SOURCE: "Fantasy, Seduction, and the Woman Reader: Rosalía de Castro's Novels," in Culture and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Spain, edited by Lou Charnon-Deutsch and Jo Labanyi, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 74-95.

In the following essay, Kirkpatrick investigates the relationship of Castro's novels El caballero de las botas azules and La hija del mar to the tradition of seduction fantasy.

Do you think a thriving virgin imagination can gorge itself with impunity on Martin, the Orphan Boy, A Doctor's Memoirs, and The Man of the Three Pantaloons? … Devouring The Three Musketeers, [the young girl learns of] Milady's evil deeds, the adulterous love of Madame Bonacieux, and the scandalous passion of Mlle. Lavalliere for the king, a passion that infiltrates young and naïve hearts the more easily when dressed in a sweetly poetic and sentimental form….[T]ender female readers, when they reach thirteen, follow as best they can in...