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“Spain is a Contradiction”: Katharine Lee Bates’ Quest for Modernity in Spanish Highways and Byways

2023; Taylor & Francis; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09699082.2023.2286754

1747-5848

Sara Prieto,

Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

ABSTRACTThis article explores Katharine Lee Bates’ travel book Spanish Highways and Byways (1900), written out of a collection of commissioned articles published in the New York Times immediately after the Spanish-American War. Her travelogue not only provides the reader with details about the Spanish architectural and natural landscape, but it also works as an instructive text to comment on the social and political panorama of Spain at a time of national crisis. Following the path initiated by Alberto Egea in “Rewriting Stereotypes on Spain: Unveiling the Counter-Picturesque in Katharine Lee Bates” (2019), I argue that Spanish Highways and Byways describes the creation of an emerging modern Spain, influenced by the intellectual movements that shaped Spanish politics of the fin-du-siècle. Bates’ text is key to understand the Spanish-American War and its effects on the Spanish population; more importantly, it shows the author’s engagement in aspects such as the education of women or workers’ rights. In my discussion, I examine how Bates negotiates with her position as an American outsider in Spain and how she takes advantage of this position to build bridges between the two nations at a time of conflict.tKEYWORDS: Katharine Lee Bates; travel writingSpanish-American War; education of womenSpain Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Katharine Lee Bates, Spanish Highways and Byways (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900), vii.2 Ibid.3 For a detailed list of Bates’ works, see Dorothy Burgess, Dream and Deed: The Story of Katharine Lee Bates (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952).4 Melinda M. Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea (Chicago: Windy City Publishers, 2017), Kindle edition, chapter 8.5 Ibid.6 Melinda M. Ponder. “Gender and the Religious Vision: Katharine Lee Bates and Poetic Elegy”, Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Religion and Literature, ed. John L. Mahoney (New York, USA: Fordham University Press, 1997), 171-94.7 Schwarz, “‘Yellow Clover’: Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 4.1 (1979): 59-67; Lynch, “Katharine Lee Bates and Chaucer's American Children,” The Chaucer Review 56.2 (2021): 95-118; and Bell “Katharine Lee Bates' Ballad Book and the Pedagogy of the Ballad,” The Journal of American Folklore 134.533 (2021): 319-42.8 Burgess, Dream and Deed, 75.9 Katharine Lee Bates. 1907. From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England (Cambridge: The University Press, 1907). Bates also planned on writing a book on her time in Egypt and the Holy Land, but she only published a few poems inspired by this experience in the end.10 Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates, chapter 9.11 Bates, A Literary Journey, i. Noël Valis explains that Chautauqua “was a popular education movement, with elements of the Athenaeum tradition and the camp meeting” that at the beginning of the twentieth century was associated with progressivism. Valis, “Crisis, Religion and Turn-of-the-Century British and American Travel Writing on Spain,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America 92: 8-10 (2015): 455.12 Valis, “Crisis, Religion and Turn-of-the-Century,” 455.13 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes on Spain: Unveiling the Counter-picturesque in Katharine Lee Bates,” Revista de Filología 38 (2019): 61-78.14 Cantizano Marquez, “Tras los pasos de Washington Irving: viajeras norteamericanas en la Andalucía del siglo XIX,” Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna 38 (2019): 31-42.15 Valis, “Crisis, Religion, and Turn-of-the-Century,” 16.16 In Spanish Highways and Byways, Bates refers to the “new Spain” when she recalls her encounter with a young Andalusian who claims that “there is no hope for Spain but to sink her deep under the earth, and build a new Spain on top.” Bates, Spanish Highways, 104.17 Egea considers the context of creation of Spanish Highways and Byways essential to understand Bates’ Spanish imagology. However, his focus on the rewriting of stereotypes through the picturesque and counterpicturesque leaves aside, in most of his discussion, Bates’ direct engagement with the effects of the war and with social and political matters.18 Ibid., 38.19 For further details about anti-Spanish and pro-war publications in 1898 see Bonnie M. Miller, From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011); and Piero Gleijeses, “1898: The Opposition to the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35:4 (2003): 681-719.20 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 64.21 Gifra-Adroher, Between History and Romance: Travel Writing on Spain in the Early Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), 18.22 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 64.23 Ibid., 63.24 Suárez-Galbán, The Last Good Land: Spain in American Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 57.25 Ibid., 69.26 Ibid., 60. Miller challenges the traditional notion that considers the yellow press a moulder of public opinion. She concludes that the significance of the yellow press was more related to the fact that they established “important visual and discursive precedents for how a broader network of print, visual, and popular culture mass-marketed war and empire.” Miller, 2011, 12.27 Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates, chapter 8.28 In February 1898, the Chicago Journal referred to Spain as “our deadly enemy, treacherous, cruel, and unforgiving.” Quoted in Gleijeses, “1898,” 682.29 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 64.30 According to Bates, the sentence “Spain is a contradiction” was uttered by the American missionary Reverend William H. Gulick to Bates and her travelling companion right at the beginning of their trip to Spain. Gulick was married to Alice Gordon Gulick, who founded the International Institute for Girls in Spain, that had been moved to Biarritz after the beginning of the war. The Gulicks had a network of Spanish families that hosted and helped Bates throughout her trip. Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates, chapter 8. For further information on Alice Gulick and Spain, see Alice Putnam Gordon, Alice Gordon Gulick: Her Life and Work in Spain (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1917) and Carol S. Grigas, “Mission to Spain: Alice Gordon Gulick and a Transatlantic Project to Educate Spanish Women, 1872-1903” (Ph diss., Washington State University, 2004).31 Bates’ reference to her connection to the Gulicks also works as a tool to validate her account, as the Gulicks give evidence of her connections to those Americans that were involved in promoting the education of women in Spain.32 Bates, Spanish Highways, 52.33 Ponder, Katharine Lee Bates, chapter 8. Bates’ first letter appeared as early as February 1899.34 Losada Friend and Lopez Medina, “La percepción de la libertad política y religiosa en la España de la Restauración en Old Spain and New Spain (1888) de Henry M. Field,” in Miradas transatlánticas: estudios sobre los vínculos históricos entre España y Norte América, ed. Carlos Aguasaco (Madrid: Universidad de Alcalá, 2019), 39-47.35 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 64.36 Miller, From Liberation to Conquest, 4.37 See Egea Fernández-Montesinos’ “Rewriting Stereotypes” for further discussion on this topic in Spanish Highways and Byways.38 Bates, Spanish Highways, 1.39 Zoë Kinsley, “Tourism,” in Keywords for Travel Writing Studies: A Critical Glossary, eds. Charles Fordsick, Zoë Kinsley and Kathryn Walchester (London: Anthem Press, 2019), 251.40 Ibid.41 Paul Smethurst, “Politics,” in Keywords for Travel Writing Studies, 196.42 Bates, Spanish Highways, 1.43 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 75.44 This was due to an editorial decision taken right after the war of dropping the price right to 1 cent, in a move that expected to attract a large number of “potential readers in the penny market.” Will Dudding, “Impartial Coverage: As Good for Business as It Is for Journalism.” New York Times (online), 16 January: https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/impartial-coverage-as-good-business-is-journalism/docview/2167246861/se-2?accountid=17192 (accessed December 1, 2022).45 Jean Marie Lutes, Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 1.46 Ibid., 4.47 See Deborah Chambers, Linda Steiner and Caroline Fleming, Women and Journalism (New York: Routledge, 2004); Lutes, Front-Page Girls; and Karen Roggenkamp, Sympathy, Madness, and Crime: How Four Nineteenth-Century Journalists Made the Newspaper Women's Business (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 2016), among others, for further discussion on the rise of the woman reporter in the United States.48 Mary Suzanne Schriber, Writing Home: American Women Abroad 1830-1920. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 7-8.49 Bates, Spanish Highways, 2.50 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 68.51 Bates, Spanish Highways, 400.52 Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 74.53 Bates, Spanish Highways, 361.54 The word “tourist” appears fifteen times in Spanish Highways and Byways, but only once does it appear in the second half of the text.55 Bates, Spanish Highways, 51.56 Ibid.57 Ibid., 21.58 Ibid., 202.59 Ibid., 203.60 Ibid., 208.61 Ibid., 212. This event attempted to denounce governmental repression of union workers and protesters as explained in Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting Stereotypes,” 72.62 Bates, Spanish Highways, 208.63 Ibid.64 As Egea explains, due to her position at Wellesley College, Bates was discreet in publicly showing her agenda. Nevertheless, she published many poems and essays that revolved around pacifism, progressivism, and socialism under the male pseudonym of James Lincoln. There is evidence as well of her critique of capitalism. Egea Fernández-Montesinos, “Rewriting stereotypes,” 72-3.65 Emilio Castelar (1832-1899) was the president of the First Spanish Republic from 1873 to 1874 and famous for his powerful rhetoric and speeches. Although more conservative than other republican leaders, he was an advocate for democracy and universal rights in Spain. Some of his views on these matters can be seen in Castelar, La formula del progreso (Madrid: J. Casas y Díaz, 1858).66 Bates, Spanish Highways, 235.67 Ibid.68 Ibid., 11.69 Ibid., 9.70 Ibid., 37.71 Ibid., 36.72 Ibid., 34; 251; 280; 355.73 Ibid., 232.74 Ibid., 208.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by AWESOME (American Women Exploring Spain (1880-1936) - Open Multimedia Encounters), Generalitat Valenciana, Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia Abierta y Sociedad Digital [grant number: CIGE/2022/016]; La España Exótica: Relatos de viaje de norteamericanos/as en España - 1900-1950, Universidad de Alicante, Ayudas para la realización de proyectos de investigación emergentes (2018) [grant number: GRE18-14].Notes on contributorsSara PrietoSara Prieto, PhD, is Lecturer at the English Department from the University of Alicante. She is the author of Reporting the First World War in the Liminal Zone: British and American Eyewitness Accounts from the Western Front (2018).