SOURCE: Kirkpatrick, Susan. “Liberal Romanticism and the Female Protagonist in Macías.” Romance Quarterly 35, no. 1 (February 1988): 51-8

[In the following essay, Kirkpatrick maintains that Larra's conception of individual subjectivity within the aesthetics of Romanticism and within liberal political reform remained male and bourgeois.]

In his 1836 essay “Literatura,” Mariano José de Larra called for a new literature, “expresión de la sociedad nueva que componemos, toda de verdad como de verdad es nuestra sociedad.”¹ Larra's development of this idea proposes as the mission of his generation a new concept of the object of literature, a concept fundamental to liberal Romanticism. It is above all in his elaboration of what he means by the truth common to literature and society that we can see the premises linking Romantic aesthetics to liberalism: “En política el hombre no ve más que intereses y derechos, es decir, verdades. En literatura no puede buscar por consiguiente sino verdades. … Porque las pasiones en el hombre siempre serán verdades, porque la imaginación misma, ¿qué es sino una verdad más hermosa?” By including self-interest, rights, passions, and imagination within the meaning of “truth,” Larra defines truth in terms of a basic assumption of liberal ideology—that the common reality in which society, politics, and literature are grounded is the individual subject. In “Literatura,” he suggests that a new focus in literature must complement political reform in recognizing the centrality of the individual subject and its mode of being. He implies that if subjectivity expressed as self-interest, bearing with it inalienable rights, has become the reality that economic and political structures must reflect, then that same reality must be represented in art as the inner truth of the subject—passions, fantasies, imagination. Individual desire—the common link between self-interest and passion—thus plays a crucial part in this liberal-Romantic conception of the subject. So, what Larra proposes to his generation is simply the project of making space for the individual subject to express its desire in economic, political, and artistic practice—founding a new society and a new literature, in other words.

Two years before writing “Literatura,” however, Larra had provided a fictional model of the new truth about which he was later to theorize. His play Macías, performed in the fall of 1834, offered a literary image of the individual subject that focused on inner experience, or subjectivity. In his brief introduction to the published version of the play, the author states the central objective of his work: “¿Qué se propuso hacer el autor? Macías es un hombre que ama y nada más. Su nombre, su lamentable vida pertenecen al historiador; sus pasiones al poeta. Pintar a Macías como imaginé que pudo o debió ser, desarrollar los sentimientos que experimentaría en el frenesí de su loca pasión, y retratar a un hombre, ése fue el objeto de mi drama” (III, 257). The poet's truth that Larra proposes to represent in his protagonist, however, carries with it traces of the other aspects of that indivisible unit of reality that Larra identifies in “Literatura.” That is, the portrayal of Macías's subjectivity inevitably becomes in this drama also an expression of his interests and rights. And it is through this connection that Macías, a man who loves and nothing more, becomes in the context of a fictional feudal world the standard-bearer of modern bourgeois aspirations and attitudes. As we shall see, the universal subjective man that Macías embodies is in fact bourgeois man.

I will argue that in fact Larra's effort to represent individual subjectivity as a universally valid poetic paradigm equivocates in the same way as did the liberal reform program of his day: the subject of passions and of rights is conceived as male and bourgeois. But while women's exclusion from political rights was categorical, their status as subjects in literary representation was more problematic. The literary image of the female was to some degree granted autonomous subjectivity, but the standard of inner life remained masculine. As we examine Larra's drama, we shall see how the writer creates a model of the subject as inner self in his protagonist, while he treats Elvira, who functions as a co-protagonist in the narrative structure, in a much more ambiguous fashion.

To begin with Macías, his first appearance on the stage as the impetuous lover who has come to claim Elvira despite his lord's command provides the audience with the image of a highly charged emotional nature. In the explosive confrontation with don Enrique that ends this episode, the protagonist's affiliation with a major trend in European characterizations of Romantic self is immediately apparent. The fiery passions that will brook the prohibitions of no external authority align Macías with many other Romantic Promethean figures who defy the traditional boundaries to human desire. However, from the outset Macías's defiance of authority is represented in terms of class conflict. The protagonist, a mere knight without title of nobility, operates on bourgeois assumptions in a feudal world. From his first entrance he shows himself to be very sure of his own merits and rights and quite heedless of the privileges of rank. He scandalously disregards feudal protocol by coming to Andújar without his lord's permission, then entering don Enrique's presence armed and without revealing his identity. When reprimanded by the Marqués—“¿Sois vos quien dicen / Que entra aquí sin miramiento?” (III, 274)—Marcías replies undaunted, “Excusadme; entrando aquí / Usé de mi propio fuero.” Don Enrique is quite rightly taken aback by Macías's use of the word fuero. Within the feudal system, the term referred to the collective rights of a community of vassals or to the area in which the lord of a given community might exercise his authority. In using the word to mean the prerogative of an individual per se, Macías implies the whole liberal Romantic concept of subjectivity.

In the explanation that Macías offers his lord, he argues that his right to pursue his individual happiness with Elvira justifies his disobedience of commands that obstruct that pursuit. In effect, he claims that his personal commitments and emotions have a higher authority than his lord's commands to remain away from Andújar.

Y aquí, como caballero,
Mi juramento primero
Me llamaba y el amor.
No presumas que es nacido
De alguna leve afición;
No, que es veraz mi pasión
Y nadie igual la ha sentido.

(III, 274)

Thus it is the inner truth and the uniqueness of his passion that Macías adduces as the grounds for breaking the rules of feudal society.

Later, Macías backs up the validity of his autonomous passion with further arguments as he challenges not only seigneurial authority but also such social institutions as the Church, matrimony, and the code of honor in claiming Elvira as his mate despite her marriage to Fernán Pérez. In his attempt to persuade Elvira to join him, Macías validates his rejection of social norms by appealing to nature as a higher authority that corroborates the authenticity of his inner imperatives.

Los amantes son solos los esposos.
Su lazo es el amor: ¿cuál hay más santo?
Su templo el universo: donde quiera
El Dios los oye que los ha juntado.
Si en las ciudades no, si entre los hombres
Ni fe, ni abrigo, ni esperanza hallamos,
Las fieras en los bosques una cueva
Cederán al amor.

(III, 281)

Thus, in Macías's view, true passion faithfully reflects nature's truth, which social forms falsify. Here he voices a characteristic argument through which nineteenth-century Romanticism sought to locate individual subjectivity as the site of fundamental truth and value.

The idea of a nature-sanctioned right to pursue the spontaneous directives of desire also underlies the political concept of the right to resist tyranny to which Macías appeals when he adopts a stance of open rebellion against his lord at the end of Act III. “Sois inhumano, / Injusto sois conmigo, don Enrique, / Porque en la cumbre os veis; porque ese infando / Poder gozáis, con que oprimís vilmente, / En vez de proteger al desdichado” (III, 284). The tyrannical abuse of power that Macías sees as the grounds for rebellion against don Enrique's authority is not the breaking of a feudal norm, however, for the Marqués did keep his word to the Doncel by not allowing Elvira's marriage to anyone else during the period of time agreed on. What Macías condemns as “vile oppression” is don Enrique's intervention into the area of Macías's private happiness by scheming to prevent his return in time to claim Elvira's hand. We see then that as Macías's defiance of the existing power structure exemplifies the power and reality of the subjective, it also expresses basic bourgeois principles: he claims as his right the space to pursue his interests and realize his happiness without interference from authority.

Let us turn now to the question of Elvira. In the narrative structure of the play, Elvira is a co-protagonist, the only character who lines up with Macías in the conflict enacted in the drama. Above all, she is identified with Macías in the scheme of opposing dramatic forces because she shares or reciprocates his passion. Thus, of all of the dramatis personae, she is the only one besides Macías who embodies subjectivity as the locus of passions and imagination. At the same time, she is the figure through which woman is inscribed in this text. With these points in mind, we must ask whether, as a woman, Elvira too shares in the image of the bourgeois subject that Larra elaborates in this play. Does she too represent that natural, valid force of desire that struggles against oppressive interference with its right to realization?

The autonomy of Elvira's desire is established very early in the play, through her resistance to the match made for her by her father and don Enrique, and through her expressions of love for the absent Macías. Her passion springs from inner values that oppose the stress on rank, power, and riches that prevails in the external social world. Her desire, however, does not have the integrity of Macías's single, powerful passion, but instead is divided against itself by the internalized reflection of female subordination. The passion that seeks realization in union with Macías is held in check by Elvira's own will to preserve her honor, that is, by a counterposing desire to conserve her social identity as a virtuous woman. Thus, the representation of Elvira's subjectivity incorporates, along with the image of autonomous desire, a traditional characterization of feminine virtue as loyalty and obedience to patriarchal law. Although she makes her true inner feelings known to her father, she promises him that she will not allow her passion to supersede the obedience she owes him. In the same way, once married to Fernán Pérez, she assures him that though she loves Macías, she will remain loyal to her vow of fidelity. Whereas Macías gains heroic stature through his Promethean defiance of external authority, then, Elvira's heroic qualities are signified by her resistance to the inner impulses that would lead her to transgress the authority of her father and her husband. The point seems clear: while this drama exalts the hero's rebellion against political authority in the name of the individual subject's right to happiness, defiance of patriarchal law cannot be conceived as a positive attribute of the female protagonist.

The split in Elvira's subjectivity, the division between her autonomous desire and her social self-concept, echoes another ambiguity in her function as a figure in the dramatic scheme. As Macías's partner in amor-pasión she is granted the status of subject, with a fully developed capacity for feeling and imagination. “Sí; yo también sé amar. Mujer ninguna / Amó cual te amo yo” (III, 293), she exclaims to Macías in the final act, echoing his earlier claim that his love is unique and thus uniquely valid. However, the text undeniably represents Elvira as object: structurally, she is the object of desire that sets the male figures of the drama at odds with one another; thematically, she is treated as an object to be used, exchanged, or possessed. This is evident early in the drama where Elvira's role in the action is that of a pawn to be exchanged for don Enrique's favor, in the case of her father, and for Fernán Pérez's loyalty and gratitude, in the case of don Enrique. From Fernán Pérez's perspective, possession of Elvira means possession of her father's fortune, but she herself is also a desired object for him. And, he believes, control of her body is control of her subjectivity:

… [Y]o haré
A mi mujer bien casada.
Además que será fuerza
Que ella con placer lo haga,
Pues no hallará otro remedio
Siendo mía y en mi casa.

(III, 269)

Later, when Elvira pleads for minimal self-determination by asking to honor her matrimonial pledge in the chastity of a convent rather than in the marriage bed, Fernán's reply leaves no doubt that he regards her claim to the status of subject as incomprehensible.

          Loca y necia
Anduvisteis en pensar
Que yo os fuese a renunciar
Lo que más el alma aprecia.

(III, 287)

“El alma” here refers to Fernán's psyche; Elvira's feelings and desires, which she has just revealed to him, count for nothing. She only signifies as a body to be possessed.

It might be possible to read the denial of Elvira's subjectivity as a tyranny against which she might justifiably rebel were it not the case that both protagonists—Elvira herself, as well as Macías, the standard-bearer for the rights of the individual subject—conceive of her at least partially in the same terms as the others. Macías's first question of Elvira when the lovers are finally alone face to face is surely the ultimate subject-to-subject query—“¿Me amas?” However, as proof he requests that she flee with him, giving herself to him instead of Fernán Pérez. His reaction to her refusal reveals an obsession with Elvira as sexual object that denies her subjectivity:

No, tú no me amas, no, ¡ni tú me amaste
Nunca jamás! …
… ¿Tú en sus brazos?
Tú, Elvira, y cuando lloren sangre y fuego
Mis abrasados ojos, ¡ah! ¡gozando
Otro estará de tu beldad! …
Primero he de morir o he de estorbarlo.

(III, 281)

At this high pitch of his passion, then, Macías treats his beloved as simply a body whose possession he disputes with his rival. She is a “beldad,” a beautiful object that passes from one set of arms to another. What she says about her feelings and her desires has not changed her status with Macías any more than it had with Fernán Pérez.

Indeed, Elvira's own internalization of this unanimous vision of woman as object accounts for the split in her desire that we noted earlier. Her concern with her honor reflects her self-identification with the concept of her body as an object of male possession strictly regulated by social rules. In contrast to Elvira, Macías has a sense of self that is so autonomous that he regards transgressing social norms—fleeing with Elvira, now married to someone else, to the wilderness, for instance—as a form of being true to himself, to the inner feelings that constitute his reality. Elvira, however, sees such transgression as a loss of self: “¿[E]stá la dicha / Donde el honor no está? ¿Cuál despoblado / Podrá ocultarme de mí propia?” (III, 281). Elvira's sense of identity derives from the social concept of woman defined by the honor code and conflicts diametrically with the promptings of her autonomous desire.

Ultimately, there is only one way for Elvira to resolve her self-division, the conflict between her existence as subject through her love for Macías and the self-image that internalizes her existence as object in the social world. The text centers her choices upon the disposition of her body as an object of sexual possession. The consummation of her marriage with Fernán Pérez would transform her totally into object, annihilating her subjective desire, while consummation of her love for Macías would objectify her by destroying her conscious self-image. Only through death can she as a subject retain control over herself—her body—as object. The image of death as salvation, first glimpsed when Fernán threatens Elvira with physical violence to obtain his prerogative as husband, becomes the solution Elvira seeks in the final act. She proposes to help Macías escape from the assassins who have been sent to kill him, but she will neither go with him nor remain in Fernán's power; instead she speaks vaguely of finding “un asilo impenetrable” (III, 293) The absoluteness of the asylum she seeks becomes clear when she asks Macías to kill her rather than let her fall in to Fernán's hands. No less obsessed with her body as an object of desire than Macías or her husband, she elicits Macías's promise by stirring his possessive jealousy: “Recuerda que a sus brazos de los tuyos / Pasara, y que esta noche a las odiosas / Caricias de un rival. …” Before she can finish the sentence, Macías promises. “¡Mujer heroica!” he exclaims, and joins her in the suicide pact.

Macías's readiness to embrace death has its own logic as the culmination of his subjective trajectory. As we saw earlier, Larra, in exploring Macías's feelings as a man, exemplifies the inseparability of rights and interests from passion and imagination that underlies the conceptualization of the individual self in liberal and Romantic discourse. The drama presents the motives for the protagonist's despair in terms of the repeated and over-whelming frustration of his desire by a social structure hostile to his right to happiness. Only in death, out of this world, can Macías find a space which permits realization of his desire. In Macías's destiny Larra figures the frustration of bourgeois revolutionary initiative in a social world pervasively controlled by feudal power structures; by giving voice to Macías's subjective existence, to “el frenesí de su loca pasión,” the author represents the historical situation of the Spanish liberals in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

Thus, in the love-death that concludes drama, Macías clearly represents at once the individual and the historical subject, forced tragically out of the world in its project of self-realization. Elvira voices the tragic theme of the consummation of desire in death: “La tumba será el ara donde pronta / La muerte nos despose” (III, 296). However, she is not permitted to remain unambiguously as one of the subjects of this death-consummated desire, for Macías's final words reinscribe her as the object: “Es mía / para siempre … sí … arráncamela ahora, / Tirano.” Directed as a last challenge to his rival, these words memorialize Elvira as the body whose disputed sexual possession has now been settled. In figurative terms, Macías's final words exclude Elvira as a subject in the struggle for self-realization by presenting her as the natural object of desire that must be wrested from tyrannical forces. In the end, then, Larra's drama enacts the historical bias that defined the Spanish liberal program of the nineteenth century as exclusively male.

Notes

1. Obras de Mariano José de Larra, ed. C. Seco Serrano (Madrid: Atlas, 1960), II, 133. Volume and page references in the text are to this edition.