The Honest Ones

The moral, psychological and social problems of the middle class is what Miguel de Carrión deals with in his diptych Las honradas (The Honest Ones) and, in a particular way, the condition of the Cuban woman. After the national liberation, and by virtue of the rapid incorporation of the country to the world currents, the emancipation of women was imposed, still condemned by the inheritance of colonial customs to vegetate in their household functions while the husband continued his adventures with all the prerogatives of a feudal lord. Material progress and proximity to the United States, where there was an intense struggle for women’s rights, favored the liberating effort. When they were published, in 1918 and 1919, respectively, Cuba entered its great period of economic prosperity, remembered with nostalgia as that of «the fat cows», and the law of divorce was the order of the day. Victoria, the heroine of Las honradas, is a Cuban Madame Bovary. Educated with all the rigor of the Spanish way of life at the end of the Colony, in avoidance of all strange contact, she receives her primary knowledge without leaving the premises of her house, in the provincial peace of Santa Clara. Then he studies a few years of studies in a North American school, where he sees another kind of life. After the war of independence, his father, an exprocurator and Villa Clara landowner, settled down in the capital, where a stroke of fortune placed him in an important administrative position. Such is the social environment and the urban setting in which the girl reaches the age of a nubile woman, but she turns out to be a misfit.

Marcelo Pogolotti

(Description has been translated into English, Book edition is in Spanish)