Masculinity and Self-perception in the 19th Century: Francis of Assisi Bourbon Through His Correspondence

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze the preserved correspondence of Francisco de Asís de Borbón, using these sources as a tool for understanding the personality of the king consort. The methodology, focused on content analysis, offers a classification divided into three stages: youth, marriage, and reign and exile. As a conclusion, various features of the king's personality are uncovered. The study reflects a configuration of the king's masculinity characterized by a conception far removed from the conventions of traditional normative masculinity, which is obtained from the exploration of six categories: self-descriptions and self-analysis; the personal reactions and meanings given to events and scandals of the time; descriptions of people (distinguishing between men and women); the descriptions of his relationships with other people, the criticisms, attacks and satires received or external visions of his personality and the rhetorical devices that reveal his vision. This work contributes to understanding the roots of the binary gender system and the notion of homosexuality that dominated the 20th century. The nineteenth century is marked by the dissemination of these notions in more ambiguous terms, which are nonetheless important for research, as this article shows with the case of Francis of Assisi Bourbon, king consort through his marriage to Isabel II and a paradigmatic example of this panorama.