SOURCE: Miller, Beth. “Gertrude the Great: Avellaneda, Nineteenth-Century Feminist.” In Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols, edited by Beth Miller, pp. 201-14. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

In the following essay, Miller tracks Avellaneda's development as a feminist and public figure throughout her life and as demonstrated by her writings. Miller also notes historical connections between Avellaneda's feminism and the concurrent feminist movement of the United States.

When I first began working on Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda in 1972, I imagined that she must have been a visible and controversial “personality” in her time, somewhat like Gabriela Mistral or Norman Mailer in theirs. Actually, Avellaneda seems to have been less self-conscious a performer than these twentieth-century counterparts although she was no less aware of antagonistic audiences and was often very sensitive to unfair criticism. Now that I am more familiar with her work and with Avellaneda...