Entre Romanticismo, Antiesclavismo y Espiritualidad: Los ecos feministas transculturales de Sab de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda en The Bondwoman’s Narrative de Hannah Crafts

This article links the novels Sab (1841) by Cuban writer Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda and the recently discovered The Bondwoman’s Narrative (1857) by African American female writer Hannah Crafts since both deal with romantic and gothic tenets that position their stories in openly feminine nineteenth century. The power of passion, the exuberant and alluring natural framework that can either protect or wash away the destiny of the characters alongside the exaltation of feelings as an epistemological paradigm are the traits that both writers unfold following the established canon of the nineteenth century. Through an indirect transcultural intertextuality that reshape the tropes of romanticism, the use of slavery and the creation of a redeeming spirituality, the novels by Gomez de Avellaneda and Crafts intermesh with each other and contribute not only to perpetuate a literary genre that represents the first steps of a path for a feminine vindication but also they demonstrate that women used literature to participate in the  national debates employing their own cultural outlets and, therefore, planted the seed of a genuine type of literature that will bloom steadily throughout the nineteenth century.