The Maid of Saragossa, a Spanish Woman Warrior in Anglo-American Catalogues of Celebrated Women

Abstract

During the Peninsular War numerous women became involved in the conflict and participated actively in it. When episodes from the War began to be recorded, the heroines who fought courageously in the Sieges of Zaragoza captured the attention of both writers and artists. One such woman, Agustina or the Maid of Saragossa, was of particular interest, in that she was young and beautiful and had operated a heavy cannon against the French army. Most importantly in the nineteenth century Agustina’s deeds were narrated in various Anglo-American galleries or catalogues of notable women. Focusing on gender issues and patriotism, this study will explore how these compendia contributed to the construction of Agustina’s myth as emblematic of the woman warrior, a hybrid figure with both feminine and masculine attributes.

Keywords:

• Maid of Saragossa
• catalogues of celebrated women
• women warriors
• Peninsular War
• nineteenth century
• gender
• patriotism

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this essay was delivered as a conference paper at the ‘I International Seminar on (Neo-)Victorian Studies in Spain: VINS Network’ (University of Málaga, May 2017).

Notes on contributor

Begoña Lasa Álvarez is a lecturer at the Faculty of Education (Universidade da Coruña). She holds two BAs in English and Spanish Studies, and a PhD on the Spanish reception of eighteenth-century English novels by women. Her academic interests focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers, literary and cultural interchanges between English-speaking countries and Spain, and English language and literature teaching. These are also her main areas of publication, with articles and book chapters in international journals (Nineteenth-Century Prose, Sederi-Yearbook, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo, Women’s Writing, ELOPE, Journal of War and Culture Studies) and publishing houses (Rodopi-Brill, Trea, Peter Lang, Fundamentos, Honoré Champion, Routledge). She has also published a monograph entitled Novelistas británicas del siglo XVIII en España (Arcibel, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

The author wishes to thank the Research Network “Lingua e Literatura Inglesa e Identidade III” (ED431D2017/17), funded by the Galician Government, and the Research Project ‘Portal Digital de Historia de la traducción en España’ (PGC2018-095447-B-I00), funded by the Spanish Government.