Al Partir

VOL. 3, NUM. 1

WINTER/INVIERNO 2006

Subversion in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab
Reina Barreto

The colonial and slave society that was Cuba of the early nineteenth century is the setting
for Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s first novel, Sab.1 Published in Madrid in 1841, this
novel represents Avellaneda’s literary struggle against the injustices of slavery and the
oppressivetreatment of women within the patriarchal Romantic framework of the early
1800s. Avellaneda’s novel draws a parallel between women and slaves: “Como los
esclavos, ellas arrastran pacientemente su cadena y bajan la cabeza bajo el yugo de las
leyes humanas” (Gómez de Avellaneda 194). Catherine Davies states that Sab “is the only
feminist-abolitionist novel published by a woman in nineteenth-centurySpain or its
slaveholding colony Cuba” (1). The fact that Sab was banned in Cuba demonstrates not
only how problematic this female-authored anti-slavery text was, but also how carefully
and compromisingly it had to be constructed.2 By way of an analysis of the novel’s
protagonist and three main female characters (Carlota, Teresa, and Martina) and their
subversion of traditional, binaryrepresentations of race, gender, and class, I examine the
underlying tension that exists in the text between subversion and the thwarting of
subversion.
Although conceived in Cuba and adapted to a Cuban context, Sab incorporates liberal
values and Romantic themes and paradigms found in earlier European novels. Critics
have noted parallels between Sab and the Romantic paradigm of subjectivity thatemerged in Spain, as well as influences stemming from the novels and writings of
Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Hugo, and Goethe. Davies, who calls Sab a “typically
Romantic Latin American novel” for its subjectivity, idealization, sensibility, melodrama,
and fatalistic determinism, also points out its connection with Spanish Romanticism, the
costumbrista genre, and the European sentimental novelbecause of the novel’s
characterization of its hero, its plot, the description of its setting, and the role of nature
and emotion. Similar to another Cuban novel with Romantic elements, Cirilo
Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés (1882), Sab’s characters represent European, African,
indigenous, and mixed racial origins, and their relationships transgress race, class, and
gender boundaries. In this way,Avellaneda’s novel reflects Doris Sommer’s statement
that “the Latin American canon of romantic novels seems to wage a consistent struggle
against classical habits of oppositional thinking” (122-23).

Decimonónica 3.1 (2006): 1-10. Copyright 2006 Decimonónica and Reina Barreto. All rights reserved.
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Barreto 2

Set on the idyllic Bellavista sugar plantation near the city of Puerto Príncipe in Camagüey
during the early nineteenth century, Avellaneda’s novel centers on Sab, a mulattoslave,
and his impossible love for Carlota, the criolla heiress of the Bellavista fortune.3 Carlota’s
love for Enrique Otway, an English merchant whom she eventually marries, complicates
the love story. Teresa, Carlota’s orphaned cousin who is secretly in love with Enrique, is
central to the plot because of her relationship with Sab and Carlota. A close bond exists
also between Sab and Martina,an indigenous woman who considers the orphaned Sab
her son. The unique qualities of the above-mentioned characters and their relationships
with each other threaten the colonial preference for established categories of race, gender,
and class. The novel begins with an encounter between colonizer (Otway) and colonized
(Sab), yet the physical description of Sab and the development of the plot...