>Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:41:59 -0400 (EDT)
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Was Cervantes a feminist: from Dario Fernandez-Morera, Northwestern U
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>I suppose it would depend on one's definition of feminism.  If one means 
>favoring women's freedom of choice in their lives regarding things like 
>love, marriage, and general way of life, I suspect Cervantes was a 
>feminist.  At least his female characters are evidence of this.  If one 
>means favoring equal pay with men regardless of work experience, the right 
>women have to abort their babies without interference from the community 
>in which they exist, their right to get equal money for high school and 
>college sports regardless of audience's interest, the right to keep the 
>children in case of divorce unless the woman is basically a criminal, and 
>other positions, one may doubt he would be a feminist given his historical 
>status as a Spanish man of the late sixteenth century.  Besides, modern 
>feminism shares some basic assumptions but there are differences of detail 
>among those who call themselves feminists.  They do not make a monolithic 
>block.  Some of the views listed above are not shared by all 
>feminists.  There are other views not mentioned that some feminists share 
>and others do not.  So it is safer to say that Cervantes' feminine 
>characters are fairly good evidence of the views listed first above, but 
>not of the views listed afterwards.  Beyond that, one is merely making 
>interesting analogies and transpositions  that cannot be substantiated for 
>obvious reasons: one cannot ask Cervantes the man of flesh and bone.  So 
>he cannot be characterized as a feminist tout court, but as a writer that 
>seems to favor some views which are associated with modern feminism, but 
>which as a matter of fact can be associated not only with feminism, modern 
>or not, but with freedom-loving viewpoints on human life that have existed 
>long before what one calls feminism, a relatively recent label in human 
>history anyway.  Dario Fernandez-Morera

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