The Possibilities of Gender Representation in Enlightenment Spain: The Case of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s El viejo y la niña (1790)

Abstract This article reconsiders the legacy of Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s first play, El viejo y la niña (1790), particularly in comparison with his much more famous last play, El sí de las niñas (1806). Analyzing three aspects of El viejo, I argue that this play is more willing to question and undermine prevailing notions of gender and authority in Enlightenment Spain. First, the surprise ending allows the play’s heroine to defend her autonomy and determine her own future while offering the option of marital separation in cases of irreconcilable differences. Second, the play depicts a rare instance in neoclassical Spanish drama of solidarity and friendship between women. Doña Beatriz counsels and defends her young sister-in-law. Finally, the play breaks with all of Moratín’s later work because only in El viejo does an older widow represent a voice of Enlightenment reason. The independently wealthy widow Doña Beatriz serves as a principal voice of Enlightenment reason in contrast with all of Moratín’s later plays—particularly El sí de las niñas—in which male characters embody reason while older, illogical widows are the object of ridicule. The differences in how these plays address the topic of women’s place in society contributes to our understanding of the gender anxiety that so preoccupied the enlightened reformers of eighteenth-century Spain.