Louis Bromfield’s The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg and The Rains Came in Francoist Spain

Abstract

"Louis Bromfield's early novels (1924-1930) treat the themes of industrialization and transformation from agriculture to industry. As a defender of the Jeffersonian tradition, Bromfield portrays the consequences of industrialism and materialism on the human being both in his native land and abroad. In The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928), Bromfield abandons his early themes, settings, contexts, and characters by introducing a mixture of sensuousness and mysticism that provide intentionally designed intensity and ambiguity. Annie’s death, after having been considered a saint because she was marked by stigmata, and her apparently miraculous life give mysticism to the novel. The Rains Came (1937) is set in Ranchipur, India, and explores humanity’s potential to fight against miseries, poverty, religious prejudices, superstitions, diseases, and natural calamities... However, the role of the church in The Strange Case
of Miss Annie Spragg and the events of Annie’s life and death may not have been well received by readers in Franco’s Spain, nor would elements of Western modernity such as certain love stories and attitudes about religion have been accepted by Franco’s censors.... the aim of this article is to examine the reception of Bromfield’s The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg and The Rains Came in Francoist
Spain, focusing primarily on the response of the censors, whose evaluations were crucial in determining whether or not these two novels would be successful in Spain."