A Woman’s Political Answer to the cuestión social in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

This article argues the necessity to rethink the role of the politically committed female intellectual in nineteenth century Spain. Concepción Arenal’s intervention on the cuestión social, her adaptation of the concept of “industrial education” and her use of legal rhetoric and of rhetorical devices typical of those applied by lawyers in the courtroom, serve as a point of departure to explain how the figure of the woman of letters can be understood as an agent of social reform in the most important social preoccupation of that time: the working masses and their relationship with industrialists.