristic imagery allowed them to refashion conventional, socio-cultural parameters, express their subjectivity, affirm creative agency and denounce socio-political ills. Notes1 María Verdejo y Durán, ‘Al señor Don Joaquín de Monistrol’, La Mujer, 7, Año 2, 12 September 1852, p. 5. When quoting from original works, I have modernized spellings throughout.2 Philip Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 5–6.3 Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville/London: Univ. of Virginia Press, 1995), 42–44.4 Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 7.5 Seaton, The Language of Flowers, 44–75.6 See Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 18–23, 51–54 & 88–89.7 Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 61 & 246.8 See Susan Kirkpatrick, ‘Flor del agua: la autorrepresentación lírica de Carolina Coronado’, in her Las Románticas: escritoras y subjetividad en España, 1835–1850 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991), 195–225; and Noël Valis, ‘Autobiography As Insult’, in Culture and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Spain, ed. Lou Charnon-Deutsch & Jo Labanyi (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1996), 27–52.9 Valis, ‘Autobiography As Insult’, 31.10 This ‘sisterhood’ was a virtual community of female Romantic poets who, during the 1840s, mutually sustained their literary ambitions through publications and epistolary expressions of solidarity in the contemporary press. Regarding the ‘Hermandad Lírica’, see Susan Kirkpatrick, ‘La “hermandad lírica” de la década de 1840’, in Escritoras románticas españolas, ed. Marina Mayoral (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1990), 25–41; Antonio Manzano Garías, ‘De una década extremeña y romántica (1845–55)’, Revista de Estudios Extremeños, 25:2 (1969), 281–332 (p. 283); and Marina Mayoral, ‘Las amistades románticas: Confusión de fórmulas y sentimientos’, in Escritoras románticas españolas, ed. Mayoral, 43–71.11 On the Isabelline canon and its writers, see Íñigo Sánchez Llama, Galería de escritoras isabelinas: la prensa periódica entre 1833 y 1895 (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000). On female writers who adopted a moderate liberal respectability, see Mónica Burguera, Las damas del liberalismo respetable: los imaginarios sociales del feminismo liberal en España (1834–1850) (Madrid: Cátedra, 2012).12 Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 241.13 See Pensil del Bello Sexo. Colección de poesías, novelitas, biografías, artículos etc., ed. Víctor Balaguer (Barcelona: Imprenta de D. J. M. de Grau, 1845).14 On the Pensiles, see Adolfo Perinat & María Isabel Marrades, Mujer, prensa y sociedad en España, 1800–1939 (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1980), 20–23.15 Regarding Flores y Perlas, see María del Carmen Simón Palmer, ‘Revistas españolas femeninas del siglo XIX’, in Homenaje a don Agustín Millares Carlo, 2 vols (Las Palmas: Caja Insular de Ahorros de Gran Canaria, 1975), I, 401–45 (pp. 438–39).16 One instance is a semi-autobiographical sketch by Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer, where the poetic voice, a personified flower, pays homage to her mentor or ‘jardinera’, Carolina Coronado, as well as displaying her own botanical knowledge. See Gimeno de Flaquer, ‘Historia de una flor: contada por ella misma’, El Parthenón, 10, 15 March 1880, pp. 152–57.17 La Adalia, ‘Introducción’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 1, 19 October 1845, pp. 3–5 (pp. 4 & 5).18 Anon., [no title], El Vergel de Andalucía, 3, 2 November 1845, p. 25.19 La Adalia, ‘Educación’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 4, 9 November 1845, pp. 27–29 (p. 28).20 La Adalia, ‘La poesía’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 7, 30 November 1845, pp. 43–45 (p. 43).21 Iris Marion Young, ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’, in Feminism and Politics, ed. Anne Phillips (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1998), 401–29 (p. 420).22 ‘Natural law’, in Dictionary of the Social Sciences, ed. Craig Calhoun (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2002), n.p.; available at (accessed 15 January 2023).23 See Martina Reuter’s analysis of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in her Mary Wollstonecraft, Ebook (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2022).24 Carolina Coronado, ‘A las extremeñas’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 1, 19 October 1845, pp. 5–8 (p. 6).25 Coronado, ‘A Claudia’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 9, 11 December 1845, pp. 68–70 (p. 69). The poem was originally published in El Defensor del Bello Sexo, 12 October 1845, p. 36; see Inmaculada Jiménez Morell, La prensa femenina en España (desde sus orígenes a 1868) (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1992), 71.26 Twelve years later Margarita Pérez de Celis would speak openly of the female poet’s ambition in her ‘La ambición del poeta’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 5, 3ª Época, 20 November 1857, p. 3.27 Manuela Cambronero, ‘A una rosa marchita’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 3, 2 November 1845, p. 26. On Cambronero, a member of the ‘Hermandad Lírica’, see Marina Mayoral, ‘Manuela Cambronero’, Galegos = Gallegos, 2 (2008), 169–72; and JR., ‘Cambronero de la Peña, Manuela (s. XIX)’, n.d., n.p., (accessed 11 July 2023).28 Josefa Maestre’s ‘En la muerte de la señorita Brunet: Plegaria’ also denounces domestic violence, comparing the victim to an early-blooming flower, untimely uprooted or killed: ‘Un hombre que la amó con desvarío / temprana flor la arrebató del suelo’ (Ellas, 3, Año 1, 8 October 1851, p. 21).29 Amalia Fenollosa, ‘Una idea de amargura’, El Vergel de Andalucía, 4, 9 November 1845, pp. 29–31. Fenollosa (1825–1869) began publishing at the age of fifteen, but ceased her prolific literary career in 1851 when she married Juan Mañé y Flaquer, director of the Diario de Barcelona. From 1845 she contributed to Madrid’s El Semanario Pintoresco Español (see Kirkpatrick, Las Románticas, 71). For details regarding Fenollosa’s life and writings, see also Santiago Fortuño Llorens, ‘Amalia Fenollosa Peris’, Real Academia de la Historia, n.d., n.p., (accessed 3 January 2023).30 Amalia Fenollosa, ‘Tempestades del Alma’, Ellas, 3, Año 1, 8 October 1851, pp. 18–19.31 La Huérfana Numantina, ‘La violeta’, Ellas, 7, Año 1, 8 November 1851, pp. 50–51.32 On the association of the violet with Persephone, see the ‘Hymn to Demeter’, in The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes, ed. Diane J. Rayor (Berkeley/London: Univ. of California Press, 2014), 17–34 (p. 17).33 Manuela Morant, ‘La violeta’, Gaceta del Bello Sexo, 4, Año 1, 30 December 1851, pp. 27–28.34 La Ciega de Manzanares, ‘Quintillas improvisadas en obsequio de mi sexo’, La Mujer, 39, Año 1, 25 April 1852, pp. 3–4.35 Page DuBois, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), 65.36 On María Verdejo y Durán, see Christine Arkinstall, ‘No Shrinking Violets But Tall Poppies: Ambition, Glory, and Women Writing in Spain’s Mid-Nineteenth Century’, La Tribuna. Cadernos de Estudos da Casa-Museo Emilia Pardo Bazán, 14 (2019), 58–86, (accessed 12 July 2023).37 María Verdejo y Durán, ‘Las mujeres literatas’, La Mujer, 50, Año 1, 11 July 1852, pp. 3–5 (p. 4).38 Verdejo y Durán here clearly glosses Coronado’s letter to introduce Vicenta García Miranda to the readers of El Defensor del Bello Sexo: ‘La cuestión de si las jóvenes deben o no dedicarse a hacer versos nos parece ridícula. La poetisa existe de hecho y necesita cantar, como volar las aves y correr los ríos, si ha de vivir con su índole natural, y no comprimida y violenta’ (Carolina Coronado, ‘Al Sr. Director’, El Defensor del Bello Sexo, 8 February 1846, p. 97; quoted in Kirkpatrick, ‘La “hermandad lírica” ’, 32; original emphasis).39 María Verdejo y Durán, ‘Una flor y una mujer’, La Mujer, 52, Año 1, 25 July 1852, pp. 2–3.40 In Verdejo y Durán’s poem, ‘La infancia y la adolescencia’, the blossoming female poet overcomes socio-cultural barriers that discourage her from writing, thanks to her discovery of a genealogy of creative women. See Arkinstall, ‘No Shrinking Violets But Tall Poppies’, 70. In turn, sardonically addressing her female readers, Rogelia León writes of the difficulties facing women who write: ‘No sabéis, no sabéis lo que padece una poetisa […] Antes perdáis vuestros encantos, antes os lancéis por un precipicio, antes cometáis los mayores disparates, que hacer siquiera un verso’ (‘Mi historia de un día’, La Mujer, 8, Año 2, 19 September 1852, pp. 4–6 [p. 4]).41 Verdejo y Durán, ‘Al señor Don Joaquín de Monistrol’, 5 (see above, note 1).42 Likewise, Margarita Pérez de Celis affirms her desire to ‘Abarcar de una vez lo infiniverso’ (‘La ambición de gloria’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 6, 3ª Época, 30 November 1857, p. 2). This writer’s creation of the surprisingly modern neologism, ‘infiniverso’, highlights her resolve to blaze original literary paths.43 See Gloria Espigado Tocino, ‘La Buena Nueva de la mujer profeta: identidad y cultura política en las fourieristas Mª Josefa Zapata y Margarita Pérez de Celis’, Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, 7 (2008), 15–33; and Antonio Elorza, ‘Feminismo y socialismo en España (1840–1868)’, Tiempo de Historia, 1:3 (1975), 45–63.44 Dorri Beam, Style, Gender, and Fantasy in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2010), 38; original emphasis.45 Fenollosa and Cambronero also published poems in El Meteoro, II (see Fenollosa, ‘La tempestad’, 5, 3 August 1845, pp. 35–36; and Cambronero, ‘A mi sobrina Virginia viéndola dormida en el campo: Improvisación’, 16, 19 October 1845, pp. 122–23).46 Sáez de Melgar states that Zapata was then living in Cádiz at Calle de la Tenería, no. 8, 4th Floor, 3rd right (‘Suscrición [sic] a favor de la desgraciada y apreciable poetisa gaditana Doña María Josefa Zapata’, La Violeta, 49, Año 1, 8 November 1863, pp. 1–2 [p. 2]). Zapata refers to her blindness in the following poems: ‘Imágenes de un pintor ciego’ (La Buena Nueva, 1, 1ª Época, 15 December 1865, pp. 6–7); ‘Optimismo en mi enfermedad de la vista’ (La Violeta, 31, Año 1, 5 July 1863, p. 3); ‘Todo y nada’ (La Violeta, 34, Año 1, 26 July 1863, p. 3); ‘La atracción’ (La Violeta, 40, Año 1, 6 September 1863, p. 3); and ‘El mundo real. Delirio’ (La Violeta, 48, Año 1, 1 November 1863, pp. 3–4).47 For censorship laws in nineteenth-century Spain, see Miguel Ángel Blanco Martín, ‘Opinión pública y libertad de prensa (1808–1868)’, in La prensa española durante el siglo XIX. I. Jornadas de especialistas en prensa regional y local (Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses/Diputación Provincial de Almería, 1988), 27–52. La Buena Nueva was associated with spiritism, present in Cádiz from 1853; see Elorza, ‘Feminismo y socialismo en España’, 59–63. Pérez de Celis confirms her spiritist affiliations in her satirical poem ‘Mi retrato: Al mocito de la esquina’, wherein she rejects ‘un amor materialista’ because she is ‘espiritualista’ (La Buena Nueva, Año 1, 1ª Época, 30 January 1866, pp. 6–8 [p. 7]; original emphases).48 See Espigado Tocino, ‘La Buena Nueva de la mujer profeta’, 20–21.49 Ángela Grassi, ‘A una rosa marchita’, El Nuevo Meteoro, 25, 22 June 1845, p. 3.50 María Josefa Zapata, ‘A una rosa campestre: Madrigal’, El Nuevo Meteoro, 25, 22 June 1845, pp. 3–4 (p. 3).51 Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 28.52 María Josefa Zapata, ‘En el olvido’, El Meteoro, 6, 10 August 1845, p. 47. Regarding Hugo’s image, see Knight, Flower Poetics in Nineteenth-Century France, 47.53 See Christine Arkinstall, ‘A Feminist Press Gains Ground in Spain, 1822–1866’, in A New History of Iberian Feminisms, ed. Silvia Bermúdez & Roberta Johnson (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2018), 111–25 (pp. 121–23).54 Alphonse Toussenel, ‘El mundo de los pájaros, Capítulo II (Continuación)’, trad. María Josefa Zapata, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 14, 3ª Época, 20 February 1858, pp. 1–2.55 See Beverly Seaton, ‘Towards a Historical Semiotics of Literary Flower Personification’, Poetics Today, 10:4 (1989), 679–701 (pp. 693–94).56 Lincoln & Lee Taiz, Flora Unveiled: The Discovery and Denial of Sex in Plants (Oxford/New York: Oxford U. P., 2018), 391. Asia Haut indicates: ‘Immersion within the floral was effectively envisaged as providing women with a role model, which would by example encourage purity and their natural procreative predisposition’ (‘Reading Flora: Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden, Henry Fuseli's Illustrations, and Various Literary Responses’, Word & Image, 20:4 [2004], 240–56 [p. 242]).57 Regarding Wollstonecraft, see Taiz & Taiz, Flora Unveiled, 408.58 See Susan K. Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803–44 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 27–28.59 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) was, with J. G. Fichte and Hegel, one of the three most prominent German Idealist philosophers. He was especially concerned with humanity’s relationship with nature. See Andrew Bowie, ‘Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2020), n.p., (accessed 28 December 2022).60 María Josefa Zapata, ‘Fourier’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 22, 3ª Época, 10 May 1858, p. 4.61 Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 20; original emphasis.62 See Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 21–22. In Pérez de Celis’ poem, ‘Paz, Orden y Justicia: El Trovador y la Zagala’, the young girl similarly vindicates Fourierist principles: ‘La patria ya es una, son todos hermanos … / Los niños y ancianos, las pobres mujeres, / Verán garantidos sus justos derechos, / Sin torpes cohechos, con mutuos placeres. / Y al ver la falange de activos obreros, / Miles de usureros veránse confusos’ (El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 23, 3ª Época, 20 May 1858, pp. 3–4 [p. 4]).63 See Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 22–23.64 Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 42.65 María Josefa Zapata, ‘La jardinera a mi querido Pensil’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 32, 3ª Época, 20 August 1858, pp. 3–4.66 See Genesis, 2:8–9; and M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1977), 187–89.67 Rosa Butler y Mendieta (1821–?) was one of four named contributors to the earlier El Pensil de Iberia, together with Zapata, Marina and Pérez de Celis. She also contributed to La Mujer (Madrid, 1851–1852), El Pensil Gaditano (1857), El Nuevo Pensil de Madrid (1857–1858) and La Buena Nueva (Cádiz, 1866).68 Another excellent example in El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia of how flower symbolism served the periodical’s commitment to advancing social justice is the anonymous translation of an essay by George Sand. The masculine narrative voice rejects the May flowers that formerly inspired his poetry, because they cannot remedy the world’s socio-political ills. Only the alliance of the privileged—‘rosas de los jardines, jacintos sin manchas, tulipanes inflamados’—with the socially deprived will produce a more perfect society (George Sand, ‘Las flores de mayo’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 12, 30 January 1858, pp. 2–3 [p. 3]).69 María Josefa Zapata, ‘El Ángel universal’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 12, 30 January 1858, pp. 3–4.70 Zapata’s poem, ‘La hija del pueblo’, similarly decries an exclusionary society: ‘[¡]Hija del pueblo! Empero … Es un engaño, / [¡]Si todos hijos son de un pueblo mismo!’ (El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 11, 3ª Época, 20 January 1858, pp. 2–3 [p. 2]). Comparable defences of the working classes are Zapata’s ‘La menestrala’ (El Pensil de Iberia. Revista Universal Contemporánea, 4, 4ª Época, 10 May 1859, pp. 2–3) and ‘El proletario’ (El Pensil de Iberia. Revista Universal Contemporánea, 7, 4ª Época, 10 June 1859, pp. 3–5).71 Alistair Hemmens, The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought: From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 55; quoted by Hemmens from Fourier’s 1822 work, The Theory of Universal Unity. See Charles Fourier, Oeuvres complètes de Charles Fourier, 12 vols (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1966–1968), II (1966), Théorie de l'unité universelle, 174. Fourier also referred to work as ‘a chain of pleasures’ (quoted by Hemmens, The Critique of Work, 62; Fourier, Oeuvres complètes, II, Théorie de l'unité universelle, 4 & 381).72 Zapata reiterates her belief in women’s equality in ‘A la civilización del siglo XIX’, where she describes Woman as ‘varona por ser de la misma esencia que el varón’ (La Buena Nueva, 1, 1ª Época, 30 January 1866, pp. 1–2 [p. 2]).73 María Josefa Zapata, ‘Un abrazo fraternal’, El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 41, 3ª Época, 30 November 1858, pp. 3–4 (p. 3).74 See Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference, 32.75 Barely two years prior, in January 1857, the Ley Moyano had mandated primary education for girls. On women’s education in Spain’s long nineteenth century, see Consuelo Flecha, ‘Between Modernization and Conservatism: Spain’, in Girls’ Secondary Education in the Western World: From the 18th to the 20th Century, ed. James C. Albisetti, Joyce Goodman & Rebecca Rogers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 77–92; available online at (accessed 29 December 2022).76 Zapata, ‘El jardín de Flora’, La Buena Nueva, 6, Año 2, 28 February 1866, p. 3. Pérez de Celis also condemned men’s wars in her poem ‘¡Guerra!!! … ’ (La Buena Nueva, 10, Año 2, 15 April 1866, pp. 4–6). Anti-war sentiment was a constant in El Pensil de Iberia. Revista Universal Contemporánea, which carried in numbers 3–5 Republican Fernando Garrido’s essay, ‘Consideraciones sobre la guerra’.77 See Haut, ‘Reading Flora’, 240.78 See Haut, ‘Reading Flora’, 246.79 See Haut, ‘Reading Flora’, 242. Furthermore, the titles of numerous nineteenth-century flower books bore Flora’s name (see Seaton, The Language of Flowers, 85–101).80 Marina Warner specifies: ‘as the conqueror of sin, [the Virgin] smells ambrosial. She is addressed as the “lily of the field”, the “rose of Sharon”, the “bundle of myrrh” ’ (Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary [London: Picador, 1990], 99).81 Warner, Alone of All Her Sex 62 & 47. In John 15:1 Jesus states: ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman’.* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.