Abstract

The literary expressions of happiness by Spanish women form the focus of this study, as exemplified in the writings of three authors: essayist Josefa Amar y Borbón, poet María Gertrudis Hore and playwright María Rosa Gálvez.Author Elizabeth Lewis traces the theme of happiness through the texts, explicating how important the concept is for understanding eighteenth-century culture. Lewis shows how happiness for women could be considered subversive, associated as it was (among other things) with freedom, with a sense of harmony that extended far beyond the domestic sphere, and with a feminine virtue that encouraged responsibility to other women, especially to future generations.The time is ripe for an extensive and serious analysis of eighteenth-century female-authored texts, from which both the importance of this period to the history of women's literature in Spain and the importance of women's literature to the history of the Spanish Enlightenment may be better understood.