Eudoxia, hija de Belisario by Pedro Montengón and women's education in the 18th century: the literary projection of a controversy

Abstract

This paper is an example of how to use literary sources for the study of Women's History. Made from a feminist perspective, it tries to elucidate the process of the construction of the female identity at the end of the Old Regime.

The chosen work, Eudoxia, hija de Belisario, addresses the subject of the education, one of the recurrent polemics in Spanish society in the 18th century, projected in the intellectual and cultural spaces of this period, from the literature, moral works and sermons to the "tertulias" and newspapers.

The ex-Jesuit and writer Pedro de Montengón, admirer of Rousseau, uses this "historic novel" as a literary recourse to define the main aspects of this controversy from the social debate about female education, finally selecting an educative model for women similar to that formulated by the Geneva philosopher in his pedagogic works.