La mujer moderna en la olvidada narrativa de un autor decimonónico profeminista: Jacinto Octavio Picón

Abstract

For some critics Jacinto Octavio Picón is the best Spanish naturalist novelist. His belief in love as the driving force of life leads him to write about women. He chooses two models, the «unhappily married» men’s victim or the «seducer» who takes advantage of them. He accuses society of not having understood women as people with duties and rights, pleading in 1890 for «free-love» or what nowadays we would call «pareja de hecho». He defends women’s natural right to re-start their sentimental life, criticising the laws that treated them like underage and protected their bad husbands.