REVIEW TEXT

Nerea Aresti. Masculinidades en tela de juicio. Hombres y género en el primer tercio del siglo
XX (Madrid: Cátedra Feminismos, PUV, 2010). 320 pp. ISBN 978843762640-6

ROSA Ma MEDINA-DOMÉNECH*

Historian Nerea Aresti is a consolidated researcher at the University of the Basque

Country, an institution that is home to a remarkable niche of contemporary historians.
With a sound formation in contemporary theory, Aresti articulates post-structuralist
and feminist theory to raise historically relevant inquiries. Her previous book, Médicos,
donjuanes y mujeres modernas: los ideales de feminidad y masculinidad en el primer tercio
del siglo XX (recently offered in open access at http://www.argitalpenak.ehu.es/
p291-content/eu/contenidos/libro/se_indice_humanpdf/eu_humanpdf/adjuntos/
Medicos,%20Donjuanes.pdf), provided an excellent analysis of the discursive
contruction of the femininity/masculinity dyad and the dense grid of justifications
of this opposition that are netted in the realm of science, politics, and literary
production in early twentieth century Spain.
Her 2010 book not only explores how discursive networks articulated normative
genders in early twentieth-century Spain, but also investigates the social perception
of femininity/masculinity. In Aresti’s analysis of what is commonly termed ‘‘crimes of
passion’’, she interestingly and unexpectedly includes crimes committed by women.
Scrutinizing a vast amount of newspapers that broadly cover the Spanish ideological
spectrum (El Liberal, Noroeste, La Voz de Asturias, El Comercio, Avance, etc.) to trace her
case-studies, she also analyses an abundant array of published primary sources and
explores women’s crimes in order to analyse the different conceptualizations of
masculinity*or even more specifically of women’s expectations of masculinity*
from the early twentieth century to the Second Republic.
The ‘‘crimen pasional’’ is understood by Aresti as a conflict that reflects the
instability of the sexual/gender order. From this point of departure, the crimes she
analyses are transformed into a locus for an updated gender/sex research agenda, as
Emilia Pardo Bazán would explain in La vida contemporánea: ‘‘in all honesty, crimes per
se as isolated cases are meaningless. They only acquire meaning when revealing the
general situation of cultural tradition (costumbres) and consequently of the spirit’’
(cited on p. 12).
The first chapter opens with a crime committed in recently industrialized Bilbao
in 1906. Jesusa, a pregnant upper-class woman, abused, dishonoured, and distraught,
kills her boyfriend when he reneges on marriage. Aresti explores an array of reactions
from different social sectors to her predicament in order to unveil how Spain
approaches gender roles in this time period. The Catholics defended the feminine
acceptance (resignación) though they condemned male infidelity; on the other side
of the social spectrum, the left and the liberals supported Jesusa. However, the
*Email:rosam@ugr.es
Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies Vol. 12, No. 2 June 2011, pp. 253255
ISSN 1463-6204 print/ISSN 1469-9818 online – 2011 Rosa Ma Medina-Doménech
http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2011.607352
254 J O U R N A L O F S PA N I S H C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

bourgeoisie was the dominant social group, the one to which the judge and prosecutor
of the case belonged. They represented the double moral standards in place and
condemned the ‘‘moral sexual’’ of Jesusa and naturalized her fiancé’s sexual pro-
miscuity as unavoidable and justifiable male polygamy, hence, easily accepting his
violent behaviour as part of the masculine cultural code. The case also portrays uneven
class issues when describing how thousands of Spanish women showed empathy
towards the victim rather than embracing a conscious feminist politics.
The second case study will bring the reader to the ‘‘crime of the Gran Via’’
*perpetrated in Madrid during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship*against a recently
married Colombian woman. In Aresti’s incisive writing, this case discusses normalized
masculinity as well as the limitations imposed on the access of women to the public
sphere by focusing on the Spanish ‘‘piropo’’. The legal restrictions imposed on this
widespread machista behaviour appeared during the Rivera dictatorship and they
gained support from upper-class women and the catholic sectors. However, during
the legal case, the victim’s moral standards were also questioned, therefore portraying
the stagnation of new ideals regardless of the fact that the notion of the intellectual
inferiority of women had been abandoned and the ideals of autonomy endorsed by
‘‘la mujer moderna’’ were already being experienced in Spain.
In this case, issues concerning the national representativeness of donjuanismo were
at play. The press close to the regime considered the perpetrator to be a ‘‘señorito
andaluz’’*not a proper Spanish man (‘‘caballero español’’)*and, as his lawyer pointed
out in his defence, ‘‘acostumbrado al rumbo y a la juerga’’ (p. 164). The clashes between
tradition and modernity and other dyads such as nature vs. culture, Spain vs. Latin-
America, degeneration vs. regeneration were playing themselves out behind the
scenes in the press’s portrayal of the crime committed in the most modern location of
Madrid, the Gran Vı́a.
In Chapter 3, readers will savour her explorations on the gap between the new
scientific creation of the male homosexual body*as a way to establish a sharp border
around the heterosexual man*and the popular understanding of male homosexuality
as an immoral behaviour embedded within a specific class structure. Writing about a
cruel crime committed in Barcelona in 1928 against a business-man*the same year
that male homosexuality was penalized*Aresti also explains how the fears of an
epidemic spread of male homosexuality can be understood in the context of feminist
vindications and the consequent gender anxieties and admonitions against Spain’s
failure in civilization.
Exploring two new cases concerning women who killed their partners in 1930
Zaragoza and 1932 Trubia (Asturias) respectively, Chapter 4 returns to masculinity
and focuses on the relationships between the sexes and responsible paternity.
In contrast with the situation at the beginning of the century, the moral and political
context had changed and the press was more critical with masculine double standards.
Renewed principles on masculinity*inspired in Unamunian ideals*coalesced during
the Republican period that questioned the ‘‘don Juan’’, and emphasized reciprocity in
gender relations and the responsibility of fathers. Moreover, the advent of
‘‘La República’’ not only mobilized ideological changes: women’s rights and
citizenship were also legally endorsed, and the single mother was de-stigmatized.
Other changes such as women’s participation in jury duty, as well as a more feminist
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(instead of only emotional) solidarity towards the accused by women’s groups, were
also decisive for the final verdict in these criminal cases.
Is there anything missing in this thorough and illuminating historical journey,
a book that is as pleasurable to read as excellent literary fiction, I would say that the
book deserves an extensive index. Considering that Cátedra is a well-renowned and
high-profile publisher, an index would have completed the edition and helped readers
to navigate the dense tapestry of cultural clues that Aresti provides. To the author,
I would suggest that the book could have been enriched by examining the politics of
emotion that made sense of these ‘‘crimes of passion’’, crimes embedded in a complex
culture where the emotional is taken for granted in matters as diverse as those of the
nation(s), gender roles, everyday politics, or even the memory of the past.