ISSN 2039-2117 (online) ISSN 2039-9340 (print) Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences Vol 8 No 5 September 2017 31 Research Article © 2017 Marina Cuzovic-Severn. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). The Geopolitics of Emilia Pardo Bazán’s La Quimera: Femme Fatale as Split Feminist Subject Marina Cuzovic-Severn Assistant Professor of Spanish Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA Doi: 10.1515/mjss-2017-0021 Abstract This paper analyzes the representation of the femme fatale in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s La Quimera (1905). Femme fatale is described by many critics as an expression of masculine anxieties and fears, caused by political crisis and growth of feminine independence in the nineteenth century. Male authors employed this figure to preserve patriarchal structure and the existent power balance between prescribed gender roles. I argue that Pardo Bazán, through imitation of male writers and manipulation of hidden meanings in La Quimera, employs this masculinist projection to express latent feminist ideas and a critique of the contemporary social position of women. In her novel, Pardo Bazán creates a feminist femme fatale and, through her geopolitically split formation (France/Latin America/Spain), criticizes Spanish patriarchy, domesticity and non-modernity. She achieves this without overtly violating masculine narrative structure or demeaning patriarchal order, as she appropriates the originally masculinist imagery of fatal woman. Nevertheless, the eventual fate of Pardo Bazán’s femme fatale—especially the elaboration of internal dialogs and her presentation not as antagonist and invasive Other but as protagonist and subject— demonstrates fundamental differences of a feminist perspective within her elaboration of this masculine fantasy. In this way, in a time and space where feminism as a movement did not yet exist or was in its formative years, Pardo Bazán immensely contributed to the development of European/Spanish feminist thought. Keywords: Emilia Pardo Bazán, femme fatale, geopolitics, feminism, imperialism Introduction 1. Robert E. Osborne (1964) comments that the main difference between Emilia Pardo Bazán’s last three novels—La Quimera (1905), La Sirena negra (1908) and Dulce dueño (1911)—and the rest of her works is “la penetración psicológica, o, mejor dicho, el esfuerzo por parte de ella de profundizar en lo más íntimo de sus creaciones artísticas” (p. 116). Many critics, such as Mariano López (1979), Walter T. Pattison (1971) and Francisca González-Arias (1992), see La Quimera as Pardo Bazán’s most important work of fiction. Eduardo Gómez de Baquero (1926), describes it as “la más perfecta de sus novelas como composición artística y como riqueza de elementos” (p. 156). I agree with Osborne and I further suggest that these last three novels—all showcasing femmes fatales—offer the culmination of the portrayal of independent women and most directly (yet still surreptitiously) express Pardo Bazán’s feminist ideas. I would also add that in addition to being the most perfect artistically, La Quimera is also Pardo Bazán’s work in which her manipulation of meaning reaches its peak. Seemingly, the focus of the work is on the depiction of the malady of modern man (González- Arias, 1992, p. 196) and a critique of modernity through the portrayal of the physical and moral