Marcelina Almeida (1880), was an Argentine-born Uruguayan writer living in

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

, since she was young. Almeida used the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

s Abel and Reine mi bella acclamada (

anagram An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into the phrase "nag a ram"; which ...

of her full name) to sign her contributions in publications of the time. Her work, ''Por una fortuna una cruz'', is considered the first Uruguayan feminist novel.

Biography

Marcelina Almeida Abel was born in Argentina, ca. 1830.Oreggioni, Alberto (2001). Nuevo diccionario de literatura uruguaya, v. 1. Banda Oriental. p. 31. ISBN 978-9974-1-0217-0. In a poem dedicated to Almeida,

Francisco Acuña de Figueroa Francisco Esteban Acuña de Figueroa (September 3, 1791 – October 6, 1862) was a Uruguayan poet and writer. He was born in Montevideo, on September 3, 1791 and died on October 6, 1862. He was the son of the Treasurer of the Royal Treasury, Jac ...

describes her as Uruguayan by adoption, born in Argentina. Almeida's romantic novel ''Por una fortuna una cruz'' was published in Montevideo in 1860. Its central theme is "the forced marriage of a fifteen-year-old girl with a twenty-five-year-old man". The work generated an intense debate in the Montevideo press of the time. Not only was the literary quality of it discussed, but also the fact that a woman writer questioned the institution of marriage. Almeida was the target of virulent personal attacks, many under pseudonyms. Virginia Cánova, a researcher based in Sweden, explains that "in her adherence to the liberal feminism of the Enlightenment and cultural feminism, the author develops the theme of the lack of rights of women, of their eternal minority protected by men, particularly the forced marriage negotiated by the father of the young woman. She presents different situations of oppression caused by the permanent minority of the woman". In 1991, Cánova found a copy of the novel in the

National Library of Uruguay The ' is the National Library of Uruguay, located in Montevideo. It was created in 1815 and is the legal deposit and copyright library for Uruguay. It has been located in its current building since 1955. In 2006, it had more than 900,000 books, ...

, tracing works that did not appear in Uruguayan literary history. The finding prompted a limited reissue of the work, thanks to an agreement between the National Library of Uruguay and the Department of Literature of the

University of Gothenburg The University of Gothenburg () is a List of universities in Sweden, university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current List of universities in Sweden#Public universities, S ...

, which includes the study "The origins of feminism in Uruguay." In this study, Cánova concludes that "(...) we can locate the origins of the feminist movement in the early stages of the 19th century and not as had been affirmed until now, in the early 20th century; and, as for female writers, we already see that

María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira Maria Eugenia Vaz Ferreira (1875–1924) was an Uruguayan teacher and poet. She was the younger sister of philosopher Carlos Vaz Ferreira and a contemporary of Delmira Agustini and Julio Herrera y Reissig. She was born and lived in Montevideo, t ...

and

Delmira Agustini Delmira Agustini (October 24, 1886 – July 6, 1914) was a Uruguayan poet of the early 20th century. Biography Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, she began writing when she was ten and had her first book of poems published when she was still a teenag ...

were not the precursors, but Marcelina Almeida and others, like Adela Correge with her work ''Tula y Elena o sea el orgullo y la modestia'' (1885)". 8 Almeida also published poems, a short story, and articles during the period of 1860-61 in the '' Semanario Uruguayo'' and poems, between 1862 and 1863, in the literary magazine ''La Aurora de Montevideo''. Almeida died ca. 1880.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Almeida, Marcelina 1830s births 1880 deaths 19th-century Argentine women writers 19th-century Argentine poets 19th-century Uruguayan women writers 19th-century Uruguayan writers 19th-century Uruguayan poets 19th-century pseudonymous writers Argentine novelists Argentine women novelists Argentine women poets Argentine short story writers Argentine women short story writers Feminist writers Pseudonymous women writers Uruguayan novelists Uruguayan romantic fiction writers Uruguayan short story writers Uruguayan women novelists Uruguayan women poets Uruguayan women short story writers Women romantic fiction writers Argentine feminist writers Uruguayan feminist writers