«Era una muger, que con su cabello desmelenado (...), daba bien a conocer que acaba de cometer un acto de desesperación.» On the cultural pathologisation of female suicide during the first half of the Nineteenth century

Abstract

This article seeks to analyse how the changes that took place throughout the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries in Europe regarding the conceptualisation of suicide affected the way in which Spanish literary discourse from the first half of the nineteenth century dealt with this subject. Despite the predominance of a religious discourse that understood it as a sin against God's will, the emergence of a scientific-medical discourse that considered suicide as a result of insanity and despair made possible social responses that allowed its victimisation. Moreover, women were seen, in this new conceptualisation, as prone to madness and suicide, so that the arts fostered a self-interested vision of the suicidal woman. In any case, the influence of the Catholic Church in the Spanish cultural arena meant that the pathologisation of suicide was a slower process, both in medical and cultural discourses. From this perspective, we will analyse how this medical discourse spread belatedly through literary exegeses that pathologise the suicidal woman, such as those offered by Joaquín Castillo y Mayone in Adelaida, o el suicidio (1833) or Wenceslao Ayguals e Izco in María, la hija de un jornalero (1845-1846).