Inferior, superior or just different? A woman's sense of justice in Carmen de Burgos's El abogado

LOUIS, Anja (2005). Inferior, superior or just different? A woman's sense of justice in Carmen de Burgos's El abogado. Hispanic Research Journal, 6 (1), 13-27.

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Abstract

It has been a common philosophical contention that women have an inferior sense of justice. Women were considered naturally incapable of developing a sense of justice, since they would always put private life before the public good. It has only been as recently as 1982 that Carol Gilligan offered a rebuttal of centuries of 'knowledge' about women's sense of justice. In her ground-breaking book, In a Different Voice, Gilligan supplies empirical evidence to suggest that women's moral reasoning is not inferior but simply different from men's. Using Gilligan's theory as my theoretical framework, in this article I will examine how her opposing concepts of the ethic of care versus the ethic of rights manifest themselves in Carmen de Burgos's novella El abogado (1915), in which a single mother sues the father for alimony of her child. I will argue that while the heroine's moral behaviour is obviously superior to that of her ex-lover, as well as that of her lawyer, her moral reasoning, in the decision-making process of how to fight for maintenance for her child, is clearly that of a 'different voice', a striving for care-based, instead of rights-based, justice.

Item Type:	Article
Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018:	Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute > Communication and Computing Research Centre
Departments - Does NOT include content added after October 2018:	Sheffield Business School > Department of Management
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1179/146827305X13668
Page Range:	13-27
Depositing User:	Anja Louis
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2014 10:00
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 19:30
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7693

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