|
The Construction of Feminine Identity through Motherhood. An Analysis of the Representation of Motherhood in School TextbooksPage 1 of 6
Author: Kira Mahamud
Introduction to the Chapter This chapter explains how the phenomenon of motherhood was represented in textbooks. This representation served as a strategy to help build a particular model of femininity and female identity linked to the national Catholic and patriotic identity. The appreciation of childhood was based on a political need for population growth, and on an indoctrination and political socialization ideologically conditioned.
Paragraph 1: Introduction “Girls of Spain: You are the most beautiful hope of our fatherland. In your heart you carry its greatness or its ruin, just as flowers carry, under the delicate sheath of their petals, the seeds from which sweet and perfumed fruits will sprout. Hammer into your souls the irrepressible desire to make Spain a greater country every day because SPAIN WILL BE WHAT YOU MAKE OF HER” 1.
This research focuses on the analysis of the representation of motherhood as a symbolic phenomenon and an emotionally charged social symbol and of the maternal universe presented in school textbooks during the first and part of the second phase2 of the Franco Dictatorship (1939-1953) in Spain. My hypothesis is that the phenomenon of motherhood was employed and manipulated by the New State and by the Catholic Church as an instrument for the transmission of their respective ideologies (patriotism; Francoism; Catholicism); and for the achievement of their political ambitions (demographic growth; maintenance of the status quo; legitimacy of the Regime; construction of new national identity, return to old, traditional values, etc.). The content of the school textbooks reveal some key aspects about the image of childhood as a social category during Francoism, in particular about feminine childhood. The schoolbooks and other documentary sources reflect an attitude towards childhood, with regard to the expectations and demands which adults made on the girls in that period. Childhood is, on the one hand, the flip side of motherhood, in the mother-child relationship; and, on the other hand, in the case of girls, during Francoism and in earlier periods, the entrance and initiation into the universe of motherhood. The quotation that introduces the chapter is very explicit and illustrative of the message and language, both characterized by a dense emotional burden. The words are pronounced by the Inspector of Primary Education, Agustín Serrano de Haro, in his book of historical readings for girls, entitled Garlands of History.
1 SERRANO DE HARO, Agustín (1957). Guirnaldas de la Historia. Historia de la cultura española contada a las niñas. Madrid, Escuela Española, p. 192. Italics and capitals belong to the author. Original quote reads: “Niñas de España: Vosotras sois la más hermosa esperanza de la Patria. En vuestro corazón lleváis su grandeza o su ruina, como llevan las flores, bajo la delicada envoltura de los pétalos, las semillas de las que brotarán los frutos azucarados y olorosos. Clavad bien en vuestras entrañas el ansia incontenible de hacer a España cada día mejor. Porque ESPAÑA SERA LO QUE VOSOTRAS HAGAIS DE ELLA”.
|
