La madre patria : Domesticity, Empire, and the Affective in Eva Canel’s El agua turbia (1899)

ABSTRACT: Eva Canel (1857–1932) is commonly associated with conservative views on Spain’s waning empire and women’s roles during the late nineteenth century. This essay demonstrates Canel’s complex engagement with debates surrounding Spain’s colonial legacy and the status of women. Drawing from Sarah Ahmed’s work on emotions, I argue that Canel’s novel El agua turbia , which delves into the final Cuban War of Independence from Spain, employs conventions of nineteenth-century domestic fiction alongside tropes of the imperial family and la madre patria to address the end of empire, produce the boundaries of the nation, and cultivate a transatlantic emotional community. Although domestic fiction usually depicted the repression of female desire, the conclusion of this novel hints at a pathway to envisioning female agency. Moreover, the narrative reveals a nuanced ambivalence towards imperial discourses, as it does not envisage Spanish hegemony in Cuba.