How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote #10
There are strange doings in Spain. I couldn't even make them out properly. They write that the throne is vacant and that the officials are in a difficult position about the selection of an heir, which is causing disturbances. This seems terribly strange to me. How can a throne be vacant? They say some doña should ascend the throne. A doña cannot ascend the throne. Simply cannot. There should be king on a throne. But, they say, there is no king. It cannot be that there was no king. A state cannot be without a king. (10.1)
Two things are going on here in Poprishchin's reaction to the news in Spain. First, he takes hierarchies so dead seriously that he cannot think about a throne without a king, which is of course something that frequently happens in monarchies after a monarch dies without a suitable heir.
Second, he thinks a woman cannot ascend the throne. Well, he would have been correct three years before this event. Before 1830, women could not really ascend the Spanish throne. But in 1830, Ferdinand VI looked at his life and thought: "Hmm, I have two daughters, and a horrible brother. How do I make sure my brother doesn't get the throne when I die?" So he changed the law. When he died three years later, a doña (his daughter Isabella) did in fact ascend the throne. When Poprishchin claims a woman cannot ascend the throne, he's just being his typical misogynistic self.