Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:41:59 -0400 (EDT)
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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