SOURCE: Gertz, Audrey R. “Masquerading as the Archetype: Images of Femininity in Miguel de Unamuno's Nada menos que todo un hombre.” In Neuvas Perspectivas Sobre el 98, edited by John P. Gabriele, pp. 251-59. Madrid and Frankfurt am Main, Spain and Germany: Iberoamericana and Vervuert, 1999.

In the following essay, Gertz suggests that in Nada menos que todo un hombre Unamuno subverts readers' understandings of archetypes through the fusion of the Self with the Other and the Other into the Mother.

Miguel de Unamuno's short but powerful novel, Nada menos que todo un hombre (1916), illustrates according to one critic “a progressive disintegration of the male personality” (Jurkevich 2). However, in Unamuno's artful portrayal of the devastating consequences of a brutal confrontation between will power and human frailty, nothing is quite as it seems. Although on the surface the novel appears to be a horrifying example of patriarchy at its worst, a...