SOURCE: "Rosalía de Castro," in Women Poets of Spain, 1860-1990: Toward a Gynocentric Vision, University of Illinois Press, 1997, pp. 43-83.

In the following excerpt, Wilcox examines Castro as a marginalized woman poet whose collection Cantares gallegos—ostensibly a poetic celebration of her native Galicia—offers an ambivalent feminist vision.

Unlike her sisters, Rosalía de Castro has established a secure reputation in Peninsular literature, but such was not the case during her lifetime (1837-85), when she fluctuated between being a "Nobody" (Emily Dickinson's word) and a "santiña" (dear little saint).¹ Few have noted her "monstrous" qualities, to use Gilbert and Gubar's metaphor for a committed woman artist whose subconscious mind is intent on self-determination; but it is the "monstrous" as opposed to "angelic" persona that interests today's students of poetry. Rosalía's "monster" persona can be glimpsed if her poems are read as texts that were...