Abstract

Beginning with a brief examination of the importance of the concept of happiness to the European Enlightenment as well as to the growing 18th -century interest in women, especially in Spain, this study focuses on the literary expressions of happiness by Spanish women as exemplified in the writings of three authors: essayist Josefa Amar y Borbon, poet Maria Gertrudis Hore and playwright Maria Rosa Galvez. Author Elizabeth Lewis traces the theme of 'happiness' through the texts, explicating how important the concept is for understanding eighteenth-century culture. Lewis shows how happiness for women could be considered subversive, associated as it was (among other things) with the freedom to make lifestyle choices, with a sense of harmony that extended far beyond the domestic sphere, and with a feminine virtue that defied traditional notions of fidelity to God and husband, and instead encouraged responsibility to other women, especially to future generations.