«Horrenda Adoración»: The «Feminism» of Felipe Trigo

University of Rochester

Abstract: Felipe Trigo stands out among the turn-of-the-century Spanish writers of erotic novels as the only one who concentrated on women's political and erotic emancipation. For the theory expressed in his doctrinal books and the sensuality of his novels, he acquired early on a reputation as an advocate of women's rights. In fact, the utopic system described in his books of theory severely constricts the same emancipatory movement it claims to undertake, and his novels rely on traditional images such as the virgin/whore, the woman-monster, and the woman-corpse to reinforce existing patriarchal social and literary structures. In view of the recent «recuperación» of Trigo's writing, it becomes important to do away with the commonplaces about it that are still being repeated, and which obstruct a true reevaluation of his place in Spanish letters. His reputation as a feminist is one such commonplace.

Key Words: 19th century, Spanish novel, erotic novel, Trigo (Felipe), feminism.

Among the turn-of-the-century Spanish writers of erotic novels, Felipe Trigo achieved singular notoriety for approaching the sexual theme «de una manera muy respetable» (Pecellín 174). Both contemporary and more recent critics have contrasted him to other «novelistas galantes» (Santonja 165) for utilizing the form as a vehicle for the dissemination of a social program rather than following a popular literary fashion for personal gain. In this program, which envisioned social change through erotic liberalization, the transformation of women's situation occupied a central position, and for this Trigo became known as an advocate of women's rights. Amanda Labarca Hubertson, the contemporary writer of a prologue to one of Trigo's novels, contrasts him to Ramón del Valle-Inclán in that «si para el primero [Valle] la única función de la mujer es el amor, Felipe Trigo reclama para ellas todas las oportunidades de vida que se presentan al hombre» (Trigo, Las Evas 18). Critics throughout the twentieth century have shared this opinion (Bouché 179; Pecellín 177-78), and Lily Litvak summarizes the view in her study of fin-de-siècle eroticism in Spain: «Trigo, al asociar la emancipación social y política de la mujer a su liberalización erótica, se adelanta a la revolución sexual y al women's lib de nuestros días» (185-86).

The radicalism of Trigo's ideas seems evident in his theoretical writings, where he argues for a better education and work situation as well as for greater sexual freedom for women. But, as Ángel Martínez San Martín has noted, «en sus novelas se encuentra [también] cierto machismo larvado» (91). Other scholars have alluded to this contradiction (Scanlon 238) and to his novels' substratum of sadism (Petriconi, qtd. in Martínez San Martín 80; Ton 86, 89-90), but no one has undertaken a detailed study of the topic. In fact, Trigo consistently portrays women as beings created by and for man, to be controlled rather than liberated. And this control assumes such explicitly violent manifestations that the recent «recuperación» (García Lara 332) of Trigo's writings merits a reevaluation of the perception of the author as a champion of women's rights.

The misogynous sentiment that permeates Trigo's novels emerges as a counteractive undercurrent even in his nonfictional books Socialismo individualista (1904) and El amor en la vida y en los libros (1907). In these writings Trigo professes himself a socialist and outlines the changes he envisions in the community of the future. His utopia was to be a cultural and economic system centered around the erotic: «en rigor acaso la cuestión social no es más que una cuestión sexual» (Trigo, quoting Andrés González-Blanco in El amor 285). Consequently Trigo concentrates

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on sketching the necessary transformation of women and the family. With this project, he acquired his reputation as a feminist while designing what was really a system for the control of women that did not depend on the institutions of marriage and the family -which novelists like Gadós, Clarín, and Pardo Bazán had already shown the woman could transgress.

Trigo's opinion of the condition of the woman of his time was that «su destino oscila entre dos tormentos: si pobre, el trabajo; el durísimo trabajo con todo el rigor de un infierno; la degradación y el vicio también... Si rica, la cárcel, la cárcel del hogar, donde se guarda su honor con centinelas de vista...» (El amor 172). At a time when many European and American scientists -social and natural- were advocating the differential education of men and women on the basis of women's supposedly lesser likelihood of excelling⁴⁹, Trigo echoed the feminists who saw access to higher education as the only means to the goal of women's emancipation. Economic independence was also a milestone of Trigo's new social order: «Digo, pues, que la mujer puede trabajar, ... y que el trabajo la redimirá de su ignominiosa esclavitud» (El amor 173). In a society in which all individuals would freely choose their careers, half the posts in any professional guild would be reserved for women.

This sharing of the public sphere would be a consequence of the social transformation of the family and the home. In Trigo's utopia, marriage would be optional because the concomitant elimination of private property and inheritance would make it unnecessary to insure the offspring's legitimacy. Men and women would enter into free unions that would be possible because children would grow up in state schools away from the family home. Thus freed from the constraints of their role as wives and mothers, women could also attain freedom from the constraint of housework. Trigo describes the home of the future as one which would benefit to the maximum from the division of labor: the cooking, the sewing, and the laundry would all be done in commercial establishments, and thus domestic maintenance would become so easy that both partners in a relationship could dispatch it in little time.

Behind this program for women's liberation one can nevertheless detect a disgust for characteristically feminine attributes. For example, in his description of the home Trigo specifies that the man and the woman should have separate rooms in which to perform their «vulgar porción de íntimas necesidades» (Socialismo 218; El amor 208) so that the man could avoid the repulsive appearance of the woman who, after the wedding, appears «desgreñada y sucia delante del marido» (Socialismo 218; El amor 207). Although at other times Trigo attempts to defend the appeal of women's physical presence from those he calls «esteticistas», who would be repelled by it, he dwells somewhat excessively on the delineation of what James Iffland calls «creaturality»: «la más bella mujer, en efecto, puede tener viruela al día siguiente, será vieja y fea sin remedio... y no está libre de las necesidades más groseras a cada horas veinticuatro del día» (El amor 57)⁵⁰. If a woman, like any man, must give a minute of every day to these needs, why not concentrate on the remaining 1,239 minutes (the creative math is Trigo's) and divert attention from her physiological deeds: «Te contesto que tú puedes escoger mujeres no viejas, ni hurgarle a las jóvenes en las narices ni amarlas en el retrete» (58).

The implicit rejection of the female body and its functions translates into a larger social scale. Just as the husband should be spared the sight of the wife's toilette, he and society should be spared the sight of the biological processes of childbearing. Around the sixth month of pregnancy, women would retire to a «Casa de Maternidad» where female doctors and other pregnant women would attend to them; they would remain there (while on paid leaves of absence from their usual jobs) through a long «quince o veinte meses de lactancia» (Socialismo 225; El amor 215). During this time men could visit their wives or lovers to learn about children and motherhood in a controlled environment reminiscent of a visit to the zoo: «He aquí el contacto de los hombres con los niños en esa sociedad... Como se va hoy en los paseos higiénicos a ver las casas de fieras en los parques, las gentes

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acudirían a los parques de niños y de flores y de pájaros para tomar el sol, viéndolos jugar o participando en sus juegos» (Socialismo 224; El amor 215).

Trigo's contradictory social scheme serves to limit the same emancipatory movement it claims to foster, because the maternity-house structure ultimately emphasizes reproduction as women's chief function. Although Trigo affirms that women will find freedom through work, the commitment to childbearing would exclude them from the highest positions in the workers' guilds, where advancement would depend on achievement. While seniority by itself could automatically merit promotion, steps in this upward movement would be skipped «como premio al talento y la iniciativa» (Socialismo 176), increasing the importance of cumulative productivity and continued training. Therefore, without any provision compensating women for the repeated and prolonged interruptions of their work associated with childbirth, one can infer that the largest concentration of women workers would be at the bottom. This professional «holding back» forced on women by biological circumstance may not have such dire consequences in the case of the shoemakers' guild. But in the medical and engineering corps, which Trigo uses to illustrate his system, the least appealing work would be done by those in the lowest strata: medical students would be in charge of the dissection of putrid corpses, and the entry-level employees of the «cuerpo de ingenieros higienistas» (Socialismo 178) would clean the sewers. Trigo's own rhetorical question -«¿quién pudiendo ser catedrático preferiría los bajos oficios de barrer las calles o limpiar las letrinas?» (Socialismo 176)- provokes a redundant answer: those least able to satisfy the requirements for promotion. But while even an average of three two-year leaves during the key production years could limit a woman's career advancement women who would be horrified at the prospect of cleaning latrines should not worry, since Trigo finds it easy to dismantle «la leyenda de vileza e indignidad sobre unos utilísimos trabajadores» (Socialismo 178).

Two corollaries emerge from the analysis of Trigo's planned reform: socially, though he sees a place for women in the public sphere, he cannot reconcile their role as mothers with this place and thus does not envision a community in which they would have realistic access to achievements comparable to those of men; sexually, although he professes to see physicality in general as noble and natural, he rejects those attributes of the female body which remove it from Christian or pagan idealizations of beauty⁵¹. This attitude of repulsed fascination -or fascinated repulsion- is the moving force of his novels, in which his quest for a perfect woman arises from a disgust for real ones and ends in what can appropriately be called an «undoing of woman», to borrow Catherine Clément's term⁵².

Perhaps the best novel with which to begin the illustration of Trigo's ideas in his fiction is Las Evas del paraíso (1910). In this novel Trigo attempts to put into practice his utopic reasoning by constructing an edenic society free from all erotic restrictions. The protagonists are two married couples -Maravillas and Rubén, Laura and Marcelino- living in an Indo-Chinese forest, where the husbands wish to establish a colony around their industrial/commercial exploits. Away from Spain's restrictive morality the four characters fall, led by the free-thinking Rubén, into a communal sexual arrangement in which even their roles as parents are shared. The difficult change in customs is accomplished through a long period of acclimation, almost a sexual game of musical chairs. The most «radical» pair -Rubén and Laura- quickly become lovers, and his move to her chalet effectively forces Marcelino and Maravillas into living together. But the final arrangements will, in keeping with Trigo's theory, enforce a division of the sexes: «Los dos chalets -explicábalo Rubén tranquilamente-; ellas, cada una en uno con los niños; nosotros en otro, equidistante, que mandaríamos construir para los dos; almorzar juntos, cenar juntos... en el nuestro, y no te quepa duda de que con fácil armonía determinaríanse las... preferencias cada noche» (274).

Judging by the place in which each night's «preferences» were to be decided, it becomes obvious by whom they were to be decided. The ideal situation that Rubén proposes makes Maravillas and Laura virtually interchangeable,

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and the women become types rather than individuals: «Ellos tenían en ellas las dos formas más gentil y estéticamente opuestas de la belleza femenina. Rubén, el poeta, sobre todo, sabíalas variar en la gama entera pasional, desde la tigre hasta la diosa» (298). This lack of individuation seems to be an inevitable consequence of Trigo's reasoning, for earlier, in Socialismo individualista, he postulated that the end of male jealousy (and the beginning of a mature approach to sexual ethics) will come when some women cease to be more desirable than others: «No habría cortejadas predilectas si todas las mujeres fuesen igualmente bellas y arrogantes y gentiles -y esto debe ser posible, como lo prueba la belleza idéntica de todas las alondras de las bandadas de alondras» (115; El amor 164). The very use of the «flock» metaphor is typical of Trigo's discourse -he constantly refers to women using animal and object metaphors such as those of the tigress, the skylark, or the statue (sometimes the goddess's statue)- all of them either above or below, but not on the same level as, men's humanity.

Consistent with this situation of woman outside the realm of the human is an arrangement of the characters around a spectrum of activity and passivity, at whose outermost extremes are Rubén and Maravillas. Rubén, one of a large family of Trigo protagonists serving as spokesmen for the author's ideas, acts as the catalytic agent confronting the others with the futility of their sexual prejudices. At the other extreme is Maravillas, the most conservative character, who finds it very difficult to change. Consequently, throughout the novel Maravillas undergoes a sort of «training» in which her resistance eventually turns into conformity and complete acceptance of the situation. By the end of the book, the success of Rubén's project is confirmed and even legally sanctioned by a contract attesting to its legitimacy, as well as by the imminent addition of two new members to their community.

Underneath this seemingly smooth progression there nevertheless lurks a current of violence. There is, at one level, the acknowledged inclination to revenge that each of the two men feels when he finds out that his wife has «betrayed» him. But there is also an underlying discourse which defines masculine desire through violence, as is evident in the scene of Marcelino and Maravillas's first sexual encounter. Maravillas has discovered that Rubén and Laura are lovers, and hastens to tell Marcelino about it. He misunderstands her presence in his shop as a sexual invitation, and what follows is rape disguised as seduction: «tuvo a puños que estorbarla el anhelo de escaparse» (161). He repeatedly ignores her entreaties to release her, forcing her into submission:

In the end Maravillas, partly out of spite for Rubén's infidelity and partly because of his strength, yields -«... poseída!» (168)- to the point of feeling some pleasure before remembering the original reason for her visit.

The violence in this scene may be justified as a textual means to overcome the stereotypical reluctance of a nineteenth-century lady to accept sexual advances, or as a result of the need to force Maravillas into participation in the new order of things. However, there are many other scenes in which the link between masculine desire and violence remains gratuitous. While living with Maravillas, Marcelino fantasizes about Laura -«...la cogería, la empelotaría, la destrozaría a besos que fuesen cada uno un mordisco» (237)- in almost the same brutal terms in which Rubén longs for his own wife: «Si se pudiera abofetear y abrazar a un tiempo, si se pudiera a la vez darle puñetazos y clavarle las uñas y escupir y matar a rabias e insultos a la misma bella vida en plena desnudez que acariciaran unos labios y unos ojos con horrenda adoración...» (189, my emphasis). For Trigo's male protagonists, free access to sexuality entails giving free rein to the use of force.

Regardless of this discourse of violence, a novel so clearly written as the illustration of a thesis must and does reach a state of order by

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the conclusion. But the apparent ease with which Trigo smoothes the way to his oriental utopia cannot be replicated in the novels set in Spain. Of these, Alma en los labios (1905) and La Altísima (1906) have been described as «de las que están más cerca de la teoría amorosa expresada en sus libros doctrinales» (Martínez San Martín 79). In the two novels the male protagonist attempts to create the perfect woman, worthy of receiving the perfect love. This impulse inscribes Trigo's novels into the long and complex history» of the metaphor of literary paternity: «Patriarchal mythology defines women as created by, from, and for men, the children of male brains, ribs, and ingenuity» (Gilbert and Gubar 12). In their more specific historical context, these novels can be related to the literary tradition of «male... envy of the feminine aspects of generation» which Elaine Showalter (78) sees as an affirmation of masculinity in the face of changing feminine roles⁵³.

In both these novels there is a spokesman-protagonist who starts out with a feeling of «hastíos galantes» (Alma 15), provoked by his extensive and unsatisfactory experience with women. Darío, the young engineer in Alma en los labios, has decided to ignore women until Gabriela, the daughter of his current lover (whom he had said would be the last), surprises him by provoking his genuine interest. Similarly, La Altísima's Víctor, a writer of erotic novels, is fed up with his books and the women who inspired them. The scene in which each protagonist initially notices the woman he will attempt to recreate is highly symbolic. In Alma en los labios, Gabriela appears in Darío's workshop during a rainstorm. Unlike her female companions, who are afraid of the storm, she receives the flash of lightning «con una expresión de extraña gratitud voluptuosa y humilde, como a una caricia celestial excesiva para un mortal» (17). This moment already epitomizes the relationship that will develop between her and Darío -she will reveal herself as a woman braver than all others and willing to receive gratefully the «celestial caress» of someone she considers greater than herself. Standing there among the machines she seems to become one of them, a legitimate object of attention for the able engineer (13).

In a parallel scene in La Altísima, Víctor strolls around a cemetery, hoping to find peace and quiet, when he catches his first glimpse of Adria standing before a grave. The dialectic between life and death established here acquires multiple significance. At one level, it prefigures the experiment he will undertake -the new woman that Adria is to become must be born out of the (figurative) death of the old one. At another level, it foreshadows the nature of the conflicts that will take place between Víctor and Adria throughout the novel. For he has come to the graveyard tired of empty women's bodies and impelled by a desire to «vivir entre almas» (16). And Adria, who has been a prostitute (though forced by financial need and remaining virtuous; Trigo's women are always both virgin and whore), is defined from her first appearance by her imposing physique.

Romantic involvement soon follows the initial meeting, but before sexual possession (and my use of the word is intentional) can occur, another ritual must take place which we may call the «unveiling». In both novels, intercourse is delayed -Darío does not have sex with Gabriela until well after they have eloped; and Víctor, who meets Adria for the second time (it is actually the first time he talks to her) with the express purpose of buying her services, passes up the opportunity. Certain proofs of submission must come first. Darío and Víctor must know that Gabriela and Adria are willing to surrender themselves in an absolute union, different from any that either woman (or any woman) may have experienced before. And then the female must literally and figuratively (and completely) undress: Darío insists that Gabriela make love to him totally naked and with the lights on, and Víctor forces Adria to stare at her own body in the mirror and be comfortable lounging in the nude before they can go any further.

In both instances the clothes that the women take off are described as veils. Gabriela pushes back her silky robe in a carefully choreographed move (Alma 95); Adria's clothes almost float away from her: «instintiva y rápida trató de recoger y alzarse por la carne la batista, los encajes... pero... a los tres pasos

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dejaba este último cendal por el suelo» (Altísima 62). Insofar as the image of the veil is associated with the hymen (Showalter 145), Gabriela and Adria's «unveiling» becomes their symbolic deflowering -and in both novels the undressing scenes are quite sadistic. The women suffer a lot, both because of their forced nudity and because of the aggressiveness required of them, as the men enjoy heightening their sense of shame⁵⁴. Víctor, for example, plays irreverently with a religious pendant that Adria had refused to take off, leaving her «anonadada en el sacrilegio» (66). In Alma en los labios, for as long as Gabriela cannot show her body without embarrassment Darío humiliates her, calling her «cobarde» (92, 94) until she falls sobbing to the floor. The analogy with rape is obvious, and it is all the more significant because the violation is displaced -it is not the vagina, which is actually being offered, that the man seeks to penetrate. What Trigo's protagonist wants is not the woman's sex, but whatever it will hurt her to give.

Another common connotation of the veil is that of concealment -it has traditionally been an icon of «sexual secrecy and inaccessibility» (Showalter 145). Conversely, sight is associated with conquest, and Trigo does not fail to make the connection, which Víctor makes explicit: «son mis ojos los que quieren poseerte» (62). Like the God that both Darío and Víctor want to be, they must be able to see everything. But what they have to face is that looking at the woman's body is not enough, because the secret of her sexuality still remains hidden. For this reason, sight leaves Darío and Víctor dissatisfied. All through the novels Gabriela. and Adria remain elusive, and it worries them: «Gabriela, que no le había rehusado un solo rubor, un solo sentimiento, un solo pensamiento de cuantos él la pidió beber, no era plenamente suya, sin embargo» (Alma 140). The consequence is that the men always want something more, a fact which may explain the gradation formed by the titles of the four sections of Alma en los labios. «La novia», «La amante», «La esposa», «La mujer».

In both novels the protagonists force the women to continuously give increasing proofs of devotion. Darío demands that Gabriela be with other men, partly so she can experience it but mostly to be sure that she stays with him because of his avowed superiority; then he wants her to endure his liaisons with other women, presumably for the same reason. The process intensifies in La Altísima, where Víctor always seems consumed by jealousy. First he wants to know all about Adria's past; then he makes her prove that she can leave all others for him -the father of her daughters (whom she still sees for their sake), her aunt and even the girls themselves. He delights in his power over her -once he orders her to kiss a friend of his and, as she mindlessly obeys, he shivers «de posesión y poderío» (245). He too wants her to accept his being with other women («te adoraré en ella» 105), but reacts with cruelty to her possible interest in other men. One night, after introducing Adria to another friend at the theater, Víctor notices that later the gentleman «la miraba y [ella] le miró; una vez también con los gemelos, luego sin ellos» (270). Angered by «Adria la traidora, la perversa, la perdida, la perdidamente falsa e hipócrita, la indiferente» (271) and by her submission to the gaze, and therefore the possession, of another man, he later punishes her with a public insult: «Adiós, Álvaro... hasta mañana... -Digo... si es que tú, Adria, no prefieres marcharte con mi amigo!» (272).

The need to possess translates itself into an urge to stifle movement and in this too Trigo's novels inscribe themselves in a European fin-de-siècle tradition: «if the rebellious New Woman-the «shrieking sister»-or the prostitute could be turned into a silent body to be observed, measured, and studied, her resistance to convention could be treated as a scientific anomaly or a problem to be solved by medicine» (Showalter 127-28). In Trigo's novels, knowledge of the woman is equated not only with the sight of her body, but with the ability to look inside it. The image of the dead woman on the observation table -a common one in late nineteenth-century literature, painting, and medical writing (Showalter 128-33)- is also frequent in the turn-of-the-century Spanish erotic novel. A striking instance appears in Trigo's La Altísima.

As part of her «education», Víctor takes

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Adria on a tour of the Madrid underworld to see «la degradación de la mujer» (222). They start at the brothel, where a client is beating a prostitute, and go on to the hospital wards for syphilitic women: «piernas y brazos punteados como de carbonosas pústulas; labios gangrenosos, fagedénicos, de una peste mortal; dientes y lenguas escorbúticas; narices roídas por los chancros» (226). Finally they go to the morgue's «Sala de Disección». As they walk among dismembered bodies, they begin to hear a song -«la serenata de Fausto» (228)- and follow its melody into a room where a doctor stands before «un rígido y blanco cadáver femenino, del cual estaba sacando el corazón» (229). The fact that the singer-lover is a doctor in the process of dissecting a body reminds the reader that, however alluring, the woman's «cuerpo» is ultimately the woman's «corpse», and therefore love of her is always ultimately necrophilia.

From the opening scene at the graveyard, Víctor has been fascinated by Adria's deathlike appearance. As she sleeps, he watches her «nasales surcos en que parecía una tinta opaca tenderle ya manchas cadavéricas a la boca seca, inerte, entreabierta» (274). But his attraction becomes a real desire (the exaggeration of that of Rubén and Marcelino) to actually kill her: «Le estremecía un deseo. "MATARLA"» (278). He plays over her body with a dagger, perceiving her breast as «brindándose al puñal» (279) and going as far as cutting her skin before displacing his desire and cutting all of her hair off. In Alma en los labios, Darío too is obsessed with Gabriela's death. While on their honeymoon he wonders if by making her his wife he has not turned her into the «cadáver de su amante», and takes a perverse delight in the image: «Tal la veía, como una muerta, aquí en la litera estrecha y honda como un sepulcro. Cubierta por el blanco edredón de pieles forrado de seda roja, parecía enterrada en nieve, con un trazo diagonal de sangre sobre el pecho» (140).

Where does this struggle for absolute control end? In La Altísima, with the death of the Adria who preexisted Víctor's arrival in her life. Adria does not literally die, as Martínez San Martín mistakenly states (79), but goes mad after receiving a scornful letter from a jealous Víctor. Her madness is nevertheless a symbolic death; she now wanders around Víctor's country house, «pálida, pálida, sus ojos negros brillaban en una sombra violeta» (325). In her delirium, she does not recognize or remember anyone but him, and actually becomes a reflection of him, a creature made by the «hombre-Dios» (284) in his own image. In the last two pages of the novel, Víctor is watching Adria -now he can look at her as much as he wants to- pull the petals off a rose, and her actions metaphorically reproduce what he has done to her:

The rose is a fit emblem for the women in these two novels. It seems to hide something in its center, which its petals cling to in order to protect it. But just as Adria does not find anything at the flower's core, Víctor ultimately finds -or leaves- nothing to possess. This is why at the end of the novel he picks up the rose she has discarded, knowing that «era cuanto su pasión podría volver a recoger de la ALTÍSIMA que le amaba ausente» (326). Adria becomes a reflection of Víctor, the rose a reflection of Adria, and the mirrors are endless -through her madness, Adria finally escapes him.

Alma en los labios has an equally inconclusive ending. Throughout the novel Darío has remained unsatisfied in his efforts to possess Gabriela. Though he himself bid her to have other lovers, his fits of jealousy are only slightly milder than Víctor's. Attempting reconciliation after a quarrel, he takes her up on his air balloon, the «Júpiter». There he feels master of the machine and of the woman, and the image of the man/god which has appeared at several points in the novel culminates here. He tells her that the reason he asked her to see other men was so he could «complacerme en el placer de dioses de estar

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imaginándote angustiada en otros brazos» (261), and she repeatedly interrupts his long-winded speech with the exclamation «-Ah, Darío! -MI DIOS!» (268). In the ultimate act of submission, she hands him the bank note with which her first lover (after him) had paid her, mistaking her for a prostitute. On the bill she has scribbled the adoring pledge of her devotion, significantly reminiscent of a litany: «Quieres a Darío como al verdadero Dios, porque no hay otro. Si hubiese dos dioses los adorarías, o serías absurda. Si hubiera dos Daríos, también; pero no los hay, y...» (271).

At this point in the novel, Darío has attained absolute control over Gabriela, but this level of possession cannot be sustained. At some point the air balloon must come back down to earth, where Gabriela will inevitably encounter other men. After initiating her in his doctrines of pantheism, Darío can no longer expect Gabriela to locate her god only in him. Furthermore, in order to confirm his own position as «el verdadero Dios», he needs her to keep proving that he is, that the other men do not come up to his level; that is ultimately why he asked her to have other lovers. In this way, Darío's absolute possession of Gabriela is inextricably linked to her sexual freedom, and each is limited by the other. This paradox-the inseparability of freedom and possession-underlies both Alma en los labios and La Altísima and is present as well in Trigo's theoretical books. For even in these, his program for women's «liberation» serves a possessive purpose: what he wants women to become is better sexual and social partners-less inhibited, more cultured, and out of the way when unwanted.

In labelling the turn-of-the-century Spanish erotic novel «la novela del corsé», Manuel Longares chose the perfect defining image. For the corset is both a symbol of sexuality and of repression; as Lily Litvak recounts: «esa prenda causaba innumerables males y dolores. Las autopsias confirmaban que a menudo el hígado estaba partido por la mitad a causa del apretado lazo que también producía, a veces, simulacros de histeria y aun podía ocasionar sensaciones eróticas» (172). But, beyond its effect on the wearer or the peeping Tom, the image of the corset shares with Trigo's novels a reliance on the presupposition that women, as they are, are all wrong, and that if only their waists were smaller or their breasts higher, if they were more sexual or better informed, the world would be a much better place for men⁵⁵. Ultimately, Trigo himself inadvertently reveals his true impulse: «al fin de formar o reformar sociedades de hombres se trata» (El amor 256, my emphasis).

A close reading of Trigo's writings reveals a fundamental discrepancy between the purported aim -to describe and illustrate an ideal social situation in which women would cease to be second-class citizens- and the actual content expressed or implied. Trigo's «feminist» reputation, basically unchallenged to this day, rests mainly on the former; as with many other writers, a thorough and innovative study of his work has been delayed by the author's own misleading statements. In fact, throughout Trigo's work, women personify the threat of disorder in what should be a smooth evolution towards a new society and, as such, they must be controlled. To do this, Trigo associates the establishment of the «normal» -reason, action, freedom, the impulse toward change- with the male protagonists and defines it in opposition to the attributes of insecurity, dependence, and even deviance characteristic of his heroines. In this context, Trigo's status as a feminist is revealed to be tortured and contradictory, and serves a double purpose which ultimately secures his literary prestige.

Although the radical nature of Trigo's social project and the liberality of his sexual program make his work appear a progressive response to the then current phenomenon of the birth of the Spanish feminist movement (Scanlon 195-257), he also exploits traditional images like the virgin/whore, the woman-monster, and the woman-corpse to reinforce existing patriarchal social and literary structures. Faced with masculine normalcy, the woman is always the unnatural, the strange, the other. To regulate this menacing force, Trigo's writing replaces conventionally sanctioned configurations of power with more extreme ones which annihilate the female subject by pretending to free her while actually

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eliminating her individuality. The women in the novels I have analyzed either imitate the men's behavior or become interchangeable objects of pleasure (Laura, Maravillas). In the end, they are either idealized (Gabriela in the sky) or destroyed (Adria). Against this neutralized Other, Trigo's narrative voice emerges as virile (the male «hero» who rescues and enlightens the weak maid), powerful, and even scientific (editors coined the pseudo-technical term «sicalíptica» to refer to this literature, and Trigo himself insists that «Yo llegué a la novela como biólogo» [El amor 277]). In this way, the very discourse which defines him as progressive secures him a respectability that really depends on the limitation of the equality he claims to advocate.

The identification of Trigo's narrative voice with masculine ideals also insures his claim to literary value by differentiating his writing from other forms of «inferior» mass literary production. Trigo's books were «bestsellers»⁵⁶ at a time when wide popular acclaim was beginning to be considered negative, and when the writers favored by the literary establishment were not necessarily the ones favored by large audiences. Writers like Ganivet and Unamuno were identifying the image of the artist with that of the intellectual, and the enormously successful authors of the second half of the century, like Echegaray, were being discredited by artists who considered themselves the young «intelectualidad española» (qtd. in Castilla 243). In fin-de-siècle Spain, «high» and «low» culture were emerging as separate spaces, and in order to procure a place in the former any discourse (and especially an economically successful one such as Trigo's) had to set itself off from the «mediocrity» of the latter.

In his discussion of aesthetic discrimination in both popular and high culture, Simon Frith argues that taste is exercised in both contexts to distinguish the good from the worthless, and that «there is no reason to believe a priori that such judgment processes work differently in different cultural spheres» (105). Instead, both within the domain of «high» and «low» culture artists attempt to defend the validity of their production and, as Frith writes, «perhaps the most striking (and recurrent) feature of the continuing standoff of the aesthete and the philistine... is that for both sides the other is feminine» (110). Both the «high» artist who disdains the market and the populist who democratically writes for the masses characterize the other milieu as weak and effeminate. By retaining and insisting on its essential masculinity even as it pretends to defend the cause of women's rights, Trigo's narrative separates itself both from the romance of the «folletines», widely perceived as inconsequential women's reading, and from the much criticized «pornography» of the lesser erotic novelists like Joaquín Belda, José María Carretero, Antonio de Hoyos, or Rafael Pérez de Haro. This separation effectively «saves» Trigo's work. Despite the repression of erotic literature accomplished after the Civil War and although he stands outside the canon of mainstream Spanish literature, Trigo is still known as «el mejor» (García Lara 232) among the erotic novelists and is the only one being «rediscovered» and occasionally even related to the larger context of modernism and the generation of 1898. In view of this «recuperación» it becomes important to do away with the commonplaces about Trigo's writing that are still being repeated, and which may obstruct a true reevaluation of his place in Spanish letters. His reputation as a feminist is one such commonplace.

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 76, Number 2, May 1993