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REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 61
DOI: http://doi.org/10.25145/j.reull.2019.38.004
R F, 38; enero 2019, pp. 61-78; ISSN: e-2530-8548
REWRITING STEREOTYPES ON SPAIN:
UNVEILING THE COUNTERPICTURESQUE
IN KATHARINE LEE BATES
Alberto Egea Fernández-Montesinos
Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla
A
is article analyzes the use of the concept of the picturesque in Katharine Lee Bates’s
travelogue Spanish Highways and Byways (1900). By comparing Bates’s text to previous
travel narratives, the essay explores how stereotypes written about Spain are challenged and
reformulated within the framework of imperial discourse. Bates’s political and ideological
agenda attempts to construct an alternative discourse through the use of what I have called
the counter-picturesque. e essay contributes to the study of travelogues written by American
women and to the eld of imagology as related to Spain.
K: Katharine Lee Bates, travel literature, Spain, picturesque, counter-picturesque,
image, stereotypes.
LA REESCRITURA DE ESTER EOTIPOS SOBRE ESPAÑA:
DESVELANDO LO ANTIPINTORESCO EN KATHARINE LEE BATES
R
El artículo analiza el uso del concepto de lo pintoresco en el libro de viajes Spanish Highways
and Byways (1900) de Katharine Lee Bates. Mediante la comparación de la obra de esta
conocida escritora norteamericana con textos de viajeros anteriores es posible apuntar cómo
se cuestionan y reformulan estereotipos sobre España en el contexto del discurso imperial. El
trasfondo ideológico de la autora intenta construir un discurso alternativo mediante el uso de
lo que he llamado lo antipintoresco. El trabajo contribuye al estudio de la literatura de viajes
escrita por mujeres estadounidenses y al concepto de imagología en relación con España.
P : Katharine Lee Bates, literatura de viaje, España, pintoresco, antipintoresco,
imagen, estereotipos.
[The] theory and practice of the Picturesque constitute
the major English contribution to European aesthetics
(Watkin 1982: vii).
The search begins for those specific characteristics that distinguish a nation
amidst its neighbours; the logic is one of the positive self-valorization
highlighted by representing other peoples negatively
(Beller & Leerssen 2007: 6).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 62
Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) is an American writer well-known for her
hugely popular poem used as the lyrics to the patriotic ballad «America the Beau-
tiful», considered by some the true American anthem. Bates was an accomplished
academic with dozens of publications who served as the head of Wellesley’s English
Department for many years, at a time when women faced severe difficulties in aca-
demia. She was an active feminist and an advocate for women’s rights who lived an
intense Boston marriage with her colleague, Katharine Coman.
Bates was an avid traveler and visited Spain in 1899, shortly after the
Spanish-American War. In this intensive six-month trip, she produced two books
about Spain, twenty-one chronicles for The New York Times and numerous poems.
While «America the Beautiful» has received immense praise and study, her travel
book Spanish Highways and Byways, published in New York in 1900, and the rest
of her travel texts remain unexplored despite being well crafted travelogues and
major contributions to the study of modern Spanish identity politics. This paper
analyzes the use of the concept of the picturesque in Bates’s travelogue. The aim is
to highlight the influence of aesthetics discourse, especially picturesque represen-
tational language, on travel writing, that is, to introduce the theoretical aspect of
aesthetics analysis and imagology in the field of travel studies written by women.
There has been an extensive mapping of American travel writing on Spain mostly
centered on the same key male figures: Irving, Ford and Borrow. However, the
role that women travelers played in the representation of Spain remains relatively
unexplored. I hope this study contributes to unveiling new perspectives by women
writers on the portrayal of Spaniards.
Regarding the structure of this essay, after a general introduction with
definitions and references to various theoretical approaches, I will conduct a brief
discussion of the picturesque as an aesthetic category. Subsequently, I will focus on
a close textual analysis of Bates’s use of the term picturesque. The central body of
the article is dedicated to comparing Bates’s rewriting of previous discourse on Spain
relative to the portrayal of landscape and subjects as related to social and cultural
issues. A substantial part of this essay deals with analyzing her dialogue with im-
perial discourse both questioning and reformulating stereotypes about Spain. The
remainder of the paper explores the conf licting discourses that are speaking through
Bates’s works, her political and ideological agenda and her attempt to produce an
alternative discourse through the use of what I have called the counter-picturesque.
The themes addressed in this essay engage with various debates about rep-
resentation and travel, culture and encounter, and hegemony and discourse, in line
with key contributions by Stephen Copley, Joep Leerssen, and Manfred Beller in the
field of picturesque aesthetics and imagology. The theoretical foundations are based
on gender studies with recent contributions by Susan S. Friedman, Elizabeth Bohls,
Jennifer B. Steadman, Cheryl J. Fish, and Lila M. Harper. Previous literature in
the area of postcolonial theory has pointed to the representation of the picturesque
in American and British travelogues written by women in India, the Middle East
and Latin America, but has neglected the case of Spain. With regard to the study
of the image of Spain as presented by women travelers, very few approaches have
been made. As pointed to by Gifra-Adroher, the contribution of women to travel
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 63
writing on Spain undoubtedly deserves more attention (2000: 188). Bates continues
a tradition of women writers begun decades earlier by Caroline Cushing in the «de-
construction of the myth of the rough peninsular crossing only fit for male travelers»
(Gifra-Adroher 2000: 229). This essay tries to bridge those gaps addressing both the
use of picturesque aesthetics in the case of Spain and the analysis of a woman writer.
The objective is to explore how Bates reworks the picturesque variety used
by her predecessors, and how the narrative strategies used in the text signal a rejec-
tion of pre-established stereotypes and bring up a gesture against previous travel
imagologies. The definition of image used in this essay relies on the contributions by
Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen in their key compilation to the field of Imagology:
«The mental or discursive representation or reputation of a person, group, ethnicity
or ‘nation’, therefore it does not refer to the pictorial aspect of a visual depiction [...]
All ‘national characters’ are imagined just because their reality relies on imputations
rather than on testable facts» (Beller & Leerssen 2007: 342).
The essay will focus on ways in which Bates employed the textual instability
inherent in the concept of the picturesque to present various critiques of previous
travel writers’ authority. In that sense, Bates’s social agenda to reshape the stereo-
typical image of Spaniards is presented through subtle literary strategies1. Bates’s
politicization of the picturesque is evident in Spanish Highways and Byways and entails
an acute confrontation with the predominant imperial discourse2. The remarkable
achievement of this text is how Bates utilizes the language of Empire as a rhetorical
weapon against the same foundational principles of that system, even if she cannot
entirely leave imperial dynamics behind.
Spanish Highways and Byways received little critical attention when it was
published in 1900. Despite Spain being an intensely studied topic at the time due to
the Spanish-American War of 1898, it seems that all interest and critical studies have
chosen to elaborate on Bates’s hugely popular poem «America the Beautiful». The
lack of critical reviews about her travelogue on Spain contrasts with the amount of
articles she published in The New York Times and her numerous invited lectures about
1 The definition of stereotype used here is the verbal expression of an opinion concern-
ing social groups or individuals as representatives of such groups [...] wrongfully simplifying and
generalizing terms and with an emotionally valorizing tendency (Beller & Leerssen 2007: 431-432).
Regarding cliché, this expression refers to a traditional form of human expression that –due to re-
petitive use in social life– has lost its original, often ingenious, heuristic power. Unlike stereotypes,
which also contain valorizing moral and metaphysical aspects, clichés are merely reductions of a
formulaic expression (Beller & Leerssen 2007: 297).
2 The definition of imperial discourse is based on the works by Cheryl J. Fish and Jennifer
B. Steadman. Fish comments that imperial discourse is the product of a unique combination of
colonial expansion, economic domination and intellectual interventionism. In some cases, women
travelers had to journey to outposts of conf lict and imperial expansion due to the difficulties in par-
ticipating in discussions on social and political topics back home (Fish 2004: 3-6). The encounter
with cultural alterity in nineteenth-century travelogues was a product of both hegemonic expansion
and an intellectual urge for investigation (Steadman 2007: 56).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 64
this convoluted episode of U.S.-Spain relations3. Bates published detailed accounts
about Spain in her 21 articles that appeared in The New York Times between 1899
and 1900. In addition, she was invited to deliver public lectures on Spanish topics
in various universities and other relevant institutions on the East Coast (Burgess
1952: 137). It is important to study the Image of Spain exactly at that key historical
moment since, as commented by Manfred Beller: «In times of political tension,
conflicts of war, these images rise up or are called up from an unconscious inventory
of images and generalized prejudices about the other» (Beller & Leerssen 2007: 11).
This avid interest in Spain at the fin de siècle was preceded by other waves
of infatuation with the country in the first decades of the nineteenth century with
the successful romantic novels, travel journals and illustrated books by best-selling
writers such as Washington Irving and Richard Ford, and academic writings by
Hispanists such as George Ticknor. Bates arrives in Spain at that second key mo-
ment in the construction of the image of Spain, described by Gifra-Adroher as a
shifting moment, moving from a dark, fanatic, cruel, Catholic country to a more
pleasing site: a romantic land of picturesque settings and hospitable dwellers. What
this study tries to analyze is the shift of the dynamics, where the image of Spain for
Bates changes from the original assessments, based on the stereotypes of idleness
and violence, to other views underlining positive traces, such as hospitality and
industriousness. Bates’s texts participate in that key transformational episode by
actively participating in reshaping Spain´s national imagology.
In the popular perception, Spain was a country of political agitation and
social unrest. In fact, in her first attempt to enter Spain in 1898, Bates was kept in
France for a few months unable to cross the frontier due to the Spanish-American
War. A predominant cliché presented a country populated by vicious individuals of an
idle nature, undeserving of the place of aesthetic beauty and picturesque landscapes.
The images of the Spaniard oscillated between negative perceptions of bandits, beg-
gars and scoundrels, and positive ones, like the romantic view of flamenco beauties
and brave toreadors. Thus, like most ethnic stereotypes, images of Spaniards had
been dualistic and Manichean. Romantic travelers had perpetuated the tradition of
Spain as an exotic peripheral location, both geographical and imaginary, favoring
negative views with obscure representations. What this study tries to understand
is the nature of the dynamics where the image of Spain shifts between contrasting
modalities and opposing judgements when compared to other writers.
Formerly, travelers had celebrated the beauty of the landscape while simulta-
neously denigrating the locals, using an assortment of vicious defects and drawbacks.
In that sense, Spain as a foreign land had inspired lack of understanding, appre-
hension, fear or loathing. This contradictory discourse, used to praise the country
3 The interest in Spain grew exponentially due to the Spanish-American War. A search
on the amount of articles written about Spain in The New York Times archives offers revealing data:
in 1905 the number of articles dedicated to Spain tripled compared to 1895 (from 5,691 to 16,690
references). The case is significant since a similar search about relevant nations such as England or
France barely doubles in number in the same time periods.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 65
while censoring the inhabitants, is reconfigured in Spanish Highways and Byways.
Bates opts for an alternative image, to elicit admiration and delight. This positive
appreciation of the exotic is, in some respects, the very opposite of ethnocentrism:
the foreign country is positively assessed and, in many cases, seen as a preferable
alternative to one´s domestic culture. According to Manfred Beller, in most cases,
the mechanics behind the construction of the imagology of a foreign land is a search
for those specific characteristics that distinguish a nation from its neighbours; the
logic is one of positive self-valorization, highlighted by representing other peoples
negatively (Beller & Leerssen 2007: 6). On the contrary, in Spanish Highways and
Byways, the description of productive locals leaves the reader slightly surprised but,
most importantly, aware of the constructed nature of previous prejudiced accounts.
In this sense, now the figures are not only deemed as picturesque appendages in the
landscape complementing the beauty of nature4.
A key term for understanding this rewriting process is the recurrent and
inescapable category of the picturesque5. Bates employed the aesthetic instability
inherent in picturesque «variety» in order to voice different critiques of masculine
authority and to articulate her emergent independence as a voice in travel writing.
What is unique to Bates is that she applied the principles of Oriental picturesquism
to Spanish models, which is a logical paradox if we consider Spain an orientalized
East within the West. The picturesque serves her to describe not only art and nature
but also denizens and their subjectivity. The first question that comes to mind is
why the term picturesque is so frequently used by Bates when describing Spain,
and also why this category is so frequently repeated in the descriptions of foreign
encounter narratives6. Before completing the textual analysis, which is the object
of this essay, the following paragraphs establish definitions of the picturesque and
contextualize its historical relevance in travel literature.
There has been an increasing interest in theories and definitions of the pic-
turesque in recent decades. The purpose of this section is not to elaborate on this
hackneyed debate but rather to outline a brief definition of how the picturesque
4 Many previous travelers were only interested in the Oriental exoticism of Spain rather
than in the sociohistorical and cultural events of the country. Gifra-Adroher mentions the case of
Washington Irving, mostly interested in the picturesque nature of the Spaniards and the Oriental
charm of architecture (2000: 127).
5 The word picturesque is used by dozens of travelers who wrote on Spain. Among them,
Henry Swinburne, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Natha niel Armstrong Wells, David Rober ts and many
others. The word is also used in other curious examples such as volume of the hugely popular
collection Picturesque Europe by Bayard Taylor whose cover is illustrated with the very Spanish and
picturesque Alhambra.
6 The aesthetic categories of the Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque are key to
understanding any modern piece in literature and the visual arts. The discourse of the picturesque
operated in narratives, poetry and painting, and became a commonplace for textual and aesthetic
criticism since the eighteenth century. The term picturesque was used and abused in many nine-
teenth-century aesthetic books a nd travel narrative s. Its overu se is criticised by many authors, among
them William Combe.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 66
relates to stereotyping and to the construction of an imagology of Spain. Various
authors have analyzed and contested the founding fathers of the discourse of the
picturesque: William Gilpin, Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight7. Recent
contributions in the field are those by Stephen Copley, Elizabeth Bohls, Persephone
Braham, and Esther Ortas, who have focused on the links between aesthetics and
social changes, national stereotypes, and gender in writing and reading travelogues.
The difficulties in establishing a clear definition of the picturesque are already
pointed out by Price, one of the original theorists: «There are few words whose
meaning has been less accurately determined than that of the word picturesque»
(1810: 8). The main difference between Price and Knight is that the latter believes
that objects themselves do not possess picturesque properties but that it is the viewer
who can produce that picturesqueness through associations. This interesting insight
is what guides the current analysis: how Bates, as viewer, produces the picturesque
and transforms it from what had been constructed.
The picturesque can be very different phenomena, such as romantic ruins,
landscapes and ethnographic subjects, exotic topoi, archaeological items, and old
times, literary figures, and even rustic communities untouched by modernity, or just
the effects of passing of time on cultural heritage. For some, the picturesque seems
to be that which escaped the process of modernization experienced in industrialized
nations such as England and the US: «The picturesque legitimized and nourished a
connoisseur taste for natural scenery and architectural and social subjects that had
conspicuously escaped modernising improvement» (Andrews 2010: 179). Among the
many types of picturesqueness, one category which has not been explored is what
I have called the counter-picturesque. This neologism designates those occasions on
which the picturesque is contested, questioned or reconstructed. The counter-pic-
turesque is not reiterating the same pictorial beauty in certain commonplaces as
presented in previous accounts. This resistance to register the supposedly picturesque
nature of those lands and to present alternative views is what differentiates Bates’s
text from previous travelogues.
The counter-picturesque is defined as an effort to elaborate on a hackneyed
topic presenting it from an alternative point of view and providing evidence and
examples of how cultural perceptions can be rearranged when seen in a different
light. In the case of Bates, the counter-picturesque entails the use of textual devices
such as quotation marks, play-on-words and irony, and placing these views at key
textual positions, such as arrival scenes. These examples are presented in a consistent
manner, that is, not only in isolated cases in a single work, but rather in different
texts of various typologies, such as happens in Bates’s main travel book Spanish
Highways and Byways and also in her articles and personal letters on Spain. The
7 Price was the first to consider the picturesque as a category distinct from both the sub-
lime and the beautiful, and emphasized it as fundamental to genres other than painting by tracing
the word’s etymology to the Italian pittoresco, which referred not only to pictorial delineation but
expanded to a whole turn of mind (1810: 618).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 67
counter-picturesque undermines previous populist and bourgeois accounts, unlike
what Bourdieu presents in his theory on dominant aesthetics, by providing agency
and subjectivity to those subjects traditionally presented stereotypically8.
In fact, what is unique to Bates’s use of the picturesque is that her text
overcomes the barrier of landscapes, locations and vistas to approach subjects,
people and habits. Her picturesquism evolves from the sphere of landscapes to that
of social characters: from the previous picturesque, originating in caves, quarries
and ruins there is an increasing interest in social issues and human characters.
There is a clear shift in the focus of attention from interest in the physical to the
human side of the trip; from things picturesque to a more modern human pictur-
esque. Previous accounts present Spain as an Oriental scenario within the West, a
playground for entertainment, the location of sensuality, difference and exoticism.
Bates’s picturesque is not the stereotypical depiction of the Spanish landscape and
the delineations of primitive bandits and sensual flamenco dancers, but rather in-
stances trying not adhere to the typology of what has been considered picturesque
by critics. In the light of this reading, it is possible to rethink negative assessments
common in modern literary studies which provide a misleading interpretation of
both the picturesque and its influence9.
«America the Beautiful», the renowned poem written by Bates after her trip
to Colorado, is also picturesque and scenic. However, Bates’s American patriotism in
this piece expressing devotion appears to be an interesting contradiction compared
to her defense of Spain in Spanish Highways and Byways. The decade of 1895-1905
(when both works were published) was highly patriotic in the United States, a time
full of flag-waving, as Melinda Ponder points out. Bates participates in this burst of
patriotism during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, right after the Spanish American
War, when the United States was becoming an imperialistic power. Nevertheless,
this is also the time when Bates writes her letters and diaries from Spain in which
she tries to help Americans see the world from the point of view of the Spaniards.
Bates’s texts try to develop empathy in her readers with regard to alternative views,
such as the Spanish soldiers who had been victimized in the Spanish American war
8 Bourdieu comments on the picturesque in a parallel manner: «Like the photographic
recording of the social picturesque, whose populist objectivism distances the lower classes by con-
stituting them as an object of contemplation or even commiseration or indignation, the spectacle
of the ’people’ making a spectacle of itself, as in folk dancing, is an opportunity to experience the
relationship of distant proximity, in the form of the idealized vision purveyed by aesthetic realism
and populist nostalgia, which is a basic element in the relationship of the petite bourgeoisie to the
working or peasant classes and their traditions» (2000: 207).
9 This is one part of a larger project on the evolution in meaning of the word picturesque
over the past two centuries. The key references to explain the initial approach to this project are
commented in A lberto Egea (2009: 9- 48). A critical bias may be perceived when modern critics a ssess
the meaning of the picturesque in works of art from different time periods without considering the
different definitions the word ha s had. The change in meaning towards a more pejorative sense needs
to be addressed. The principle of the picturesque has to be reassessed using historical dictionaries
from the different decades in which this word was used.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 68
and also the abuses of the American army in the Philippines. Therefore, it is very
interesting to note how the author of the key patriotic hymn challenges the very
expansionist principles of that empire: an enthralling paradox.
The word picturesque is used over twenty times in Spanish Highways and
Byways to describe situations, characters, habits and locations. In fact, it is the very
first adjective used to describe Spain, already in the Preface, praising the pictur-
esque, poetic charm of the Peninsula and the graciousness of Spanish manners
(1900: i). The book´s arrival scene takes place in the tiny village of Pasajes in the
Basque Country, where Bates witnesses the peasants working extremely hard. The
description contradicts the stereotypical view of Spaniards as lazy idle characters
perpetuated in previous accounts: «One of our preconceived ideas went to wreck at
the very outset on the industry of the Basque Provinces. The ´lazy Spaniard´ has
passed into a proverb» (1900: 2). This view of the town of Pasajes is relevant since
it is the first thing Bates notes upon arrival.
With this use of the category of the picturesque directly at the beginning
of the text, the reader perceives a clear change in the stereotypical idleness applied
to Spaniards by previous travel writers. Bates’s human-centered version of the
picturesque scene emphasizes the dignity of the labouring men and women who
inhabit the landscape. Infusing the picturesque with hard working and dedicated
characters, Bates self-consciously modifies the aesthetic discourse bringing a positive
and productive vision of the people. Adding to this narrative, Bates published the
article «Hardships of the Middle Class» in The New York Times on 12 February
1899, describing the Spanish middle class in these terms: «lusty element of kindly,
honest, hard-working, self-respecting people» (1899-1900: 12). In this sense, Bates
becomes a good example of what Shirley Foster and Sara Mills have called the
questioning of imperial discourse.
The relevance of arrival scenes in travel literature has been pointed out
by Mary Louise Pratt who defined them as «potent sites for framing relations of
contact and setting the terms of its representation» (1992: 78-80). These images
are visual instances where the writer sees the «other» for the first time. Therefore,
this arrival scene serves to frame the tone for the whole text10. This textual image
together with the reference in the preface summarizes the two main topics of this
paper: the use of the picturesque as an aesthetic device and the questioning of
stereotypes as a rhetorical mechanism. In this sense, the purpose of Bates’s first
10 Spanish Highways and Byways presents a total of forty visua l images, that is, illustrations.
However, their aim is not to underline t he picturesque nature of Spain. They are not images of dec ay,
roughness, ruins or irregularity, as in many other illustrated books on Spain such as Julia Clara Pitt
Byrne’s Cosas de España and Olive Patch’s In Sunny Spain: its People and Places. Out of the twenty
textual references to picturesqueness in Spanish Highways and Byways, only four of them refer directly
to the illustrations in the book: the Village of Pasajes, Filling the Water-jars, Gypsy Tenants of an
Arab Palace, and Dancing the Sevillana, A Roman Well in Ronda and Bull-fight of To-day (1900:
4, 62, 112, 258, 290, and 414). The relationship of visual images and text are merely anecdotal, and
therefore they are not explicitly commented on in this essay.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 69
use of the word is no other than to question this major stereotype about Spain,
perpetuated by previous romantic travelers during decades in the Modern period:
the idle Spaniard. Stereotypes and clichés of national characters are often invoked
ironically as, precisely, clichés with a knowing wink from author to reader, as Joep
Leerssen comments (quoted in Beller & Leerssen 2007: 74).
Bates entitles her first chapter «The Lazy Spaniard». However, curiously
enough, the title appears in quotation marks. In fact, it is the only chapter of the
whole book to appear in quotation marks (besides the chapter «O la Señorita!» which
requires quotes since it is written in a foreign language). Therefore, from the way
the title is presented, the reader assumes that the concept of «the Lazy Spaniard»
is being borrowed from previous discourse. Farmers, teachers and shepherds and
their wives are described as very hard-working people at the same time that Bates
uses the title of the chapter, «The Lazy Spaniard», to challenge this prevailing cliché
(1900: 2-8)11. At the same time that the use of the quotation marks suggests that
this cliché might need rethinking, the text is clear in affirming early on page 2:
«the laborious Spaniard can no longer be ignored». Also, a few pages later, she uses
the expression «lazy Spaniard» again with subtle irony: «But all her week’s work
looked to us impossible. We had known diligent teachers in the United States; this
‘lazy Spaniard,’ however, not only keeps her Kindergarten well in hand from nine
to twelve, but instructs the same restless mites in reading and counting» (1900: 7).
Laborious farmers and diligent workers are the alternative picturesque
for challenging previous commonplaces: «peasants ploughing the very mountain
top, picturesque figures against the sky» (1900: 364). It is clearly a more dignified
presentation of the laboring nature of Spaniards than average previous accounts.
Bates revises the canons of scenic description to make a seamless transition from
mere motionless characters with just an aesthetic presence to the active hardworking
individual. Underlining the effort and dedication of the workers serves to break the
frame of picturesque convention to make room for a more humane mode of represen-
tation. In this case, her use of counter-stereotyping contests previous commonplaces:
«Having re-formed our concept of a Spaniard to admit the elements of natural vigor
and determined diligence» (1900: 11). Bates enters the discourse of the picturesque,
a mostly male field, and transforms it to her benefit. Zoë Kinsley refers to Dorothy
Richardson’s travel journal strategies in this manner: «The picturesque simultaneous-
ly enables her to organize and bring coherence to her experiences of the unfamiliar
landscapes of travel, while allowing her the opportunity to enter a predominantly
male discursive forum and offer her own interpretation of its ideology» (2005: 611).
11 Many foreign travelers had criticized Spaniards for not being productive enough and
dedicating their time to enjoying life. It is striking that those criticisms were formulated when the
travelers were visiting the popular celebrations throughout the country. Some of them regret that,
it being, unfortunately, the time of a fair, and therefore they could not see anyone at work. They
then extrapolate the specific case to the whole nation therefore generalizing about the country as
indolent and festive. As Copley ironically comments, the striking absence at the centre of this claim,
however, is any consideration of this critic’s position as the leisured observer of the scene (1994: 51).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 70
In traditional travel literature, «figures in picturesque landscape were typi-
cally peripherals, faceless, grouped as carefully as trees or cattle, and included solely
as ornaments» (Bohls 1995: 118). In the case of Bates, some of these characters, such
as workers, gypsies and beggars acquire distinct subjectivities. While picturesque
aesthetics usually avoids subjects and subjectivity, Spanish Highways and Byways
succeeds in portraying the personalities and problematics of gypsies. In her beautiful
description of the Alhambra, Bates introduces outlaws not as mere decorative pieces
(as we can see in most travelogues and chronicles of the time) but as real people who
suffer oppression and marginality (1900: 136-137). The all-time favorite character of
the gypsy, amply portrayed as demeaning in Borrow’s and Byrne’s highly prejudiced
texts («fortune tellers, dancers and beggars»), is staged under a different light in this
travelogue. Bates mentions George Borrow to point to the major differences she
has appreciated as compared to the account of this classical gypsy authority: «Yet
there has been an improvement ... The gitanos are not such ruffians as of old, nor
even such arrant thieves ... There are wealthy gypsies, whose wives and daughters
go arrayed with the utmost elegance of fashion, in several Spanish cities. Seville has
her gypsy lawyer, but her gypsy bull-fighter, who died two years ago, was held to
reflect even greater credit on the parent stock» (1900: 133). Apart from these occa-
sions, it is true that Bates finds it hard to escape from the demeaning mainstream
discourse on gypsies and the tourist guide nature of her text which required her to
warn travelers on the dangers of Spanish bandits and gypsies.
Regarding how people are presented in picturesque travelogues, David
Marshall comments: «the picturesque represents a point of view that frames the
world and turns nature into a series of living tableaux. It begins as an appreciation
of natural beauty, but it ends by turning people into figures in a landscape or figures
in a painting» (2005: 414). Human figures in the picturesque scene are frequently
reduced to faceless ornaments, like Ford’s or Brooke’s ubiquitous banditti. In tradi-
tional travel narratives, the locals were sometimes considered part of the landscape,
as commented by James Buzard: their objectification was part of this panorama
of the nineteenth century. They could neither be heard nor recognized as subjects.
They were presented as a mere amusement for the travelers. This can be seen in
many examples of travel descriptions from trains which present faceless and soulless
subjects as dehumanized portraits (1993: 189).
On the contrary, the relevant feature of Spanish Highways and Byways is
how it tries to do exactly the opposite by approaching the people and establishing
a dialogue with them. What allows Bates a closer integration and understanding
of Spanish subjects is her mastery of the Spanish language, which allowed her to
establish a special communion with Spaniards. Bates had ample conversations
with Spanish factory workers and mingled with farmers, gypsies and people from
all walks of life in their own language, in which she acquired high proficiency12.
12 Bates began learning Spanish in 1898, the year before her trip to Spain. She continued
her study of Spanish, Italian, German and French at the Berlitz School in London (Ponder 2017: 180).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 71
She spent evenings talking to the gypsies in Granada’s Albaicín and kept animated
conversations about politics with friends in Madrid, which allowed her to know
firsthand how corruption and bad government had impoverished Spaniards’ everyday
life (11). Already in the first chapter, Bates talks to a group of workers who tell her
about the misery and sorrow that surrounds them and their families (1900: 4). In
fact, Bates presents herself more inclined to talk to humble workers than refined
politicians: «In the course of the month, English and Spanish callers climbed the hill
to us and encompassed us with kindness, but we still maintained our incorrigible
taste for low society and used to hold informal receptions on sunny benches for all
the tatterdemalions within sight» (1900: 33).
What other travelogues had considered picturesque, Bates recategorizes.
From gypsies to landscapes, from coachmen to water bearers, Bates tries not to
objectify destitutes and marginals. Here rustics, beggars or gypsies are not idealized
and their living conditions are not sublimated in anesthetized bucolic descriptions.
Bates visits an asylum, and later visits a school for women in Vigo, and in the
same chapter she manages to get a «touch of genuine fellowship» with Galician
peasants (1900: 441). What begins as borders of difference ends as the space of
intercultural mixing. Even if the discourse of the picturesque had abounded in
wistful gazes toward untouchable objects, Bates presents a social agenda rather
than a mere aesthetic one when using the category of the picturesque. In that
sense, her portrayal of the people is also counter-picturesque since Bates does not
choose to elaborate on abbey ruins, flamenco and bullfighting, but instead deals
with the social problems of factory workers and the need for reform in education
to include women (1900: 209)13.
Another relevant issue is how Spanish Highways and Byways presents ordi-
nary Spaniards and relates to their everyday life. Bates praises Spanish hospitality
towards strangers and celebrates innkeepers who had been criticized by previous
travelers in the same location and in the same year, such as her experience in Sanlúcar
(1900: 270). According to Bates, shopkeepers, hosts, neighbors, or just passersby are
extremely courteous and kind (1900: 60, 73, 77, 156, 378), which serves to under-
mine the ideas of violence, cruelty and bad manners presented in earlier accounts.
Her biggest surprise comes when she expects Spaniards not to receive her kindly
because of the recent Spanish-American War but is pleasantly surprised following
such a touching welcoming from everyone (1900: 29). In general terms, Spaniards
are highly praised: «The civilization of Spain [...] is still in many aspects finer than
In Spain, more of her stays were in Spanish homes, where she could practice the language. In Spanish
Highways and Byways, she translates poems, riddles and stories from original Spanish sources. Her
mastery of the Spanish language is proved by her 1909 published translation of Romantic Legends of
Spain by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (Burgess 1952: 126).
13 Bates’s vindication of women´s rights is already present in her childhood diary written
when she was only eight: «Girls are a very necessary portion of creation. They are full as necessary
as boys. [...] Sewing is always expected of girls. Why not of boys? Boys don’t do much but outdoor
work. Girls work is most all indoors. It isn´t fair» (quoted in Burgess 1952: 4).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 72
our own. In everything that relates to grace and charm of social intercourse, to the
dignified expression of reverence, compassion, and acknowledgment, Spain puts us
to the blush» (Bates 1900: 39).
By using these corrections and disapprovals, Bates is disallowing previous
travel book writers such as Richard Ford and Karl Baedeker. She sweeps away the
two leading guides of the day, dismissing some as inaccurate: «On we go over the
Bridge of Alcantara, wrought aeons since by a gang of angry Titans –the guidebooks
erroneously attribute it to the Moors and Alfonso the Learned» (1900: 274). Baedeker
is also wrong when describing their Palencia inn: «But even Baedeker is fallible, and
on arriving at the Gran Hotel Continental, we were met by all the Castilian dignity
and grave kindliness of greeting» (1900: 283).
On a parallel issue, Bates’s political position was certainly liberal and this
may be detected through her defense of workers’ rights and her criticism of capital-
ism14. Curiously enough, she attended a political meeting about the 1899 Montjuïc
prisoners with the presence of Pablo Iglesias15. In spite of this, and due to college
restrictions and her public image as a university professor, it is understandable that
Bates would not want to be very open about her progressive ideology. This liberal
agenda contrasts with the vision offered by most of her biographers, such as the
book written by her niece, Dorothy W. Bates Burgess16. In some of her letters, Bates
challenges the foundations of capitalism, sympathizes with members of the socialist
party, and expresses her rejection of the religious control of Wellesley College faculty
by the provost. In that sense, Bates’s revision of the aesthetics of the picturesque
must be understood as part of her liberal political project of exploring otherness
and pointing out social inequalities.
All in all, after reviewing the references to the picturesque in Spain,
what is at stake in Spanish Highways and Byways is a statement of the systematic
inequalities and problems of Spanish society. Bates’s liberal political project of
extending rights and reducing social inequality both in Spain and back home is
14 Bates used a male pseudonym, James Lincoln (Jay), (after her admired president), to
publish many poems and essays dealing with pacifism, socialism, and progressive social issues, such
as the consequences of war, like the ca se of the Spanish-American War. In addition, Bates was a lso an
admirer of President Woodrow Wilson and his defense of peace and progressive legislation (1900: 261).
15 A meeting dedicated to denounce the brutal repression by the government of union
workers and social protesters: «Our Madrid mass meeting was of ch ief consequence in impressing the
Government with the weight of popu lar opinion. The swaying multitude was ca lled to order at quarter
of ten by Señor Canalejas, who introduced a notable array of speakers. There were representatives of
labor, [...] Pablo Iglesias by name, and great men of the nation, Azcárate, Moret, and Salmerón. [...]
But surely there is hope for Spain, while she has sons who, in grasp of a military tyranny which has
rendered such crimes possible, contend in open field for the overthrow of the ‘black Spain’ of the
Inquisition, and still bear heart of hope for a white, regenerated Spain, where religion shall include
the love of man» (1900: 212-213).
16 Burgess’s description of Bates, far from the reality of her texts and letters, offers this
version: «She herself was always a conservative who limited herself to a deprecation of certain class
distinctions –an attitude which might be described as a matter of taste and courtesy rather than a
politic a l posit ion» (1952: 111-112).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 73
what informs her project of political activism. Her social protests against polit-
ical oppression and abuse by higher classes is present on multiple occasions: her
description of the Basque workers (1900: 2), the misery of farmers (1900: 4), the
wealth of the clergy versus the poverty of the people (1900: 35, 57, 90), the high
level of illiteracy in the population and the living conditions of poor people (1900:
189, 428), as well as the harsh reality of beggars (1900: 187, 286, 392). In addition,
Bates presents the paradox of the high class aristocrats who enjoy the picturesque
beauty of unused fields, latifundios, caused precisely by the rich landowners who
keep them uncultivated. The desperation of the misery among farmers is clearly
present in Bates’s dialogue with a young hopeless Spaniard: «–And a fertile soil.
What country outblooms Andalusia?» [...] –«Soil! Yes. All the world has soil. It
serves to be buried in» (1900: 34).
At this point, it is interesting to see how Bates disengages herself from pre-
vious pro-expansionism and imperialistic discourse. Earlier visitors in Spain, such
as Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, had advocated territorial, economical and ideolog-
ical US expansionism. Gifra-Adroher comments on Mackenzie’s 1836 travelogue:
«[Mackenzie is the] epitome of the emerging American expansionist mentality of
Manifest Destiny at a time when this concept had not yet been explicitly formulat-
ed» (2000: 97). According to Nigel Leask, the picturesque is a category that filters
through association and memory: either due to «personal nostalgia or to imperial
desires» (2002: 175-176). Additionally, Stephen Copley and Peter Garside point out
how picturesque aesthetics translates the political and the social into the decorative,
for example when describing poverty and social deprivation. It is at this point that
the picturesque intersects with the discourses of colonialism (1994: 6). In Bates’s
case, there is an explicit criticism of the imperialism of the United States:
I did not try to explain our new Imperialism in Spanish. It troubles me not a little
to understand it in English [...] Catholic Spain, best beloved of Our Lady among
the nations of the earth, had labored long in the Philippines to Christianize the
heathen, when suddenly, in the midst of those pious labors with which she was
too preoccupied to think of fitting out men-of-war and drilling gunners, a pirate
fleet bore down upon her and overthrew at once the Spanish banner and the Holy
Cross (quoted in Ponder 2017: 180).
With regard to expansionism, Jennifer B. Steadman comments on how
women writers practice an unconventional form of nation-building that insists on
critiquing the practice of the nation and exposing its limitations and contradictions
rather than uncritically advocating expansion. These writers claim authority to crit-
icize the political, social, and economic policies and practices of the nation. Their
support of the United States is contingent upon their ability and authority to make
and publish their criticisms; only then do they endorse the spread of a reformed
and truly democratic nation (2007: 19). In this respect, Fish states that the women
writing against expansionism made a special effort to participate meaningfully in
the public sphere and to articulate more than just public policies, and for that pur-
pose they journeyed to outposts of conflict and imperial expansion (2004: 3), such
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is the case of Bates. Bates is indeed an agent of expansionism, not economic but
educational17. She comments on the group of American teachers who came to Spain
to work on women’s education: «a gallant little band of American teachers spending
youth and strength in their patient campaign for conquering the Peninsula by a
purer idea of truth. Rough Riders may be more pictorial, but hardly more heroic»
(1900: 1). Bates was, indeed, an agent of educational expansionism for women in
Europe as the director of the International Institute from 1899 onwards, where she
contributed to substantial changes in the education of many young Spanish women.
Another recurrent use of the term picturesque is the traveler’s fixation in
imagining rustic communities untouched by modernity. The unsophisticated, tra-
ditional, and aged was picturesque to their eyes just because it reminded them of
the reality back home prior to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. When
visiting Spain, most writers idealized the Peninsula as an old and traditional location,
untouched by the dehumanizing tentacles of modernity and industrialization. Most
of the traditions fading away back home were still, fortunately, alive in Spain. Some
of these travel books idealize rural picturesque Spain but at the same time demonize
the country and its people: «In due time they came to seek in the Levant, particularly
among the farmers/country men, that ideal of a pristine, long lost unitary commu-
nity so hard even to imagine at home» (Olsaretti 2007: 269). The economically
productive activities of Spain are thus dismissed as un-picturesque and contribute
to establishing the troubling division between the backward colonial subject and the
productive utility of the foreign traveler. What most travelers expected to encounter
in mystified Spain was a stereotypical isolated and backward country, fit for their
narratives of picturesque adventures. For that simplistic reason, anything modern
could not be picturesque, and vice versa.
In this regard, it is interesting to analyze how Bates comments on the «in-
dustry» of Spanish society just upon arrival in the country (1900: 2). In fact, what
the reader finds in the first chapter are factories and industrial landscape: moder-
nity at its best. Not everything is going to be picturesque primitivism and bucolic
backwardness as expected by tourists. Upon entering Bilbao, Bates comments: «It
is not a city to gratify the mere tourist, who expects the people of the lands through
which he is pleased to pass to devote themselves to looking picturesque. But even
Spain is something more than food for the Kodak» (1900: 373).
To sum up, Bates’s attitude towards the picturesque, and towards prejudices
and stereotypes, can be summarized with her radical statement in chapter : «I
have a prejudice against being prejudiced» (1900: 120). It is interesting to observe
how Bates foreshadows contemporary theories of discourse and representation. She
is aware of and critiques the naive belief in the possibility of language ever simply
17 Bates’s will for an improvement in women’s education and working conditions becomes
evident with her volunteer work. She was a volunteer in Denison House, Boston, a woman-run set-
tlement house which offered social and educational help to immigrants and poor people. She also
edited the journal The Courant in which she dedicated her efforts in fighting for women’s rights.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 75
representing the world. All images of the world are just that, images, and not the
world itself. Representations bring the world into being. Paraphrasing Roland Bar-
thes, when we encounter representations we do not encounter a world but rather
witness the adventure of language. In fact, it is now that people have abandoned
a belief in the authenticity of national characters as explanatory models that the
actual emergence of imagology as a critical study of national characterization can
take place, as commented by Leerssen (quoted in Beller & Leerssen 2007: 21).
As a woman of her time subject to the frame of imperial discourse, Bates
writes on both sides of the liminal line of travel: at times she is complicit with dom-
inant stereotypes about Spain and the conceptions about the other, and on other
occasions she recycles those stereotypes and becomes a counter figure of imperial
politics. Once again, Bates has no option but to use the existing discourse of the
picturesque. In that respect, Elizabeth Bohls comments that many women writers
stand in a deeply ambivalent relation to aesthetic discourse and its cultural power but
that does not prevent them from challenging this masculine bias (1995: 123). Bates
offers examples of the expansionist politics of the United States and the drawbacks
of capitalism, but at the same time is unable to divest herself of the imperial gaze
of writing as an American intellectual from a high social status. Bates’s conflicted
position vis-á-vis empire building and her North American inescapable self may
be viewed as mediating between her dismissal of some things associated with the
United States and her praise of the Spanish counter-picturesque.
What ultimately matters in Spanish Highways and Byways is not the for-
mulation of previous or current stereotypes but rather how the text points out the
existence of picturesque prejudices and the need to become critically aware of them.
The most useful tool against inherited prejudices is not the vain effort to abolish
them but the determination to bring them into the light of day. Imperial politics
set about organizing Spain for consumption in the metropolis through the frame
of the picturesque. However, the picturesque viewing in Bates represents another
manner of enclosing and framing Spanish denizens. Through her mobile subjectivity
and social activism, Bates offered significant revisions not only in the portrayal of
Spain but also in the aesthetics of travel writing and the rhetoric of representation.
In conclusion, Bates’s engagement with travel literature precepts gave her
a means of presenting alternative views which facilitated access to a debate about
Spain and the picturesque that, like the field of travel writing, had been dominated
by men. Bates enters public debate through the back door, that is, with her use of
the travel genre. What Spanish Highways and Byways succeeds in doing is to reflect
on the rhetorical devices of the genre itself. Travel writing conceived as a general
description of a foreign country for readers expecting the stereotypical picturesque
was giving way to more specific kinds of writing: social and historical travelogues
reflecting on political vindications. All this is at stake in Spanish Highways and
Byways, in addition to the traditional description of monuments and customs. By
contesting the approaches of other travelers, Bates claims authority in pointing out
biases in the stereotypical vision on Spain. As we study Bates’s contribution in the
construction of the image of Spain through the use of the counter-picturesque, we
can begin to map and underline the significant contributions she made on issues
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 76
such as women’s rights and education and the public debates on social movements
and political activism. Therefore, it is possible to affirm that Bates participated in
reshaping Spain’s national imagology in this second key moment of the construction
of the country’s image. By unveiling the hidden picturesque in Bates’s discourse, it
is possible to see how she rewrote the stereotypical view on Spain and managed to
offer an alternative understanding of Spaniards.
R: junio de 2018; : octubre de 2018.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA, 38; 2019, PP. 61-78 77
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