4 - The New Woman and the Second Republic

Summary

En la vida actual, la mujer està preparada única y exclusivamente para el matrimonio. Es lógico que hoy la pasión amorosa se condense en ella de tal manera, que excluya aspiraciones de otra índole. La sociedad actual es manca, porque le falta el brazo activo de la mujer. Cuando la mujer no necesite el matrimonio para resolver su vida y cuando el hogar deje de ser la sepultura del espíritu, entonces la pasión amorosa podrà ser sometida a disciplina y equilibrio.

(Díaz Fernàndez, NR 50)

[In modern life, women are prepared only and exclusively for matrimony. It is logical that today passionate love is condensed in her in such a way, that it excludes aspirations of other types. Modern society is crippled, because it lacks the active limb of women. When women no longer need matrimony to resolve their life, and when the home stops being the sepulcher of the spirit, then amorous passion can be subjected to discipline and equilibrium.]

The position of women in society was one of the most important topics of the “other” Generation of 1927, and females figure prominently in the prewar social novels (Fuentes, La marcha 88). This concern is reflected in Díaz Fernàndez's El nuevo romanticismo, which lamented the lack of the intellectual participation by women in Spanish society. As a solution to this state of affairs, he proposed that Spaniards look to the Soviet Union, where gender- based stereotypes were being dismantled, and women participated fully in intellectual life.