Puñal de claveles, Carmen de Burgos

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language: Spanish
country: Spain
year: 1931
form: novel
genre(s): literary
dates read: 14.4.24

like everyone else who’s read Carmen de Burgos’s Puñal de claveles in the last long while, I did so because I discovered it was an alternate interpretation of the so-called “crimen de Níjar” and was itself possibly the inspiration for García Lorca’s Bodas de sange, the play of all time (though he may have encountered the story directly through news reports at the time).

where in reality the man who eloped with the bride on the day of her wedding ended up dead, Burgos ends her novel as the couple are riding away through the countryside, leaving open the possibility that they may escape. this makes sense in the context of her argument throughout the novel, which positions the bride-to-be, Pura, as — quite explicitly — trapped or caught (presa) in an engagement she doesn’t want but is obligated to enter because of social pressures. Burgos frames Pura’s rejection of her fiancé as both an expression of her genuine (though rather abrupt) passion for his friend José and, more importantly, also as a rejection of the social structures that have left her with a choice between either abandoning everything that brings her pleasure in life and entering into marriage as a submissive, hardworking housewife or abandoning everything that brings her pleasure and resigning herself to the austere and solitary life of a spinster.

as the novel is quite short, there’s very little time for the relationship between Pura and José to develop — in that respect I think García Lorca did a better job by virtue of having them have been previously involved. the most emotionally interesting part was probably José’s sudden realization that actually he hates his best friend and would rather kill him than let him marry Pura; unfortunately, the novel’s not really very interested in psychological interiority — I would describe it as fairly costumbrista (despite its feminist current) and interested first and foremost in the society of the Níjar area (and especially in highlighting its differences from an assumed non-Andalucian reader’s social expectations).

moods: informative


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