ABSTRACT
In Europe, traditional gender roles were violently debated at the beginning of the twentieth century, challenging the nineteenth-century ideal of womanhood embodied in the figure of the 'Angel in the House', an image popularized by Coventry Patmore's eponymous poem. This chapter examines how New York narratives showcase the centrality of gender in debates about Spanish national identity in the first decades of the twentieth century, when patriarchal values were at the core of both traditionalist and liberal views of the nation. In La ciudad automatica, Julio Camba regards gender equality in the United States as the effect of 'special laws', which have allegedly been passed in order to protect women. The image of 'la nina violenta' constructed by Moreno Villa in Pruebas de Nueva York condenses the violence and aggressiveness with which male intellectuals associated changes in sexual and social conventions.
