Chapter Seven - Writing as Shelter: Refuge and Poetic Space in Hispanic Women’s Writings

Summary

In the second half of the nineteenth century, an unexpected female character entered Colombian literature through a serial novel (novela de folletín) published in the newspaper El mensajero (“The Messenger”). Authored by Soledad Acosta de Samper (1833–1913) in 1867, Dolores tells the story of a young woman who is introduced as the traditional romantic character, extremely beautiful, orphaned at a very early age, raised by a wealthy aunt, and a victim of leprosy, a terminal disease inherited from her father. What makes the character of Dolores unique in nineteenth-century Latin American literary production are the actions she takes after knowing that leprosy will take over her body. Instead of passively waiting for the inevitable, she chooses to isolate herself from everyone, repairs a small hut away from home where she has decided to live her final days and, most interestingly, reads and records her experiences as a young woman whose body becomes deformed by leprosy. To this end, Dolores builds a new place and pens a journal, activities that provide her with material and symbolic refuge from her sufferings. In the spaces provided by the hut and her writing, she finds some relief when confronting her impending death and, in the process, she uncovers her voice. This literary character distinguishes itself from the traditional romantic female protagonist of the nineteenth-century novel whose representation reproduced time and again the feminine ideal incarnated in the figure of the domestic angel. It also constitutes an example of Hispanic women's reflection about finding and/or making a place to escape from the scrutiny, persecution and harassment of others to establish a dialogue with themselves, discover, reflect, exercise and write their voices. Not only did they find and create refuges for themselves but, in the process, they also benefited from the healing properties of writing. Refuge for these writers was not only the physical space of the hut, the convent or other places in the world away from home but also the space in which they read and wrote at their own will, making a conscious choice that will allow their voices to flow and express their inner worlds.