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ABSTRACT
Critics have claimed that Spanish-American naturalist novels such as Federico Gamboa's Santa (1903) simply echo Eurocentric narrative models. In this article, I qualify this assertion by focusing on Gamboa's use of space in Santa. Gamboa's construction of the brothel as a heterotopic space where social condemnation and the hope for spiritual salvation can coexist provides theoretical grounds to question the deterministic and positivist tenets of European naturalist narrative. I explore the consequences of this questioning for Latin American literary historiography, as I contend that Gamboa's use of space begs a reconsideration of his novel as an imitation of European models.
Notes
1. This information comes from Chile's National Archive, Intendencia de Santiago, from January 1891.
2. Debra Castillo comments on the integral role of the prostitute in achieving a “smooth functioning of a moral social order” when she states, “Men need these other women as outlets for their own stronger sexuality and as protective buffers to save decent women from the corrupting knowledge of their own potential sexual desires” (12).
3. Michel Foucault discusses this nineteenth century solution to the problem of prostitution: “If it was truly necessary to make room for illegitimate sexualities, it was reasoned, let them take their infernal mischief elsewhere: to a place where they could be reintegrated, if not in the circuits of production, at least in those of profit” (The History of Sexuality 4).
4. On Zola's theories of determinism and literary naturalism, see his study The Naturalist Novel.
5. While I will be focusing on Federico Gamboa's Santa, this argument also applies to Augusto D'Halmar's Juana Lucero (1902) and Manuel Gálvez's Nacha Regules (1919).
6. While Spanish-American naturalism, in general, tends to distance itself from that of Zola by demonstrating a “propensity to depict the human drama as something more than just the result of impersonal forces, blind instinct, or unbridled concupiscence,” Gamboa, in effect, differs from other Spanish-American naturalist authors in his treatment of religion (Sedycias 99). Although religion at times factors into the works of Spanish-American naturalist novelists such as Chile's Augusto D'Halmar and Peru's Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, it does not offer redemption and spiritual cleansing, as in Gamboa's Santa.
7. Other authors who have dealt with the function of space in Santa include María Teresa Zubiarre. In El espacio en la novela realista, Zubiarre contrasts urban and rural spaces in Santa and discusses the connection between gender and space.
8. When Cánovas analyzes the space of the brothel in Latin American Boom novels, he does allude to the possibility of viewing the brothel as a positive space. He states that in certain conditions the brothel can be seen as “una alegoría sobre la felicidad” (“Heterotopías” 146). All other references to Cánovas in this paragraph refer to his Sexualidad y cultura en la novela hispanoamericana: La alegoría del prostíbulo.
9. The end of the nineteenth century saw the origin of the theory of sexual repression that states that “all sexuality must be subject to the law; more precisely, that sexuality owes its very definition to the action of the law: Not only will you submit your sexuality to the law, but you will have no sexuality except by subjecting yourself to the law” (Foucault, The History of Sexuality 128). The ideologies of sexually active unmarried women are obviously not in accordance with these ideas: In a time when females were seen as either “pure” or “potentially polluting” and the popular dichotomy was woman as either “angel” or “whore,” those women who derived pleasure from sexual activity were seen as abnormal and had to be dealt with accordingly (Duffin 31).
10. Debra Castillo comments on the multifaceted nature of the brothel but ultimately emphasizes its negative aspects: “The brothel, then, is not just another space among the various institutionalized spaces of instruction and production; it is also a compendium of the others. Meat shop and school, factory and cemetery, the brothel is a microcosm of society and an index of all that is wrong with the other sites” (60).
11. According to Arnold van Gennep, the idea of social passage from one world to another is a three-part transition consisting of “rites of separation [preliminal rites], transition rites [liminal rites], and rites of incorporation [postliminal rites]” (11). In van Gennep's terms, Santa's separation consists of her flight from her mother's home and from the rigid social norm of accepted sexual behavior to the decadent world of prostitution and complete sexual liberation. The transition occurs in the brothel, which has a liminal nature that suspends Santa between two worlds, that of social acceptance and that of social marginalization. Her integration back into society at the end of the novel, albeit brief because of the grave illness that will soon claim her life, constitutes the stage of incorporation and fulfills the third and final step of the rite of passage between social worlds. Viewing the brothel as a liminal space serves to further emphasize the multiple meanings with which it is associated. Not only can the brothel be interpreted as a liminal social space, but according to Tracy Fessenden, the figure of the prostitute also possesses an inherent social liminality (459).
12. The home has been interpreted, under certain conditions, as “alternatively a site of disenfranchisement, abuse, and fulfillment” (Mertes 58). Along these lines, the brothel, as Santa's home, can be seen as possessing an inherent ambiguousness.
13. When Elzbieta Sklodowska analyzes Santa's expulsion from the church, she comments on this notion of social contamination and confirms that due to Santa's profession and her fallen status, her “presencia puede profanar cualquier espacio” (121).