For years I have been captivated by this book by the writer and poet Dolors Monserdà (1845-1919), one of the first Catalan feminists. In this novel -inspired by the figure of Eulàlia Escuder (1808-1868), an ancestor of mine- tells the story of the rise staff, social and economic rise of Antonieta Corominas in Barcelona in the mid-nineteenth century. It is a costumbrist novel that describes the passage from handloom craftsmanship to the mechanical loom industry, the formidable demographic growth of Barcelona at that time and the remarkable social and urban transformations, concentrating its attention on the formidable role of the protagonist who admirably combines her business leadership and her feminine condition. It is a slow book, but it captures the reader. Its topicality, more than a century after its publication, can be well reflected in this sentence by Dolors Monserdà: "Intelligence has no sex". 

La Fabricanta had two editions during the author's lifetime, the first in 1904 and a second corrected edition in 1908. They were published by Llibreria Francesc Puig in Barcelona. The book was subtitled "Novela de costums barceloninas (1860-1875)" and was beautifully illustrated by Enric Monserdà, the author's brother. The third edition was published in 1935 at the Minerva printing house in Mataró and decades later new editions have appeared: 1972 (Library Services Selecta), 1992 (Edicions de l'Eixample), 2008 (Horsori) and 2022 (Barcino).

I think it is particularly important the edition made in 2008 by the City Council of Premià de Mar and the Museu de l'Estampació of that town with a valuable prologue by Jaume Sobrequés, Full Professor of History of Catalonia at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. "The reading of La Fabricanta -writes Sobrequés- is one of the most emblematic testimonies of the Catalan narrative of the turn of the century about the role played by women in the industrializing process".

The novel is dedicated by Dolors Monserdà to her two daughters, Angelina and Dolors, and is headed with a significant quotation by the writer Fernán Caballero (1796-1877) that says (in Catalan): "The truth is a source that is never interrupted". This novel -writes my relative Josep Maria Vilumara in his prologue to the Clàssiques Catalanes edition, published with the support of high school Catalan Women of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2008)- is "testimony of the role of women in a period core topic of the history of Catalonia. It reflects the will to incorporate women into the cultural and business life for which Dolors Monserdà fought". And Teresa Pamies will point out that "the revolutionary aspect of this novel is in having placed women in the foreground and not as a decorative object" (1992).

It is not easy to summarize the narrative. In a certain sense, the topic of the novel is the social ascent of the artisans to the bourgeoisie thanks to the effort and ingenuity in the work. Its plot is the story of Antonieta Corominas, an active and determined woman, who marries, in spite of the family civil service examination , a young artisan, Pere Joan Grau, from class more leave. Antonieta brings to the marriage two looms, which Pere Joan installs, and they start working immediately. In a few years, following the guidelines set by Antonieta, they have become the masters of a large factory.

On the other hand, her cousin Florentina, married to Pep, brother of Antoinette, and mother of two children, was a rather frivolous woman, who, after fourteen years of marriage, left her husband because she felt unhappy. She was beautiful and attractive, but she had abandoned the upbringing of her two children to the servants and had an empty life. The contrast between the two women is striking. Antonieta "was not pretty," write the López Bercero sisters in an interesting work, "but she had other qualities that allowed her to have a happy and balanced life. We believe that sample with her way of being the profile of a hard-working and thrifty Catalan woman who always thinks about tomorrow". In fact, when her brother went bankrupt in the stock market, Antoinette came to her rescue financial aid.

A striking feature of Monserdà's life and work is her deep Catholic religiosity, coupled with her active feminism. Similarly, the protagonist of La Fabricanta is deeply religious and at the same time seriously committed to the prominence and promotion of women in business life. The coincidence of both qualities often disconcerts those who read Monserdà looking for a revolutionary feminism, perhaps because they only have in their imagination a bad caricature of the social activism developed by women in the nineteenth century. For this reason alone, it would be worth reading this work.

financial aid But it should also be said that La Fabricanta is a great nineteenth-century novel, which captures the attention of today's readers and makes them think and understand a time that is long gone. Its protagonist, Antonieta, is a brave social fighter who captivates by her tenacity and at the same time by her kindness. For all these reasons, a translation to Spanish of this great novel, La Fabricanta by Dolors Monserdà, originally published in 1904, would be worthwhile.