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Año 2007

ÍNDICE 

Estudios ............................................................................................................................................. 8 

Documento .....................................................................................................................................174 

Reseña ............................................................................................................................................181

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977 

4

Nota preliminar 


El volumen XII de Anales galdosianos presenta una serie de interesantes estudios que nos llevan 

de La Fontana de Oro a Ángel Guerra . Notamos, como fenómeno interesante, que hay una gran 

preponderancia de crítica galdosiana escrita en inglés por hispanistas británicos y norteamericanos. 

En los últimos volúmenes de Anales galdosianos el lector asiduo habrá ya notado la falta de balance 

que solíamos conseguir entre las contribuciones escritas en inglés y en español. 

El primer estudio que presentamos expone ejemplos prácticos del uso de «la psicología de las masas» 

que hace Galdós en su novela La Fontana de Oro , uso que antecede a las primeras manifestaciones 

teóricas hechas por Ferri y Sighele en Italia, por Le Bon en Francia y por Freud en Viena. 

En este volumen experimentamos con una nueva política editorial que creemos será útil a los lectores: 

la de publicar, en lo posible, pares de artículos sobre una misma novela. Así, por ejemplo, el lector 

encontrará dos estudios sobre cada una de las siguientes novelas: La desheredada , Realidad , El 

amigo Manso y Tristana . 

El primer artículo sobre La desheredada examina los manuscritos de los capítulos II y III de la 

novela para demostrar cómo cambió o evolucionó la caracterización del personaje la Sangüijuelera y 

cómo los cambios que Galdós va introduciendo al escribir la obra fueron necesarios para destacar la 

función de este personaje en la novela. El segundo artículo explora, una vez más, el complejo problema 

del «naturalismo» de La desheredada concluyendo que el destino de Isidora no corresponde ni al 

de una historia de decadencia naturalista, ni a una en la que un autor de mentalidad didáctica imparte 

un «castigo» al personaje principal, sino más bien una auténtica tragedia humana. Según el autor, en 

esta novela se detecta una madurez en la visión trágica de Galdós que se basa en el concepto de la 

imposibilidad de completarse, de alcanzar un sentido de totalidad entre el ser y su realidad circundante. 

Así, «lo que le falta a un enfermo le sobra a otro». 

Las obras literarias deben ser reinterpretadas por cada generación de lectores. En este volumen 

presentamos dos nuevas interpretaciones de Realidad. La primera, desde el punto de vista del concepto 

galdosiano del cristianismo. La segunda, desde un enfoque psicoanalítico. En ambos casos los 

resultados nos muestran que Orozco, «el hombre nuevo» para Casalduero, no es sino un hombre 

bastante convencional y que es Augusta la que se destaca como «la mujer nueva», en un caso, o como 

una especie de «santa», precursora de la «figura evangélica», en el otro. Ambos artículos nos hacen 

ver la complejidad psicológica de los personajes principales de esta novela dialogada. 

5


Otra de las más discutidas novelas de Galdós, El amigo Manso , se estudia desde dos enfoques 

distintos: el estructuralista, que, en este caso, se vale del método onomástico utilizado por Galdós, 

para elucidar no sólo el proceso creativo de ésta -y otras novelas de este autor- sino también para 

mostrar que su estructura es una elaboración del motivo de la mansedumbre; y el del homo ludens , 

o sea, el del novelista que juega con el arte de su novela e invita al lector a que entre dentro de este 

juego -en este caso, el juego de la autonomía ficticia de esta novela, que va comentando pari pasu 

el acto de novelar. 

Uno de los artículos sobre Tristana analiza al personaje principal desde el punto de vista de la 

psicología jungiana, y hace hincapié en dos aspectos para explicar el desintegramiento del psique 

en la protagonista: la relación con Horacio en términos de la figura del animus que, gradualmente, 

va transformándose, con la ausencia, en el «amado fantasma» y en el «Divino amado»; y las cuatro 

etapas que los jungianos han definido como el proceso de desarrollo del psique femenino. Con este 

enfoque espera reconciliar las divergentes opiniones de los dos primeros críticos de esta novela, la 

Pardo Bazán y Clarín. 

El segundo examina y trata de dar una explicación satisfactoria para el sentimiento de desilusión que 

los críticos han expresado sobre Tristana . Se examinan varias circunstancias que pueden explicar 

el hecho de que esta novela no llegara a colmar la medida de su posible excelencia. Se arguye que 

Galdós, en términos artísticos, sólo pudo ver el fenómeno social del feminismo en términos de las 

relaciones inter-personales entre los personajes; y se apunta la paradoja de que Tristana , en su 

búsqueda de una vida satisfactoria, utiliza al hombre como modelo, de modo que el hombre es, a la vez, 

su enemigo y su salvación. Se presenta, por último, como una novela en la que Galdós experimenta 

conscientemente con nuevos caminos, caminos que ya le había llevado a presentar, tres años antes, la 

muerte de Federico Viera desde dos diferentes perspectivas. Poco importa si, en el último análisis, el 

experimento falla. Si Tristana desilusiona, esta desilusión es significativa. 

El estudio sobre Ángel Guerra apunta el cambio que se opera en Galdós de su interés en los procesos 

históricos a una búsqueda de soluciones ahistóricas, excepto que los problemas históricos se niegan 

a desaparecer. Ángel Guerra representa el primer ejemplo de una novela en la que Galdós trata de 

comprender la visión evangélica de la caridad. Contrasta a Fortunata y Jacinta con Ángel Guerra 

: en la primera novela Galdós ensaya la posibilidad de una renovación desde dentro; en la segunda 

presenta un rechazo total del orden establecido. 

6


Por último, presentamos un documento que nos ofrece la perspectiva de Galdós en cuanto al asesinato 

del Obispo Martínez Izquierdo, tal y como el novelista la expone en tres artículos escritos para La 

Prensa, de Buenos Aires. Y, en un ensayo-reseña se nos da una evaluación del primer tomo de la 

monumental bibliografía de Galdós compilada por don Manuel Hernández Suárez. 

Esperamos que los lectores encuentren útil este nuevo volumen de los Anales galdosianos. 

La Dirección. 

7

Estudios 


8

Galdós and Mass Psychology 

Clark M. Zlotchew 

Senatores boni viri; senatus autem mala bestia . 

( Ancient maxim .) 


The present era of mass communication and social unrest places a high priority on the understanding 

of group psychology. Sociologists and psychologists study the phenomenon while the advertising 

agencies and statesmen give practical application to the knowledge gathered by the socio- 

psychologists. The roots of this science can be traced to the nineteenth century, principally to the 

Italian school of positive criminology, the founder and chief exponent of which is generally held to 

be Enrico Ferri 1 . Ferri's major departure from the classical school of criminology, with significant 

consequences for the yet unborn science of mass psychology, is contained in the idea that the joining 

together of generally intelligent individuals into a group does not guarantee the intelligence of the 

resulting assembly. This is so because, psychologically speaking, «the union of individuals never 

gives, as it would seem it should, a total equal to the individual value of each of them» 2 . Equally 

significant is his affirmation that emotion predominates over rationality in a group endeavor. 3 

While Ferri's statements referred principally to the composition and psychology of juries, his 

disciple, Scipio Sighele, applies these concepts to mobs as well and greatly expands upon them in 

La Folla delinquente (1892) 4 . Other writers, in France as well as Italy, write of the psychology of 

1 William W. Smithers states, «Enrico Ferri, founder of criminal sociology...». Enrico Ferri, Criminal 

Sociology , translated by Joseph I. Kelly and John Lisle, edited by William W. Smithers with an 

introduction by Charles A. Ellwood and Quincy A. Myers (New York: Agathon Press, Inc., 1967), 

p. xxi. « the founding in Italy of a new school of positive criminal law, of which Ferri is himself the 

chief exponent.» Ibid. , p. xxiii. 

2 Ibid. , p. 486. 

3 «This predominance of sentiment over reason, which is the fundamental note of the jury...» Ibid. , 

p. 489. 

4 Scipio Sighele, La Folla delinquente (Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1892). A wide diffusion of this book 

may be assumed because only a few months after the first Italian edition the French edition appeared 

as La Foule criminelle . Perhaps one of the more significant statements by Sighele is: « Un'antica 

9


the masses in the late 1880's and early 1890's and reach similar conclusions; however, it is Gustave 

Le Bon who in La Psychologie des foules (1895), and while basically agreeing with Sighele in his 

definition of the crowd 5 , succeeds in providing the point of departure for most of the important 

subsequent studies in mass psychology. Current studies in the field generally have some basis in 

Le Bon and Freud whose work on the subject 6 begins with a résumé of Le Bon's thoughts on the 

matter. In addition to the fact that Le Bon's study on crowd psychology has been highly influential 

in twentieth-century social psychology, the practical application of La Psychologie des foules as a 

textbook for the political manipulation of entire nations is notable; it was employed by Mussolini 7 

and probably by Hitler. 8 

sentenza dice: senatores boni viri, senatus autem mala bestia , e il filosofo oggi ripete e conferma 

questa osservazione, quando, a proposito di certi gruppi sociali, afferma che presi gli individui uno 

per uno son galantuomini, messi insieme, sono birbanti. » La Folla delinquente , 2.ª edizione (Torino: 

Fratelli Bocca, 1894) , p. 13. 

5 «In its essentials, however, Le Bon's definition of the crowd is the same as Sighele's. For both of 

them, a study of the crowd begins with the idea that the crowd cannot be seen as a simple aggregate, 

but is based on the special kind of mutual dependence among the individuals who compose it.» Robert 

Ezra Park, The Crowd and the Public and other Essays , translated from Masse und Publikum by 

Charlotte Elsner, edited and with introduction by Henry Elsner, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago 

Press, 1972), p. 11. 

6 Sigmund Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer 

Verlag, 1921). 

7 «The ease with which Mussolini raided Le Bon's writings for justifications of Fascist ideology is 

striking.» Robert A. Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave Le Bon and the Crisis of Mass 

Democracy in the Third Republic (London; Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1975), p. 178. 

8 «Though it may be claiming too much to ascribe directly to Le Bon's influence ideas which by 1905 

were the lingua franca of nearly all European collective psychologists, the reader of Mein Kampf is 

certainly struck by the similarity of the descriptive language Hitler used to Le Bon's 'classic' account 

of crowd behavior.» Ibid. , p. 179. «Hitler's own phenomenal sensitivity to mass audiences might 

possibly have been reinforced by the theoretical endorsement offered in Le Bon's succinct portrait 

of the crowd.» Ibid. 

10


The concept of mass psychology seems to have been in the air in Europe by the end of the nineteenth 

century. The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate that young Benito Pérez Galdós, in his 

first published novel, La Fontana de Oro (1870), already had expressed many of the ideas which 

were to be published later in the theoretical treatises on the subject even anticipating certain concepts 

which would not be promulgated again until Freud's study fifty-one years later. 

Among the Novelas de la primera época , the novels in which the emphasis is heavily placed on 

political conflict are La Fontana de Oro and El audaz: Historia de un radical de antaño , 9 published 

respectively in 1870 and 1871. The existence of sizeable groups in violent confrontation in these two 

novels provides the opportunity for examining a Galdosian entity which we shall denominate, for 

reasons which will become apparent, the «group-organism». In the formidable array of characters 

engendered by Galdós' prolific literary creativity might be numbered the various groups of individuals 

which seem to be brought into existence, quite often for a short period of time, for the purpose 

of carrying out a specific task. These task-forces, it will be seen, often are portrayed not merely 

as socially-organized groups or categories, but as living organisms in which the component parts 

(individual human beings) surrender their personal identity in order to become organs or cells of 

the larger organism 10 . The members of the organism will be observed to transfer control of their 

individuality to the head (literal as well as figurative) of the conglomerate creature. The group- 

organism may be well structured (e. g. a military unit) or quite unstructured, as in the case of a mob. 

La Fontana de Oro , upon which we shall concentrate, offers prime examples of the group- 

organism. As a location in which politically oriented groups were formed in order to put theory into 

practice in the streets of Madrid, the café called the Fontana de Oro was an ideal breeding ground 

for group-organisms. The fact that the group-organism was quite definitely felt by Galdós to be what 

now is referred to as a gestalt seems evident, early in the action of the novel, when Galdós himself 

9 The same can be said of many of the Episodios nacionales of the first two series. 

10 In this respect it is interesting to compare Gerald Gillespie's ideas which equate couples in Galdós' 

work to molecules and the individuals forming those couples to atoms. See: «Reality and Fiction in 

the Novels of Galdós», Anales galdosianos , 1 (1966), 20-21. Cf. the statement in Torquemada en la 

hoguera (1889): « Somos átomos, amigo don Francisco; nada más que unos tontos átomos. » Obras 

completas , vol. V, p. 919. (See note 11 below for full title.) 

11


comments on the first speech made in the café by the protagonist. Lázaro realizes that he is making 

a singularly poor impression on the public. Galdós intervenes: 

Lo singular es que si se hubiera preguntado a cualquiera, particularmente, su opinión sobre el 

discurso, habría dado, tal vez, una opinión no desfavorable; pero la opinión de un público no es la 

suma de las opiniones de los individuos que lo forman, no; en la opinión colectiva de aquél hay algo 

fatal, algo no comprendido en las leyes del sentido humano . 11 

There is in the idea that the opinion of a group is not equal to the opinions of the individuals who 

form that group an approximation to a dictionary definition of gestalt with respect to the above « 

público ». A « público », any « público » is the possessor of an « opinión » which is not the 

sum of opinions belonging to the individuals who, comprise it. A « público », then, would seem to 

be for Galdós a living organism which is capable of thinking, of judging. The gestalt-like composition 

of the group, as presented by Galdós, clearly indicates the total subservience of the individual to the 

group-organism; perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to the absorption of the former in the 

latter. Galdós' words on the subject, published in 1870, are echoed in 1895 by Le Bon: 

Le fait le plus frappant présenté par une foule psychologique est le suivant: quels que soient les 

individus qui la composent, quelque semblables ou dissemblables que puissent être leur genre de 

vie, leurs occupations, leur caractère ou leur intelligence, le seul fait qu'ils sont transformés en foule, 

les dote d'une sorte d'âme collective. Cette âme les fait sentir, penser et agir d'une façon tout à fait 

différente de celle dont sentirait, penserait et agirait chacun d'eux isolément. La foule psychologique 

est un être provisoire, composé d'éléments hétérogènes pour un instant soudés, absolument comme 

les cellules d'un corps vivant forment par leur réunion un être nouveau manifestant des caractères fort 

différents de ceux que chacune de ces cellules possède . 12 

11 Benito Pérez Galdós , Obras completas, introducción, biografía, bibliografía, notas y censo de 

personajes galdosianos, por Federico Sainz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, 1966), tomo IV, p. 56. All 

subsequent quotations from this volume will be indicated by the page number in parentheses within 

the text. 

12 Gustave Le Bon , La Psychologie des foules, nouvelle édition présentée par Otto Klineberg 

(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963) , p. 11. 

12


Le Bon's comments on the jury succinctly states the same notion: « Et c'est ainsi qu'on voit des jurys 

rendré des verdicts que désapprouverait chaque juré individuellement... ». 13 

Judging by the above, we note that Galdós recognized a phenomenon the psychological implications 

of which are utilized today by television producers. Laughter, as well as fear, is highly infectious. 

As a result, it has been observed that a member of a motion picture audience laughs more readily at 

humorous events than the solitary television viewer of the identical film. Horror movies are probably 

more effective with respect to audiences in movie theaters than to the individual home viewer. In 

order to simulate to some degree the impact of the group upon the individual, producers of many 

television comedy series employ pre-recorded laughter on the soundtrack of their program. This 

«canned-laughter», operating in much the same manner as would laughter emanating from a theater 

audience, provokes the viewer to laugh and produces the illusion of greater comicity than might 

actually exist. The pre-recorded laughter of the soundtrack indeed causes the viewer to temporarily 

relinquish his individuality while becoming one cell, so to speak, in an artificial group-organism. The 

individual's personality is subordinated to that ephemeral organism (an «audience» represented by its 

voice alone) in much the same manner as suggested by Galdós who states that the « opinión » of « 

un público » is not equal to the sum of the opinions held by its components. 

Another facet of the relationship between the individual and the group-organism is revealed in the 

course of Lázaro's unsuccessful speech at the Fontana de Oro. The omniscient narrator explains: « 

En todo orador hay dos entidades: el orador, propiamente dicho, y el hombre. Cuando el primero se 

dirige a la multitud, el segundo queda atrás, dentro, mejor dicho, hablando también » (p. 55). In this 

dédoublement , the independent personality (« el hombre ») remains in the background or rather 

within, which is equivalent to its being submerged, and observes its own actions (oratory, in the case 

at hand) with detachment. Lázaro as « orador, propiamente dicho », functions as one cell of a group- 

organism while his independent personality (« el hombre ») is temporarily suspended. 

At this point in Galdós' development of the scene, Lázaro has not yet been definitively absorbed by 

the group-organism; he is attempting to be absorbed by it. His efforts to sway the audience may be 

compared vaguely to the manner in which an idea occurs in the human mind. The audience considers 

Lázaro's words much as a mind weighs ideas. Just as the mind ultimately either accepts and then acts 

upon an idea or, on the contrary, rejects it after consideration, the gathering at the café, after having 

13 Ibid. , p. 15. 

13


weighed Lázaro's exhortations, rejects them: « Ni Lázaro persuadió al público, ni éste aplaudió al 

orador » (p. 56). « Lázaro - idea » has been considered by the Fontana-organism and, found 

unacceptable, is rejected. Lázaro desired to become a cell of the organism, albeit a rather important 

cell located in the brain, but failed. An effective image is employed by Galdós to describe this rejection 

of an idea by a mind unwilling to or incapable of incorporating it. Lázaro's experience is expressed 

thus: « como si hubiera encendido un sol en un mundo de ciegos » (p. 56). Perhaps paradoxically, 

the individual (Lázaro) is saddened at not being deprived of his individuality by the group: « Bajó 

con el alma atribulada, oprimido el corazón... » ( ibid. ). For the nonce the personality has regained 

its integrity; the « hombre » and the « orador, propiamente dicho » have been reintegrated into 

an independent unit. 

Another orator ascends the platform while: « la multitud celebraba con aplausos maquinales las 

frases de su orador favorito... » (p. 57). The fact that the « multitud » applauds « maquinalmente 

» this other speaker who is classified as « favorito » even before he begins his discourse is analogous 

to the mind's predisposition to accept familiar ideas (« orador favorito ») while being disinclined 

to readily embrace new ones (Lázaro). Le Bon refers to this quality of the crowd mind: « S'il faut 

longtemps aux idées pour s'établir dans l'âme des foules, un temps non moins considérable leur est 

nécessaire pour en sortir ». 14 

When the favorite speaker ends his exhortation declaring the necessity for putting into effect the 

demonstration prepared for the following day, the audience reacts enthusiastically: « Todos se 

levantaron unánimes gritando: '¡Sí' » ( ibid. ). The organic character of the group is emphasized 

by Galdós who qualifies its action as « unánimes ». After having rejected a new idea (Lázaro), the 

organism's mind reconsiders a familiar one (« orador favorito ») to which it is already favorably 

disposed, becomes entirely convinced (« ¡Sí! ») and prepares to act on its final decision: « Todos 

prometieron concurrir... » ( ibid. ). Galdós, as we have seen, considered that the organism referred to 

as « público » holds opinions which do not necessarily reflect those of its component parts, He has 

implied that those parts might well have reacted favorably to Lázaro's perorations had they considered 

them as individuals. One might speculate whether the reverse would hold true. Whereas the organism 

approves with « aplausos maquinales » the favorite speaker even before hearing his words and 

unanimously and emotionally begins to transform resolution into action, might not the individuals 

composing the group-organism have thought better of the rash action embarked upon in exaltation? 

14 Ibid. , p. 34. 

14


In any event, we have witnessed, in this speech-scene in the café, the thought process within 

the group-organism's mind. The presentation of this thought process within a living body (taken 

etymologically, « unánimes » suggests the existence of one single soul within this body) lends true 

life, in the reader's conception, to one more personage in the novel. We observe further development 

of this new creature: « y tres o cuatro, encargados del ceremonial, dieron cuenta del arreglo de la 

procesión; se fijó la hora, se designó el punto de reunión » ( ibid. ). The organs or cells of the 

organism, that is, the totality of persons in the café, are arranged so that it has a body (most of the 

members) and a brain formed of the « tres o cuatro » who arrange the details of the action to be 

taken. This organism, whose thought patterns we have been observing, will be seen in action and in 

conflict with another group-organism at a later time. 

As the patrons of the Fontana de Oro take their leave, one small group characterized by Galdós as « 

aquella fracción ignorante y turbulenta » decides to end the evening by creating civil disorder outside 

the home of Morillo, Captain General of New Castile. This group has as its nucleus a small number of 

individuals who had been seated in one corner of the café. At the instigation of Calleja, the barber, who 

shouts, « ¡Señores, serenata a Morillo! », their ranks are augmented by: « toda la gente dispuesta 

para el caso que por allí pasaba » (p. 57). This entity, which we may denominate the Calleja group, 

may be viewed as yet another personage, one which is quite distinct from the group formed within the 

café and which is scheduled to participate in a demonstration the following day. The Calleja group is 

as much the product of oratory (« serenata a Morillo ») as is the other organism, but its difference 

in character may be noted by its more violent and less considered intentions in addition to the fact 

that it operates in accordance with Calleja's exhortations rather than the advice of the café's « orador 

favorito ». Calleja had not dared to speak in competition with the eloquent orators of the Fontana de 

Oro; nevertheless, Calleja-idea is hastily accepted by the group labeled « ignorante y turbulenta ». 

As human beings differ in character according to the ideas they accept and the actions they commit, 

so do the two groups described above (the café group which rejected Lázaro-idea but accepted the « 

orador favorito »; the Calleja group) differ and may be considered distinct Galdosian personages. 

Prior to the events of the evening described above, Alcalá Galiano addresses the throng gathered at 

the Fontana de Oro 15 . This prestigious historical personage finds it necessary finally to step down 

15 The footnote on page 20 of the Obras completas , vol. IV ( La Fontana de Oro ) states: « El mismo 

Alcalá Galiano refiere con mucha franqueza este suceso en sus anotaciones a la Historia de España, 

por Dunham. » 

15


from the speaker's platform when, after a disturbance is heard forming in the streets, his listeners 

increasingly are drawn from the café to join the street mob until: « el orador no tuvo más remedio que 

callarse » (p. 20). Finally, the five or six persons left in the café, wanting to satisfy their curiosity, 

leave the café accompanied by Alcalá Galiano himself. The idea represented by the renowned Alcalá 

Galiano is abandoned in favor of that represented by the street disturbance. This process may be 

thought of as analogous to the group-organism's changing its mind. One feature of this particular 

organism's character is brought out by this action: rashness. Rather than follow the intricacies of 

Alcalá Galiano's reasoning, it prefers to cease thinking altogether in favor of precipitate action. 

The event just described may well have implications which may be generalized: the active mob 

sweeping through the streets has irresistibly drawn the individuals forming the sedentary café audience 

into its ranks. A still embryonic group (the café patrons) has been attracted into an already formed, 

although turbulent, organism to become part of ft. The reader is not told the exact nature of the 

mob's mission; in fact, he is left with the feeling that no specific goal is present, but rather that the 

group-organism in question is having, as do individuals, an outburst of undirected temper. The only 

information we have concerning the activities to be carried out by the mob is the statement: « Todas 

las señales eran de que había comenzado una de aquellas asonadas tan frecuentes entonces » (p. 20). 

Another generalization is possible with relation to the events just described, viz., that emotion is a 

force which has greater power over the group-organism than reason. We have just observed that Alcalá 

Galiano's sensible but intricate reasoning was abandoned in favor of unconsidered action sparked by 

high feeling in the streets. This generalization will be expressed by Le Bon: « Dans sa lutte éternelle 

contre la raison, le sentiment n'a jamais été vaincu » 16 . He insists: « Aussi est-ce à leurs sentiments 

et jamais à leur raison que font appel les orateurs qui savent les [les foules] impressioner ». 17 

Galdós soon reveals that many of the « asonadas » so frequent in the era described (1820-23) 

were fomented by Absolutists who, using Fernando VII's funds, would pay professional agitators to 

stir up the impressionable pueblo and the more radical elements of the anti-Absolutists against the 

Government, a constitutional monarchy in which the King was only a figurehead and in which the 

affairs of state were run by intelligent liberals whom the King would have liked to see destroyed. The 

exaltados (radical elements who wish immediate revolution) blindly discharge their fury against the 

more moderate government ministers, not realizing that in so doing they are serving the King and are 

16 Op. cit. , p. 40. 

17 Ibid. , p. 65. 

16


working against their own interests. The mob just described displays extreme ignorance of the facts 

of political life 18 . Its energy is expended in self-defeating enterprises. As Le Bon would observe: « 

Les impulsions diverses auxquelles obéissent les foules... seront toujours tellement impérieuses que 

l'intérêt de la conservation lui-même s'effacera devant elles ». 19 

The raging mob exerts a powerful attraction on those listening to Alcalá Galiano's speech, 

incorporating them within itself. The «canned laughter» effect mentioned above is a mild form of 

the same phenomenon exemplified by the attraction of the mob on individuals within sight and 

sound of its presence. The proximity of an active and violent mob irresistibly draws the previously 

calm individuals into the rabble's uncontrolled rampage, completely subjugating individual will to 

that of the entire organism. The psychological implications suggested by Galdós in this case are, 

incidentally, remarkably similar to the laws of physics in which the mass and proximity of a physical 

body determines the amount of attraction it exerts on smaller bodies. 

Thus far we have witnessed the birth of three distinct group-organisms: that created in the Fontana 

de Oro after rejecting Lázaro-idea but accepting the « orador favorito » as their guiding principle; 

the irresponsible Calleja group formed in the streets outside the café for the purpose of creating a 

disturbance at Morillo's residence; and the mob surging through the streets which attracted to itself 

Alcalá Galiano's listeners. A fourth organism might have developed from Alcalá Galiano's audience 

had the individuals forming the potential organism not been attracted to and absorbed by the more 

active and larger street mob. Each of the three groups actually integrated may be thought of as 

constituting a unique personage in La Fontana de Oro possessing its own personality and its particular 

function with respect to the novel. 

The group which rejected Lázaro but was moved to action by the « orador favorito » disbanded 

the evening of the speeches (the organism «went to sleep») determined to act on the following day. 

This group-organism, which we shall now call the Riego group, has decided to parade about bearing 

a large portrait of general Riego, the officer in charge of Aragón who was relieved of his post by the 

Government. The procession has been prohibited by the authorities, but the group, as we have seen, 

18 Cf. «The theme of the patriots' ignorance is carried all through the work [ La Fontana de Oro ].» 

Carroll B. Johnson, «The Café in Galdós' La Fontana de Oro », Bulletin of Hispanic Studies , 44 

(1965), 114. 

19 Le Bon, p. 17. 

17


has been sparked into action by the power of oratory. This organism has grown to many times its 

original size. While smaller when first formed and possessing a brain composed of « tres o cuatro 

» men, on this day the creature, whose body has grown but whose brain has decreased to « dos o 

tres personas » (p. 63), is wallowing in confusion. 

At this moment, Lázaro struggles with his determination to go straight to his uncle's house and with 

the opposing force of the group which exerts a tremendous attraction upon him: « Allí estaba reunido 

un pueblo, dispuesto a una gran manifestación » (p. 64). His struggle to maintain his individuality in 

the face of the attraction of the larger organism may be seen especially in the skillful portrayal of his 

mental state in the words: « Lázaro quiso dominarse rechazando la tentación. Se alejó del pueblo y 

volvió a acercarse a él » ( ibid. ). The protagonist's fluctuation between independence and surrender 

is further described: « La masa, en tanto, se arremolinaba y se extendía por la plazuela del Ángel. 

Lázaro la siguió como fascinado; después se apartó con miedo de ella y de sí mismo. Pero no podía 

resolverse a retirarse » ( ibid. ). He hovers on the border between self-possession and absorption by 

the group-organism. While attracted by it, he also feels « miedo » toward it, presumably because 

of its potential for destroying his personal will; he feels this same emotion toward himself (« de sí 

mismo ») because of the half-realization that something within him wishes to be absorbed by the mob. 

This suggests the same duality in Lázaro which was made explicit by the narrator when, the previous 

night, Lázaro was described as being both « orador, propiamente dicho, y el hombre » (p. 55). 

Up to this moment, the organism has reached physical proportions too great to be directed by its small 

and apparently inefficient brain. The fact that it wallows about in confusion as well as the insistence 

that it is one single creature, one unified entity, is clearly indicated by Galdós: « Había llegado aquel 

momento supremo de las agitaciones populares en que las turbas se paran silenciosas, alterados los 

miles de corazones por un solo y profundo temor, trastornadas las mil cabezas con una sola duda » (p. 

64). While the creature is the possessor of thousands of hearts and a thousand heads, those hearts and 

heads all share « un solo y profundo temor » and « una sola duda ». The emotions are single 

rather than multiple, thus, demonstrative of integration. This moment in the formation of a group- 

organism will be described by Le Bon: 

Dans certaines circonstances données, et seulement dans ces circonstances, une agglomération 

d'hommes possède des caractères nouveaux fort différents de ceux de chaque individu qui la compose. 

La personnalité consciente s'évanouit, les sentiments et les idées de toutes les unités sont orientés 

dans une même direction. Il se forme une âme collective, transitoire sans doute, mais présentant des 

caractères très nets. La collectivité devient alors ce que, faute d'une expression meilleure, j'appellerai 

18


une foule organisée, ou, si l'on préfère, une foule psychologique. Elle forme un seul être et se trouve 

soumise à la loi de l'unité mentale des foules. 20 ( Le Bon's emphasis. ) 

This statement should be compared with Galdós' description, through La Zarza, a personage in El 

audaz (1871), of the Parisian mob: « Ninguno era dueño de sí mismo; todos habían abdicado su 

persona ante la colectividad, y cada cual dejó de ser un individuo para no ser más que muchedumbre 

» (P. 255). 

Something is still lacking to set this creature in motion: « Falta que una voz sola diga lo que todos 

sienten » (p. 64). The emotions felt by the organism must be expressed; this expression cannot be 

multiple if it is to represent one single creature. The « voz » which is needed must be « una » and 

« sola ». Furthermore: « esa voz dice lo que una multitud no puede decir; porque la multitud, que 

obra como un solo cuerpo con decisión y seguridad, no tiene otra voz que el rumor salvaje, compuesto 

de infinitos y desiguales sonidos » ( ibid. , my emphasis). 

Lázaro asks himself: « ¿Sería el verbo revelador de aquel cuerpo ciego e inconsciente? ¿Hablaría o 

no hablaría? » ( ibid. ). Finally, his resistance disappears entirely and he is drawn into the organism 

as the necessary « verbo ». The description of his absorption is extremely vivid: « Lázaro se mezcló 

en el torbellino. Sus ojos brillaban con extraordinario resplandor; su inquietud era una convulsión; su 

agitación, una fiebre; su mirada, un rayo » ( ibid. ). This is not the description of a man simply 

joining with his fellows: Lázaro is undergoing a metamorphosis which Galdós felt important enough 

to portray in a searching «close-up» of the protagonist at a crucial moment. There is, in the vocabulary 

depicting Lázaro's incorporation in the organism (« convulsión », « agitación », « fiebre ») and 

the appearance of his eyes, the suggestion, quite possibly unconscious on Galdós' part, of sexual union; 

this latter type of union may result, as does incorporation in a group-organism, in the creation of a 

new being. Furthermore, in both cases the creation of the new entity is accompanied by the temporary 

surrender of the personality on the part of the individuals who unite in this endeavor. The elements 

of attraction, resistence, surrender, pleasure within that surrender, and temporary abandonment of the 

self in the creation of another being, are factors common on one hand, to the process under scrutiny 

in which individuals form the group-organism and, on the other, to sexual reproduction. Perhaps one 

might suggest some analogy between the distinction orador-hombre and a dichotomy representing 

procreation and self-preservation. 

20 Ibid. , p. 9. 

19


The parallel between the attraction exerted by the mob and sexuality, here suggested dramatically 

by Galdós, is not observed by Le Bon and will not be examined until 1921 when Freud, who places 

great emphasis on this parallel, seeks to explain the psychological factors which are responsible for 

the change in mental state undergone by the individual in a mob: 

Our interest is now directed to discovering the psychological explanation of this mental change 

which is experienced by the individual in a group. ... what we are offered as an explanation by 

authorities upon Sociology and Group Psychology is always the same, even though it is given various 

names, and that is -the magic word 'suggestion'. Tarde calls it 'imitation'; but we cannot help agreeing 

with a writer who protests that imitation comes under the concept of suggestion, and is in fact one 

of its results. Le Bon traces back all the puzzling features of social phenomena to two factors: the 

mutual suggestion of individuals and the prestige of leaders. But prestige, again, is only recognizable 

by its capacity for evoking suggestion. 21 

Protesting that, while suggestion repeatedly has been offered as the explanation for the individual's 

mental change in a crowd as well as under hypnosis, but that the nature of suggestion itself has not 

been explained, Freud states: « I shall make an attempt at using the concept of libido for the purpose 

of throwing light upon Group Psychology...» 22 He explains: 

Libido is an expression taken from the theory of the emotions. We call by that name the energy... 

of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word 'love'. The nucleus 

of what we mean by love naturally consists (and this is what is commonly called love, and what the 

poets sing of) in sexual love with sexual union as its aim. in relations between the sexes these instincts 

force their way towards sexual union, but in other circumstances they are diverted from this aim or 

are prevented from reaching it, though always preserving enough of their original nature to keep their 

identity recognizable... 23 

He continues: 

21 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego , authorized translation by James 

Strachey (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1951), pp. 33-34. 

22 Ibid. , p. 37. 

23 Ibid. , pp. 37-38. 

20


We will try our fortune, then, with the supposition that love relationships (or, to use a more neutral 

expression, emotional ties) also constitute the essence of the group mind. Let us remember that the 

authorities make no mention of any such relations. What would correspond to them is evidently 

concealed behind the shelter, the screen, of suggestion. Our hypothesis finds support in the first 

instance from two passing thoughts. First, that a group is clearly held together by a power of some kind: 

and to what power could this feat be better be ascribed than to Eros, who holds together everything 

in the world? Secondly, that if an individual gives up his distinctiveness in a group and lets its other 

members influence him by suggestion, it gives me the impression that he does it because he feels the 

need of being in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them -so that perhaps after all he 

does it ' ihnen zu Liebe ' 24 , (' ihnen zu Liebe ' is an idiom meaning 'for their sake' but literally 

signifies: 'for love of them'.) 

Specifically referring to the nature of the ties which are present in groups, Freud adds: «We are 

concerned here with love instincts which have been diverted from their original aims, though they do 

not operate with less energy on that account» 25 . (Let us recall, at this point, that Lázaro marries Clara 

to settle down with her in isolated, provincial Ateca only after he definitely has freed himself from 

the attraction of the group-organism and abandons Madrid and his desire to play a part in politics. 

In Freudian terms this would represent a reversion of Lázaro's libidinal drive toward a truly sexual 

object. Freud might as well have been referring specifically to Clara and Lázaro when he affirmed: 

«Two people coming together for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, in so far as they seek for solitude, 

are making a demonstration against the herd instinct, the group feeling».) 26 

If the above parallel is valid (obviously, it is extremely vulnerable) and the « orador » is 

analogous to the part of the personality attracted to procreation, Lázaro's condition on joining the 

group-organism, as described further by Galdós, takes on greater significance while the rather exalted 

language employed is justified to a greater extent: 

Cruzábanle por la mente extrañas y sublimes formas de elocuencia; latíale el corazón con rapidez 

desenfrenada; las sienes le quemaban, y sentía en su garganta una vibración sonora que no necesitaba 

más que un poco de aire para ser voz elocuente y robusta. 

24 Ibid. , p. 40. 

25 Ibid. , p. 58. 

26 Ibid. , p. 121. 

21

(p. 64) 


Galdós continues to stress the importance of speech to the full development of the group-organism: 

Cuando aquel hombre [la «voz»] ha hablado, la multitud ha dicho lo que tenía que decir; la multitud 

se conoce, ha podido recoger y unificar sus fuerzas, ha adquirido lo que no tenía: conciencia y unidad. 

Ya no es un conjunto inorgánico de fuerzas ciegas: es un cuerpo inteligente cuya actividad tiende a 

un objeto fijo, bueno o malo, pero al cual se encamina con decisión y conocimiento. 

( ibid. ) 

Once its voice has been found, the creature gains self-awareness; it possesses personality. The 

organism is sufficiently intelligent to concentrate on obtaining a specific goal, for better or worse. 

Galdós now proceeds to endow this creature with limbs and sight while insisting on its intelligence: 

« El gran monstruo midió de una mirada el volumen de sus miembros multiplicados y la anchura 

del arco por donde había de pasar » ( ibid. ). With this description of the organism, whose sinister 

potential is hinted at by the term « monstruo », in its great size coupled with intelligence, Galdós 

brings a touch of melodrama to the action. 

The organism whose genesis we have witnessed is now fully formed and will not long be viewed in 

a vacuum. Once described, it will enter into conflict with another organism. In attempting to parade 

through the streets bearing aloft the portrait of Riego, in defiance of Government orders, the Riego 

organism finds its path barred by a military detachment composed of two rows of soldiers lined up 

in the Platerías backed up by mounted lancers commanded by Morillo: « el capitán general de 

Madrid, a caballo, esperando con grande aplomo y entereza » ibid. ). An excitable but poorly 

armed «civilian» (the Riego group) faces a well armed and disciplined «soldier» (Morillo's troops). 

The Riego group has as its only intention a public demonstration in favor of Riego. Morillo's troops 

have been ordered to prevent this demonstration from taking place. Galdós presents us with a dramatic 

conflict between two «characters». The visual impact the reader receives of the Riego organism, a 

living creature with limbs carrying a huge likeness of Riego, is, in effect, that of a monster wearing 

a mask. Because this organism's only purpose is to call attention to itself and to the portrait, one may 

perhaps describe its motive, using an English idiom, as being nothing more than to «show its face». 

After being ordered to disperse, the Riego group explains that the demonstration it wishes to carry 

out is not aggressive in purpose; its motives are merely those of rendering tribute « al héroe que había 

dado la libertad a su Patria » (p. 65). Morillo is adamant, however, and orders everyone to return 

home. It is obvious that the Riego group cannot contend with the military; it begins to retreat. The 

22


organic character of this group is insisted upon by Galdós' description of the disposition of Riego's 

portrait: « El retrato descansaba en tierra y se movía adelante y atrás, poco seguro en manos de sus 

portadores » ibid. ). We receive a visual image of Riego's head lowered and nodding to and fro 

on the agitated body of the organism. If not too facetious, the English phrase referring to an Oriental 

code of honor might be appropriate in describing this physical manifestation of the psychological 

phenomenon now taking place: the organism is «losing face». 

We have already, on several occasions, noted the importance of oratory in La Fontana de Oro with 

respect to the activation of the group-organism. Calleja activated his small and senselessly violent 

group by shouting: « ¡Señores, serenata a Morillo! » (p. 57). The « orador favorito » gave 

resolution to the group at the Fontana de Oro, which, re-uniting on this next day and having swelled by 

the addition of new components, we have referred to as the Riego group. The scene in which Lázaro- 

idea was rejected by the audience which then accepted the « orador favorito » also underlines the 

significance given by Galdós to the spoken word 27 . Today, Lázaro has been accepted as the « voz 

» which provides the organism with intelligence and cohesiveness, and once more we shall see the 

importance of speech. Le Bon recognizes this: « L'orateur, en communication intime avec la foule, 

sait évoquer les images qui la séduisent. S'il réussit, son but a été atteint; et un volume de harangues 

ne vaut pas les quelques phrases ayant réussi à séduire les âmes qu'il fallait convaincre ». 28 

27 Carroll B. Johnson refers to Lázaro's «characteristic preoccupation with sound... which imply 

speech», and to «the intimate relationship which exists between Lázaro and sound, especially speech». 

Op. cit. , 116. Galdós' fear of having to speak in public is well-known, e. g., at a banquet in his honor, 

Galdós asked José Castro y Serrano to read his speech for him. See: H. Chonon Berkowitz, Pérez 

Galdós: Spanish Liberal Crusader (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1948), p. 171. Cf., 

«Without the gift of oratory...» Ibid. , p. 210. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles indicates a dislike in 

Galdós even for general conversation: « De estos amigos, con ninguno le ligó mayor simpatía que con 

Mariano, el campanero sordo de la Catedral. Tal vez porque, teniendo tal defecto, se liberaba el gran 

silencioso que era Galdós de darle conversación. » Introducción to Obras completas , tomo I, p. 55. 

It should be noted, however, that a more recent study states: «Don Benito, contrary to the myth, was 

really an entertaining and delightful conversationalist with his intimates.» Walter T. Pattison, Benito 

Pérez Galdós (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), p. 15. 

28 Le Bon, p. 35. 

23


As the intimidated Riego organism begins to withdraw in the face of the Morillo organism, Lázaro 

addresses the crowd: « El orador [Lázaro] continuó su filípica; pero la continuó excitando al pueblo a 

que no cediera su empeño de verificar la manifestación. y cada palabra suya era como un latigazo que 

estimulaba a la muchedumbre a seguir adelante » (p. 65). The troops, with weapons and military skill, 

nevertheless prevent the demonstration from taking place. The means by which this is accomplished 

once more underlines the power of the spoken word as the idea impelling the group-organism. The 

officers repeatedly give orders to seize the speaker, thereby recognizing the motivating quality of 

speech: 

-¡A ésos que gritan! -dijo el que mandaba el piquete... 

( Ibid. ) 

-¿Quién gritaba? -dijo el capitán-. A los que gritan. Prended a los que gritan... 

( Ibid. ) 

Prended a los que gritan. Este es el predicador. ¡A ése! 

( Ibid. ) 

Lázaro is apprehended and the demonstration ends: « La procesión fracasó. El retrato quedó hecho 

trizas en medio de la plaza... » ( ibid. ). The portrait of Riego lying in the square while the crowd 

disperses may be taken as a kind of symbol of the decapitation and death of the Riego organism. 

The importance of the leader to the life of the psychological crowd, here recognized by Galdós, is 

made explicit by Le Bon: « Si, par suite d'un accident quelconque, le meneur disparait et n'est pas 

immédiatement remplacé, la foule redevient une collectivité sans cohésion ni résistance » 29 . Freud 

explains this phenomenon in terms of panic, which is the result of the severance of the libidinal ties 

between the crowd and the leader, on cone hand, and between each member of the crowd and his 

fellows, on the other: «Now that he [the individual in the crowd] is by himself in facing the danger, 

he may surely think it greater» 30 . He gives an example: 

The typical occasion of the outbreak of a panic is very much as it is represented in Nestroy's parody 

of Hebbel's play about Judith and Holofernes. A soldier cries out: 'The general has lost his head!' 

and thereupon all the Assyrians take to flight. The loss el the leader in some sense or other, the birth 

29 Ibid. , p. 70 

30 Op. cit. , p. 47. 

24


of misgivings about him, brings on the outbreak of panic, though the danger remains the same; the 

mutual ties between the members of the group disappear, as a rule, at the same time as the tic with 

their leader. The group vanisher, in dust, like a Bologna flask when its top is broken off. 31 

As the action progresses, the King's agents continue their attempts to incite the people against the 

moderates. On one particular evening many impassioned speeches are delivered at the Fontana de 

Oro. The audience at the café once more appears to be conceived of as a group-organism: « La 

Fontana estaba aquella noche elocuente, ciega, grande en su desvarío. Iba a perpetrar un crimen sin 

conocerlo » (p. 142, my emphasis). Because of his action during the Riego demonstration, we: may 

consider Lázaro a « familiar idea » in the mind of the Fontana de Oro. He is urged to speak and he 

complies with great skill. The main thrust of this speech is that the people have become slaves to a 

privileged class which has arisen from among them. He refers to the moderates or prudentes who are 

presented by the narrator with great sympathy. As a familiar « idea », Lázaro's speech has a powerful 

influence on the listeners. A secondary character tells Lázaro: « Esta noche nuestro partido adquiere 

con la palabra de usted una fuerza terrible » (p. 143). The « fuerza terrible » brought about by 

Lázaro's oratory will be seen in operation as the fury of the mob is unleashed the following evening. 

Lázaro, who has political reform through legal means in mind upon making his speech, is shocked to 

discover that his words have been distorted into an exhortation to liquidate the members of government 

referred to variously as discretos, prudentes , or servilones . Consequently he warns the men who, 

are the object of the plot. The mob, the instrument of absolutist conspiracy, swells with misguided 

exaltados and members of the pueblo, reaching fearful proportions: « todo el largo de la tapia 

del Príncipe Pío estaba ocupado por el pueblo, y algunos pelotones de gente armada estaban en la 

Montaña, en la parte contigua a dicha puerta » (p. 171). One member alone of this organism is 

composed of over three hundred persons: « El callejón de la Cara de Dios contenía más de trescientas 

personas... » ( ibid. ). This mob, while composed of « personas », is portrayed as one single 

organism in Galdós' vivid description: « Imposible es referir los vaivenes, las convulsiones, los 

bramidos con que se manifestaba la pasión colectiva del inmenso pólipo, difundido allí, comprimido 

con estrechez en aquel recinto » (p. 172). 

The creature, here specifically called an « inmenso pólipo », is seen writhing in « convulsiones 

» and is heard by its « bramidos »; thus, we are presented by the narrator with visual as well as 

auditory manifestations of a « pasión » referred to as « colectiva ». The monster's physical 

31 Ibid. , p. 49. 

25


strength is applied intelligently to the weakest point of the intended victims' meeting place: « El 

monstruo oprimió con su más fuerte músculo la puerta de la casa » ( ibid. ). Galdós is not viewing 

the mob as a union of distinct personalities; he is painting a picture of a single monstrous creature 

operating in concentrated fury. 

As a result of Lázaro's recent awareness of the true political situation (the Absolutists' manipulation 

of radicals and people to destroy, rather than liberalize, constitutional government) and his warning, 

the mob-organism will have to contend with another organism: « pero al llegar al patio hubo un 

instante de vacilación, de terrible sorpresa. Doble fila de soldados apuntaban a la multitud... » (p. 

172). The military organism is once more presented as an entity which, unlike the mob, is orderly, 

methodical, dispassionate, and well disciplined. When the door is knocked down by the « monstruo 

», the riflemen still hold their fire, merely aiming their weapons at the invaders. The commanding 

officer orders the mob to retreat. Only when one of the soldiers is felled by a shot (i. e., the military 

organism receives a wound) do the riflemen fire. After a brief skirmish, the undisciplined horde 

begins to recoil in confusion as foot soldiers advance against it. Simultaneously, a squad of cavalry 

gallops into the fray, proceeding along the Calle del Conde Duque as a battalion of National Guards 

advances along the Portillo impeding the rioters' escape. The cavalry, the National Guards, and 

the riflemen within the house may be considered several members of one organism. This military 

organism destroys that which has been variously labeled by Galdós « pólipo » and « monstruo ». 

Galdós states in the preámbulo to La Fontana de Oro that this novel is didactic in nature, having as 

its purpose the analysis of a complicated political situation in the Spain of 1820-23 for the purpose of 

avoiding a repetition, in Galdós' own time, of the misfortunes occasioned by political naiveté in the era 

described in the novel. The utilization of the device denominated by us as the «group-organism» serves 

several purposes. The spectacle of two branches of the same political persuasion (liberal) divided 

into two camps ( exaltados and prudentes ) capable of destroying the Liberal party and allowing 

the King to regain absolute control gives rise to two distinct, although related, themes which will be 

present in some form or another in much of Galdós' subsequent work. The first theme is that peace 

and compromise are to be preferred to the futility of violence and extremism (these last two qualities 

appear graphically in the form of antagonistic group-organisms). Deriving from Galdós' concern with 

the deep ignorance evinced by the organisms composed of pueblo , an ignorance which leads these 

entities to engage in self-defeating activities, there emerges a second theme which will be a constant 

in his work: the importance of education as the remedy for destructive ignorance. Precisely because 

the group-organism is easily led to engage in acts which the individual members composing ft might 

26


eschew if in possession of their personal consciousness and because these acts can be violent, the 

group-organism attains, in La Fontana de Oro , the function of a dual symbol for ignorance and 

extremism. Galdós' weapons against this bicephalous monster, as may be seen throughout his work, 

are education and a spirit of compromise. 

What is of paramount importance to the present study, however, is that many of the concepts relating 

to mass psychology which were published in the late 1880's and early 1890's must have been in the 

air throughout a good part of Europe previous to 1870, when La Fontana de Oro was published, 

and most certainly were known to Galdós at that time. Galdós as a very young man, and in his first 

published novel, demonstrates familiarity with the socio-psychological «discoveries» promulgated by 

the theoreticians over two decades after the appearance of La Fontana de Oro . However, even more 

startling is the fact that in this early novel Lázaro marries Clara only after he manages to disengage 

himself from the bonds of the group-organism, a concomitance which is in perfect accord with Freud's 

affirmation, published in 1921, more than a half-century after the novel, that: «Two people coming 

together for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, in so far as they seek for solitude, are making a 

demonstration against the herd instinct, the group feeling» 32 . While not writing a treatise on social 

or psychological theory, but rather producing an artistic creation, young Pérez Galdós anticipated by 

fifty-one years Sigmund Freud's tracing to the libido the phenomenon which group psychologists had 

been labeling suggestion or imitation without further analysis. 33 

State University of New York at Fredonia 

32 Freud, p. 121. 

33 Galdós' pre-Freudian insight into psychoanalysis has been recognized by Rodolfo Cardona with 

reference to La sombra : « this novel [ La sombra ] is probably one of the earliest works anywhere in 

Europe to present a complete 'case history' aimed at explaining the delusions of a psychotic individual, 

thus making this a remarkably 'Freudian' novel long before Freud had even begun his investigations.» 

Rodolfo Cardona, Introduction to La sombra (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1964), p. xix. 

Another critic believes that the works of Galdós in general disclose an insight into human personality 

superior to that of Freud's: «Galdós evinces an astonishing pre-Freudian grasp of the most enduring 

tenets of psychoanalysis. At the same time he discloses a conception of personality which is superior 

to Freud's and coincides with the view of man espoused by humanistic psychologists.» Arnold M. 

Penuel, «Galdós, Freud, and Humanistic Psychology», Hispania 55, 1 (March 1972), 67. 

27


The Evolution of Encarnación Guillén in La desheredada 34 

Martha G. Krow-Lucal 

Encarnación Guillén, by her own admission « más charlatana que todos los cómicos de Madrid 

» 35 , rises up before us (talking at breakneck speed, of course) out of the sea of garbage that is the 

barrio de las Peñuelas like a caricature of Venus rising out of the sea at Cyprus, and becomes an 

important counterweight to Isidora in her mad flights of fancy. In a novel where language and ideas 

are so closely intertwined and used to indicate a character's moral and social worth, Encarnación's 

language separates her from -and in certain ways places her above- her fellow characters (Mariano 

grunts; Joaquín and Isidora use the highflown, empty language of the novela por entregas and 

bad Romantic theater; Relimpio declaims in imitation chivalresque style about his goddaughter's 

problematical honor; Bou thunders simplistic anarchism; Sánchez Botín is the embodiment of windy, 

meaningless parliamentary oratory; and Gaitica is unable to speak at all without the copious use of 

obscenity). While they are perverted by bad literature (except for Gaitica , who doubtless cannot 

read), Encarnación is a fount of fresh and pungent « pueblo » speech; the only visible «literate» 

influences are the Bible and (in passing) Celestina 36 . What the narrator calls her « verbosidad 

infinita » is not a series of meaningless commonplaces, but rather the most original language in the 

novel (aside from that of Miquis, another common-sense figure who presents a different problem). 

34 For Ramón Aroca Hernández-Ros. 

35 While I was working at the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid) I compared the final version of the 

manuscript with the Guirnalda edition of La desheredada . This edition has no date, but is autographed 

by Galdós. However, for the sake of clarity, the page numbers heinsafter cited will be those of 

the Aguilar edition of F. C. Sainz de Robles, Benito Pérez Galdós: Obras completas , Novelas I 

(Madrid: 1973). Words crossed out in the manuscript are represented here by brackets [ ]; words added 

interlinearly are in italics, and words underlined in the manuscript are in boldface type. 

36 We are reminded of Celestina's detailed praise of Areúsa's body by Encarnación's observances 

about Isidora: the girl has rounded out while living with her uncle in La Mancha; « en la cara tienes 

ángel »; « qué bonitos dientes », etc. (see OC p. 1000 b ). There is another echo, more faint, of 

Celestina's « Dile que cierre la boca y comience abrir la bolsa » referring to Calisto (Auto primero) 

in Encarnación's demand for money if Isidora wishes to send Mariano, her brother, to school (see 

OC p. 1003 a ). 

28


It is also a reflection of her praiseworthy character. Her language is clear, humorous and succinct in 

a novel where a lack of ability to express oneself clearly and simply all too often indicates a lack of 

ability to think clearly. 

Not only is Encarnación's own language important; the words that Galdós uses to describe her have 

also been very carefully chosen. The purpose of this article is to examine the primitive and final 

manuscripts (especially the crossed-out portions of both) of Chapters II and III of La desheredada 

in order to show how Galdós' characterization of the Sanguijuelera changed as he was writing, and 

why those changes were necessary to her function in the novel. 

After allowing Encarnación to paint her own verbal portrait in conversations with Isidora and 

Mariano, Galdós sums up the old woman's character: « Honradez y crueldad, un gran sentido para 

apreciar la realidad de las cosas, y un rigor extremado y brutal para castigar las faltas de los pequeños, 

sin dejar por eso de quererles, componían, con la verbosidad infinita, el carácter de Encarnación la 

Sanguijuelera » (pp. 1004 b -1005 a ). The reader is reminded by the description that the author 

dedicated this novel to the schoolteachers of Spain as the only possible purveyors of the « benéficos 

reconstituyentes llamados Aritmética, Lógica, Moral y Sentido Común » (p. 985) which would 

help put Spain on the road to spiritual and social regeneration. Thus we realize that Encarnación's 

nickname, like her given name, was not chosen at random; it reflects her curative function (or her 

attempts at one). On one level the trade of leech-selling is a picturesque one which reminds us that 

for centuries leeches were a medical instrument; the leeches that Encarnación sells are used to bleed 

patients. But she herself, on another level, bears a strong relation to her worms; she is certainly not 

Juan Bou's hated « sanguijuela del pueblo », but rather someone who draws blood (her tongue is 

sharp enough) and cures sickness at the same time. Her harsh words to Isidora are ultimately intended 

to bring the young woman back to reality and cure her of her madness. Encarnación is one of the 

two main characters in the novel (again, the other is Miquis) who is equipped with enough logic and 

common sense to be able to attempt Isidora's cure. 

In her first dialogue with Isidora, the Sanguijuelera is immediately established as a woman with a 

very special language; in the first three paragraphs there are eight religious or Biblical references. She 

says of her great-nephew Mariano: « Es más malo que Anás y Caifás juntos... Yo le llamo Pecado, 

porque parece que vino al mundo por obra y gracia del Demonio » (p. 999 a ). Isidora is upset 

because Mariano must work, she would much prefer that he go to school. But her great-aunt explains 

that school has already been tried to no avail: « Ahí le puse en esa de los Herejes, donde dicen la 

misa por la tarde y el rosario por la mañana... Pero aguárdate, un día sí y otro no, me hacía novillos el 

29


tunante. Después le puse en los Católicos de abajo, y se me escapaba a las pedreas... Es un purgatorio 

saltando » (p. 999 a-b ). She goes on to complain that she has spent her entire life working, with 

nothing to show for it, in part because she has had to bail Isidora's family out of one scrape after 

another: « ¡Ya ves qué polla estoy! sesenta y ocho años, chiquilla, sesenta y ocho Miércoles de Ceniza 

a la espalda. Toda la vida trabajando como el obispo y sin salir nunca de Cristos a porras » (p. 999b). 

A number of these expressions are commonplace, no only in La desheredada but in many other 

Galdós novels. They are part of the oral Spanish that Galdós was at such great pains to reproduce. At 

the same time, such an accumulation of religious references 37 in such a reduced space is a signpost for 

the reader; they are not being used casually. And we see from the manuscript that Galdós deliberately 

changed some of the expressions in order to enhance their religious implications. The Sanguijuelera 

says that she first placed Mariano in a Protestant school: « Ahí le puse en [la Protestantes , porque 

daban] esa de los Herejes , donde dicen la misa por la tarde y el rosario por la mañana. Daban un 

panecillo a cada muchacho, y esto ayuda » (ms. p. 76; OC p. 999 a ). By changing one word, 

the Sanguijuelera 's character is changed radically from heterodoxy (she is willing to send her great- 

nephew to a Protestant school) to strictest orthodoxy (she calls a school heretical because, even though 

it is Catholic, it reverses the normal order of morning mass, evening rosary) 38 . And referring to her 

own age, she describes herself as having « sesenta y ocho [Carnavales] Miércoles de Ceniza a la 

espalda » (ms. p. 77; OC p. 999 b ). Again, by changing a single word (carnaval, traditionally 

a time of wild abandon) to another (Ash Wednesday, the solemn first day of Lent), the old woman's 

character is changed radically. The life principle of a somewhat pagan woman (not unlike Lorca's 

Vieja primera in Yerma , who has always been « una mujer de faldas en el aire ») is channelled 

into a more orthodox mold in order to make her more acceptable as a figure of truth to Galdós' readers. 

The Biblical and religious references continue. When the two women go to the rope factory where 

Mariano works, his great-aunt, who has already described him once in Biblical terms (« Anás », 

37 Religious references in this novel have very little to do with what is usually though of in connection 

with religion in Galdós' works (Christian charity in its many forms, Christ figures such as Benina 

and Nazarín, etc.). Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe La desheredada 's references as 

«Catholic and Bible-related». In this novel the Bible' is equal to absolute truth (we recall that in the 

popular language of the time, if something is true, « es el Evangelio »). 

38 Later Riquín will be urged by Encarnación to be merciless when he becomes Pope: « ¡Leña a los 

herejes, duro, firme! » (p. 1164 b ). 

30


« Caifás », « Pecado », « Demonio », « purgatorio ») adds: « Tiene más malicias que un 

Iscariote » (p. 1002 a ). And when he is finally allowed to leave for lunch, she examines his clothing 

for rips and upon finding one exclaims: « Ya me has roto los calzones... [Tunante, ya verás, ya verás] 

Ya verás, Holofernes, ya verás » (ms. p. 98; OC p. 1002b). And in the final scene of Chapter III 

between Isidora and Encarnación the references multiply. The Sanguijuelera opines that it would 

have been far better for all concerned had Isidora and Mariano never been born: « Nada habría 

perdido el mundo con que os hubierais quedado por allá... en el Limbo » (P. 10003 b ). When Isidora 

denies that Rufete and Francisca Guillén were her parents, Encarnación retorts: « Justo, justo, mi 

Francisca, mi ángel os parió por obra del Espíritu Santo o del Demonio » (p. 1004a). The old woman 

sarcastically invites her great-niece to continue the melodramatic version of her birth and Mariano's: 

« Pero acábame el cuento. Salimos con que [eres hija] sois hijos [de mi sobrina Paca] del nuncio... 

» (ms. p. 105; OC p. 1004 a ). And when Isidora insists on believing the Canónigo's absurd account 

of her birth, to the Sanguijuelera 's contemptuous astonishment', the old woman exclaims: « No sé 

sino que te caes de boba. Eres más sosa que la capilla protestante » (p. 1004 a ). 

Certainly these religious references are proper to the character of a hardworking lower-class woman, 

which is perhaps why they pass almost unnoticed at first. But these Biblical and otherwise religious 

references are not local color; they are too carefully inserted to be coincidental. Encarnación uses 

them because she is a prophetess, and at the end of Chapter III she will make a prophecy to Isidora and 

the Spain she represents. The narrator summarizes the Sanguijuelera 's character a moment before 

the prophecy: « Honradez y crueldad, un gran sentido para apreciar la realidad de las cosas, y un rigor 

extremado y brutal para castigar las faltas de los pequeños sin dejar por eso de quererles, componían, 

con la verbosidad infinita, el carácter de Encarnación la Sanguijuelera » (pp. 1004b-1005a). With 

the groundwork thus laid and Isidora cowering at her great-aunt's feet, the Sanguijuelera predicts the 

course of Isidora's life and the natural outcome of her pretension to a position in the Aransis family: 

« ¡Toma, toma, toma, duquesa, marquesas, puños, cachas!... Cabeza llena de viento... Vivirás en las 

mentiras como el pez en el agua y siempre serás una pisahormigas... Malditos Rufetes, maldita ralea 

de chiflados... » (p. 1005 a ). 

It is too soon, however, for Galdós to announce his intention openly and give the ending away, so 

he retreats, using a religious reference ironically in order to undo the effect of all the serious religious 

references that have gone before. The narrator comments at the end of Encarnación's harangue: « Y 

cada palabra era un golpe y cada golpe un cardenal leve (es decir, subdiácono)... » (p. 1005 a ). 

Suddenly an uncertainty exists: are we witnessing the vision of a prophetess or the temper tantrum of 

31


a strong-willed, eccentric old woman? As it turns out, Encarnación's prophecy is fulfilled to the letter. 

And as we will learn from the rest of the novel, she never abandons Biblical and religious references 

entirely 39 , since they are part of her prophetic character. But the other side of her character, that of a 

hardworking madrileña of the lower classes, is equally interesting and shows us as much about the 

author's conception of her function in the novel as the religious references. 

The influence of English and French novelists (Dickens, Balzac: and Zola) on Galdós is well known. 

The influence of Zola especially was noted in La desheredada from the time it was published. Clarín, 

while deploring the fact that Galdós' latest novel (1881) had been received with almost absolute silence 

40 , hailed the novel as a triumph for Naturalistic techniques: « Galdós ha estudiado imparcialmente 

la cuestión [of Naturalism] y ha decidido, para bien de las letras españolas, seguir en gran parte 

los procedimientos y atender a los propósitos de ese naturalismo tan calumniado... » (Galdós, p. 

97). There can be no doubt that Galdós was acquainted with and deeply interested in Zola's works; 

six Zola novels (the first six novels of the Rougon-Macquart series, all in French and all dated 1878) 

were found by Berkowitz in his library 41 . The author of La desheredada himself was aware that 

this novel was in many ways a departure from his previous ones; in his famous letter to Giner de los 

Ríos he admits that « Efectivamente, yo he querido en esta obra entrar por nuevo camino o inaugurar 

mi segunda o tercera manera... ». 42 

39 Encarnación is the character who transfers the Biblical name that she originally gave to Mariano 

-Holofernes- to Isidora's son. She also gives him a name by which the narrator will later refer to him 

-the Antichrist: « Riquín fue atacado de la tos ferina y era preciso llevarle a otra parte. ¡Pobrecito 

Anticristo! Daba pena verle... » (p. 1121 b ). 

40 « ¿Saben ustedes algo de lo que ha dicho la crítica acerca de La desheredada ? ¿Han escrito los 

periódicos populares, con motivo de este libro, artículos de sensación, de los que tienen un titulejo 

o rótulo especial para cada párrafo? Nada; el silencio... nadie ha dicho a La desheredada por ahí te 

pudras. » Leopoldo Alas «Clarín», Galdós (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1912) , p. 105. 

41 See H. Chonon Berkowitz, La biblioteca de Benito Pérez Galdós (Las Palmas: El Museo Canario, 

1951), p. 184. 

42 La lectura , 20 (1920), Part I, p. 254. See also Walter T. Pattison, El naturalismo español (Madrid: 

Gredos, 1969), pp. 90-91. 

32


The immediate reason for the classification of La desheredada as a Naturalistic novel was its subject 

matter. It is (on the most basic level) the story of a prostitute whose father died insane and who was 

brought up by an insane uncle (the «Naturalistic» influences of heredity and environment). She in 

only able to sustain herself spiritually by convincing herself that she is the long-lost daughter of a 

marchioness. Once that illusion is definitively destroyed she sinks into the lowest depths of Madrid 

society, never to rise again. But La desheredada is far more than a story about inevitable prostitution 

brought on by hereditary insanity and a perverse environment 43 . There is no clear-cut determinism 

in the novel; E. Rodgers, for example, feels that «however strong the various influences to which 

[Isidora] is subjected, she is ultimately responsible for her own downfall» 44 . If this is true, it would 

take her out of the realm of pure (that is to say, Zola's theoretical) Naturalism which Galdós was never 

ready to accept in its entirety, to judge by his novels. He seems to feel that Naturalism is one way of 

expressing a social and spiritual reality of Spain, but it is not an end in itself. 

He did, however, intend to make the Sanguijuelera more «Naturalistic» that she appears in the final 

text (by «Naturalistic» we mean a character more closely resembling the Gervaise of the final chapter 

of L'Assommoir : miserably poor, drunk and half-deranged). Encarnación is struggling to earn a 

living in a poor barrio far from the center of Madrid when we first meet her. She is poor now, but was 

not always so; we discover that Isidora's mother and father between them finished off « diferentes 

veces las economías y la paciencia de Encarnación, que era trabajadora y tenía sus buenas libretas del 

Monte de Piedad » (p. 1000 a ). Because of them the old woman lost various shops and a good 

deal of money. She has obviously come down in the world, though not through vice or hereditary 

stupidity. It is her generosity and family feeling which have brought her to this pass. 

The Encarnación of the manuscript is certainly different from the one we encounter in the final 

version and printed text. She is described thus by the narrator: « No había [sido casada, no había] 

tenido hijos [y aun gustaba del buen aguardiente, y por nada se habría colgado su vida (según decía) 

en la fastidiosa percha de un marido] ni había sido casada » (ms. p. 81; OC p. 1000 a ). In the 

printed text, all references to a liking for strong liquor and a dislike of tiresome husbands are deleted; 

Encarnación simply had not married and had never had children of her own. The physical descriptions 

43 For historical aspects and Isidora as a Spain figure, see Antonio Ruiz Salvador's excellent « La 

función del trasfondo histórico en La desheredada », AG , I (1966), pp. 53-61. 

44 E. J. Rodgers, «Galdós' La desheredada and Naturalism», BHS , XLV (October 1968), p. 295. 

33


likewise change before reaching their final form. In the manuscript « Sus ojos, que habían sido 

grandes y hermosos, conservaban todavía un chispazo azul [en medio de su atroz desfiguración y 

decadencia], como el fuego fatuo bailando sobre el osario » (ms. p. 79; OC p. 999 b ). The use of 

the fuego fatuo simile emphasizes the life and intelligence that are still Encarnación's most important 

characteristics, rather than a decadence that would destroy her further usefulness to the author. Further 

descriptions of her are also softened in the final version; in the manuscript her arms are covered by 

« un pellejo [flácidol [flojo] » (ms. p. 80), while in the corrected version and printed text it is a « 

pellejo sobrante » (ms. p. 80; OC p. 1000 a ) that covers them. Her fingers begin by being stuck 

on with saliva: « las falanges [parecían pegadas con saliva] » (ms. p. 80) while in the final and 

printed versions they are « tan ágiles que parecían sueltas » (ms. p. 80; OC p. 1000 a ). Most 

insulting of all, in the manuscript Galdós actually describes her as a member of the Rufete family 

(the Canónigo's aunt): 

y más charlatana que todos los cómicos de Madrid. 

[Pero no me has dicho nada, cachas!, qué puñales! Y mi sobrino tu tío el Canónigo? 

Isidora no omitió nada que pudiese (illegible) habló largo rato de su tío el Canónigo, acomodado 

vecino del Tomelloso, de cuya prolija relación recibió no poca molestia la Sanguijuelera, porque todo 

lo que hablaban los demás le parecía un ataque a su incontestable derecho de usar de la palabra.] 

(ms. p. 78; OC p. 999b) 45 

Later she is depicted as half-demented, a state befitting a Rufete, in a fragment of the primitive 

manuscript which was intended to end Chapter III. Isidora has just escaped from the children who 

have followed her away from her great-aunt's house: 

La Sanguijuelera se metió en su tienda, corrió al patio, volvió, fue, vino, dio varias vueltas, como 

un avechucho enjaulado, y después de hablar sola con febriles movimientos, cogió con ambas manos 

el delantal azul que de su cintura pendía, se lo llevó a los ojos, apretó fuerte, lanzó un gran berrido, y 

de sus ojos, de todos los orificios de su cara brotó un raudal. ¡Qué modo de llorar! 

(primitive ms. p. 114, back of ms. p. 121) 46 

45 For two different opinions of Encarnación's relation to the Rufete family, see Rodgers 

(loc. cit.) and Robert H. Russell, «The Structure of La desheredada », MLN , LXXVI, 

numbers 6-8 (December 1961), pp. 794-800. 

46 Galdós, as is known, crossed out pages which did not satisfy him and often used 

the reverse side (after blue-pencilling the first version) to write the final version of the 

manuscript. Thus in La desheredada , as in many other manuscripts, we have the 

34


Obviously Encarnación cannot be a prophetess and a Rufete at the same time; it is impossible for a 

drunken, degenerate Sanguijuelera to see the truth about Isidora's pretensions. Encarnación may be 

arbitrary but she cannot be mad; and Galdós takes care to separate the Guilléns from the Rufetes in 

the final version of the novel. The prophetess remains; the madwoman does not. 

It is in one of the pages of the primitive manuscript that we first meet Isidora's great-aunt, when 

the girl « fue a ver a su tía Asunción... » (primitive ms. p. 66, back of ms. p. 69). She is next 

mentioned by name as « aquella buena Asunción Guillén » (primitive ms. p. 71, back of ms. p. 

72). She appears only once more as Asunción when the narrator explains that her niece Francisca's 

marriage to Rufete « consumió diferentes veces las economías y la paciencia [de Asunción] [ Teresa 

Guillén ] de Encarnación, que era trabajadora... » (ms. p. 81, OC p. 1000 a ). These are the 

only references to the Sanguijuelera as Asunción. From this point on (ms. p. 81), the names used 

will be Teresa and Encarnación 47 . The former seems much more in harmony with the harsh and 

caricaturesque descriptions of the Sanguijuelera than does the latter. She is called either Teresa or la 

Sanguijuelera until page 109 of the manuscript, when she becomes Encarnación definitively. Most 

probably Galdós changed the name at that point and then went back to the beginning of Chapter II to 

change the Asunciones and Teresas to Encarnaciones. 48 

Names of characters are often glaringly obvious in Galdós (Salvador Monsalud, Benigno Cordero 

de Paz, Torquemada, etc.), and it is therefore not strange that Teresa should give way to Encarnación, 

just as the drunken degenerate gives way to the eccentric but clear-sighted prophetess. The name 

Teresa is in one Hispanic tradition an aristocratic name; in another it belongs to the lower classes 

49 . Espronceda's Teresa is certainly not lower-class, and his « Canto a Teresa » could not have 

fragments of a primitive manuscript, and it is to such a blue-pencilled fragment that we 

refer here. 

47 This page is the only one on which the three names appear together; the chronological order is 

obviously Asunción-Teresa-Encarnación. 

48 Galdós absentmindedly continues calling the Sanguijuelera Teresa on a number of pages; however, 

he must have corrected the galley proofs since that name never appears in the printed text. 

49 The name Teresa does not seem to have had upper-class associations in the seventeenth century. 

One example can be found when Góngora parodies Lope's « Ensíllenme el potro rucio... » with his 

own « Ensíllenme el asno rucio... »; Lope's highborn morisca Adalifa becomes Góngora's « Teresa 

35


been unknown to Galdós (nor could don Benito have failed to take into account the Saint of Avila, 

not of noble blood but a figure of the highest possible spirituality). However, in a novel so heavily 

influenced by Don Quijote and La Mancha, it might be more fruitful to look for a prototype of Teresa 

Guillén in Teresa Panza, who keeps a jar of wine by her spinning-wheel. In fact, Encarnación may 

be seen as a commonsense Sancho who uses popular speech (the nineteenth century equivalent of 

proverbs) and tries to show «reality» to a (degenerately) Quixotic Isidora. 50 

A parallel process takes place with the name of Encarnación's neighbor. She is first called « tía 

Gordita » (ms. p. 85), an appropriate name for the neighbor of a demented Teresa. She is rechristened 

« señá Agustina » in the final version and printed text (ms. p. 85; OC p. 1000 b ), and in Chapter 

VI is finally fixed as « Angustias » for the rest of the novel. « Angustias » is a much more 

appropriate and dignified companion than is « la tía Gordita » for the Encarnación of the end of 

Chapter III, the common-sense Word made flesh that Galdós felt Spain to be so in need of. 

We have seen, then, two major developments in the Sanguijuelera's character that are really 

intertwined. First: she was originally conceived as an extremely «Naturalistic» denizen of Madrid's 

lower class. But this conception rapidly became too narrow; she could not serve Galdós' purpose if 

she were portrayed as nothing more than a drunken degenerate (and his purpose, as we understand it, 

is to juxtapose a rational figure to one whose rationality has been eclipsed by too much imagination; a 

figure of naked truth contrasted with one of wilful blindness). She therefore had to be a hardworking, 

honest «woman of the people», one of the «decent poor», as Betty Higden says (she is another possible 

prototype for Encarnación; and the scene in which she appears with Sloppy, who is working the 

clothespress, may have been the seed from which both Encarnación and Mariano's work in the rope 

factory grew) 51 . The development away from degeneracy can be seen in the manuscript deletion of 

la del Villar ». Another example is the protagonist of Castillo Solórzano's picaresque novel, Teresa 

de Manzanares. 

50 At this stage of Galdós' career he still felt that the spirit of Don Quijote (as he then understood it) 

was detrimental to Spain' progress in the modern world. Later he would change his mind. 

51 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (London: Everyman, 1970), pp. 186-188. See Stephen 

Gilman's forthcoming article in Anales galdosianos wherein he discusses the importance of this same 

scene in relation to Jacinta's visit to the cuarto estado . He was the first to point out the possibility of 

Betty Higden's being a partial prototype for Encarnación: «She was one of those old women, was Mrs. 

Betty Higden, who by dint of an indomitable purpose and a strong constitution fight down many years, 

36


many characteristics suitable to Gervaise in the final stages of her fall; it can also be seen to an extent 

in the introduction and subsequent deletion of two of the Sanguijuelera's three names. And second: 

the constant religious references used by Encarnación indicate that she has something as important 

as Scripture to say to her great-niece'(hence the name that was finally chosen, Encarnación). For this 

reason she must be a recognizable figure of truth acceptable to Galdós' readers, an orthodox woman 

who would not allow her great-nephew to attend a Protestant school. The Sanguijuelera gives away 

the entire ending of the novel when she tells Isidora: « Vivirás en las mentiras como el pez en el agua, 

y siempre serás una pisahormigas » -but she does so in such a way that the reader is left wondering if 

she is telling the truth. It will only be confirmed definitively by the letter signed « Santiago Quijano- 

Quijada » which ends Part I. It is a tribute to Galdós' novelistic and stylistic skill that the signature 

can still come as a shock after Encarnación's prophecy at the end of Chapter III. 

Harvard University 

though each year has come with its new knockdown blows fresh to the fight against her, wearied by 

it; an active old woman, with a bright dark eye and a resolute face...» (p. 186). 

37


«Lo que le falta a un enfermo le sobra a otro»: Galdós' 

Conception of Humanity in La desheredada 

M. Gordon 

In the by now fairly substantial body of critical literature on Galdós' La desheredada two issues 

stand out as having particularly engaged the critics' attention: the nature of the segunda manera and 

the related (and to some virtually identical) problem of the novel's naturalistic content. These are 

major questions, no doubt, and questions which must be grappled with in any attempt to assess either 

the novel itself or Galdós' creative evolution as a whole. The fact remains, however, that the result of 

such deliberations has all too often been an over-compartmentalised vision of Galdós' development 52 

and a tendency to over-emphasise the Zolaesque elements of the novel. These two weaknesses seem 

to me to stem from a basic methodological deficiency the fact that, with some exceptions (notably the 

works of Hafter 53 , Russell 54 , Ruiz Salvador 55 , Montesinos 56 and Lowe 57 ), the novel is usually 

dealt with more in terms of external comparison (with the novels which preceded it or with those of 

Zola which influenced it) than on its own merits as an independent work of art with its own internal 

coherence -a procedure which not only does a disservice to the novel but also vitiates many of the 

conclusions arrived at with regard to the segunda manera and naturalism. 

A recent and welcome corrective to the above tendency is F. Durand's «The Reality of Illusion: 

La desheredada » 58 . Eschewing the habitual preoccupation with naturalist influences, Durand 

52 A tendency recently subjected to critical scrutiny by R. Cardwell in «Galdós' Early Novels and the 

segunda manera : A Case for a Total View», Renaissance and Modern Studies , XV (1971), 44-62. 

53 M. Z. Hafter, «Galdós' Presentation of Isidora in La desheredada », Modern Philology , LX (1962), 

22-30. 

54 R. H. Russell, «The Structure of La desheredada » Modern Language Notes , LXXVI (1961), 

794-800. 

55 A. Ruiz Salvador, « La función del trasfondo histórico en La desheredada », Anales Galdosianos , 

I (1966), 53-62. 

56 J. F. Montesinos, Galdós, vol. II (Madrid, 1969). 

57 J. Lowe, «Galdós' Skill in La desheredada », Iberoromania , II (1971), 142-51. 

58 Modern Language Notes , LXXXIX (1974), 191-201. 

38


concentrates on the important theme of illusion and reality, rightly emphasising, in the process, 

the subtle ambiguities inherent in Galdós' approach to madness which earlier critics have tended to 

overlook. Cervantes, rather than Zola, is seen as the major influence here. Durand is particularly 

effective in his analysis of the parallels between Isidora's psychological shortcomings and the 

mental and moral deficiencies of the Madrid society portrayed by Galdós in the novel. Here 

Cervantine ambiguity and heredity come together to reinforce, through the medium of irony, Galdós' 

social critique, for the heredity which unites Rufete and Isidora in a common madness also unites 

symbolically Leganés and Madrid. Despite the suggestion, made repeatedly in the description of 

Leganés in chapter 1 and rendered with graphic panache in the Canencia episode, that the bordeline 

between madness and sanity is not as easy to draw as might be thought, throughout the first part of 

the novel Leganés and Madrid remain fundamentally antithetical worlds the respective, and largely 

separate, domains of the manifestly mad Rufete and of Isidora, apparently so normal that she not 

only shares, but positively embodies, the values and aspirations of the society in which she lives. Not 

until the «canon's» letter at the end of Part I ends the suspense which has been carefully maintained 

with regard to the validity or otherwise of Isidora's pretensions -and in doing so recalls to mind 

the half-forgotten spectre of Rufete's madness- is the real underlying similarity between Isidora, the 

«canon» and Rufete finally and fully grasped. With the arrival of this letter, reality, in the shape of 

the hereditary bond linking these three in a common, and now manifest, « neurosis », delivers an 

ironic commentary on previous appearances, puncturing the apparent normality of Isidora and, by 

extension, that of the whole society with which she is identified. With Isidora thus tarred with the 

brush of Rufete's madness, the wall separating the apparently antithetical worlds of Leganés (insanity) 

and Madrid («normality») collapses, leaving their fundamental similarity fully revealed. 

This is a good example of the way in which Galdós adapts the naturalistic theory of the degenerative 

family neurosis 59 to suit his own particular purposes. It is surely wrong, therefore, to dismiss such 

devices, as Durand does, as «mere naturalistic trappings» 60 . One of the major attractions of the 

theory for Galdós was clearly its protean character. By its means he is able to group within the three 

generations of a single family a wide variety of psychologically abnormal types without sinning 

greatly against verisimilitude (rather as though the major branches of the Rougon-Macquart family 

59 V. M. Gordon, «The Medical Background to Galdós' La desheredada », Anales Galdosianos , VII 

(1972), 67-76. 

60 Art. cit., p. 193. 

39


tree were condensed within the confines of a single novel). Moreover, if the deterministic implications 

of the theory fail to excite Galdós' interest, he is by no means averse from exploiting its possibilities 

for other, essentially moral and symbolic, purposes. A case in point is Riquín, Isidora's son, whose 

macrocephaly serves as a kind of ironic commentary on the figurative swollen-headedness of his 

mother. Here, instead of being a blind force of nature, or an impassive scientific law working itself out, 

heredity operates like an ironically-minded god (or author?), apportioning to Isidora the punishment 

which her overweening ambition has merited. With its enigmatic suggestion of' certain « misterios 

» at work in the domain of « la herencia fisiológica » (cf. Miquis' cryptic: comment 61 ) it also 

constitutes an early, and at this stage basically playful, incursion into the realm of the veta fantástica 

. 62 

However, it is in the context of Durand's overwhelmingly social interpretation of the illusion-reality 

theme that serious objections begin to arise. Durand sees the Cervantine element providing the «ironic 

framework for his [Galdós'] commentary on Spain» 63 . Of course there is a great deal of truth in this 

assertion. As the example discussed above shows, heredity serves as the framework for a subtly ironic 

extension of Galdós' critique of prevailing social attitudes whereby Madrid comes to be seen as a « 

manicomio suelto » (p. 190). This irony is in turn dependent on the undoubted similarity between 

Isidora's attitudes and those of Madrid society as a whole. 

In strictly social terms, Isidora, represents but one permutation -though by far the most important- on 

the basic theme of the quiero y no puedo characteristic of Madrid society as Galdós portrays it. Her 

obsession with nobility, stemming from the reading of too many cheap novelettes and the deleterious 

influence of her uncle, determines her attitudes and value judgements and leads her ineluctably down 

the road to ruin. From the outset Galdós is at pains to underline the deficiencies inherent in his 

heroine's attitudes, both her cheap snobbery (especially evident in her outing with Miquis) and her 

total impracticality (as evidenced in her first shopping expedition) being pinpointed very early on in 

the novel. The rest of the novel is very largely concerned with the consequences of these defects. 

Firstly, Isidora is unfitted to respond to the moral and material needs of Mariano, and part of the 

61 Alianza Editorial edition (Madrid, 1967), p. 246. 

62 These quirks of heredity continue to interest Galdós long after La desheredada . The second 

Valentín (the Torquemada novels) and Leré's younger brother ( Ángel Guerra ) are other examples. 

63 Ibid. , p. 197. 

40


blame for his downfall must therefore be laid at her door 64 . «Secondly, and even more important, 

her enslavement to false social values corrupts her whole moral being. If, in chapter XIII, she is able 

to resist the crude advances of Joaquín Pez, because to sell herself in this fashion does not accord 

with her ideal of aristocratic conduct, later, when her illusions are shattered (albeit temporarily) by her 

interview with the marquesa, her one and only moral bulwark -pride in her «position»- collapses, albeit 

temporarily, and her descent into immorality is the inevitable result. In Part II, her illusions partly 

restored, the realisation of her dream world becomes conditional on the outcome of the seemingly 

interminable lawsuit, with the result that the gulf between the dream and reality yawns ever wider and 

her morality also comes to be governed by the same conditional mode of thought. Aristocratic pride, 

thus weakened, proves an insufficient guardian against moral laxity at a time when her continuing 

impracticality and inability to trim her financial sails against the wind of hard times forces her into 

a series of progressively more degrading relationships, culminating, when her illusions are finally 

dashed by the revelations of Muñoz y Nones, in the destruction of the last vestiges of her moral and 

spiritual being. The way is therefore prepared for her acceptance of the overtures of the repulsive 

Gaitica and, finally, her descent into common prostitution. 

Isidora's decline is thus an object lesson in the perils of imaginación , with Galdós frequently at pains 

to emphasise the connection between her social illusions, her financial irresponsibility and the moral 

collapse which results from both. Nor does he scruple to employ the weapons of explicit didacticism 

against his heroine, to the extent even of preaching a sermon (chapter 12) to her in his own voice (to 

say nothing of the moraleja at the end). Yet for all his remorseless cataloguing of Isidora's defects, 

it is clear that Galdós' attitude to her is neither unremittingly didactic nor totally unsympathetic. If 

there are times when Isidora is snobbish, it is equally true that she possesses a genuine refinement 

of sensibility which contrasts favourably with the cruder attitudes of those around her. It is hard, for 

example, not to feel some sympathy for her, her snobbery notwithstanding, when she receives what 

is surely an excessively cruel beating at the hands of her distinctly unrefined aunt, the redoubtable 

Sanguijuelera , in chapter III. Her horror at the nature of Mariano's employment, which she regards, 

rightly, as « trabajo para mulas », also contrasts favourably with the money-grubbing insensitivity 

of Encarnación -an insensitivity which is part and parcel of the latter's « gran sentido para apreciar la 

64 V. «The Medical Background...» 

41


realidad de las cosas » (p. 55) 65 . Similarly, whatever qualities Juan Bou may possess, the oafishness 

of his conduct during the visit to the Aransis palace in chapter XXVII (aptly entitled « La caricia del 

oso ») not only engenders sympathy for the very real sufferings of Isidora, but also makes clear, by 

highlighting the gulf between their respective sensibilities, the sheer incongruity of Miquis' suggested 

marriage between these two very disparate beings. 

Nor does Isidora fit entirely comfortably into the category of simple social archetype. To begin with, 

it is probably true to say that there is a lack of sufficient points of comparison with Madrid society 

as a whole -similarities there undoubtedly are, but Isidora is not as wholly identified with her milieu 

as Rosalía Bringas is with hers. Moreover, if there is a basic resemblance between her imaginative 

excesses and the quiero y no puedo characteristic of the inhabitants of Madrid as a whole, there is also 

an important qualitative difference. In a world peopled by the likes of Melchor, Gaitica et al., cheap 

hucksters and frauds pursuing ignoble and material ends under a transparent veil of hypocrisy- Isidora 

is marked out as a creature apart, not only by her greater sensibility, but also by the genuineness of 

her belief in her own nobility. If her ideals are false, they are at least a cut above those of most of her 

fellows. Moreover, there is a genuine nobility about Isidora -an ability to make others seem small and 

mean by comparison- which survives every degradation (indeed, it seems to grow greater the lower 

she falls). Thus the triumph of the «practical» Sánchez Botín is rendered abject by Isidora's aristocratic 

self-assertion and even in the very act of self-abasement -her attempt to sell herself to Miquis- she 

triumphs by a kind of paradoxical grandeur over the latter's bourgeois conventionalism (though this 

scene is perhaps a trifle too theatrical). The very power she has to hold men in thrall -Miquis himself, 

Bou, Don José- testifies to the existence of something out of the ordinary in her character. Above all, 

however, Isidora is redeemed by her own ennobling passion for Joaquín Pez, a creature whose very 

worthlessness only serves to tender her own unwavering and self-sacrificing love seem the greater. 66 

65 Significantly, the description of the rope work is presented in terms of its impact on the sensitive 

Isidora. 

66 In this respect, as R. Ricard has pointed out ( Aspects de Galdós , Paris, 1960), Isidora bears a 

distinct resemblance to Fortunata. 

42


As a result there is, pace Rodgers 67 , a genuine and by no means insignificant vein of tragedy 

in Galdós' treatment of Isidora's downfall. When Muñoz y Nones administers the coup de grâce to 

her illusions we do not feel the satisfaction attendant upon a comeuppance long overdue and now 

duly administered, but rather the sense of tragedy arising from the contemplation of a not ignoble or 

unsympathetic being the very roots of whose existence have been destroyed. There is even a tragic 

scale to her reaction -the «all or nothing» attitude which leads her to fling herself into the world of the 

prostitute. The apparent conflict between this tragic vein and the aforementioned didacticism, and the 

negative attitude to Isidora which it reflects, is not a question of the novel lacking unity or purpose 

or of Isidora having succeeded in transcending the limitations of Galdós' original intentions: rather it 

is a reflection of the Cervantine dualism underlying Galdós' whole approach to the conflict between 

illusion and reality. As in the case of D. Quixote, Isidora's virtues are one with, and inseparable from, 

her major failing -her inability to content herself with reality as she finds it. Galdós' Cervantine concept 

of imagination is the key to his tragic vision: not to possess this quality is to be deprived of one's full 

humanity, while to those gifted (or afflicted) with it imparts an inherent dissatisfaction with reality, 

and a craving to transcend its limitations which is almost invariably doomed to frustration precisely 

because of its unreality. 

In this context it is important to take into account Galdós' deliberate technique of contrasting 

characters drawn from opposite ends of the spectrum of illusion and reality. The most obvious 

example is the polarity of attitudes embodied in Isidora and Mariano. For while Isidora's overheated 

imagination leads her to shun reality in favour of absurd flights of fancy, Mariano, on the other hand, is 

just the reverse: his is a wholly materialistic existence confined within the narrow horizons of sensual 

gratification. Galdós deliberately underlines the contrast: 

Diríase que la Naturaleza quiso hacer en aquella pareja sin ventura dos ejemplares contrapuestos 

de moral desvarío; pues si ella vivía en una aspiración insensata a las cosas altas, poniendo, como 

dice San Agustín, su nido en las estrellas, él se inclinaba por instinto a las cosas groseras y bajas. 

(p. 279) 

The same direct contrast is apparent in their mental processes: 

67 «Galdós' La desheredada and Naturalism», Bulletin of Hispanic Studies , XLV (1968), 285-98. 

For Rodgers the tragic potential inherent in Isidora's situation is prevented from developing by Galdós' 

didacticism. 

43


Así como su hermana, invadiendo con atrevido vuelo las esferas de lo futuro, se representaba 

siempre las cosas probables y no acontecidas aún, Pecado, cuando se sentía dispuesto a la meditación, 

resucitaba lo próximamente pasado, y se recreaba con un dejo de las impresiones ya recibidas. 

(p. 447) 

These differences notwithstanding, the ultimate fate of both is strikingly similar. Isidora in her decline 

comes increasingly to resemble her brother, a similarity commented upon by Miquis: 

Su hermano y ella han corrido a la perdición: él ha llegado, ella llegará. Distintos medios ha 

empleado cada uno: él ha ido con trote de bestia, ella con vuelo de pájaro; pero de todos modos y por 

todas partes se puede ir a la perdición, lo mismo por el suelo polvoroso que por el firmamento azul. 

(p. 463) 

This contrapuntal technique, however, extends even further. Both Encarnación Guillén and Juan Bou, 

for example, may in this respect be seen as « contrafiguras » to Isidora. If she is an example of 

the perils which lie in wait for those who choose to evade reality, or to try and mould it in the light 

of their own aspirations, the limited sensibilities of the likes of Encarnación and Bou are likewise a 

warning of the dangers of too close and unquestioning an adherence to the narrower sort of «realism». 

As much is suggested even by their physical appearance. Galdós' description of Encarnación, for 

example, readily conveys a sense of her immense physical vitality (p. 42). Yet the description is also 

laced with abundant images of death and decay: her face is « pergaminosa », the sparkle in her 

eyes like « el fuego fatuo bailando sobre el osario », her hands are like those of a skeleton and her 

thinning hair is formed into « el más gracioso peinado de esterilla que llevaron momias en el mundo 

». These images reflect symbolically Encarnación's combination of physical vivacity and spiritual 

mummification. Similarly, Juan Bou's cyclopic appearance, with his grotesque revolving eye, is the 

physical expression of his lop-sided inner nature. 

Obviously what is conspicuously missing in all this is anybody who seems able to achieve the 

happy medium -an adequate balance between the claims of imagination and reality. The nearest 

approach to such a balance would seem to be Miquis, who seems able, if somewhat erratically, to 

balance the two, represented in his case by science and music. However, Galdós handles Miquis' 

fundamentally adolescent exuberance too lightheartedly for him to be taken seriously as a model. 

Ultimately, moreover, his idealism retreats into the conventional world through what is clearly a rather 

unpassionate bourgeois marriage. In default of this middle way, the impression of human existence 

conveyed by the novel is one of inherent instability -the seemingly congenital inability of people to be 

44


at one with either themselves or the reality of their existence. A remark made by Miquis -throwaway 

and lighthearted in tone but clearly significant for all that- provides the key to this tragic sense of life: 

-En los hospitales -decía-, en esos libros dolientes es donde se aprende. Allí está la teoría unida a 

la experiencia por el lazo del dolor. El hospital es un museo de síntomas, un riquísimo atlas de casos, 

todo palpitante, todo vivo. Lo que le falta a un enfermo le sobra a otro, y entre todos forman un 

cuerpo de doctrina. 

(p. 73, my italics) 

Clearly this lack of wholeness is not confined to the inmates of hospitals. It is precisely this sense of 

incompleteness, the fact that individual human existence is limited and partial, that underlies Galdós' 

tragic conception of the human condition and is reflected in the radical polarity one finds in so many 

of the novels (Isidora having to excess what Mariano conspicuously lacks and viceversa). 68 

Immunity from the tragic contradictions of life, the unalloyed and uncomplicated serenity which 

comes from a sense of oneness with the self and with reality round about, is usually bought at a 

price and often found to be precarious to boot. Encarnación and Juan Bou once again provide good 

examples, Both of these characters undergo development in the course of the novel and in each case 

this development is such as to emphasise the inadequacy of their earlier simplistic certitudes. Yet 

if theirs is a growth towards a fuller humanity, it is also an awakening to the tragedy of life, for 

while the nature of the development is essentially positive -in both it takes the form of an emotional 

involvement with another human being which softens and humanises their characters- at the same 

time the humanity thus acquired makes them more vulnerable: as they are drawn into the complexities 

of human involvement, so they are made painfully aware of life's suffering. Encarnación's hardened 

exterior is gradually melted by her attachment to Riquín and through this attachment she becomes 

more and more involved in the fortunes and misfortunes of Isidora and Mariano. Juan Bou becomes 

romantically attached to Isidora, the arch- sanguijuela del pueblo, and this new emotional reality 

subverts all his former crude values. Encarnación, because of her emotional involvement with Isidora 

and Mariano, is overwhelmed by the disaster which befalls the latter -a disaster which, moreover, 

pitifully exposes her helplessness. The Encarnación who, in her desperation, tosses her simple and 

ineffective plea for mercy into the royal carriage -a masterpiece of controlled pathos by Galdós- 

is a far cry from the hard-boiled woman who earlier sought to dispel Isidora's aristocratic illusions 

68 This of course is the basis of Galdós tragic vision in Fortunata y Jacinta : v. A. Zahareas, « El 

sentido de la tragedia en Fortunata y Jacinta », Anales Galdosianos , III (1968), 25-34. 

45


at the end of a broomhandle. Juan Bou's tragedy, of course, lies in the permanent and inevitable 

frustration to which his new-found love is condemned. Given the manifest disparity of their natures, 

Isidora must remain for him an unattainable ideal, though this, of course, does nothing to diminish her 

attractiveness in his eyes. It is rather like the old story of the mortal who falls in love with a goddess. 

Bou emerges from the experience a chastened and more humble man, with an entirely new awareness 

of the inadequacy and incompleteness of his existence. The crowning irony of his subsequent lottery 

win only serves to heighten this awareness: 

Diríase que la Providencia cristiana, no menos caprichosa a veces que la pagana Fortuna, se había 

propuesto abrumarle de bienes positivos, negándole los que su corazón apetecía, y le colmaba de 

frutos riquísimos sin dejarle ver y gozar la flor hermosa del amor. 

(p. 379) 69 

Often the impact of this tragic vision is veiled behind Galdós' humour. As Nimetz has pointed out, 

however, Galdós' humour is often inextricably linked with his tragic vision, the one acting as a kind 

of insulation against the other 70 . A case in point is Galdós' treatment of Don José Relimpio. Rodgers 

has said that Galdós seems to want to draw the reader's attention away from Don José's positive 

qualities, and to arouse mockery at his lack of manliness, in order (a) to avoid developing the «idyllic» 

potential of his relationship with Isidora, and (b) to satirise Don José's tendency to idealise his own 

position 71 . There is certainly a good deal of truth in the latter part of the statement. Don José's 

Tenorio fantasies and his obsession with book-keeping illustrate yet again the gap between illusion 

and reality which looms so large in La desheredada , for Don José is an aging gallant whose amorous 

adventures are confined to the realm of the purely platonic and whose financial irresponsibility and 

utter impracticality make a mockery of his prowess in accountancy. It is less easy to see, however, 

why Galdós should want to «attack Don José's dignity as a person» and to make his relationship 

with Isidora appear grotesque in order to avoid developing its idyllic potential, for it is hard to see 

what idyllic potential there could be in such a relationship anyway. The idyllic and the ludicrous are 

difficult to reconcile and the imbalance in terms of age and personality between Isidora and Don José 

place their relationship in the context of the latter rather than the former. If Galdós is trying to avoid 

69 Cf. the plight of Moreno Isla in Fortunata y Jacinta. The fact that Bou's wife was also a « 

sanguijuela » would seem to emphasise his inner craving for something above and beyond 

his own inadequacy - an element of glamour to embellish an otherwise dull existence. 

70 M. Nimetz, Humor in Galdós (New Haven & London, 1968). 

71 Art. cit. 

46


anything, therefore, it is surely an overdose of pathos. Moreover, is it entirely true to say that Galdós 

attacks Don José's dignity as a person? The hostile, dehumanising stance implicit in such a procedure 

is surely contradicted, to take but one example, by the manifest sympathy and compassion which 

Galdós shows towards his character at the latter's death. The reality is that Galdós' portrait of Don 

José is much more finely balanced than this criticism would tend to suggest. 

Galdós portrays Don José, as he portrays Isidora, in a fundamentally dualistic manner -a dualism 

neatly expressed in the initial description of Don José, when Galdós tells 

Era el hombre mejor del mundo. Era un hombre que no servía para nada. 

(p. 123) 

Don José's character is made up of two conflicting strands: on the one hand, his uselessness, 

ridiculousness and inadequacy, and, on the other, certain more positive qualities, among which 

inoffensiveness and selflessness occupy a prominent position. The same dualism characterises his 

relationship with Isidora. If his vision of himself as a kind of romantic paladin is incongruous, and 

therefore ludicrous, the fact remains that Don José acts out his self-imposed role with a selflessness 

and nobility which makes his dog-like devotion touching in spite of everything. There are two obvious 

ways in which such a character could develop. By emphasising Don José's inadequacy -in other words 

by effectively ridiculing or vilifying his character- Galdós could underscore the ludicrousness of his 

illusions. Alternatively, by stressing the nobility of Don José's conduct, he could play up the pathos 

inherent in his personal inadequacy. Galdós, however, eschews both of these obvious scenarios and 

manages instead to strike a balance between them, pointing out the unreality of Don José's illusions 

without denigrating him as a character and arousing sympathy for his positive qualities without 

provoking an excess of pathos. Here Galdós' use of humour and irony is at its most effective, the 

warmth and indulgence of the humour retains our sympathy for the character, while the insulating 

effect of irony guards against the obvious pitfall of sentimentality, this restraint making possible the 

controlled pathos of his death scene. 

Don José's insanity, ostensibly a mixture of senile dementia and alcoholism, is brought on by the 

burden of his frustrations, disappointments and humiliation. This much clearly recalls many of the 

victims of psychological frustration in the primera época (e. g. Daniel Morton in Gloria or Martín 

Muriel in El Audaz ). There is, however, a fundamental difference in the case of Don José. Characters 

like Morton and Muriel are essentially social casualties whose aspirations or natural psychic drives 

are thwarted by the prevailing social system or ideology and whose tragic fate, therefore, implicitly 

stresses the need for a new and more fulfilling social order. The tragedy of Don José, on the other hand, 

47


is inherent in his character and personality. In this sense he may be regarded as a precursor of later 

characters such as Maxi Rubín in Fortunata y Jacinta -characters who are doomed to suffer, not so 

much because of their own or society's vices, but because of their own essential natures. The sympathy 

and humour with which Don José is treated reflects Galdós' compassion for life's born misfits. 

La desheredada is thus a complex novel made up of many different strands. If what I have argued 

in this essay is correct, then certain conclusions logically follow. The first and most obvious is that in 

any discussion of naturalism in La desheredada , or indeed in Galdós' work as a whole, a definition of 

terms is imperative. Clearly, Galdós did learn much from his reading of Zola, and La desheredada is 

perhaps the best example of those lessons being put into practice. Yet for all that, Galdós' underlying 

vision remains far removed from that of Zola. His «naturalistic» borrowings are grafted onto this 

underlying vision: they do not subvert it. Indeed, there is much in La desheredada which recalls 

the earlier novels -the clash between ideals and reality, the theme of psychological frustration and, 

above all, the novel's marked social didacticism. There is, however, a noticeable evolution, for in the 

last analysis La desheredada transcends the limits of a didactic critique of society. Isidora's fate is 

neither a tale of naturalistic decline nor a straightforward comeuppance meted out by a didactically- 

minded author, but a true human tragedy. Nor does one need to have recourse to an explanation of the- 

character-grew-in-the-author's-hands variety in order to square this tragic vein with the didacticism. 

Both have their origins in the Cervantine complexities with which Galdós surrounds the treatment 

of the conflict between reality and illusion. While this theme in itself is nothing new in the work 

of Galdós, in La desheredada it is handled in a more subtle and mature way than in any of the 

earlier novels. lt is this maturing of Galdós' tragic vision which, as much as naturalistic innovations 

of technique, makes La desheredada , as well as an intrinsically fine novel, a significant landmark 

in Galdós' creative evolution. 72 

The Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland 

72 This article was read in typescript by Dr. Jennifer Lowe of Edinburgh University, to whom I am 

indebted for many helpful comments. 

48

Illusion, Reality and Realidad 

Joseph F. Chorpenning 


Professor Frank Durand has recently demonstrated how Galdós used his interest in the interplay 

between reality and illusion in La desheredada , the first in the series of las novelas españolas 

contemporáneas , «to capture the whole of reality rather than limit himself to the description of 

the exterior world» and to provide a proper ironic framework for «a serious commentary on the 

values of society as well as a presentation of the country's politics or its historical situation» 73 . He 

concludes his study by asserting that, in this first novel of the series, Galdós «no more than begins 

his examination» (p. 201) of the relationship between reality and illusion, which he develops more 

and more in succeeding novels of this series. 

One way Galdós uses this interplay in later novels is to bring out another one of, his interests, namely, 

that in the exploration of an inner reality of conscience and morality. It is a critical commonplace that 

this interest first surfaces in the epistolary novel La incógnita and in the dialogue novel Realidad , 

and evolves into a « proceso de espiritualización » in subsequent novels such as Nazarín , Halma 

and Misericordia 74 . In fact, La incógnita and Realidad are themselves representative of Galdós' 

interest in playing with reality and illusion: the former describes the « cara exterior », i. e., the 

illusion which Manolo Infante imagines to be the truth of the « caso » which forms the plot of 

both novels, the death of Federico Viera, whereas the latter offers the « descripción interior » and 

the « verdad profunda » of the « caso » 75 . But, although Realidad is the truth of the matter, 

that is not to say that its characters do not have illusions. On the contrary, the principal characters 

of Realidad Augusta Cisneros, Tomás Orozco and Federico Viera, have a great deal of difficulty 

73 «The Reality of Illusion: La desheredada », MLN, 89 (1974), 191-201, at pp. 201 and 198 

respectively. 

74 See H. Chonon Berkowitz, Pérez Galdós : Spanish Liberal Crusader (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin 

Press, 1948), p. 224; Ángel del Río, Estudios galdosianos (Zaragoza, 1953), pp. 15-16; and Gustavo 

Correa, Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós: ensayo de estética realista 

( Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo , 1967), pp. 163-191. 

75 Benito Pérez Galdós Obras completas , ed. Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles, 2nd ed., 6 vols. 

(Madrid: Aguilar, 1950), V, 786. Both La incógnita and Realidad are included in vol. 5 of this edition. 

Further references are given after quotations in the text. 

49


in distinguishing physical reality from illusion. This fluctuation is exemplified by their inability to 

distinguish dreams from life, hallucinations from reality. From the outset this alternation occurs, e. 

g., in the final scene of the first act, Augusta imagines that she sees the Sombra of Orozco, and that 

she confesses to him; later, she doubts: « En verdad que no puedo asegurar que estoy despierta ni 

que estoy dormida... puedo jurar que le he visto ahí..., una persona, un sacerdote, un ser extraño, con 

la cara y los ojos de... Difícil es que pueda precisar si he dormido o no... » (p. 809). These characters 

are, as Ricardo Gullón has so accurately described them, « alucinados » 76 . However, these physical 

illusions are only symptomatic of deeper internal disorders, the moral illusions of these characters, 

which are the origin of these aberrations in the physical realm. While the illusions of the characters 

of, say, La desheredada are principally of a social nature (see Durand), those of Orozco, Viera and 

Augusta are primarily of the moral order. They constitute the main thread of the novel and are the 

key to understanding the reorientation which Galdós effects in this series in this single novel. In order 

to portray the mistaken ideas which his characters assert as reality, Galdós must penetrate, to borrow 

Augusta's phrase, « las cuevas más escondidas del alma » (p. 808). 

The purpose of this essay is twofold: first, to define the illusions of Orozco, Viera and Augusta; and 

secondly, to explain their significance from the perspective of the « proceso de espiritualización » 

which unfolds in subsequent novels. I shall argue that Galdós presents the moral ideas of Orozco and 

Viera in a negative light to point to the Christian values to which he subscribed and which he would 

continue to represent in later novels. Moreover, of the three principal characters of Realidad , ft is 

Augusta to whom Galdós is most sympathetic. 

76 Galdós, novelista moderno , 3rd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1973), p. 229. 

50

I 


Although galdosistas are almost unanimously agreed that Orozco should be studied in relation to 

the theme of charity in Galdós' novels, they are divided, as are the characters of the novel itself, as to 

whether he is a « santo laico » or a « demente » 77 . The answer to this question, as well as to 

what Orozco's illusions are, is to be found in Galdós' ideas about religion. A. A. Parker, in « Nazarín 

, or The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Galdós» 78 , has succinctly summarized these 

ideas: 

The traditional type of sanctity is incompatible with the modern world, in which there is no place 

for hermits and contemplatives; the « vulgar » and « mediocre » world requires a «practical» 

type of sanctity expressed in a Christ-like charity... 

(p. 87) 

Further, he continues: 

What Galdós refrains from saying is as important as what he states. It has long been emphasized 

that he conceived religion as practical social action and had no conception of contemplative prayer. 

It should also be emphasized. that while there is nothing unchristian and uncatholic in his affirmation 

of human and natural values against a puritanical asceticism, he yet never shows anything that could 

77 See, e.g., Gilberto Paolini, An Aspect of Spiritualistic Naturalism in the Novels of B. P. Galdós: 

Charity (New York: Las Américas, 1969), passim ; and Arnold M. Penuel, Charity in the Novels of 

Galdós (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1972), pp. 71-76. 

78 AG , 2 (1967), 83-101. For the historical background to these ideas, see Penuel, pp. ix-xiii. 

Galdós' religious ideas were shared by his Victorian contemporaries: «All these novelists [Thackeray, 

Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Meredith and Hardy] concentrate on the theme of love, and all in 

one way or another see the relation of the self to the other as an attempt to satisfy religious longings 

in a world where relations to God are blocked. To put this another way, Victorian fiction may be said 

to have as its fundamental theme an exploration of the various ways in which a man may seek to 

make a god of another person in a world without God, or at any rate in a world where the traditional 

ways in which the self may be related to God no longer seem open» (J. Hillis Miller, The Form of 

Victorian Fiction [Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1968], p. 96). The theme of charity in 

Galdós' novels is part of what Amado Alonso has called « Lo español y lo universal en Galdós », 

Materia y forma en poesía , 3rd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), pp. 201-221. 

51


indicate that man has an allegiance to heaven as well as to earth and that there is an infinite disparity 

between the two... Nazarín shows us powerfully the serious danger there is to religion in forgetfulness 

of human suffering and sorrow. Galdós nowhere shows us or tries to show us the equally serious 

danger of forgetfulness of divine transcendence, whereby religion declines to mete humanism. 

(p. 99) 

The distance between these ideas and those of Orozco is revealed in a speech which Orozco makes 

in a state between wakefulness and sleep, a state Galdós uses for exposing the true interior disposition 

of the characters of this novel: 

Aquí solo, dentro del círculo de mis pensamientos, apartado del mundo, ante el cual represento 

el papel que me señalan, restablezco mi personalidad, me gozo en mí mismo, examino mis ideas y 

me recreo en este sistema... lo llamaré religioso..., en este sistema que me he formado, sin auxilio de 

nadie, sin abrir un libro, indagando en mi conciencia los fundamentos del bien y del mal... ¡Qué placer 

descubrir la fuente eterna, aunque no podamos beber en ella sino algunas gotas que nos salpican a 

la cara! 

(p. 805) 

Against the background of Parker's résumé, Orozco's speech sets up a series of oppositions between 

his religious ideas and those of Galdós: selfcenteredness-othercenteredness; otherworldliness- 

worldliness; asceticism-activism. This quotation can be juxtaposed to a statement that Orozco makes 

to his wife when he awakes to illustrate how he mediates his consciousness when speaking to others: 

Me conviene que continúe este lazo que al mundo nos une, y aparentar que, lejos de haber en mi 

perfecciones, soy lo mismo que los demás... En el mundo, en plena sociedad activa, es donde se debe 

luchar por el bien. Nada de ascetismo... 

(p. 807) 

This mediation of consciousness is at the root of what Arnold M. Penuel has called «the ambiguity of 

Orozco's virtue» 79 . This ambiguity is resolved ex fructibus , i. e., by Orozco's deeds. 

Even though Orozco performs many charitable acts, e. g., aiding a number of poor families, making 

possible the construction of a correctional institution for juvenile delinquents and defraying the costs 

almost singlehandedly, helping Viera's sister, Clotilde, her fiancé, and Viera himself, etc., of which 

79 See «The Ambiguity of Orozco's Virtue in Galdós' La incógnita and Realidad », Hispania , 53 

(1970), 411-418. 

52


Galdós would approve, nevertheless, he does fall short of the ideal. Charity is more than mere physical 

actions or aid in material sustenance; man's support of man includes the psychological and the spiritual 

as well. Orozco fails in this regard by his refusal to allow the beneficiaries of his charity to discharge 

their psychological need to express gratitude, because he believes that his reward will be greater in 

the hereafter if he remains unpraised in this life, and by his suppression, in the classical ascetical 

manner, of his most natural inclinations, which makes him neglect his sexual life with Augusta, and 

unwittingly fuel her adulterous relationship with Viera. Both these examples and the first quotation 

reveal Orozco's pride and his desire: to feel morally superior. It is this cold air of superiority which 

deters Augusta from confessing her wrongdoing to her husband. Thus, Orozco uses others to achieve 

perfection instead of helping them for themselves. Galdós also hints that Orozco is charitable in order 

to calm a vague feeling of guilt which arises from the fact that his fortune is derivative of the money 

his father and the father of Viera were able to salvage when their insurance company, La Humanitaria, 

went bankrupt, and hundreds of its insurants lost their life savings. Measured against Galdós' own 

religious ideas, Orozco emerges, in his words and deeds, as an individual who, albeit he performs 

many charitable acts, consciously uses charity as a means of self-perfection and of quieting his own 

conscience rather than as a means of helping others. His illusion, then, is his mistaken idea of Christian 

perfection, for he pursues an ascetical, and subtly egotistical, ideal which Galdós considers to be 

inappropriate and outdated. 

It has been observed that Galdós accentuates his play with reality and illusion in his novels by 

paralleling them with Don Quijote (see, e. g., Durand, p. 195). There are structural and thematic 

parallels between Realidad and the Quijote 80 . More to our point are the parallels directed to 

80 La incógnita , like Cervantes' novel, is a novel about a novel, and Realidad structurally parallels 

the Historia de Don Quijote written by Cide Hamete as a novel within a novel. See Leon Livingstone, 

«Interior Duplication and the Problem of Form in the Modern Spanish Novel», PMLA , 73 (1958), 

393-406; and E. C. Riley, «Three Versions of Don Quixote », MLR , 68 (1973), 807-819. In theme 

Realidad corresponds exactly to one of the novellas which Cervantes interpolates in the first part of his 

novel, El curioso impertinente (Chapters 32-35). Both Realidad and El curioso are found in a trunk; 

both tell the tragic story of husbands who, consumed with the quixotic pursuit of theoretical perfection, 

destroy their wives' faithfulness; and both use a love triangle to play with reality and illusion. The 

basis of my comparison of Realidad and El curioso differs from that of René Girard's comparison of 

Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband and El curioso in his Deceit, Desire, and the Novel : Sell and 

Other in Literary Structure , trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 

53


characterization 81 . In his pursuit of an obsolete religious ideal, Orozco brings to mind Don Quijote, 

who followed the antiquated ideals of chivalry in the seventeenth century 82 . The madness of Orozco's 

quijotismo surfaces in his rapidly debilitating mental state, which Augusta constantly hints at, and 

49-52. The basis of my comparison is the interplay between reality and illusion within a love triangle, 

whereby both Orozco and Anselmo emerge as quixotic figures, whereas that of Girard's comparison is 

the mediation of desire, whereby Pavel Pavlovitch and Anselmo are examples of internally mediated 

desire, distinguishing them from Quijote, who is an example of externally mediated desire. I should 

further note that, considered from Girard's perspective, Orozco's desire is externally mediated: upon 

learning of Augusta's infidelity, he struggles to suppress his natural inclination to feel jealous, because 

of his own ideal of self-perfection, which contemns ordinary human feelings. 

81 Several critics have remarked on some of these parallels. J. Chalmers Herman, Don Quijote and 

the Novels of Pérez Galdós (Ada, Oklahoma: East Central Oklahoma State College, 1955), briefly 

discusses Viera's quijotismo (pp. 30-31), and observes that: «The letters that Manuel Infante and 

Equis write to each other in La incógnita recall at times the verbal exchanges between Don Quijote 

and his Squire. This is especially true in the very last missive in which Equis calls upon his friend 

to believe the incredible just as Sancho and Don Quijote invoke the credulity of each other...» (p. 

44). Monroe Z. Hafter, «Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels», PMLA , 76 (1961), 233-239, describes 

Viera and Orozco as similar quixotic figures (p. 238). And finally, Gullón, op. cit. , lists Viera as a 

quixotic character (p. 58). I might add that the characterization of Infante and Equis in the account of 

the magical self-structuring of Realidad brings to mind Cide Hamete, the fictitious chronicler, who, 

although he has the magical power to reveal the most hidden thoughts ( Quijote , Part II, Chapter 

40), also has the limitation of occasionally being unreliable (Part I, Chapter 9; and Part II, Chapter 

3): Infante is a fictitious author and frequently unreliable narrator; Infante, believing Equis to be the 

author of the manuscript, attributes to him « un poder de adivinación » to « ver la cara interior de 

los hechos humanos » (p. 786). This account, then, functions as a preamble to the parallels between 

Realidad and the Quijote . 

82 It is interesting to note that Don Quijote's virtuousness is not unambiguous; see the polemical 

articles of A. A. Parker, «Don Quixote and the Relativity of Truth», The Dublin Review , 44 (1947), 

28-37; Helmut A. Hatzfeld, « ¿Don Quijote asceta? », NRFH , 2 (1948), 57-70; and Amado Alonso, 

« Don Quijote no asceta, pero ejemplar caballero y cristiano », NRFH , 2 (1948), 333-359, rpt. in 

Materia y forma en poesía , pp. 159-200. 

54


which fully emerges in the final scene of the novel. But, unlike Quijote, Orozco remains without self- 

understanding at the end of Realidad . 

The parallel is much more explicit in the case of Viera. Viera is an hidalgo who goes mad because 

of his obsession with an outdated ideal. He follows a Calderonian code of behavior in the bourgeoise 

society of the nineteenth century. The Sombra of Orozco calls him « el Amadís de la delicadeza y 

de la dignidad » (p. 886). He is outraged when his sister runs off with the impoverished Santanita, 

and he plots to avenge this affront to his honor. Infante tries to persuade him that « se han quedado 

muy atrás los tiempos calderonianos » (p. 816). His « acentuación quijotesca de algunas prendas 

morales » and his « carecer de otras » (p. 720) result in his life being divided into « dos esferas 

irreconciliables » (p. 821). The clash of these two «spheres» of his personality, i. e., his love affair 

with Augusta and his Calderonian code of behavior, is resolved by his adherence to the latter, whereby 

he becomes both the avenging husband and the punished adulterer, and which he carries out by killing 

himself. Although the parallel between Viera and Quijote is sustained until his suicide, e. g., Viera 

suggests to the Sombra, « Nos haremos pastores marchándonos a una región distante y sosegada, 

donde impere la verdad absoluta » (p. 877), (cf. Quijote, Part II, Chapter 67), Viera, unlike Quijote, 

dies without self-understanding. 

The collision between the two halves of Viera's personality is precipitated by his notion of honor. 

Viera's concept of honor is that of the unredeemed world of the Old Testament, where affronts against 

honor were avenged by blood. With the coming of Christian times, this idea of honor, which knew 

no redemption and demanded ancient retributive rites, became outdated and was shown for what it 

really was, an expression of human pride. Christ came as a healer who shed his blood in a manner 

which worldly men deemed as dishonorable, in order to cure a universal wound and restore men to 

honor in the sight of God. The mark of the redeemed order of nature, therefore, is that each man has 

within himself an honor which was avenged by the blood of Christ once and for all. As a result, man's 

response to affronts to honor should be forgiveness and reconciliation, not revenge. The reverse is 

true in the case of Viera. Viera's idea of honor is the motivating force behind his reaction to Clotilde 

running off with Santanita and his suicide. His practice of charity is also a question of honor as pride: 

he is charitable to continue a family tradition of more prosperous times. Consequently, Viera's illusion 

is his mistaken idea of honor, which is a travesty of a vital spiritual reality. It is as far from Galdós' 

idea of Christian perfection as is Orozco's asceticism, and as much out of place in the nineteenth 

century as it was in the seventeenth (and well before that too!). And Galdós, as did Calderón in his 

55


so-called «honor plays», is using the values and violence it prescribes in a negative way to point to 

his own Christian values. 83 

Of the three main characters of Realidad , Augusta alone travels the road from locura to cordura . 

Like Quijote, she is bored with the conventionality of life and feels impelled to recreate ordinary life 

in a novelistic fashion: « Yo apetezco lo extraño, eso que con desprecio llaman novelesco los tontos, 

juzgando las novelas más sorprendentes que la realidad » (p. 825). This leads Augusta to criticize an 

objective morality and to argue that morality is a personal, individual and subjective matter. It is on 

this basis that she justifies her affair with Viera. Still, at the end of the novel, she does renounce her 

illusion, at least to herself, and promises to make amends for her wrongdoing much as Don Quijote 

renounced his knight errantry and made a firm purpose of amendment in the final chapter of the 

second part of the Quijote. From the brief glimpse of her conduct in Torquemada y San Pedro (Part 

1, Chapters 7-11), she does seem to have kept this promise. 

To sum up, Galdós portrays the moral ideas of Orozco and Viera as illusions, mistaken ideas which 

they assert as reality, but which simply do not correspond to the reality of the «'practical' type of 

sanctity expressed in a Christlike charity» (Parker, «Nazarín...» p. 87) demanded by the modern world. 

The negative light in which Galdós casts these mistaken ideas is accentuated by his identification of 

these two characters with Quijote. Augusta, too, is like Quijote: she seeks to live life as if it were a 

novel, yet she, unlike her husband and lover, and like Quijote, attains desengaño . In consequence, 

Augusta is the only character which Galdós uses quijotismo to exalt in Realidad . From the 

perspective of later novels such as Nazarín, Halma and Misericordia our examination of the 

illusions of these three characters gives an important clue as to how Galdós initiates the « proceso 

de espiritualización » in las novelas españolas contemporáneas . 

83 See P. N. Dunn's seminal essay « Honour and the Christian Background in Calderón », BHS , 

37 (1960), 75-105, rpf. in Critical Essays on the Theatre of Calderón , ed. Bruce W. Wardropper 

(New York: New York Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 24-60. Also see his « Patrimonio del alma », BHS , 

41 (1964), 78-85. 

56

II 


Various critics have expressed what they believe is the novel's commentary on social values, or 

its presentation of Spain's historical situation. Gonzalo Sobejano 84 , for instance, sees the novel's « 

formas literarias », i. e., monologues and soliloquies, as « formas de sensibilidad social » (p. 105), 

i. e., « la soledad el secreto, la desconfianza » (p. 103) of bourgeoise society. Joaquín Casalduero 

85 considers the novel to be a presentation of « las ideas históricas de Galdós sobre España » (p. 

394): Viera is « la España tradicional en lucha con el Tiempo » that « se ve vencida y obligada 

a desaparecer si no quiere terminar en la ignominia », while Orozco is « la nueva conciencia, el 

hombre nuevo » (p. 396). Since Realidad is Galdós' «literary approximation to the complexity 

of reality itself» (Penuel, «The Ambiguity of Orozco's Virtue...», p. 417), both of these views can, 

within a Cervantine perspectivism, be admitted. The present analysis, however, directs us toward an 

interpretation of this work which has not previously been expounded. 

Infante, in one of his letters to Equis, makes this statement apropos of the question of Orozco's virtue: 

No niego que pueda existir en nuestros tiempos la santidad; pero me resisto a admitirla en las altas 

clases. Existirá en las Ordenes religiosas, o en los desiertos habitados por una sola persona; pero en 

el mundo activo, en la sociedad, en el matrimonio, en medio de los chismes, de las envidias, de la 

soberbia, del lujo... Vamos, Equisillo, que se te quite eso de la cabeza. 

(p. 778) 

This statement might be counted as just one more example of Infante's unreliability, because, as 

we have already seen, it certainly does not represent Galdós' own religious thinking. It is tempting, 

though, to see this statement as the proposition which Galdós systematically sets out to disprove 

in Realidad and in succeeding novels, where, by playing with reality and illusion, he explores and 

represents « la santidad » in different social classes and in varying degrees and shades. Galdós 

does not completely and satisfactorily disprove this proposition until Misericordia . As Robert H. 

84 « Forma literaria y sensibilidad social en La incógnita y Realidad », RHM, 30 (1964), 89-107. 

85 « Ana Karénina y Realidad », BH , 39 (1937), 375-396, rpt. in his Estudios de literatura española , 

2nd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1967), pp. 179-201. 

57


Russell has so convincingly demonstrated 86 , in the character of Benina « la santidad » is not self- 

conscious or problematic, as it is in the characters of earlier novels such as Orozco, Viera, Nazarín 

and Halma. Benina has no concept of herself which she seeks the means to realize: she neither self- 

consciously separates herself physically from society, nor does she use others as the means for her 

own self-perfection. While the interplay between reality and illusion is employed in novels prior to 

Misericordia to expose the illusions of Orozco, Viera, Nazarín, Halma, etc., it is used in Misericordia 

to shed light upon, Benina's Christlikeness. 

Considered from the perspective of Misericordia , Orozco and Viera are far from the ideal which 

Galdós posits in the character of Benina. Both perform charitable works, yet they do so in the 

quixotic: pursuit of antiquated ideals: Orozco aspires to an ascetical, and subtly egoistical, ideal of 

self-perfection, and uses other people to attain it; Viera follows an outdated and unchristian ideal 

of honor. Continuing this line of reasoning, of the main characters of Realidad it is Augusta with 

whom Galdós sympathizes most, and who, by virtue of her intention to repent at the end of the novel, 

most approximates the « santidad » of the « figura evangélica » of Benina. (This view of 

Augusta is corroborated by the external evidence of her subsequent actualization of this intention 

in Torquemada y San Pedro.) Augusta alone traverses the Cervantine trajectory from engaño to 

desengaño by recognizing her own failings, and, having rejected the religious ideals of her husband, 

resolving to dedicate herself to the selfless and unconscious pursuit of charity. This is how Galdós 

uses the interplay between reality and illusion to explore the inner reality of conscience and morality 

in Realidad and to begin the « proceso de espiritualización » which would continue to unfold in the 

novels that followed it. Finally, this interplay provided Galdós with the proper ironic framework to 

make in Realidad a serious commentary on social values, which would be repeated again and again 

in its successors: that all men, regardless of class cleavage, can attain « santidad », if they will only 

recognize their illusions and selflessly dedicate themselves to the total practice of charity. 87 

The Johns Hopkins University 

86 «The Christ Figure in Misericordia », AG , 2 (1967), 103-130. Also see J. E. Varey, «Charity in 

Misericordia », in Galdós Studies I , ed. J. E. Varey (London: Tamesis, 1970), pp. 164-194. 

87 I am grateful to Professors Rodolfo Cardona and Paul R. Olson for reading an earlier version of 

this paper and encouraging me to revise it for publication. 

58

Honor y adulterio en Realidad 

Carlos Feal Deibe 


La novela de Galdós, Realidad (1889), cuya forma dialogada permitió fácilmente su adaptación 

teatral (en 1892), no ha dejado de suscitar interés y controversias desde los días mismos de su 

aparición. Tal interés radica, sin duda, en el planteamiento original del tema del adulterio, que no se 

resuelve aquí en la conocida fórmula calderoniana. Así, Joaquín Casalduero vio en Orozco, el marido 

ultrajado, un representante del «hombre nuevo» 88 , y H. Chonon Berkowitz señalaba en Realidad « 

flashes of new morality » 89 . La personalidad de Orozco es, sin embargo, muy compleja para que en 

torno a ella se dé unanimidad en la crítica 90 . Con razón Donald L. Shaw afirmaba recientemente: « 

Needless to say, Orozco was and has remained an enigmatic and unique figure, beyond the range of 

Galdós's Spanish audience » 91 . El enigmatismo de Orozco determina, por supuesto, el de la novela 

(y obra teatral) en conjunto. Mi trabajo debe considerarse como un nuevo asedio a la elucidación de 

ese enigma que atrae, y seguirá sin duda atrayendo, a múltiples lectores del gran novelista canario. 

Tomás Orozco se manifiesta, ya desde el principio, como un ser en pugna con la sociedad. Es quizá 

significativo que, aunque las primeras escenas pinten una recepción dada en su casa, él tarde tanto 

en salir; no aparece hasta la escena VI. Orozco se resiste a mezclarse con los demás. Quiere estar 

solo; más exactamente, solo con su mujer, Augusta. Al irse al fin todos, exclama para sí: «Yo deseaba 

88 Vida y obra de Galdós , Madrid, Gredos, 1951, p. 121. 

89 Pérez Galdós Spanish Liberal Crusader , Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1948, p. 225. 

Un buen resumen de los encontrados pareceres que el drama suscitó, puede verse en Berkowitz, pp. 

245-261. La disensión del protagonista respecto de modelos tradicionales fue el motivo principal del 

rechazo de la obra por algunos: « There were scattered objections to the hero's non-Spanish attitude 

toward conjugal honor » (p. 251). « No red-blooded Spaniard [afirmaban los detractores] could accept 

so anti-national a solution of adultery » (p. 255). Esa extraña actitud del protagonista -supuestamente 

no española- dio pie a críticos como Portnoff o Balseiro para hablar del influjo sobre Galdós de Ana 

Karénina de Tolstoi. Joaquín Casalduero -« Ana Karénina y Realidad », Bulletin Hispanique , 39 

(1937)- niega que exista tal influjo. 

90 Véase Arnold M. Penuel, « The Ambiguity of Orozco's Virtue in Galdós' La incógnita and 

Realidad », Hispania , 53 (1970), donde se revisan distintas opiniones sobre el tema. 

91 A Literary History of Spain . The Nineteenth Century , London, Ernest Benn, 1972, p. 143. 

59


que se fueran. Me siento esta noche más fatigado que nunca» 92 . Lo que más duele a Orozco es 

que no ha sido capaz de atraer a Augusta a su retiro: «Una sola idea me aflije, y es que mi mujer 

está aún distante, pero muy distante de mí» (p. 805). Mas Orozco es responsable en gran medida 

del distanciamiento de su mujer. Pues se niega a verla como un ser independiente, dotada de propia 

personalidad. El deseo de Orozco sería fundirse con ella; o mejor, fundirla a ella con él, asimilársela 

totalmente: «arrojo a su entendimiento algunas ideas No las recibe mal; pero no se halla todavía en 

estado de asimilárselas» (p. 805). Los resultados, naturalmente, son los contrarios de los queridos. 

Augusta, que no se deja dominar, se aleja cada vez más de él. El alejamiento de Augusta es tanto 

más explicable cuanto que el modelo (el hombre) a quien ella tendría que asimilarse se le aparece 

inalcanzable a causa de su exigente moralidad. Augusta, dotada de poderosa vida instintiva, no puede 

sacrificarla a esa moral austera del hombre. Desde este punto de vista, Orozco es hermano espiritual 

de León Roch (krausista como él, según Casalduero señala) 93 , pero también, aunque ningún crítico 

lo afirme, tiene puntos de contacto con el Horacio de Tristana , en la medida en que éste pretende 

modelar a su gusto a Tristana, y escapa de ella cuando ve que su empeño es irrealizable. 94 

Augusta, sin embargo, aprecia a su marido. Más aún, proclama: «quiero tiernamente a este 

hombre» (pp. 805-806). Pero ella también es muy consciente del abismo que existe entre los dos: «esta 

unión no satisface mi alma» (p. 806). Es interesante que diga mi alma, y no mi cuerpo. No es sólo por 

llenar una necesidad física por lo que Augusta se entrega a su amante, y no tendrán por tanto razón 

quienes (personajes o críticos) vean a Augusta como un ser puramente sensual, en el polo opuesto a 

los vuelos espirituales del marido. 

Hay también que destacar que, ya desde esta jornada I, Augusta manifieste deseos de confesar la 

verdad al esposo: «Casi, casi me dan impulsos de abrir el alma delante de mi marido, y contarle todo 

lo que me pasa» (p. 806). Lo que él le exige al final -una confesión- no es entonces algo, aunque ella 

no llegue a hacerlo, opuesto a sus deseos profundos. Augusta anhela la intimidad con su marido, pero 

el temor reverencial a éste, temor de su severa moral, le impide confesarse. 

92 Realidad , p. 804. Cito por Obras completas , Madrid, Aguilar, 1967, vol. V. 

93 «Orozco es uno de los personajes krausistas de Galdós». « Ana Karénina y Realidad », p. 226. 

Cito por Douglass M. Rogers, ed., Benito Pérez Galdós , Madrid, Taurus, 1973, donde el artículo ha 

sido reimpreso. 

94 Véase mi artículo « Tristana de Galdós: capítulo en la historia de la liberación femenina» Sin 

Nombre , 7 (1976). 

60


Aquí surge una ironía. Orozco se ufana de forjarse una moral propia en el interior de su conciencia: 

«este sistema que me he formado, sin auxilio de nadie, sin abrir un libro, indagando en mi conciencia 

los fundamentos del bien y del mal...» (p. 805). En lo que toca, sin embargo, al adulterio de su mujer, 

su moral -pensamos- no difiere mucho de la tradicional. Cierto, no mata a la mujer y no pierde la 

calma aparente. Pero rechaza a Augusta. Ella, en cambio, se sorprende de que un hombre de tan vasto 

saber y tamaña rectitud no pueda comprenderla: «¿qué inconveniente habría en que este hombre, 

que miro como hermano de mi alma; este hombre de entendimiento superior, de gran corazón, todo 

nobleza, supiera todo lo que me está pasando, y que lo oyera de mi propia boca?... Esto, que parece 

absurdo... ¿por qué lo es? Mejor dicho, ¿por qué lo parece? No; lo absurdo no es esto que pienso, sino 

lo otro, todo el armatoste social...» (p. 806). Para ella, como sus palabras muestran, la mentalidad de 

Orozco no difiere, respecto del problema planteado, de la del «armatoste social», y de ahí el temor -y 

finalmente la imposibilidad- de confesarse. Orozco depende mucho más de lo que piensa de las ideas 

de la sociedad en que vive. Lejos de ser el «hombre nuevo», como Casalduero pretende, es más bien 

Augusta la que se nos aparece como la mujer nueva. Es ella la que desafía las normas sociales, en 

gran parte injustas: injustas desde luego en su condenación, sin paliativos del adulterio de la mujer, 

cuando tan tolerantes son, en cambio, con el del hombre. 

No sólo Orozco, por tanto, concibe aspiraciones tocante a su mujer; ella también quisiera transformar 

a su marido. Cada uno trata de atraer a su moral al otro. Augusta piensa: «El que a mí me confiese ha 

de ser un sacerdote extraordinario, ideal, superior a cuantos hombres andan por el mundo, de un saber 

tan grande y de una sensibilidad tan fina para tomar el pulso a las pasiones, que pueda yo mostrarle con 

sinceridad hasta los últimos dobleces de la conciencia...» (p. 808). Sigue manifestando aquí -como 

vemos- su deseo de unión íntima, profunda, con el hombre. Ese «sacerdote ideal» asume luego los 

rasgos del marido, quien se presenta a Augusta en una alucinación de ésta. Pero, vuelta a la realidad, 

Augusta rechaza a Tomás, de quien piensa que se mueve por zonas demasiado elevadas, etéreas, y 

por tanto inhumanas: «Pero lo que yo digo, los santos deben estar en el cielo. La tierra dejádnosla a 

nosotros los pecadores, los imperfectos, los que sufrimos, los que gozamos, los que sabemos paladear 

la alegría y el dolor. ( Contemplando otra vez a Orozco .) Los puros, que se vayan al otro mundo. 

Nos están usurpando en éste un sitio que nos pertenece» (p. 810). Augusta, pensamos, no tiene razón 

al decir esto. Sus palabras anteriores mostraban un idealismo y exigencia que sobrepasan incluso a 

los del propio Orozco (hablaba de encontrar un «sacerdote extraordinario, ideal, superior a cuantos 

hombres andan por el mundo»). Aunque aparentemente vinculada a la tierra, Augusta se revela aquí 

como una mujer a la que ningún hombre podría verdaderamente satisfacer. Más que un hombre lo que 

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ella busca es un dios. Es natural que acabe quedándose sola, y nos preguntamos si alguien distinto de 

Orozco hubiera podido evitarlo. Pues no se trata sólo de comprender el adulterio; Augusta exige una 

comprensión absoluta, que no está al alcance de ningún ser humano. 

La personalidad del amante, Federico Viera, no es menos compleja e interesante que la de Augusta 

y Orozco. Federico se relaciona no sólo con Augusta sino también con otra mujer, Leonor la Peri, una 

prostituta. Y, en el plano de la intimidad y la confianza, esta segunda relación es mucho mejor que 

la que tiene él con la mujer de Orozco. Entre Federico y la Peri no hay -no hay apenas- secretos. Se 

trata, por tanto, del tipo de relación entre hombre y mujer que Augusta ambicionaba, pero que ella 

no puede tener ni con su marido ni con su amante. Federico no responde al deseo de intimidad, de 

unión profunda (de cuerpos y almas) que experimenta Augusta. Federico es un ser dividido: el cuerpo 

para Augusta, el alma para la Peri. La situación es paradójica en cuanto que la Peri es una prostituta, 

y fue amante de Federico, pero ya no lo es. ¿No es esa ausencia de vida sexual entre ellos la que hace 

posible la confianza? 

Lo que perturba a Federico, en el caso de Augusta, es que ésta es la mujer de otro hombre: un hombre 

que, para más señas, es amigo y protector suyo (una especie de figura paterna). Desearía que Augusta 

se cansase de él y lo dejase: «No puedo dudar que me interesa, y, no obstante, deesaría que ella. se 

cansase y me propusiese el rompimiento...» (p. 820). De Augusta piensa también Federico: «pertenece 

a la sociedad, y ante ella, por una serie de actos maquinales, me revisto de mi orgullo» (p. 820). 

La sociedad a que Augusta pertenece es la sociedad de los hombres, y concretamente del marido: la 

sociedad masculina, que con sus leyes hace a la esposa objeto prohibido, tabú, para quien no sea su 

esposo. Moderna forma del ancestral tabú del incesto, donde la esposa aparece asimilada a la madre. 

Añade Federico: «por ella he faltado a la consideración que debo a un amigo» (p. 820). Comprendemos 

el drama de Federico: aunque los víole, respeta los principios de la sociedad donde vive. 

Cierto, la institución matrimonial, aunque socialmente respetable, es atacada por hombres tanto como 

por mujeres. La fuerte coacción moral y legal puede actuar como un estímulo para muchos, que así 

satisfacen sus ansias de rebelión. En el caso del hombre, su edipismo le lleva a sentirse atraído por 

la mujer casada (asociada inconscientemente a la madre, según dijimos). Este aspecto edípico es 

bastante claro en Viera, pues tanto Orozco como Augusta adoptan frente a él una actitud protectora, 

que recuerda a la de los padres. Contra tal actitud se revuelve el amante: «Ya, ya sé la cantinela de 

Augusta esta tarde. Me parece que la oigo: que desea regenerarme; que debo pensar en vivir de un 

modo regular; el estribillo de la última tarde que nos vimos» (p. 821). A Federico le molesta verse 

tratado como un hijo; tal es el lado negativo de la asimilación de la mujer a la madre. 

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Bajo el deseo que Augusta siente de una absoluta confianza entre ella y el hombre, es posible percibir 

otro: el de adueñarse del ser del hombre, de su vida: «Cuando se ama de veras, gusta mucho absorber 

toda la vida de la persona amada» (p. 824). Muy posiblemente Federico, que la defrauda en sus deseos, 

percibe la amenaza existente para él; amenaza de ser absorbido. Augusta se comporta con Federico de 

modo análogo a como Orozco lo hace con ella. Su actitud podría así entenderse como una suerte de 

revancha. De ser modelada por el hombre a su imagen y semejanza, pasa a desear modelar al hombre a 

imagen y semejanza suyas: «Yo deseo ser, además de tu amante, tu consejera y tu administradora» (p. 

825). Posiblemente la conducta de Augusta se comprende mejor en cuanto que no tiene ningún hijo, 

lo que impide en ella el conocido proceso según el cual la mujer dominada por el hombre -castrada- 

se desquita con el hijo, a quien maneja y convierte en su falo, completándose de tal modo. 95 

A Federico dice también Augusta: «Yo aspiro a vencer tu orgullo y a devorarlo» (p. 825). El orgullo 

de Federico es lo que le impide ser ayudado económicamente por ella (o sea, en el fondo, ser tratado 

como un hijo). El orgullo es la actitud de que Federico se reviste ante la sociedad: «ante ella [... ] me 

revisto de mi orgullo». Esa sociedad (creada por los hombres), cuyos dictados él mentalmente acata. El 

deseo de Augusta, al destruir ese orgullo, sería esencialmente destruir la sociedad u orden masculinos 

para sustituirlos por otros de inspiración femenina. Transformar el -patriarcado en que vive en una 

suerte de matriarcado. El marido-padre es sustituido por el amante-hijo. Ella misma declara que lo 

que le atrae en Federico es su pobreza: «yo te quiero por desgraciado, por bohemio, por el abandono 

que hay en ti tu vida angustiosa, tu pobreza, sí, empleemos la palabra terrible, han sido un incentivo 

más del amor que te tengo» (p. 825). La pobreza y el abandono de Federico son un incentivo para 

Augusta en la medida en que lo colocan en una situación de inferioridad, que le permite a ella ayudarlo 

(y, en cierto modo, manejarlo, dominarlo). Repárese en lo expresivo del verbo devorar (devorar tu 

orgullo) en la cita anterior, en la misma línea que el absorber (absorber la vida). Tal vez, en este 

contexto, el nombre imponente de Augusta es intencionado. Raro en su forma femenina, hace pensar 

en el emperador Augusto y dota así a la mujer de características dominantes, posesoras, que se nos 

antojan más propias de hombres. 

Interesa también que Augusta tenga celos de la Peri y pida insistentemente a Federico que abandone 

a esta mujer. A los proyectos de ella, que piensa en una unión permanente con el amante («establecer 

95 Como muy bien dice Gonzalo Sobejano: «[Augustal ama ardorosamente, y con la maternal 

protección que no le fue dado ejercer sobre un hijo de la carne, a un hombre parecidamente rebelde y 

aventurero». «Efectos de Realidad », Estudios escénicos , n.º 18 (sept. 1974), p. 47. 

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tu vida junto a la mía, en condiciones de estabilidad»), responde él: «Esa aspiración tuya es un sueño. 

Olvidas que estás ya casada» (p. 826). Federico vuelve a Augusta a la realidad, la realidad del orden 

social creado por los hombres (que él, repetimos, acata). Augusta reconoce su error: «Es cierto. Con 

esa idea me traes a la vida real. Iba yo por los espacios imaginarios, como las brujas que vuelan 

montadas en una escoba» (p. 826). La asociación de Augusta con una bruja parece confirmar lo que 

decíamos. Las brujas (madres malas) son un medio de representarse el matriarcado, la dominación 

del hombre por la mujer. 

La escena siguiente muestra muy bien las diferencias profundas -ideológicas, morales- que existen 

entre los dos amantes. Es él, no ella, quien se asusta de lo que ocurre. Él habla del marido: «un 

hombre a quien tú y yo ofendemos gravemente» (p. 827). Ella reacciona: «déjame a mí el pecado 

entero, y coge para ti los escrúpulos. Todavía no me he convencido de que esto sea una cosa muy 

mala, rematadamente mala» (pp. 827, 828). Augusta -repetimos- es la mujer nueva, la representante 

de un nuevo tipo de moralidad, que no ve el adulterio femenino desde el mismo punto de vista que 

el hombre; para ella no es algo execrable, absolutamente reprobable. Federico no entiende: «A ti te 

corresponde, como mujer, la pasión irreflexiva; a mí, la serenidad» (p. 828). Sin embargo, ni él es tan 

sereno ni ella tan irreflexiva. Federico adopta la postura tradicional del hombre respecto a la mujer; 

esa postura, precisamente, con la que ella se enfrenta. Aunque no sólo, desde luego, el adulterio de 

Augusta nos parece en parte el resultado de una rebelión contra el dominio del hombre: el esposo 

que trata de asimilársela, de controlarla totalmente. Federico no ceja en su actitud: «tengo el valor 

de incitarte a que me sacrifiques, a que entres en la ley, a que vuelvas los ojos a aquel hombre tan 

superior a mí... Regenérate huyendo de mí y entregando los tesoros de tu alma al hombre más digno 

de poseerlos» (p. 829). Frente a Augusta que quiere regenerarlo, él habla de regenerarla a ella. Habla 

en nombre de su sexo, de la sociedad masculina, a la que si hace falta está dispuesto a sacrificarse, 

sacrificar su amor, que atenta contra el orden establecido. 

No es extraño, entonces, que la relación de Federico con la Peri sea más satisfactoria en muchos 

respectos. Federico ve a la Peri como a una igual: «Te profeso un cariño fraternal» (p. 818), le dice. 

Además la Peri no se le aparece, como Augusta, en una situación triangular. La Peri se da a muchos 

hombres y, en esa medida, no es exactamente la mujer de ningún hombre. La prostituta no tiene honor. 

Federico puede obrar con conciencia tranquila (o, por lo menos, más tranquila), pues no ataca el honor 

de nadie. A diferencia de Augusta, que «pertenece a la sociedad», la Peri está al margen de la sociedad. 

Y es ese carácter marginal el que la aproxima a Federico, quien en su conducta -aunque no en sus 

ideas- se sitúa también al margen de la sociedad. 

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Federico, hay que advertirlo, es un héroe calderoniano 96 . Es el amante, no el marido, 

paradójicamente quien se ajusta a la tradición. Lo prueba dándose muerte a sí mismo, ya que conforme 

al modelo calderoniano el amante debe morir. Al no matarlo el marido, el amante se mata a sí mismo. 

De tal modo se identifica con el marido engañado, y así se entiende muy bien el abrazo final de los 

dos hombres (exactamente de Orozco y la imagen de Federico) y la exclamación final de aquél a éste: 

«Eres de los míos» (p. 901). Frase que expresa la aprobación del marido por la muerte del amante. Si 

Orozco no se atreve a dársela, no quiere decir que no la juzgue apropiada, que no la vea como la única 

solución honrosa. Orozco, en este sentido, no está tan alejado del héroe calderoniano como parece. 

Los dos hombres se funden al final, a través de la identificación mutua. 

El calderonismo de Viera se muestra también en su actitud hacia su hermana Clotilde. Federico 

reprueba completamente los amores de ella con un muchacho de humilde condición social. Clotilde 

se degrada, para su hermano, aceptando esos amores: «A esa chiquilla sin seso y de condición villana 

le enseñaré yo el respeto que debe a su nombre» (pp. 815-816). Su amigo Infante, con quien está 

hablando, objeta: «¡Ay, amigo mío, no echas de ver que se han quedado muy atrás los tiempos 

calderonianos! «(p. 816). Federico responde: «Sí, y también echo de ver la gran diferencia en favor 

de aquéllos.» 

Esta historia secundaria tiene interés por la luz que arroja sobre la principal. En la Jornada tercera, la 

criada Bárbara se refiere así al caso de Clotilde: «Ellos se divierten con cuanta mujer encuentran, y a 

nosotras, si un hombre nos mira o le miramos, ya nos cae encima la deshonra y empieza el runrún de 

si lo eres o no lo eres... Pues ¿qué quería ese tonto? ¿Que mientras él se daba la gran vida, su hermana 

se pudriera en casa como una monja? ¡Ay, bello sexo! ¡Qué falta te hacen muchas así, resueltas y con 

garbo para darle el quiebro a la tiranía!» (p. 831). Las reivindicaciones femeninas -es decir, la protesta 

contra el doble standard - se formulan aquí muy claramente, y permiten tal vez entender mejor la 

actitud de Augusta, a la que atribuimos, aunque no las declare, ideas parecidas. 

96 En su crítica de Realidad , Clarín señaló ya esto: «El [Federico] -un calavera que de tantos modos 

se ha degradado-, va a tropezar con escrúpulos morales de los que dilucidan los galanes de Calderón». 

Leopoldo Alas: Teoría y crítica de la novela española , ed. Sergio Beser, Barcelona, Laia, 1972, p. 

262. La reseña de Clarín apareció en Ensayos y Revistas . Madrid, Manuel Fernández Lasanta, 1892, 

pp. 277-306. 

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A diferencia de Federico, Augusta muestra gran simpatía por Clotilde y su enamorado, quienes han 

huido para irse a vivir juntos. Augusta encuentra la historia muy romántica y piensa que hay que 

proteger al muchacho, carente de medios económicos. Santana, el amante de Clotilde, sería así un 

nuevo Federico (un pobre enamorado al que hay que proteger) y, consiguientemente, Augusta se 

identificaría con Clotilde. Ambas desafían las leyes sociales: una escapando con un hombre, otra 

teniendo un amante. 

Volvamos a Orozco. En su conversación con Joaquín Viera, el padre de Federico, manifiesta bien sus 

complejidades. No es un hombre tan rígido, tan puritano, como puede parecer. Hace ahora el elogio de 

los pícaros: «Suele ofrecernos la Humanidad este contraste, y es que la gente ordenada se cae de sosa, 

y los traviesos y desarreglados tienen toda la sal de Dios No sé si Dios tendrá dispuesto que la bohemia 

y los caracteres picarescos desaparezcan al fin con la aplicación completa de la disciplina moral. 

Si así fuera, ¡qué lástima!, porque lo picaresco parece un elemento indispensable en el organismo 

humano» (p. 843). Orozco simpatiza con individuos alejados aparentemente de él, lo cual muestra que 

esos individuos representan modos o tendencias profundas de su personalidad. A Joaquín también le 

dice Orozco: «Pues ahora resulta que el virtuoso y rígido, el hombre de conciencia intachable, no existe 

más que en la infundada creencia de los tontos que han querido suponerle así; resulta que Orozco es 

como todos los que le rodean, ni perverso ni tampoco santo; que desea mantenerse en el justo medio 

entre la tontería del bien absoluto y el egoísmo brutal de otros» (p. 847). La cosa es interesante en lo 

que toca a las relaciones de Orozco y Augusta. Pues ésta sigue la opinión general, considerando a su 

marido un hombre sumamente recto, puritano y, como tal, aburrido. Tal es una de sus justificaciones 

-la básica quizás, al menos desde un punto de vista consciente- para engañar al esposo. Así dice a 

Federico: «¿Por qué me enamoraste tú, grandísimo tunante? Porque eres una realidad no muy clara, 

porque no veo tu vida cortada por el patrón de este puritanismo inglés que aborrezco» (pp. 825-826). 

La ceguedad de Augusta respecto a su marido es naturalmente más grave que la de los demás, ya que 

la esposa, si de veras se lo propone, está (siempre que sea inteligente, y Augusta lo es) en condiciones 

óptimas de conocer al hombre con quien vive. No hay nada que permita suponer que Orozco es menos 

complicado, menos interesante que Federico. Si lo que de veras atrajese a Augusta en el hombre 

fuera el hecho de ser éste una «realidad no muy clara», no tendría verdadera razón para engañar a su 

marido. Augusta lo engaña antes de haber aclarado su realidad, sin duda mucho más problemática de 

lo que ella cree. Cierto, Tomás no es personaje que se abra mucho a los otros. Pero una mujer tiene 

a su alcance medios extraordinarios para abrir el corazón del hombre que la ama. Orozco no es un 

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ogro. Sus impulsos dominantes o pedagógicos podrían con tacto ser amansados. Su reprimida vida 

instintiva podría ser sacada a flote por una mujer bella como Augusta, a la que Orozco quiere. 

Augusta tiene ocasión de sorprender al marido en el momento en que éste amenaza a Joaquín con 

partirle la cabeza. Este arranque de genio encanta a la mujer, que dice para sí: «Bien, muy bien» (p. 

847). Pero luego, hablando con Tomás, ella no lo entiende. Orozco tiene la obligación moral -aunque 

quizás no legal- de pagar una deuda, supuestamente caducada, a Joaquín. Y aunque su deudor se 

contentaría tal vez sólo con un tanto, Orozco decide pagar la deuda en su integridad, si bien no toda 

a Joaquín: un tanto a éste y el resto a sus hijos, Federico y Clotilde, seres necesitados, haciendo así 

con ellos las veces de padre (el padre que Joaquín no ha sabido ser). Aspira, además, a reconciliar a 

Federico y Santana. No nos parece esta actitud de Orozco tan incomprensible, sobrehumana, como 

a Augusta: «Soy poco para ti en el orden espiritual, porque soy simplemente una mujer. Eres mucho 

para mí, porque has dejado de ser un hombre» (p. 854). Augusta exagera. Piensa probablemente así 

en virtud de la situación en que se halla. Orozco decide ayudar a Federico, su rival, el hombre a quien 

debería odiar. Pero es que ignora que Federico es el amante de su mujer. 

Federico considera la posibilidad de abrirle él mismo los ojos a Orozco. Sólo retrocede al decirle 

la Peri: «¿De manera que tú mismo acusarás a la que te quiere tanto?» (p. 863). Finalmente será él 

quien se sacrifique (matándose), pero vemos que también pasó por su cabeza la idea de sacrificar a 

Augusta, pues sacrificarla sería el delatarla: señalarla como víctima culpable a su marido. 

La Peri propone a Federico que acepte la ayuda económica de Augusta: «Me parece una atrocidad 

que pases tantas amarguras teniendo esa amiga tan ricachona» (p. 864). A Federico tal idea le espanta. 

Aceptar dinero de Augusta sería ponerse él mismo en la situación del chulo explotador de la Peri, de 

quien ella dice: «Cuentas de sastre, cuentas de café, cuentas de la Taurina y cuentas de la santísima 

carandona de su madre. Todo lo tengo que pagar yo, y me voy cansando, como hay Dios» (p. 861). En 

tal contexto, Augusta se confunde con la prostituta. Por otra parte, Augusta, para Federico, satisface 

su imaginación y sus sentidos, pero no su corazón. La relación íntima, amistosa, la tiene él con la 

Peri. Los papeles de las dos mujeres están así como trastocados. A Augusta corresponde el papel 

que normalmente se asigna a la meretriz. Todo esto ilustra lo que podríamos llamar una ley del 

inconsciente masculino: la mujer que engaña a su esposo o, simplemente, la que se entrega a más de 

un hombre es una prostituta. 

Así, en Lo prohibido (1884-1885), José María, amante de Eloísa, no se anima a desposarla tras la 

muerte del marido de ella. Eloísa percibe muy bien los temores del hombre: 

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-Yo leo en ti -prosiguió-; me meto en tu interior, y veo lo que en él pasa. Tú dices: «Esta mujer 

no puede ser la esposa de un hombre honrado; esta mujer no puede hacerme un hogar, una familia, 

que es lo que yo quiero. Esta tía ..., porque así me llamarás, lo sé, caballero; esta tía no se somete, 

es demasiado autónoma...» Dime si no es ésta la pura verdad. Háblame con tanta franqueza como 

yo te hablo. 

La verdad que ella descubría, desbordándose en mí, salió caudalosa a mis labios. No la pude 

contener, y le dije: 

-Lo que has hablado es el Evangelio, mujer. 97 

Es un gran acierto de Galdós el representar en el amante, precisamente el amante, la actitud 

escandalizada del hombre en general ante la adúltera. Nadie, en efecto, más sensible que el seductor 

(con frecuencia atraído por la mujer de otro, o sea por lo prohibido ) a la infidelidad femenina, que 

repetidamente tiene ocasión de comprobar. En la caída de ella, vería el seductor -el amante- una 

confirmación de sus prevenciones respecto a la mujer. De ahí su inseguridad y el deseo de mantenerse 

distante (renunciando al matrimonio). Por eso, pese a su responsabilidad en el adulterio, el amante 

extrema su rigor con la mujer, quien se le aparece como una prostituta (una tía ). 

Tiene también interés que sea Malibrán y no el marido, Orozco, quien descubre los amores 

clandestinos de Augusta. Allí donde el marido se abstiene de los deberes que la sociedad de machos le 

adjudica (vigilar a la mujer, castigarla si ella lo engaña), otros hombres se encargan de esta misión. Así 

entendido, para la mujer no hay escape. Aunque el marido fuera tolerante, otros hombres (piénsese 

también en los esfuerzos de Infante, en La incógnita , encaminados en el mismo sentido) se cuidarán 

de descubrir y proclamar la «falta» de la mujer a fin de ponerla en su sitio; o sea, de retirarla del 

lugar honorable de las mujeres decentes, fieles a sus maridos. Malibrán será el primero en pensar -y 

decir- que Augusta mantiene a Federico (como la puta a su chulo). La relación extramatrimonial, en 

la sociedad de machos, sólo puede existir a un nivel degradado, por más que Augusta -la mujer- se 

esfuerce en enaltecerla y trate de convertirla en una relación burguesa, estable, ordenada. 

Entiéndase bien. No es que Malibrán descubra casualmente los amores de Augusta, sino que la 

ha estado espiando. Malibrán es exponente de la sociedad masculina, que vigila y controla los 

movimientos de la mujer. Este influjo social es tan fuerte que difícilmente un hombre puede resistirse 

97 Lo prohibido , Madrid, Castalia, 1971, pp. 247-248. 

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a él, y así Orozco y el mismo amante sucumben a los prejuicios de las gentes de su sexo. Cierto, 

sobre el amante recae no sólo la animadversión, sino también la envidia: envidia de aquel -más audaz, 

menos inhibido- que destruye un tabú. Pero la mujer seducida no volverá ya a ocupar el estrato social 

y moral que antes poseía. Está ya irremisiblemente deshonrada. Augusta no advierte esto. Su postura, 

sin embargo, anacrónica en su tiempo, lo es mucho menos hoy, sobre todo en algunas sociedades 

distintas de la española. 

La estrecha relación existente entre Orozco y Federico se ve muy bien en la Jornada IV (esc. XIII). 

Viera tiene una alucinación, en la cual se le aparece Orozco, con quien dialoga. Orozco, entonces -su 

sombra-, no es tanto un ser independiente cuanto una parte del propio Federico, y lo que representa 

es su conciencia moral: «bajo estas apariencias insustanciales escondo una austeridad de principios 

que a mí mismo me asusta cuando atentamente la considero. ¡No faltaría más sino que pretendieras 

tú monopolizar la práctica de una moral rígida!» (p. 872). La Sombra de Orozco muestra conocer 

la ayuda económica que la Peri presta a Federico, y ello sin que nadie se lo haya dicho: «¿Acaso lo 

has pensado, lo has discurrido tú, sin que te lo dijera nadie? ( La Sombra contesta afirmativamente 

con la cabeza )» (p. 873). Siendo la Sombra una parte de Federico, nada hay de extraño: la Sombra 

conoce todo lo que Federico conoce. El diálogo es en realidad un monólogo, donde el amante trata de 

disculparse. Se refiere al lazo puro, pese a apariencias en contrario, que hay entre él y la Peri. Vemos 

en esto el deseo de librar la relación hombre-mujer de toda connotación de lascivia. Existe aquí una 

concepción negativa de la sexualidad. Sexualidad e intimidad son incompatibles: «Entre Leonor y yo 

hay un lazo moral, que será, visto desde fuera, muy feo, pero que por dentro es de lo más puro, créelo, 

de lo más puro que puede existir. Los amores van por otro lado, ¡ay!, amores sin raíces, como los que 

contraemos con las mujeres de vida ligera, para distraernos y engañar las penas» (p. 873). De modo 

rotundo, Augusta se asocia ahora con una prostituta. Federico es en el fondo incapaz, respecto a la 

mujer, de salir de la famosa dicotomía: o prostituta o virgen. Huyendo de la prostituta la transforma 

en una virgen; pero no puede impedir que la virgen, o quien la reemplaza, la casada -el otro paradigma 

femenino en la sociedad cristiana-, se le aparezca como una prostituta. Este grave atentado -o falta de 

adaptación- a la realidad impide a Federico ser feliz, y lo convierte en un hombre dividido, desgarrado. 

Dice también Federico a la Sombra: «Porque tú debes triunfar y yo debo sucumbir» (p. 873). Federico 

debe sucumbir a manos de su conciencia moral, proyectada ahora en Orozco. 

Alejada la Sombra, Federico no se atreve a ir a ver a la Peri, su confidente: «De noche, no puedo; no 

sé ver en ella a mi amiga querida. A estas horas encontraré la casa toda llena de... hombres» (p. 874). 

La visión de la sexualidad lasciva debe borrarse totalmente a fin de que la confidencia sea posible. 

69


Pero con la mujer «honrada de noche» (Augusta) no puede tampoco Federico consolarse: «ambas me 

cierran sus puertas en las horas de mayor soledad y tristeza» (p. 874). Es la mujer en general -reducida 

por Federico a dos únicos tipos opuestos- la que lo abandona, pues ninguna unión plena se lleva a cabo 

con esos dos tipos extremos. Falta la mujer que sería resultado de una conjunción de ambos; o sea, 

la verdadera mujer. De Augusta piensa ahora su amante: «¡Pobre mujer! Alucinada por el amor, has 

perdido de vista la ley de la dignidad, o, al menos, desconoces en absoluto la dignidad del varón» (p. 

874). De nuevo Federico se identifica con el marido ofendido, cuya dignidad la esposa infiel mancha. 

La conciencia moral se sobrepone otra vez a la vida instintiva del personaje. 

Un segundo diálogo con la Sombra se produce poco después. Federico por fin, en su alucinación, 

confiesa que engaña a Orozco, y por eso no puede aceptar su dinero, La Sombra responde: 

«Empequeñeces el asunto subordinando su resolución a las fragilidades de una mujer. Elevémonos 

sobre las ideas comunes y secundarias. Vivamos en las ideas primordiales y en los grandes 

sentimientos de fraternidad» (p. 876). Dada la identificación de Federico con Orozco, las palabras 

pueden ser de cualquiera de los dos. Expresan una idea -o creencia- típicamente masculina. No sin 

razón piensa Sobejano que Orozco y Federico son el Hombre frente a Augusta y la Peri, la Mujer: 

«parece como sí Galdós hubiese querido sólo poner de relieve la trágica oposición entre el hombre y la 

mujer; aquél, siempre insatisfecho y anhelante de perfección, de justificación moral; ésta, satisfecha 

siempre con la porción de felicidad sensual y sentimental que la vida le concede o que ella arranca a la 

vida. A una parte están Tomás Orozco y Federico Viera; a la parte opuesta, Augusta Cisneros y Leonor, 

'la Peri'» 98 . Claro que Augusta tiene, según vimos, unas exigemcias que van mucho más allá de lo 

puramente instintivo o carnal; pero, desde la perspectiva del hombre (aunque no, quizás, de Galdós), 

no hay duda: la mujer es materia, instinto, sobre la cual los dos hombres -el Hombre- se elevan a las 

regiones puras del espíritu, supuestamente masculino en su esencia. A la relación pura, fraternal, de 

Federico con la Peri sucede la relación fraternal con el hombre. La gradación es evidente. De la mujer 

lasciva se pasa a la mujer pura y, finalmente, dejada atrás la mujer, se pasa a un ámbito exclusivamente 

masculino: el ámbito del espíritu, de la pura razón. Es ése el mundo a que Orozco ha tendido siempre, 

pero para subir al cual la mujer le resultaba una carga. Sólo asimilándosela totalmente, inculcándole 

sus principios, podía la mujer ser aceptada (ser redimida). Pero Orozco fracasa en su empeño. La 

mujer (Augusta) revela su naturaleza instintiva indomable, insaciable: su verdadera naturaleza. 

98 «Forma literaria y sensibilidad social en La incógnita y Realidad de Galdós», en Forma literaria 

y sensibilidad social , Madrid, Gredos, 1967, p. 98. Publicado originalmente en Revista Hispánica 

Moderna , 30 (1964). 

70


Ricardo Gullón, aunque tímidamente, hace en este punto una observación muy justa: «Hay una 

hipótesis, ciertamente aventurada, que no voy a defender, pero sí a presentar: en la relación entre 

Orozco y Viera se trasluce un velado tinte de homosexualismo» 99 . Personalmente yo extendería la 

observación de Gullón, para aplicarla no sólo al caso de los dos hombres, Federico y Tomás, sino 

de la sociedad en que viven -sociedad de machos-, donde se trasluce también un «velado tinte de 

homosexualismo». La obra de Galdós refleja muy bien este hecho en esas escenas iniciales de la 

reunión en casa de Orozco. Hay allí sólo hombres; exceptuando a la madre de uno de ellos, la única 

mujer es Augusta, la esposa del anfitrión. ¿Dónde están, si las tienen, las mujeres de los otros hombres? 

Por otra parte, en la Jornada IV se ve que la Peri tiene tratos con varios de los personajes subalternos de 

la obra: Villalonga, Malibrán, posiblemente Cisneros y Monte Cármenes. Se insiste así en la pintura 

de una sociedad machista: hombres que nunca vemos acompañados de sus mujeres, o de mujeres 

simplemente, sino para quienes la mujer es puro objeto sexual, y, como tal, un ser degradado. Es 

entre hombres sólo, no entre hombres y mujeres, donde surgen poderosos lazos afectivos e intereses 

comunes. El caso de Federico y la Peri es la excepción que confirma la regla, pues la relación de 

compañerismo entre ellos sólo es posible tras haber previamente asexuado a la mujer. 

Pero, en su diálogo con Viera, la Sombra expone también nociones verdaderamente revolucionarias: 

«Has dicho que me habías ofendido quitándome 'mi' mujer. ¿Qué quiere decir eso? Augusta no es 

mía. Considera que en esta esfera de las ideas puras adonde nos hemos subido los seres todos gozan 

de omnímoda libertad. Nadie es de nadie. La propiedad es un concepto que se refiere a las cosas; 

pero a nada más... Los términos 'mío' y 'tuyo' no rezan con las personas. Nadie pertenece a nadie, y 

Augusta, como todo ser, dueña es de sí misma» (pp. 876-877). Aquí sí que Orozco puede considerarse 

como exponente del «hombre nuevo» (y lo mismo Federico, que asiente, y dice haber pensado las 

mismas cosas). Sí, aquí se sientan los postulados de una nueva moral. Sin embargo, no nos engañemos. 

Más que altruistas, las palabras de la Sombra son de carácter defensivo. No es tan fácil suprimir las 

pasiones, los instintos, y remontarse a esas regiones etéreas. A lo sumo es posible para la conciencia, 

no para el inconsciente, formado hereditariamente sobre un fondo de experiencias ancestrales 100 . Por 

99 Galdós, novelista moderno , Madrid, Taurus, 1960, p. 219. 

100 «Los sucesos del Yo parecen, al principio, no ser susceptibles de constituir una herencia; 

pero cuando se repiten con frecuencia e intensidad suficientes en individuos de generaciones 

sucesivas, se transforman, por decirlo así, en sucesos del Ello, cuyas impresiones quedan conservadas 

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eso Federico se suicida. Por eso Orozco no podrá evitar sentir rencor frente a su mujer y considerarla 

como un ser inferior. La idea de deshonra, que la sociedad proyecta sobre la esposa infiel y el marido 

engañado, es sin duda injusta. Fácilmente criticable por la razón, no resulta, sin embargo, tan fácil 

deshacerse de ella en los estratos más profundos de la personalidad. Augusta, al final, aparece como 

un ser irredimible. Los dos hombres la abandonan: uno matándose; otro rechazándola, renunciando a 

vivir con ella. La sociedad es más fuerte que todos, y por eso quienes intentaron afrontarla (Federico 

y Augusta) o evadirla (Orozco) acaban siendo castigados: su destino será la muerte o la soledad (una 

muerte espiritual). 

Hay que ver, no obstante, que antes de que surja el adulterio, y con él el pretexto para rechazar a la 

mujer, Orozco ya, incapaz de asimilársela, la veía como una suerte de enemigo. Al menos en lo que 

se refiere a su naturaleza carnal (o sea, su supuesta esencia femenina), de la que debía alejarse: «Pero 

si tú -dice Federico- apenas haces vida marital con ella. Lo sé, tonto, lo sé... Tu perfección moral te 

ha elevado sobre las miserias del mundo fisiológico» (p. 878). Como Federico, Orozco es incapaz 

de conciliar carne y espíritu. A las palabras de Federico, responde la Sombra: «¡Simple, confundes a 

Augusta con la 'Peri'!» De nuevo aquí la sexualidad de la mujer se hace sinónimo de lascivia. 

El deseo que Augusta tiene de dominar a Federico se manifiesta muy bien en la jornada V: «debes 

someterte a mi voluntad, grandísimo pillo. ( Acariciándole .) ¿Qué tienes tú que hacer más que vivir 

exclusivamente para mí? Yo soy para ti el mundo entero, y agradarme y tenerme contenta es tú unico 

fin» (p. 879). O sea, huyendo del dominio que el esposo intenta establecer sobre ella, la mujer busca 

otro hombre con quien pueda invertir las perspectivas: «Si quieres que no riñamos, di a todo que sí y 

déjate guiar, muñeco» (p. 881). Términos como este de muñeco , o tonto o bobalicón , aplicados 

al amante, acuden frecuentemente a los labios de Augusta. No nos la imaginamos llamando así a su 

marido. El respeto que siente por él es demasiado grande para permitirle tal tono. Pero ese mismo 

respeto la aleja de Orozco, situado para ella en otro mundo; un mundo inasequible. 

El afán de dominación sobre el amante se expresa también en el hecho de que Augusta tiene celos 

furiosos de la Peri. Quiere que Federico la ame sólo a ella: «Perdis, loco, botarate, ¿me quieres mucho? 

Dime que no amas ni puedes amar a nadie más que a mí» (p. 882). Se entiende así que Augusta se 

identifique con la Peri, a fin de que el amante no eche nada de menos en ella: «Tu amiga, tu 'Peri', soy 

yo y nadie más que yo» (p. 882). Federico: «Eres mi 'Perí', y mi no sé qué, y yo soy tu perdis y tu chulo, 

hereditariamente». Freud, El «Yo» y el «Ello» , Obras completas , Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 1948, 

1, 1225. 

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y tú qué sé yo qué... Cuando me prendan por estafador, ¿irás tú a llevarme la comida a la cárcel, chavala 

mía?» (p. 882). Augusta recoge con agrado estas palabras, que parecen indicar una debilitación de la 

conciencia moral en el hombre. Federico ahora es el anti-Orozco, y Augusta puede dar rienda suelta 

a deseos profundos, reprimidos: «Sí; me pongo mi mantón, y allá voy. Luego, cuando te suelten, nos 

iremos del bracete por esas calles, y entraremos en las tabernas, siempre juntitos, a beber unas copas...» 

No le molesta en absoluto la asociación de Federico con un chulo (y consiguientemente, de ella con 

una prostituta): «Recuerda que eres mi chulo, y que te llevo la comida a la cárcel» (p. 883). Pero 

aquí vemos también que el deseo de dominación de Augusta sobre Federico coexiste con el opuesto: 

deseo de ser dominada por el hombre. Dominada sexualmente, no intelectualmente. Dominada por 

un hombre al que, de otra parte, ella ayuda: hijo y padre a la vez. Con Tomás, en cambio, Augusta 

no puede ser una madre, o al menos así lo piensa. Tomás se le aparece como autosuficiente. Ella 

no comprende el fondo de debilidad que en él existe (que existe en todo hombre). Prefiere entonces 

amar a un hombre donde la debilidad, a causa de su pobreza, es manifiesta. Ante ese hombre puede 

someterse, porque en el fondo no lo considera distinto de ella, superior a ella. Ante ese hombre puede 

someterse porque piensa que, a su vez, puede sometérselo. 

Pero Federico la defrauda; según vimos, su mentalidad, pese a las apariencias, está próxima a la de 

Orozco. En seguida reacciona contra las fantasías expuestas: «Mucho siento tener que decírtelo: tu 

sentido de la dignidad es muy incompleto; tus ideas morales no se ajustan a la razón» (p. 883). 

Augusta, incapaz de entender a su marido, piensa que es un loco. Responde el amante: «A todo 

el que piensa o hace algo extraordinario le llaman loco» (p. 884). La diferencia -y barrera- entre 

Federico y Augusta, entre el hombre y la mujer, está más que clara. Federico, para Augusta, acaba 

transformándose en otro loco: de Quijote -caballero andante- lo trata ella (p. 884). La ruptura se 

produce inevitablemente. 

Augusta, luego, expresará dolor por el hecho de que Federico, al morir, no le dirigió ninguna palabra 

de ternura: «Parecía que me despreciaba...» (p. 893). Recuerda también que él la llamó por el nombre 

de la Peri, la prostituta: «me dio un nombre ofensivo, ultrajante, el apodo de esa mujerzuela» (p. 

893). Repetimos. la mentalidad del amante corresponde a la que sería más lógico esperar del marido. 

Marido y amante están muy próximos; más que como rivales, aparecen unidos en su desprecio común 

por la mujer adúltera, asimilable a una prostituta. Federico, al morir, pide perdón a Dios, pero no pide 

perdón a Augusta, que se deshonró por él, y ella se lo reprocha: «¿Por qué no me había de pedir perdón 

también a mí, aunque no fuera sino por este rastro de deshonra que tras sí deja?» (p. 893). Augusta 

no tiene derecho al perdón, tan abominable resulta, para el hombre, su conducta. 

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En la tremenda crisis que padece, Augusta no sabe si confesó su falta al marido o simplemente lo 

soñó: «fui al despacho de Tomás y llamé a la puerta. El dijo desde dentro: '¿Quién es?' Y yo respondí: 

'Soy la 'Peri' '» (p. 894). Luego (p. 900), por boca de él nos enteramos de que efectivamente ella 

fue a verlo, calenturienta y trastornada, y pronunció palabras ininteligibles. La intentada confesión 

respondería a un deseo profundo de la mujer: deseo de comprensión. Ese deseo que Federico no 

supo satisfacer. Vemos también que Augusta se identifica ella misma con la Peri, aceptando así - 

aunque sea inconscientemente- el insulto de Federico, así como la estimación social de los hombres 

sobre la mujer adúltera. La confesión al marido tendría por objeto verse liberada, mediante la actitud 

comprensiva del hombre, de esa adversa connotación moral que le adjudicaron. Augusta trata de 

recobrar su identidad perdida de mujer honrada: «ha quedado en mí una oscura reminiscencia de lo 

que me atormentó la idea de ser yo la 'Peri', ese trasto, y de los esfuerzos que hice para no ser ella, 

sino quien soy. ¡Lucha espantosa entre un nombre y mi conciencia!» (p. 894). Augusta se preocupa 

ahora por cosas que antes no le preocupaban (o le preocupaban menos). Diríamos que, finalmente, 

el hombre, rechazando la instintividad de Augusta, la fuerza a encararse con su conciencia. Y en 

cuanto la conciencia se presenta como una suerte de atributo o creación masculina, acatarla supone 

acatar las leyes del hombre, y asimismo el perdón ha de venir del hombre. Para disculparse, Augusta 

necesita que el hombre la disculpe. Así, paradójicamente, para ser quien es necesita salir de sí misma, 

alienarse. Augusta, la mujer, es lo que el hombre la llama: prostituta o mujer honrada. El hombre es el 

forjador de su identidad, y ella, pese a sus esfuerzos, es incapaz de labrar su identidad por sí misma, 

de rechazar por sí misma la injusta acusación de prostituta. 

En la penúltima escena, marido y mujer se encaran. Orozco espera que ella confiese, callando por 

su parte que él ya conoce la verdad. Orozo estaría dispuesto a perdonar a su mujer, si ella, por su 

propia voluntad, confesara. En definitiva, se trata una vez más de atraer a Augusta a su modo de 

vida, de negarle personalidad independiente: «Yo te enseñaré la manera de triunfar, si te confías a mí; 

pero por entero; confianza ciega, absoluta. Revélame todo lo que sientes, y después que yo lo sepa... 

hablaremos» (p. 896). El Horacio de Tristana se expresará de un modo semejante: «Entrégate a mí 

sin reserva» 101 . La mujer no debe tener secretos para el hombre, a fin de que éste pueda en todo 

momento ejercer un control sobre ella. Por otra parte, Orozco no dice que la vaya a perdonar; reserva 

su juicio para después que ella hable. Augusta naturalmente siente miedo: «¡Confesar! Esto me aterra. 

Si él fuera más hombre y menos santo, tal vez...» (p. 896). 

101 Obras completas , V, 1576. 

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Orozco ha de luchar contra sus sentimientos. Para él Augusta es una parte de su ser (sólo así puede 

aceptarla, amarla), y separarse de ella es, por tanto, como verse privado de una parte de sí mismo. 

Habla, en efecto, de una amputación: «El desgarrón de este sentimiento, que me arranco para echarlo 

en el pozo de las miserias humanas, ¡cómo me duele! Al tirar, me llevo la mitad del alma, y temo 

que mi serenidad claudique. ¡cómo me duele esta amputación!» (p. 897). Se consuela, sin embargo, 

pensando que sin ella le será más fácil remontarse a las puras regiones del espíritu; prueba de que ve - 

y veía- a Augusta como un ser excesivamente carnal, necesitado de purificación: «Quizá será un bien 

esta viudez que me espera; quizás este lazo me ataba demasiado a las bajezas carnales...» (p. 897). Al 

verse a sí mismo como viudo, Orozco da simbólicamente muerte a Augusta. En un plano profundo, 

su conducta no difiere, pues, de la del marido calderoniano. 

Pregunta luego Tomás a Augusta: «¿No te acusas de ninguna acción contraria al honor, a las leyes 

divinas y humanas?» (p. 897). El ascetismo de Orozco no le ha conducido a una moral muy distinta 

de la del mundo en que vive. El honor queda visto como conjunto de leyes divinas y humanas, 

no como algo interno: el sentimiento de la propia bondad. El «independiente» Orozco acata así las 

leyes sociales; él también, como Augusta y Federico, es víctima de la sociedad: esa sociedad cuyos 

prejuicios llevan a los tres a una muerte real o espiritual. Augusta responde: «Me confieso a Dios, que 

ve mi pensamiento; a ti, no...» (p. 897). Podríamos añadir: a ti, no, en cuanto representante de esas 

leyes humanas y supuestamente divinas que invocas. Pero se confesaría a él si lo creyera capaz de 

comprensión, capaz de crítica e independencia frente a esas leyes que exigen el castigo de la mujer. 

O si lo creyera simplemente capaz de dolor, de sentirse afectado por lo ocurrido: «Si viera en él la 

expresión humana del dolor por la ofensa que le hice, yo no mentiría, y después de confesada la 

verdad, le pediría perdón» (p. 898). Augusta, de nuevo, es incapaz de adivinar la tragedia interior del 

marido. Que éste se la encubra a sí mismo no debe ser necesariamente causa de que ella no la vea. 

Ninguno de los dos cede en este momento crucial; ninguno da el paso decisivo en el acercamiento al 

otro. El disimula su dolor, su conmoción interior. Ella se deja engañar por la apariencia. No hay duda 

que Orozco está interiormente turbado, y en un aparte tiene el valor de confesárselo: «La conmoción 

interior es grande» (p. 898). Pero la confesión de este sentimiento a la mujer no se produce. No sólo 

es, pues, Augusta la que no confiesa. Los dos callan; los dos callan sus verdaderos sentimientos. 

La efervescencia interior de Orozco se manifiesta también en estas líneas, dichas para sí: «¿Por qué 

no te impongo el castigo que mereces, malvada mujer?» (p. 898). La acusación es clarísima ( castigo , 

malvada ). Si Orozco se resiste a dar este castigo, no es tanto por generosidad cuanto por hacer frente 

a las pasiones, a los instintos. El abandono a lo instintivo es el mal, el mal por excelencia, para Orozco. 

75


Un individuo así se encuentra, sin duda, en situación muy difícil de entablar una relación íntima con 

otro, pues tal relación no puede producirse sin frecuentes descargas instintivas. No es tanto Orozco el 

que tendría que salvar a Augusta cuanto ésta a él, haciéndole salir a flote la instintividad reprimida. 

Orozco, finalmente, es un ser empobrecido; acaba solo, sin mujer, pero además su personalidad, sin 

sitio para los instintos, ha sido como aherrojada en una camisa de fuerza: «Despierto de un sueño en 

que sentí reverdecer mis amortiguadas pasiones, y vuelvo a mi rutina de fórmulas comunes, dentro 

de la cual fabrico, a solas conmigo, mi deliciosa vida espiritual» (p. 898). 

Debemos aún decir que el tono de Orozco, aparentemente heroico, suena a veces tan grotesco que es 

difícil no creer que Galdós -pese a sus conocidas simpatías por el krausismo- percibe las limitaciones 

del personaje. Por ejemplo: «La muy tonta -dice Orozco por Augusta- se ha perdido mi perdón, que 

es bastante perder, y la probabilidad de regenerarse» (p. 960). Habría aquí, o mucho me equivoco, 

una crítica implícita de la actitud de hombre tan sesudo. 102 

El monólogo final de Orozco lo presenta remontándose a las alturas celestiales en un deseo de 

escapar de este bajo mundo, el mundo de las pasiones e instintos. Pero no es tan fácil liberarse de 

las pasiones, y éstas irrumpen cuando menos se piensa. Más aún, el impulso por ahogarlas resulta a 

menudo contraproducente: «Me había propuesto expeler y dispersar estos pensamientos; pero no es 

fácil. Se apoderan de mi mente con despótico empuje, y tal es su fuerza plasmadora, que no dudo 

puedan convertirse en imágenes perceptibles, a poco que yo lo estimulara» (p. 899). 

Efectivamente, los pensamientos de Orozco sobre lo ocurrido, de que en vano intenta desasirse, 

cobran ahora tal fuerza que la imagen del amante se le aparece con la nitidez de un personaje real, 

Lo que quisimos reprimir se transforma en una alucinación: «Si no te calentaras los cascos dormido 

y despierto, no vendría yo a molestarte» (p. 900), dice la Imagen. Federico -o sea, el propio Orozco, 

quien en su turbación se representa al amante- se expresa así: «reconstruiste, al par de la terrible 

escena de mi muerte, las escenas amorosas que la precedieron» (p. 900). La nulidad de los esfuerzos 

de Orozco por borrar la imagen de lo sucedido, resulta patente. Confiesa: «Es verdad: ayer y hoy, 

a pesar de mis esfuerzos por encastillarme en un vivir superior, no he podido menos de ser a ratos 

tan hombre como cualquiera». Tan pobre hombre como cualquiera, precisaríamos. Se advierte así el 

error de Augusta, y los que como ella piensan, al juzgar a Orozco un superhombre. Orozco estaba 

tan necesitado de ayuda como el pobre Federico. En su marido, Augusta hubiera podido ejercitar, 

102 Clarín formuló una observación similar: «a veces parece que el autor se burla de la bondad de 

su héroe y le convierte en caricatura». Op. cit. , p. 264. 

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tanto como en el amante, sus ansias protectoras y maternales, Si esto era difícil, a causa de la capa 

de orgullo y autosuficiencia de Orozco, vimos que el amante no poseía menos orgullo, no se aferraba 

menos a un riguroso ideal de vida, que mantenía a raya los instintos (y consiguientemente a la mujer, 

asimilada a ellos). Federico era tan incapaz como Orozco de establecer una relación satisfactoria - 

es decir, completa- con la mujer. Tomás atribuye rectamente la muerte del amante a «estímulos del 

honor y de la conciencia» (p. 901), y, al considerarlo uno de los suyos y darle finalmente un abrazo, 

muestra que idénticos motivos son los que operan en él. Lo que se excluye, en uno y otro caso, es la 

rica instintividad de la vida, que la mujer representa. 

SUNY at Buffalo 

77

Máximo Manso: The molde and the hechura 103 

H. L. Boudreau 


No reader of Galdós remains long unaware that the important figures in his works bear names with 

both a real and a metaphoric dimension. Often the authorial comment thus made is obvious but ironic 

(Don Inocencio, Doña Cándida), sometimes it is clear and direct (Benigna, Víctor), and on occasion 

the implied comparison is openly explained by the author (Torquemada) or a character (Licurgo). 

Instances are not lacking when the symbolism is so unambiguous as to be anti-esthetic (José María 

Cruz, Electra), but then some of these seemingly unsubtle ones (Cruz del Águila) go on to form the 

basis of the most complex of thematic and structural metaphoric developments. The Shoemaker study 

of the character of José Ido del Sagrario reveals how elaborate and meaningful such metaphor can 

be even in the case of a secondary character 104 . Máximo Manso's name is no exception to such 

onomastics, and critics have known this from the beginning, at least in a general way. A closer look, 

however, may reveal more than has been suspected. 

If the Diccionario de la Real Academia defines manso as « benigno y suave » and as « sosegado 

», it also gives us a sixth acceptance that includes « buey que sirve de guía a los demás ». The latter 

can serve as a point of departure toward the enlargement of the term as Galdós conceived it within 

the context of his novel. The modesty of dictionaries notwithstanding, a popular acceptance of the 

word (obviously an extension of the buey -not masculine- suggestion) is «cuckold» or « no bravo 

»; that is, one who is taken advantage of or used by others. Unamuno saw this clearly when he re- 

elaborated the Galdós material in Niebla . The Augusto Pérez/Eugenia/Mauricio triangle is closely 

modeled on Manso/Irene/Manuel. 105 

103 A minimally altered version of this paper was presented 

at the Galdós Seminar, conducted under the auspices of 

the Modern Language Association at its Annual Meeting. 

December 28, 1974 in New York City. 

104 William G. Shoemaker, «Galdós' Literary Creativity: D. José Ido del Sagrario », in Estudios 

sobre Galdós (Valencia: Editorial Castalia, 1970). 

105 Ricardo Gullón, « El amigo Manso : Nivola galdosiana », in Técnicas de Galdós ( Madrid: Taurus 

Ediciones , 1970), p. 80. 

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The «cuckold» meaning is, however, richer than this might suggest. It will be remembered that when 

Manso accompanied Irene and the children to the theater to see some Christmas plays, one of those 

witnessed was a travesty entitled El Nacimiento del Hijo de Dios , of which the protagonist-narrator 

says, « lo más repugnante de aquella farsa increíble era un pastor zafio y bestial, pretendiente a la 

mano de María, y que en la escena del templo y en el resto de la obra se permitía groseras libertades 

de lenguaje a propósito de la mansedumbre de San José. » 106 

Five years after the publication of El amigo Manso , Galdós returned, with Fortunata y Jacinta , 

to the matter of the mansedumbre of San José in the naming and imagined cuckoldry of José Ido 

del Sagrario 107 in a novel in which the triangle situation is echoed with variation after variation in 

a series of trios. With his marriage to Fortunata, Maxi invites the cuckolding which soon follows, 

resulting in a pregnancy he imagines to have a supernatural cause. The all but identical first names 

of Manso and Rubín (Máximo/Maximiliano) is suggestive. Part of the novelist's interest in each case 

-despite the differences between the two characters- is to satirize with the inflated first name and 

then to portray men who, in important senses, live on the fringes of life and come to grief when 

they enter into it without full understanding of their own natures and those of others. As their stories 

begin Maximiliano and Máximo are living the «life of the mind» (pharmacy/philosophy), cared for 

by a mother figure (Doña Lupe/Doña Javiera). They then enter the affective world through interest 

of an amorous nature (although not fully understood as such because of their unworldliness) in an 

inappropriate woman (Fortunata/Irene) whose natural affections turn to a man more suited to her 

emotional needs (Juanito/Manuel). The competition is unequal and both Maximiliano and Máximo 

are defeated, whereupon they withdraw once more from the world, the former into lofty, rationalistic 

madness, the latter into death, i.e., the nonexistence with which the novel began. Maximiliano, in 

his final wise madness, says: « No contamos con la Naturaleza... Protestamos contra sus lecciones 

admirables, que no entendemos, y cuando queremos que nos obedezca, nos coge y nos estrella, como 

el mar estrella a los que pretenden gobernarlo » 108 . Máximo begins his story with: « Yo no existo 

» (9). In both characters Galdós is portraying the conflict between the natural and the rational and 

the two men share both real and figurative mansedumbre . The similarity of names having led us to 

106 Benito Pérez Galdós, El amigo Manso (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1955), p. 65. Future 

references to this edition will be cited parenthetically in the text. 

107 Shoemaker, p. 117. 

108 Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata y Jacinta (Madrid: Ediciones Hernando, 1968), p. 1036. 

79


think of the two men in comparative terms, we can now see that they are, in fact, variations on a single 

character configuration that recurs in Galdós' work. The structuralistic: resonances of such an insight 

can then lead us to group other characters in the novelas contemporáneas as multiple incarnations 

of a single actant . 109 

When, with his first words, Manso claims « Yo no existo » (9) and shortly thereafter « carezco de 

buena barba » (12) 110 , the metaphoric elaboration of his name begins, just as the ramifications of 

the word Miau begin their growth in Chapter I of that novel and by the end have branched out into the 

entire world of the work, taking on more and more meaning with each new use. Leaving aside, for the 

moment, the narrator's relationship to the novel's creator, it is illuminating to note that the character's 

novelistic «life» begins when, for the first time, he ceases being a philosopher. He leaves his vida 

sosegada ( sosegada = mansa ) for the purpose of attempting a direct and personal impact on society 

through his pupil Manuel (= «God with us»). Very shortly, with the arrival of José María Manso 

and family from Cuba, the spatial focus of the novel moves to that household, to remain there until 

sosiego returns after the marriage of Manuel and Irene. It is typical of Galdós' novelistic structures 

for the action to begin with the introduction of an agent of change into the central character's life, his 

or her true nature being a given which the author tells us about but does not dramatize. The action 

of the work then portrays the character struggling to achieve what will be seen as impossible, either 

because of his own true nature or that of society -or a combination of the two. We are not shown 

109 The term is that of A. J. Greimas in his Sémantique structurale (Paris, 1966) and is discussed in 

Frederic Jameson's The Prison-House of Language (Princeton, 1972), pp. 123-129. Although separate 

attempts have been made to relate both Máximo and Maximiliano to Galdós' personal life (without 

seeing a relationship between the two characters) such possibilities would not seem to relate to the 

concerns of the present study. (See Walter T. Pattison, « El amigo Manso and El amigo Galdós », 

Anales Galdosianos , II, (1967), 135-153, and J. C. Ullman and G. H. Allison, «Galdós as Psychiatrist 

in Fortunata y Jacinta », Anales Galdosianos , IX, (1974), 7-36. 

110 Suggestive evidence that Galdós intends this statement to relate to mansedumbre (lack of virility, 

vital force) can be found in his El caballero encantado (Chapter 3) when the following words, with a 

contrary intent, are said of the father of the Infantes de Lara: « Eso es un hombre, eso es un caballero, 

un español de cuerpo entero y con toda la barba ». ( Obras completas , ed. F. C. Sáinz de Robles, 

2nd ed. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1951), VI, p. 230). The novelist is, of course, using a traditional symbolism 

already prominent in the Poema de mío Cid . 

80


Villaamil being appreciated, or Fortunata being vulgar, or Torquemada being cruel. We must take 

these matters on faith and then observe the character in action coping with the opposite condition or 

the need to change. So it is with Máximo Manso. 

Manso's former life is described by Doña Javiera: « ¡Un hombre sin trapicheos, sin ningún vicio, 

metidito toda la mañana en su casa; un hombre que no sale más que dos veces: tempranito, a clase; por 

la tarde, a paseo, y que gasta poco, se cuida de la salud y no hace tonterías! » (18). Curiously, however, 

the novel proper portrays him as almost exclusively concerned with trivia involving principally his 

brother's housebold. Why should this be so? 

The narrator calls José María « Bendito José » (72) when speaking of his heading a political party 

called the Mantistas , but Don José protests, « Todo me lo han hecho..., yo no me muevo... Yo 

no busco a nadie; me buscan » (73). This mansedumbre is, of course, not valid -as the narrator 

recognized when ironically using the adjective bendito with its double suggestion- but Galdós has 

not baptized his character « José » without intent. The Manso brothers' relationship to Manuel 

Peña is different but pointedly parallel, Máximo providing the rational formation and José María the 

practical: first education, then life. The end of the novel makes very clear that Manuel turns out to 

be the foster son of José, not of Máximo: 

¡Execrable ligereza la nuestra! Ella y él [Irene y Manuel] se amaban tiernamente. El amor, la 

juventud, la atmósfera social cargada de apetitos, lisonjas y vanidades, criaban en aquellas almas 

felices la ambición, desarrollándola conforme al uso moderno de este pecado, es decir, con las 

limitaciones de la moral casera y de las conveniencias. Esto era natural, como la salida del sol, y yo 

haría muy bien en guardar para otra ocasión mis refunfuños profesionales porque ni venían al caso 

ni hubieran producido más resultado que hacerme pasar por impertinente y pedante. Las purezas y 

refinamientos de moral caen en la vida de toda esta gente con una impropiedad cómica. Y no digo 

nada tratándose de la vida política, en la cual entró Manuel con pie derecho desde que recibió de sus 

electores el acta de diputado. Mi discípulo, con gran beneplácito de sus enemigos y secreto entusiasmo 

de su esposa, entraba en una esfera en la cual el devoto del bien, o se hace inmune, cubriéndose con 

máscara hipócrita, o cae redondo al suelo muerto de asfixia. 

(p. 221) 

It is José María, who has « El espíritu reconciliatorio » and who « todo lo transige » (85), advising 

Máximo to « abandonar de una vez para siempre las utopías y exageraciones, buscando en el ancho 

campo de mi saber una fórmula de transacción, una manera de reconciliar la teoría con el uso y el 

pensamiento con el hecho » (88). This much-referred-to characteristic of José María is later brought 

81


to bear on Máximo by Manuel when he persuades his mentor to stop at an unphilosophical buñolería 

at the unphilosophical hour of four A.M.: « Transacción... Procuremos conciliarlo todo, como dice 

su hermano de usted » (90). It is one of the many ironies of the novel that Máximo transige much 

more than he ever realizes, although he does speak of the problem on several occasions, particularly 

in the light of Manuel's duel (105). 

The height of Máximo's coming to terms with his society is in his consenting to speak at the velada 

along with any number of cursis before a popular audience. On this occasion Manuel, the man for 

the century 111 , triumphs, and Manso fails, whereupon his brother tells him, « Nunca serás nada... 

porque no estás nunca en situación. ¿Ves tu discurso de esta noche, que es práctico y filosófico y 

todo lo que quieras? Pues no ha gustado, ni entusiasmará nunca al público nada de lo que escribas, ni 

harás carrera, ni pasarás de triste catedrático, ni tendrás fama... Y tú, tú eres el que hace en mi casa 

propaganda de modestia ridícula, de ñoñerías filosóficas y de necedades metódicas » (125-126). 112 

The shifting mixtures of active and passive in the brothers Manso and in their relationship with 

Manuel reach their apogee in the triple courtship of Irene, in which, of course, the younger man 

cuckolds the two Mansos, each proceeding according to his established character: José María brutal 

and unscrupulous, Máximo timid and analytical, while Manuel merely acts with the natural vitality 

and drama of youth. Later Máximo laments that, unlike Manuel, he was not Adam but rather the 

methodical angel defending the gates of the paradise of reason (200). The role of Manuel, then, as 

simultaneous protegé and rival of both the Manso brothers is rather elaborately worked out as part of 

the mansedumbre motif of the novel. Irene's saying that the two brothers are « el día y la noche 

» (101) should not mislead us. Galdós has used such complex and superficially contradictory name 

symbolism elsewhere. The Miau manuscript reveals that the unloved Villaamil sisters, Luisa and 

Abelarda -the author's draft changes suggest it- take their names from the medieval lovers Héloïse 

and Abelard, despite the sex change and inappropriate relationship 113 . The irony of their relationship 

to Víctor, the unworthy man they both love, it thus expressed. For related artistic reasons Tristana, in 

the novel of the same name, is not called Isolda. 

111 « Parece que en él ha querido la Naturaleza hacer el hombre tipo de la época presente. Está cortado 

y moldeado para su siglo, y encaja en éste como encaja en una máquina su pieza principal » (129). 

112 One is reminded of the equally decisive climax in discurso form of a later Galdós novel, 

Torquemada en el Purgatorio . 

113 Robert J. Weber, The Miau Manuscript of Benito Pérez Galdós (Berkeley, 1964), p. 47. 

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The morning after Máximo discovers that Irene has given herself to Manuel, the narrator, having 

regained the emotional control that he had lost for the first time in his life, rationalizes in his class 

lecture that « El hombre de pensamiento descubre la verdad; pero quien goza de ella y utiliza sus 

celestiales dones es el hombre de acción, el hombre de mundo, que vive en las particularidades, en 

las contingencias, y en el ajetreo de los hechos comunes » (180). Indeed, the various mixtures of 

active and passive -continuation of the mansedumbre elaboration- become the very stuff of the 

novel, providing its vital principle. Every significant character reflects Galdós' preoccupation with 

mansedumbre , making the work a fabric of dependency/ independence, use/abuse, doing for and 

being done unto 114 . Manso, the thinker, paradoxically spends his novelistic life carrying out the 

everyday errands of his brother's household. José María, who can bend society to his will -he claims- 

by letting it use him, must turn to Máximo when a nodriza is needed for the new baby, Máximo 

meekly complies, inappropriate as the task is to his calling. The nodriza , in turn, becomes an image of 

use and abuse. The utter dependence upon her of both mother and child turns her into a kind of human 

cow whose entire family descends upon the Mansos to be fed, lodged, and humored, lest the nodriza 

leave the family without milk for the baby. When trouble arises, it is Manso who must amansar her 

father (214). The mansedumbre theme may, in fact, explain the inordinate amount of space given to 

the nodriza matter in the novel. It does not otherwise seem thematically integral. 

No better example of the parasitical, of the actively dependent, could be found than in the character 

of Doña Cándida, who, spends her vital energy inventing ruses for the use and abuse of others, and 

principally of the Manso family. The narrator is used by everyone. « ¡Cuándo acabarían mis dolorosos 

esfuerzos en pro de los demás!... Bienaventurado el que enciende una vela a la caridad y otra al 

egoísmo » (215). When Máximo is not running errands for his sister-in-law -in whose household 

he nevertheless becomes just as much a dependent as do Doña Cándida, Manuel, the nodriza and 

her family, and the political hangers-on around José María- he is solving the problems of others, 

amansando a Doña Javiera, Doña Cándida, his brother, Manuel, Irene, etc. The latter is herself a part 

of the paradoxical mansedumbre permeating the novel: « ¿Qué habíamos de sospechar, viendo 

aquella modestia, aquella conformidad mansa, aquella cosita... así...? Pero estas mansas son de la piel 

de Barrabás para esconder sus líos... » (158). 

114 While we believe this to be true, we are not claiming that thematic elaboration precedes thematic 

definition in the creative process. 

83


The work in its entirety is a study of the influence of the individual on his milieu and of it upon 

him. Earlier critical approaches sometimes brought to the work an a priori belief that the undeniable 

Krausist ideas expressed in El amigo Manso required a positive reading. Such approaches are now 

being tempered by interpretations in keeping with Galdós' hope and charity, without requiring him 

to have faith 115 . Imagination, the ever-present « loca de la casa » in his works, never triumphs. 

The other novels that deal with change in the individual and in society -and on the highest level this 

may be the prevailing theme of all his work- are pessimistic. El amigo Manso is no exception, nor 

is the author subtle about the matter. In the first chapter Manso claims to be the « humilde auxiliar 

de esa falange de nobles artífices que siglo tras siglo han venido tallando en el bloque de la bestia 

humana la hermosa figura del hombre divino » (12), but he admits that « la penetración activa, la 

audacia fecunda, la fuerza potente y creadora, me están vedadas como a los demás mortales de mi 

tiempo » (12; underlining ours). Later he states categorically that « es ley que el mundo sea nuestro 

molde y no nuestra hechura » (69) 116 . And finally, in the last chapter, his existence concluded, he 

finds that « de cuánto escribí y enseñé apenas quedan huellas » (224). In the case of Manuel, « 

115 Useful representative studies, from differing vantage points, are those of Ricardo Gullón, op. 

cit. ; José F. Montesinos, Galdós , II (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1969); and Denah Lida, « Sobre el 

krausismo de Galdós », in Anales Galdosianos , II (1967), 1-27. 

116 These words express the central theme of the novel, one of contemporary man's most disturbing 

perceptions. B. F. Skinner, in his Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Bantam Books: New York, 1972) - 

one of many elaborations that might be cited- states categorically that «a person does not act upon the 

world, the world acts upon him». (202). Ernest Jones explains Freud's comparable view in The Life 

and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1955) as the result of three scientific blows to 

mankind's narcissism -those of three revolutions: the cosmological of Copernicus, the biological of 

Darwin and the psychological of Freud. (II, 225-26). Galdós, clearly responding elsewhere in his work 

to the first two and markedly pre-Freudian in his best work, is nevertheless, in Manso , concerned with 

a social rather than a scientific perception. Karl Marx' view that «it is not the consciousness of men that 

determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness» ( A 

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859], reproduced in Karl Marx and Friedrich 

Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. L. S. Feuer, [Garden City: Doubleday, 1959], p. 

43.) is not far removed from the statement made by El amigo Manso , one of the early overt treatments 

of the theme. 

84


Lo que yo le enseñé apenas se distingue bajo el espeso fárrago de adquisiciones tan luminosas como 

prácticas, obtenidas en el Congreso y en los combates de la vida política, que es la vida de la acción 

pura y de la gimnástica volitiva » (224). Ironically, José María's career will carry him to the post 

of ministro -without benefit of the education Manuel had received from Máximo. Only one of the 

meek will inherit the earth. Máximo -« el pensamiento de la familia » (99)- is last remembered 

by Doña Cándida when she begs money from Irene to have masses said for his soul, money in fact 

destined for some more practical purpose. 

The reflection of thematic conflict in Galdós' characters and in their interrelationships in the manner 

here described is frequent and perhaps constant in the novelas contemporáneas . Although the other 

novels need not be approached through the characters' names, such a method might be revealing in 

some instances. Miau , like El amigo Manso , reveals a double theme with a positive and a negative 

component, within which all the characters struggle and relate. As is usual with Galdós, the dual theme 

has implications for both the individual and the group. In Miau the subject is success vs. failure; in 

both Fortunata y Jacinta and the Torquemada series it is change and constancy 117 , and no reader of 

Galdós needs to be reminded of the dualities and their elaboration in Doña Perfecta and Misericordia 

. Recognition of such thematic deep-structuring not only aids specifically in the analysis of individual 

novels, but also has broader implications for the illumination of Galdós' general creative method. 

Studies of El amigo Manso have tended to focus either on the matter of its autonomous character 

(novelistic technique) or on its Krausism (ideology). The two are in fact -for all their inherent interest 

as unique phenomena- both aspects of the elaboration of the motif of mansedumbre : action vs. 

thought, influencing vs. being influenced. When Manso says at the beginning of the -novel « Yo 

no existo » (9), the statement quickly takes on a variety of meanings, some real, some metaphoric. 

Manso does not exist because he is a literary creation of the author, not a real person, but he is also 

at both beginning and end disembodied spirit. Within the body of the work Manso is as firmly rooted 

in the reality of the novel as is any other character -indeed, more so, since the others exist only as he 

perceives them. There is no author but he. However, he does not exist in another sense, as a person in a 

real world. Manuel tells him « Usted no vive en el mundo... Su sombra de usted se pasea por el salón 

de Manso; pero usted permanece en la grandiosa Babia del pensamiento, donde todo es ontológico, 

donde el hombre es un ser incorpóreo, sin sangre ni nervios, más hijo de la idea que de la Historia 

y de la Naturaleza; un ser que no tiene edad, ni patria, ni padres, ni novia » (94). The novel is the 

117 This last is documented in a forthcoming study. 

85


story of Manso's gradual approach to the life of action and the emotions, but his failure withdraws him 

from life once more -again in the double sense. When Manso's story is told, when Galdós has finished 

with him, he meekly accepts his creator's dictum (unlike his literary descendent, Unamuno's Augusto 

Pérez) and dies without sufficient natural cause and without resistance. Rather than autonomous, he is 

its opposite: dependent -the passive agent of Galdós' creative act. Máximo tells Doña Javiera: « He 

dado mi fruto y estoy de más » (222). When she claims not to recognize his «fruit», he makes his only 

positive statement, but without clarifying its meaning: « Invisible es todo lo grande, toda ley, toda 

causa, todo elemento activo » (222). Later he claims -in passages most of which we have already 

quoted- to have left little behind him in others, while memory of him has faded rapidly away. The 

passivity/ failed activity/return to passivity structure of his story is complete, and he goes back -so 

willed by his creator- to what he had called at the beginning the « frío aburrimiento de estos espacios 

de la idea » (10), or to what is now seen as sosiego (223) as opposed to the dolor (11) of human life. 

The ambiguities of the novel largely evolve from Galdós' capacity for combining opposites and his 

related talent for creating dichotomous characters. The latter include those with whose ideas or way of 

life Galdós disagrees, but for whom he expresses compassion (Torquemada), and those who are made 

ridiculous as people, but whose ideas are close to those of the author (Bailón). Such ambiguity is found 

in El amigo Manso , but more problematic still is the question of Manso as narrator (and therefore 

interested party) of his own life. Early statements such as « Adquirí cierta presunción pedantesca y 

un airecillo de autoridad del que posteriormente, a Dios gracias, me he curado por completo » (15) 

are disproved by the remainder of the work and reveal the narrator's unreliability. Clarification of the 

matter is of no less importance for El amigo Manso than it is for that other great experiment in first 

person narrative voice, Lo prohibido . The temporal perspective of the narrator is also a puzzle in 

relation to the above. Manso tells us that he is thirty-five and that the major action he will describe 

occurs in the space of a year (11), yet he dies «naturally» at the end. If the entire novel is narrated 

after the fact -as it would seems to be- rather than in medias res , interpretative difficulties multiply. 

On the night that Manuel had persuaded Manso to accompany him to the buñolería , Máximo's 

claim that the education being given his pupil was obviously not taking root is followed by « -¡Oh!, 

no -exclamó Peña con vehemencia, dándose una puñada sobre el corazón y un palmetazo en la frente-. 

Algo queda. Mucho hay aquí y aquí, maestro, que permanecerá por tiempo infinito. Esta luz no se 

extinguirá jamás, y mientras haya espacio, mientras haya tiempo... » (92). Manuel is not speaking 

seriously, of course. The setting, the gestures, and the hyperbole make that clear, but Manso's story 

makes even clearer that he was occasionally unrealistic enough to believe that the man of thought 

86


could remain, could permanently change the world. Galdós knows better, as does Manso -from time 

to time: « La Humanidad es como la han hecho, o como se ha hecho ella misma. No hay nada que 

la tuerza » (214). Perhaps the ultimate ambiguity of the work -whether intended or not- is after all 

in that word manso , from the Latin manere : permanecer . 

University of Massachusetts-Amherst 

87


El amigo Manso and the Game of Fictive Autonomy 

John W. Kronik 

Allowing, as his more recent heirs have, that art is a game, Galdós in El amigo Manso has chosen 

to play with the game that art is and invites his reader and critic to join him in that game 118 . The 

game in this case revolves about a protagonist who functions as a purportedly autonomous character, 

that is, one who is himself aware of his fictional status and by virtue of that awereness gains a degree 

of independence from his creator 119 . That independence is projected at the start when Manso, after 

revealing that he is the evocation of a conjurer-novelist who is a friend of his, recounts: 

Este tal vino a mí hace pocos días, hablome de sus trabajos, y como me dijera que había escrito ya 

treinta volúmenes, le tuve tanta lástima que no pude mostrarme insensible a sus acaloradas instancias. 

Reincidente en el feo delito de escribir, me pedía mi complicidad para añadir un volumen a los treinta 

desafueros consabidos. Díjome que sabedor de que yo poseía un agradable y fácil asunto, venía a 

comprármelo . No me pareció mal trato, y acepté. 

(I, 2-3) 120 

118 An embryonic version of this study was read at the 28th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language 

Conference, Apr. 24-26, 1975. I am grateful to Brian J. Dendle for the invitation that sparked this 

essay. 

119 I use the term «autonomous» not to refer to a character's extranovelistic credibility, as Francisco 

Ayala, for example, uses it in « Los narradores de las novelas de 'Torquemada' », « Cuadernos 

Hispanoamericanos , No. 250-252 (1970-71), 375; rather, I apply it more narrowly to the illusion 

of independence from authorial control by means of a character's confrontation with his fictionality. 

Joseph E. Gillet, «The Autonomous Character in Spanish and European Literature», Hispanic 

Review , 24 (1956), 179-90, who makes only passing reference to El amigo Manso and detours around 

the illusory nature of the device, discusses autonomy in this light as an author's willing abdication of 

his power, with the result that characters exist as citizens of a double world of reality and literature. 

This duality infuses the concept with its problematic nature, of which I am fully aware and which I 

shall develop later in this essay. 

120 References to El amigo Manso are to the first edition (Madrid: La Guirnalda, n.d. [1882] 

by chapter and page. I have modernized the accentuation and, where necessary, the 

punctuation. 

88


El amigo Manso won little esteem from its contemporaries: a novel without plot or action, they 

called it; Clarín, to the best of our knowledge, failed to review it; and Unamuno pretended not to have 

understood it. Early critics paid little attention to the fact that Chapter I and Chapter L constitute a 

frame that establishes Máximo Manso in his own words as a lie, a fictive invention. These critics read 

the novel as an autobiographical account or as a disquisition on « krausismo » and late nineteenth- 

century educational theories 121 . Even Casalduero, in his predilection to classify, still labels El amigo 

Manso as a naturalistic novel in which Galdós exposes society to objective, scientific observation 122 . 

Vast as Galdós' readership has been, Galdós has yet to find his readers. The more recent commentators 

have tended to recognize the importance of the play on autonomy in this direct antecedent of Niebla 

, but in limited contexts or as a subservient component of the novel. Peter G. Earle, though concerned 

with other matters, has expressed well Máximo's duality as a creation: « El amigo Manso es la 

novela en que Galdós mejor sitúa a su protagonista en la circunstancia del novelista mismo. Es un 

espíritu autónomo que lleva su 'apariencia humana' en calidad de prestada » 123 . Robert H. Russell 

has pointed to Manso's awareness of himself as a writer of fiction and says cautiously: «It is not 

entirely imprudent to suggest that El amigo Manso is as much concerned with literature as it is 

with education» 124 . However, he prefers to hover above Galdós' game as a knowing non-participant, 

assumes that the unnamed character in the novel to whom Manso refers as his creator is Galdós, and, 

collating his reading of the novel with the author's career, limits his thesis to Galdós' discovery that 

the humanity of his fictional creations is deepened if his own ideological posture does not obtrude 

onto their reality. Gustavo Correa has understood and insisted more than any other critic that Galdós 

121 Emilio G. Gamero y de Laiglesia, Galdós y su obra , II. Las novelas (Madrid: Imprenta Ruiz, 

1934), discerned that Máximo Manso is both « un ser efectivo y real » and « hechura de la fantasía del 

novelista » (p. 86) but, not knowing what to make of that, made nothing of it. Walter T. Pattison, given 

to positivistic sleuthing, rejects out of hand the denomination of Manso as an autonomous character 

(« El amigo Manso and el amigo Galdós », Anales Galdosianos , 2 [1967], 151, n. 72). 

122 Joaquín Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós (1843-1920) , 3rd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), p. 

223; reprinted from Homenaje de poetas a Pierre Darmangeat (Paris: Les Éditions Polyglottes , 1966), 

pp. 83-90. 

123 « La interdependencia de los personajes galdosianos », Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos , No. 

250-252 (1970-71), 129. 

124 « El amigo Manso : Galdós with a Mirror», MLN , 78 (1963), 167. 

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projects his artistic consciousness as a thematic strain into his own novels. By that token, Correa has 

captured El amigo Manso's dimension as a novel about novel writing 125 . Even so, rather than fixing 

on it as an end in itself, Cornea treats the self-conscious aspect of Galdós' artistry as a feature of the 

novelist's construction of the illusion of reality. Many of the most perceptive readers of El amigo 

Manso have, in fact, responded to the work's suggestive treatment of the nebulous frontiers between 

reality and fiction. 126 

125 Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 

1967), esp. pp. 100-07. A propos of Felipín Centeno he says that « el autor descubría en sus personajes 

mismos de novela la posibilidad de sentirse ellos como seres reales, pero, al mismo tiempo, de hallarse 

conscientes de ser criaturas de ficción » (p. 79). Some of his introductory remarks, which he restates 

in his conclusion (p. 291), bear repeating here: « Nos hallamos situados, así, frente a un arte que se 

propone ser una representación fiel de la realidad, pero que insiste, al mismo tiempo, en su carácter 

estricto de ser un mundo de ficción. el hecho de convertir esta preocupación de arte en sustancia 

misma de novela viene a constituir una de las peculiares maneras que adopta el novelista para llevar a 

cabo este proceso de transformación de la realidad en un mundo de ficción. La novelística de Galdós 

revela, así, una dimensión interior de arte que es consustancial a su propia creación » (p. 11). 

126 For example, Leon Livingstone, «Interior Duplication and the Problem of Form in the Modern 

Spanish Novel», PMLA , 73 (1958), 393-406, includes a brief discussion of El amigo Manso in support 

of his postulation that this technique of interior duplication and character autonomy is a statement 

of a relativist metaphysic in which fiction and reality have no fixed outlines. Monroe Z. Hafter's 

introductory remarks in «Ironic Reprise in Galdós' Novels», PMLA , 76 (1961), 233-39, might suggest 

that he is to take up the problem of internal repetitions of the fictional construct, but he deals, rather, 

with characters' reflection of each other. He extrapolates the self/other antinomy from complementary 

pairings cither of characters or within characters and thereby dramatizes Galdós' subtle illumination 

of an elusive human reality. Eamonn Rodgers, in « Realismo y mito en 'El amigo Manso' », Cuadernos 

Hispanoamericanos , No. 250-252 (1970-71), 430-44, aware of the frame's presence throughout the 

novel, takes note of Manso's mythic dimension but remains tied to a defense of the label of realism. 

Nancy A. Newton, « El amigo Manso and the Relativity of Reality», Revista de Estudios Hispánicos , 

7 (1973), 113-25, cleverly weaves Manso's autonomy into her thematic considerations. She defines 

his trajectory from object-centeredness to subject-centeredness as «a dynamic act of auto-creation» (p. 

122) and takes note of the special textual kinship between Galdós and Manso as a «deliberate rupturing 

of the fictional illusion which the nineteenth-century realist novelist normally makes every effort to 

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Máximo's apparent autonomous nature also has led the critics into social and ontological 

considerations -for good reasons, to be sure. Máximo's dual existence as the product of his creator 

and as an independent entity willy-nilly invites examination of the grey area between fact and fiction, 

reality and illusion. The autonomous character metaphorically raises the question of the split that 

exists between man as a social being with social dependency on others and man as endowed with the 

power to form and determine himself. Manso articulates that issue in his pithy utterance: « es ley 

que el mundo sea nuestro molde y no nuestra hechura ». On another level, man's relation to God is 

suggested (the novel's second paragraph establishes the parallel), or more broadly, man's subjection 

to fate -the uncontrollability of human actions. A further form of subjection that man is seen to suffer 

is the power of his psyche. If Máximo Manso is not the puppet of his creator, he is, then, under the 

control of his « mansedumbre »: he may be a free character, but he is not free of his character. The 

self and the other are in pernicious contest. From the author's position, the autonomous character - 

Máximo in this case- can be seen as a projection of the author's subconscious. Yet another reading of 

the novel turns it, like Niebla , into an attack on reason. Máximo, as an intellectual, a philosopher, a 

teacher, has the power to autonomize himself through thought. So defined, he functions as both subject 

and object, as an eye on society and as matter for examination. His failure, his apparent ingestion into 

the bourgeois mode, represents from this standpoint the collapse of the cerebral way. 

The presence of these important questions in El amigo Manso over and above its documentation of 

a social transformation and its ironic representation of a theory of education is testimony to the novel's 

richness. Beyond that, whether or not Máximo is, in fact, a truly autonomous character is in itself a 

maintain» (p. 115). Ricardo Gullón, « El amigo Manso, novela galdosiana », in Técnicas de Galdós 

(Madrid: Taurus, 1970), pp. 57-102, reprinted from Mundo Nuevo, No. 4 (1966), 32-39, and No. 

5 (1966), 59-65, examines various aspects of the Galdós text but is more interested in enlacing it 

with Niebla and in defining its self-exposure as a metaphor of the life process than in extracting its 

metanovelistic components. He does remark on the first chapter's « operaciones de magia » (p. 77); he 

also registers Máximo as an archetype of fiction, « personaje de papel, ente inventado que no recata 

sino proclama su condición artificial » (p. 61). Gullón was among the first to give Manso his real due, 

but he did not choose to analyze the novel as a commentary on the creative act. Since the completion 

of my essay, Arnold M. Penuel has published a brief note, «Some Aesthetic Implications of Galdós' 

El amigo Manso », Anales Galdosianos , 9 (1974), 145-48, which bears on Manso's autonomy and 

Galdós' concern for fiction. 

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root problem for critics. If he is autonomous, who made him that way? Who gave him his name? How 

can he be autonomous and such a perfect little bourgeois? Doesn't the structure of illusion within an 

illusion simply amount to fabrication? The problem is worth discussing. 

But whether or not Máximo is autonomous -namely, free by appearances- is secondary to the illusion 

that he is. Though proportionately in greater view, the human disposition of Máximo Manso is always 

subservient to his fictional substance. The readers who fail to perceive that fact have ignored or 

forgotten the first chapter and many details of the narration. They have accepted all too readily 

Manso's invitation, « Vedme con apariencia humana » (1, 2), and disregarded with equal alacrity 

his admonition that he speaks without possession of a voice and writes though he has no hands. The 

narrative trick that makes Máximo appear transcendentally conscious of his fictionality and therefore 

not to be Galdós' creation makes the novel appear to be Máximo's creation. El amigo Manso is 

therefore a metanovel -a novel that investigates the nature of the novel, art about art. The autonomous 

-or supposedly autonomous- character in El amigo Manso raises not so much the question of Galdós' 

bold novelistic technique in this particular work (a major concern of the critics who have paused 

to comment on the device), but the whole broad problem of fiction, its birth, the relationship of its 

constitutive elements, its power, and its immortality 127 . Galdós' novel strikes beyond its evident link 

with Don Quijote to display the artistic self-consciousness that is so very much a twentieth-century 

phenomenon. 

Lest El amigo Manso be taken as a momentary aberration, a measure of Galdós' whimsicality in 

1882, it is well to recall that throughout his career he made manifest directly within his novels his 

preoccupation with the creative process. In the last chapter of Fortunata y Jacinta , in the funeral 

scene, one sentence stands out for its bizarre timbre in the context of a mimetic narrative: « En el 

largo trayecto de la Cava al cementerio, que era uno de los del Sur, Segismundo contó al buen Ponce 

todo lo que sabía de la historia de Fortunata, que no era poco, sin omitir lo último, que era, sin duda 

lo mejor; a lo que dijo el eximio sentenciador de obras literarias que había allí elementos para un 

drama o novela, aunque, a su parecer, el tejido artístico no resultaría vistoso sino introduciendo ciertas 

urdimbres de todo punto necesarias para que la vulgaridad de la vida pudiese convertirse en materia 

127 One is tempted to agree with José F. Montesinos' apparent hyperbole: « Nunca como en 

esta novela irónica ha comprendido el escritor tan claramente el sentido de su actividad creadora 

» ( Galdós , II [Madrid: Castalia, 1969], p. 29), but precisely because in the context of our discussion, 

the statement -ironically- is not hyperbolic at all. 

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estética » (V, 544) 128 . This delicious morsel of artistic self-revelation is Galdós' commentary on 

his way as a novelist and on his belief that there is stuff for a novel in every one of us. The sentences 

that follow the one quoted are a midway compromise between Galdós' positions in his Observaciones 

sobre la novela contemporánea en España of 1870 and his 1897 entry speech to the Academy. 

On a larger scale, in one of his earliest works, La sombra , the creative process is literalized when 

Paris, an « ente de imaginación », comes to life out of a painting. At the same time, as Harriet 

S. Turner has indicated, Galdós produces the illusion of Anselmo's fictional autonomy by allowing 

Anselmo to assert his independence in a series of confrontations between character and narrator-as- 

character 129 . «The daydreams of Isidora in La desheredada , in which, influenced by her readings 

of romance, she constructs herself into a fictious heroine, are a form of inner recreation. As well as a 

commentary on a specific type of narrative, they are a commentary on fiction in general, a complicated 

but not uncommon case ( Madame Bovary and La Regenta are well-known examples) where fiction 

fosters fiction. Another instance of reflexivity is Tormento , which, from a certain perspective, is 

the creation of José Ido del Sagrario as outlined at the end of El doctor Centeno » 130 . In Lo 

prohibido , José María Bueno de Guzmán undertakes a literary venture in the writing of his memoirs. 

The God-visions of Luisito in Miau constitute an interior duplication of the creative process, so 

much so that Luisito replaces Galdós as the all-knowing power that determines Villaamil's suicide. 

Manolo Infante's last letter in La incógnita posits that reality is incomplete without its fictionalization, 

where the soul of truth lies, and so Realidad is born. The letter also questions generic distinctions in 

literature and the authorship of the literary creation. The name that her mother bestows on Tristana is, 

as the narrator explains it, an act of literary recreation that imposes, from the mother's viewpoint, the 

harmony and nobility of art on « nuestras realidades groseras y vulgares » (V, 1546). Her protector, 

for his part, is converted into a theatrical figure by acquaintances who call him Don Lope de Sosa, 

while he, himself, has engaged in a similar fictional self-recreation: « Andando el tiempo, supe que 

la partida de bautismo rezaba don Juan López Garrido, resultando que aquel sonoro don Lope era 

128 References to Galdós' novels other than El amigo Manso are taken from the Obras completas , 

V, 4th ed. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1965). 

129 «Rhetoric in La sombra : The Author and His Story», Anales Galdosianos , 6 (1971), 10-12. 

Turner confuses the categories of author and narrator, but her point is well taken. 

130 Cornea develops this idea in Ch. VI, « La realidad como ficción », in Realidad, ficción y 

símbolo... , pp. 80-99. 

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composición del caballero, como un precioso afeite aplicado a embellecer la personalidad »; and the 

name, it turns out, suits him so well « que el sujeto no se podía llamar de otra manera » (V, 1541). 

Nazarín, thanks to its peculiar structure, is a statement on the act of writing. And in Misericordia , the 

whole puzzling episode of Don Romualdo can be explained only, but quite easily, as a manifestation 

of fiction's miraculous powers of creation. 

All these instances reflect the concern on Galdós' part with the problem that Erich Kahler in his 

interesting little book, The Disintegration of Form in the Arts (New York: Braziller, 1968), considers 

a mark of our times. He says: «more recently the problem of how to render the bewildering complexity 

of out reality has become the very subject matter of certain works of art. [This] means the presentation 

in a work of art of the artist's struggle with his task -a kind of artistic epistemology» (p. 6). The 

French «new» novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, avowed enemy of art that signifies anything external to 

art, expresses the same thought: «What constitutes the novelist's strength is precisely that he invents, 

that he invents quite freely, without a model. The remarkable thing about modern fiction is that it 

asserts this characteristic quite deliberately, to such a degree that invention and imagination become, 

at the limit, the very subject of the book» 131 . El amigo Manso is at the least a venerable example 

of what Wellek and Warren call the «romantic-ironic» mode of narration 132 . More than that, it is 

Galdós' most expansive statement on the problematic nature of fiction. 

Chapter I, with Chapter L at its heels, is the structure that shapes the entire novel. In fact, the two 

chapters are the unit that comprises the novel in question here: the story of fiction. Between them, 

they contain a fictional story. The outer novel serves to distance the interior novel from itself and 

from the reader, along lines that turn out to be as Brechtian as they are Cervantine. The interior novel, 

if framed, must occupy a space inside and lesser than the framed whole (that is, Chapters I through L 

span more pages than Chapters II through XLIX). At the same time, the interior novel is perceived by 

the reader as a contained image. But in its function, the frame of a novel is quite unlike a picture frame, 

which one might rather compare to the covers of a book. The physical frame of a picture is normally 

an adventitious, externally imposed element, which the modern painter regularly prefers to suppress, 

leaving the picture to be bound by its natural limits. The novel's frame is an intrinsic member of the 

imaginative construct and does not outline decoratively the image it contains nor simply circumscribe 

131 For a New Novel (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 32. 

132 René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature , 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 

1956), p. 223. 

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that image spatially; instead, it infuses the construct with meaning and delimits that meaning. It is 

a sign superimposed on another sign, which latter can no longer be perceived independently of its 

informing structure. In other words, the novel cannot be reduced to what the frame contains: a social 

portrait of late nineteenth-century Spain or the dialectic between thought and action. The story of 

Máximo Manso is bound by a structure that forces a wedge between the bourgeois reality of the inner 

novel and the reader's own bourgeois reality all the while as it passes sentence on bourgeois reality. 

The two-tiered structuring compels in the reader a critical awareness of what the novel is about and 

what the novel is. 

Roman Jakobson in a celebrated essay isolated the six factors that constitute a speech event: 

addresser, addressee, message, context, code, and contact 133 . Reading a novel can be considered 

a speech event. The function that language, or here the novel, takes on at any moment, explains 

Jakobson, depends on which of these elements is emphasized. In the bulk of El amigo Manso - 

in the interior novel- focus is on the message in its context, and so the novel's function is largely 

referential. The frame or outer novel shifts the attention of the addressee (reader) to the novel's code, 

and its function thus becomes self-referential, that is, metalingual or reflexive 134 . The frame, being a 

statement on fictionality, imposes that theme on the inner structure and colors the thematic statement 

of the inner structure with its exposure of fictionality. 

« Yo no existo » are the novel's opening words (I, 1). « Yo soy Máximo Manso » is the title 

of the second chapter. There are two ways to interpret this transition. It can be said that Máximo 

emerges from nothingness (Ch. I) to assume carnality and identity (Ch. II). The novelistic process, 

here laid bare, demands, first, imaginative invention and, secondly, shaping of the invented object. 

An idea is fashioned into a character. Máximo, portrayed as conscious of himself as a text, actually 

reads himself the way the reader reads him. In telling his own story, he creates himself -again as the 

reader creates him by reading him. This way of looking at the initial chapters and the book confirms 

fiction as its subject. 

133 «Linguistics and Poetics», in Style in Language , ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: MIT Press, 

1960), pp. 350-77. 

134 Some critics attempt to distinguish between «reflexivity» as a work's reference to itself 

generically and «self-reflexivity» as a work's reference to itself specifically. Since these two facets 

of artistic self-consciousness are barely distinguishable and one implies the other, I do not propose 

to mark such frontiers here. 

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The other perspective sets a value on the subject of fiction. « Yo no existo » is a flagrant declaration 

of Máximo's fictionality. The words are immediately corroborated: « Soy una condensación artística . 

Quimera soy, sueño de sueño y sombra de sombra, sospecha de una posibilidad » (I, 1-2). But 

paradoxically, the cry of « Yo no existo » can be uttered only by a being existentially aware of 

himself. « Yo no existo », which says «I am a fiction, a dream», means «I exist». It is as much an 

averment of existence -more so perhaps- as Augusto Pérez's climactic « Yo soy yo ». When the 

second chapter proclaims, « Yo soy Máximo Manso », that then needs to be read as «I do not exist». 

More accurately, the statement says: «I exist because I do not exist». The passage from « Yo no 

existo » to « Yo soy Máximo Manso » is the affirmation of non-existence, that is, the apotheosis of 

fictionality. Manso's opening protest against any possible investiture « de los inequívocos atributos 

de la existencia real » must be taken literally. Later the text is dotted with efforts to project onto the 

reader Máximo's intuition of his fictional otherness: « Me veía como figura de pesadilla, o como si yo 

fuera otro y con ese otro estuviera soñando en la plácida quietud de mi cama » (XIX, 116). Midway 

into the novel, Manuel Peña characterizes Manso to his face with words that most analysts of El 

amigo Manso feel constrained to quote: « -Usted no vive en el mundo, maestro Su sombra de usted 

se pasea por el salón de Manso; pero usted permanece en la grandiosa Babia del pensamiento, donde 

todo es ontológico, donde el hombre es un ser incorpóreo, sin sangre ni nervios, más hijo de la idea que 

de la historia y de la Naturaleza; un ser que no tiene edad, ni patria, ni padres, ni novia » (XX, 124). 

The meaning of these words in the context of Manolo's thought/action, theories/deeds, ontology/fife 

dichotomy is clear. They are, beyond that, the novel's most explicit internal link with its frame. What 

Manolo takes to be a character portrayal of his teacher is a description of his fictional essence that 

matches his self-appraisal. The play here is complex: Galdós' autonomized creation's autonomized 

creation recreates his creator coincidentally with the latter's self-creation. What I am saying -what 

Galdós is saying- is that Máximo Manso exists because he is a fiction, just as Unamuno exists not 

because he wrote Niebla but because he is a character in Niebla . Máximo as a non-existent entity 

acquires an existence that he could not otherwise have. Living in the bourgeois social atmosphere of 

Restoration Spain, Máximo as a man, even as a thinking man, is part of it; but as a fictional creature 

he transcends it. He exists in space and time in a way that Castelar's mother or Galdós' third brother 

-or Galdós himself- do not. 

Once his fictive autonomy is certified, Máximo can say: « Es que alguien me evoca, y por no 

sé qué sutiles artes me pone como un forro corporal y hace de mi un remedo o máscara de persona 

viviente » (1, 2). Máximo's friend who evokes him -suppose, if you wish, that his name is Pérez 

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Galdós- does not, in fact, exist prior to the narrative as his capacity to «evoke» Manso might imply. 

He exists only thanks to Manso, who creates him within the narrative. So, the character evokes the 

author, the creation creates his creator; and one may ask, as twentieth-century writers so often have: 

who creates whom, who owes his existence to whom in the fictional relationship? The answers are 

as ambiguous as the question is intriguing. 

Manso, ever gentle and good, is everybody's friend. For his part, Galdós as narrator is often the friend 

of his « criaturas ». But never is the friendship so close as it is between «el amigo» Manso and 

Galdós . Why? Because, like the best of friends, they are inseparable. If Manso cannot pinpoint the 

«subtle arts» of his creation, it is because the miracle of artistic birth cannot be defined or described 

with precision. The creator/creation dichotomy, when carried beyond the obvious and subjected to 

analysis, becomes so blurred that no order of sequential precedence between its two factors seems 

possible. As a consequence, a character like Manso endowed with the illusion of autonomy assumes 

a duality whose two sides the reader might forcibly isolate from each other if he wishes but which 

operate conjointly at every moment in the book. It is not, as Gullón would have it (p. 88), that part 

of Manso's narrative «I» participates and part contemplates: all of him does both at the same time. 

He is poet and empiricist, histor and eye-witness wrapped into one 135 . That is why Manso can first 

talk of someone who conjures him (Ch. I: birth as a fiction) and then go on to speak calmly of his 

father and mother, to whom he owes his life and all that he is (Ch. II: birth within a fiction). Truly, 

an imagined entity should not be depending on a bowlful of chickpeas for his sustenance. It should 

be sufficient for a reader to read him. Yet, in that paradox lies the secret of fictional creation, which 

must live out this tension of being and not being autonomous. Of course, it is easy to envision the 

protests against such a reading: You can't have it both ways! You can't have Máximo creating a 

creator who has created him! But that is precisely the beauty of fiction, as Galdós fully realized. Its 

delectable ambiguity not only allows us to have it both ways, but forces these paradoxes upon us. 

Wordsworth's dictum, «The Child is father of the Man», seems appropriate to the case. Naturally, we 

know that there is no such unfathered creature as an autonomous character in the world of fiction. 

A character who is a paradox, a game, an irony, a phantom, is, in the end, impossible. Therefore, 

the question as to whether or not Máximo Manso or Grau's puppets or Capek's robots or Pirandello's 

homeless half dozen or Don Quijote are truly autonomous is beside the point when we acknowledge 

its illusoriness. The significance of the issue lies in our capacity to apprehend simultaneously that 

135 See Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford Univ. 

Press, 1966), Ch. VII. 

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illusion of their possible autonomy and our knowledge of their dependency. The questions that follow 

upon that illusion constitute an inquiry into the nature of fiction through the problematic relationship 

between author and character. To the extent that he is known to us as an invention of Galdós, Máximo 

Manso here serves that investigative aim. And as happens regularly when the question matters more 

than the answer, the investigation produces no findings. At the end, in successive paragraphs, Máximo 

appears to will his own death -« Y tal era mi anhelo de descanso, que no me levanté más »- while 

yet dependent on his conjurer to effect it -« El mismo perverso amigo que me había llevado al mundo 

sacome de él » (L, 307, 308). 

Máximo's death fits this scheme. Some critics have expressed puzzlement or sought vain 

explanations for his death from natural causes at the age of 35. But how old is Máximo Manso; how 

old is he now? Is he 35 as stated in the novel and therefore 35 forever? Is he 94, the age of the 

novel at this writing? Or is he 129, the sum of the two? The point, of course, is that Manso does 

not die; his story merely comes to a close. To borrow Nimetz' felicitous turn of phrase: «Although 

a mirage, Manso never quite disappears» 136 . Manso's death is not physical; it is, like his birth, a 

conjurer's act. A text cannot die. It can only reach its natural end, at which point, with one stage of 

the creative act completed, it lies in a continued state of dormant existence until it is read, reread, 

recreated, reexperienced. Manso can presumably die in his role as creator, though not as creation, a 

fact which actually assures him of survival on both counts: as creator, he lives through his creations, 

as Galdós does through Manso, even if his earthly traces disappear and his creations -Manolo, Irene- 

also autonomize themselves; as creation, there is no way in which he can suffer mortality, for a « yo 

sin carne ni hueso » (I, 1) is pure spirit. 

In the novel's opening paragraph, Manso designates himself as a myth. A myth exists eternally, and 

a mythical figure enjoys life and significance beyond that of the ordinary human being. Novel writing 

is myth creation. Thus, when Máximo dies, he does not simply vanish from the earthly scene. His 

death is a signal that the process of his mythification has been accomplished. That is, he dies because 

the fictional mission has been realized: his story has been told; he has been created. He is now ready 

to pass into eternity. How is it he can tell us about his own demise? As subject and object, as teller 

of his tale, as creator of himself, he stands both outside and inside the fiction. He is a fictional being 

who is witness to his own fictionalization. From Máximo's perch outside the process of which he is 

136 Michael Nimetz, Humor in Galdós (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 98. 

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the protagonist, his consciousness -his fictional consciousness- can embrace both the beginning and 

the end of that process. Again like the reader, he can read the text that he is -the whole text. 

Furthermore, Máximo's death is not a disappearance into memory. His death is a very part of his 

existence, of his continuing existence. With his death, Máximo does not pass from existence into non- 

existence, but from process into state. The act of writing has come to an end; but the text exists, waiting 

to be read. What Manso imagines Irene telling him near the end of his development, we can all say 

quite literally: « Te leo, Manso; te leo como si fueras un libro escrito en la más clara de las lenguas 

» (XLVIII, 299). Máximo is recreated every time El amigo Manso is read; he can be recreated at will. 

I, as a critic, am now replaying that process of recreation. The rest of us, when we die, cannot aspire 

to that degree of immortality. Gullón (p. 83) recognizes, as do characters in the novel, that Máximo is 

different from the rest, that he appears not to participate in this life as they do. Gullón has done well 

to seize upon this distinctiveness of Máximo and to interpret it as the abyss which separates the man 

of action from the contemplative soul. There is no doubt that the text must be read in this fashion; but 

the text with the same words also alerts us to the distinction between a being of flesh and a fictitious 

creation. These two readings together allow us to superimpose onto Gullón's elucidation of the ending 

-Manso's happy escape into limbo from the regions of life's demands- the view that his «death» is a 

manifestation of his superior cognitive powers and his open reassumption of them 137 . Newton (p. 

123) explains the close of the novel as a retreat into literariness on Manso's part after he was denied, 

because of his passive, analytical personality, entry into the world of action. If it is a retreat, it is a 

return to the fictional heights whence he had emerged. More accurately, perhaps, it is not a retreat, 

but an ascension. Certainly, though, literariness is the shape of Manso's immortality. His discovery 

of his uselessness and his subsequent secession from life constitute his existential self-realization as 

a fictitious character. Such is the implication -or one of them- when he complains: « Yo no era yo, 

137 If Manso's death is seen as the affirmation of his fictionality rather than as the obliteration of 

his immanent existence, one quickly senses how false is the distinction traced by Robert Kirsner: « 

Empezó su relato como ente de ficción y lo acaba como un ente no existente » (« Sobre 'El amigo 

Manso', de Galdós », Cuadernos de Literatura , 8 [1950], 192). Kirsner's effort to draw critical attention 

to a neglected novel merits applause. Robert Ricard, « Quelques aspects du thème de l' évasion dans 

les romans de Galdós », in Galdós et ses romans ( Paris: Institut d'Études Hispaniques , 1961), pp. 

63-71, is close to the truth in his conviction that Manso's death is not a flight, but a departure for 

good reason, the reason being that his work is done. Ricard's assessment falls short of being a fully 

satisfactory formula insofar as it accounts for Máximo's social but not his fictional status. 

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o por lo menos, yo no me parecía a mí mismo. Era a ratos sombra desfigurada del señor de Manso 

» (L, 306). Only at that final point has the process of self-creation been consummated. At that point 

it makes full sense that at the start Manso should have seen himself existing, as myths do, in infinite 

time and that -« recreándome en mi no ser » (1, 2)- he should have taken pleasure, as readers of 

novels do, in the contemplation of an invention. 

The examination of the nature of fiction and of the problem of fictive autonomy is accorded yet 

a deeper dimension in El amigo Manso through a secondary structure that duplicates the primary 

one. Máximo's relationship with Manuel Peña and Irene is parallel to Máximo's relationship with 

his creator, for Máximo in turn becomes Manolo's and Irene's creator, and they, as soon as they are 

shaped, declare their independence of him. 

As a first-person narrator, Manso is naturally the creator of all the characters in the book. Doña 

Javiera, for example, does not exist for us until Máximo writes: « Voy a hablar de mi vecina » (III, 

13). The account he then presents of her appearance, speech habits, and personality traits is the process 

of novelistic creation. Lica, for her part, is ingenuous, delicate, and kind, as Manso sees (makes) her, 

and not the unpolished peasant girl that she is in the eyes of Madrid's high society. In the cases of 

Manolo and Irene, Manso's creative involvement is redoubled, because not only is he responsible for 

their presence in the novel, he is internally the catalyst for the particular shapes they assume. Manolo 

is his pupil, and Irene is his mental construct of an ideal. 

The chapter that marks Manuel Peña's entry into the novel (IV) is entitled « Manolito Peña, 

mi discípulo ». Since Manuel's discipleship breached the constraints of a purely formal academic 

education and Manuel before and after his contacts with his mentor was not the same person, « mi 

discípulo » can be read as «my creation». That stands as fact not only for the reader, but also 

for Manso, who, interestingly, defines that relationship in artistic terms. Initially he says: « Mi 

complacencia era igual a la del escultor que recibe un perfecto trozo del mármol más fino para labrar 

una estatua » (IV, 22). Assessing the raw material, Manso quickly determines that the esthetic terrain 

would be the most propitious for forming Manolo's character, a decision he smugly qualifies as « 

Excelente plan » (IV, 23). Later, with his task behind him -on the occasion of Peña's successful debut 

as an orator- Manso returns to the same idea: « yo había dado a sus dones nativos la vestidura del arte 

» (XXVIII, 171) 138 . Irene, too, in the chapter in which she is introduced (VI), is presented as raw 

138 In their respective speeches in the theater, Manso and Peña emerge as the imperfect halves of a 

unit, for Manso's is all content and Peña's is all form. Paternal pride aside, how do we explain Manso's 

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material, full of potential, that can be misshapen or admirably developed, according to the creative 

circumstances. She, too, is estheticized: « la tristeza que despedían sus bonitos ojos, aquella tristeza 

que a veces me parecía un efecto estético, producido por la luz y color de la pupila, a veces un resultado 

de los fenómenos de la expresión, por donde se nos transparentan los misterios del mundo moral, 

quizás revelaba uno de esos engaños cardinales en que vivimos mucho tiempo, o quizás toda la vida, 

sin darnos cuenta de ello » (VI, 39). Irene is projected not as a creature of flesh, but as a phenomenon 

of esthetic, linguistic expression. The statement also adduces that art, here in the shape of Irene, is 

the affirmation of life's mysteries and that arts deceit, its ambiguity, is inherent and sustains us. That 

power of art forges the supernatural oneness that exists between creator and creation. « La llevaba 

conmigo », writes Manso of Irene in terms even more explicit than his expressions of solidarity 

with Manuel. « Era como si la naturaleza de ella hubiera sido inoculada milagrosamente en la mía. 

La sentía compenetrada en mi, espíritu con espíritu » (XVII, 104). The long conversation between 

Máximo and Irene in which the details of her relationship with Peña are revealed is for all intents 

and purposes Irene's confession, but it comes from the mouth of Manso. It is as if he were reciting a 

drama whose script he had composed. This retrospective account that abounds in evidence of Manso's 

omniscience prompts Irene to exclaim twice: « -Sabe usted... más que Dios... »; « -Usted lo sabe 

todo... Parece que adivina... » (XLI, 256, 258). The reader is not so surprised. 

The creator's control over his creation, however -whether that creation is a pupil, an ideal, or a 

fictional character- is tenuous. Through Manolo, the pupil (the idea) is portrayed as potentially willful 

and rebellious, and the teacher (the artist) must conquer and tame in order to shape. In the course 

of the educational process, Manso discovers that he needs to adjust to his pupil's innate gifts. He 

cannot squeeze polished writing out of oratorical talent, and he cannot fan speculative interests where 

pragmatic inclinations persist. Even the name by which Manolo is most frequently called, Peñita, is 

given him by someone else and in spite of Manso's distaste for it. Small incidents these, yet proof 

that the artistic raw material is refractory from the start and subject to the interference of third parties. 

In Irene's case, too, Manso constructs her in a given fashion, as a woman of the North, free of his 

society's enervating moral climate: « He aquí la mujer perfecta, la mujer positiva, la mujer razón, 

contrapuesta a la mujer frivolidad, a la mujer capricho » (XIII, 77). Yet Manso is prompted to 

wonder: « ¿Acaso la conozco bien? No; cada día noto que hay algo en ella que permanece velado a 

enthusiasm for the gestures, the flowery phrasing, the empty metaphors that lead him. to ask twice « 

¿de qué hablaba? » and that in others he had relentlessly condemned? Only his instinctive recognition 

of the symbiotic dependency between creator and creation can serve as an adequate explanation. 

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mis ojos » (XVI, 100); and he recognizes how easy it is to portray an individual's unchanging traits 

variably as defects or perfections. Moreover, he is confused by the tension between his powers of 

observation and artistic dictates. After Irene's attack of hysteria and fever, he asks: « ¿La debilidad 

y la pena aumentan su belleza o la destruyen casi por completo? ¿Está interesantísima, tal como el 

convencionalismo plástico exige, o completamente despoetizada? » (XL, 252) 139 . Galdós, Manso, 

art, nature, society: whose is the guiding hand here? Manolo's (mis)use of his education to join the 

ranks of the petty bourgeoisie is an act of independence or of rebellion, depending on the vantage 

point; in any event, a destruction of the mold in which he had been cast. As for Irene, her revelation to 

Manso of her true character is her profession of autonomy. There is no rebellion in her case: « ¡Error 

de los errores! » (XLII, 266): Manso's ideal Irene simply crumbles as she assumes a form at variance 

with the one he had imagined for her. 

Here is a man who lives by order and by reason's absolute law, who boasts of method in his every 

act and defines life as a solemn plan, yet cannot control his creations. Small wonder, then, that he 

is given to self-doubt. When, contrary to all his habits and at Manolo's insistence, he finds himself 

confronting some churros and brandy in a « buñolería », he muses: « ¿Quién se llamará dueño 

de sí ? » (XX, 119). It would appear that the individual has so little sway over his order (whether it 

is social, ontological, or fictional) that the order imposes itself on him even though he has created it. 

Several times in the novel's pages Manso confesses himself to be his creations' creation and inferior 

to them 140 . So formed by his pupil is he that for a moment he rebels against analysis and knowledge 

and exalts the man of action over his own ways. Of Irene he says: « La que fue maestra de niños 

después lo había sido mía en ciertas cosas », and he imagines her echoing: « Las maestras de escuela 

139 Manso reveals, as omniscient creator, that he knows how the story of Manolo and Irene is to 

end; but then he feels sorry for himself because his role in its denouement is not clear to him: « ¿Me 

correspondía intervenir en ella, o, por el contrario, debería yo evadirme lindamente dejando que los 

criminales se arreglaran como pudieran?... ¡Pobre Manso! » (XLI, 258). Whether he is pawn of the 

action or its guiding force or simply withdraws (dies) depends on whether he plays character and 

participant or creator or narrator. 

140 In an intelligent article that does not touch on the question of Manso's fictionality («Galdós' El 

amigo Manso : An Experiment in Didactic Method», Bulletin of Hispanic Studies , 39 [1962], 16-30), 

G.R. Davies singles out the « buñolería » scene as an example of Manso's distanced state from the 

political and social realities of life and his inferiority, in this respect, to his own pupil. 

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sabemos más que los metafísicos » (XLVIII, 298, 300). When at the end he says: « He dado mi 

fruto y estoy de más » (L, 307), he is signaling not only the realization of his own fictionality, but 

Irene's and Manolo's and his acceptance of their autonomous status. 

Why does Máximo lose control over Manolo and Irene? In accordance with life's patterns, although 

they owe their existence to the thinker-teacher-writer-artist Máximo, they, not he, determine their 

actions as they embrace the society in which they dwell. In the light of fiction, once created, they too 

become texts that others read and recreate. Their ultimate identity depends on these readers' recreation 

of them. Art is as relative to the beholder as reality is, and since the creator's perspective is no more 

than the perspective of yet another beholder, the creation's flight from its creator's particular perception 

of it is built into the creative act. Perhaps it lies in the nature of art that the artist, unable to sense the 

texture of his creations and powerless to track their future, simply programs their autonomy. 

Máximo Manso's eruption into the novel, his death, and his education/idealization of Manuel Peña 

and Irene are the three principal phases of Galdós' structuring of the theme of fictionality in El amigo 

Manso . To complete the picture, one must mention that the book brims over with direct and oblique 

references to the literary art. On the one hand, the frequent touches which signal that a writer is writing 

expand the work's self-referential dimension as art, fiction, and novel. On the other hand, specific 

literary styles and practices come under mischievous scrutiny. 

From the beginning Galdós pokes fun at the artistic process, but with the double irony that informs 

the whole novel. That is to say, the ironic tone that subverts the object presented in this light is itself 

subverted by the measure of seriousness with which it must be read. Consequently, when Manso 

writes: « soy un ejemplar nuevo de estas falsificaciones del hombre que desde que el mundo es 

mundo andan por ahí vendidas en tabla por aquellos que yo llamo holgazanes, faltando a todo deber 

filial, y que el bondadoso vulgo denomina artistas, poetas o cosa así » (I, 1-2), derision and exaltation 

are indistinguishable. If he is disrespectful of his progenitor, he does not disown him, for he declares 

himself openly as an artist (XIV, 84); and playful as the self-revelation is, it is nonetheless a revelation. 

The mysteries of the nature of fiction are outlined in Chapter XL, aptly entitled « Mentira, mentira 

» 141 -to wit, fiction. It begins with the sentence, « Dígolo porque ahora trae mi narración unas cosas 

tan estupendas que no las va a creer nadie » (XL, 247), and goes on to establish the following series 

of paradoxical facts: 1) this is a narration, my narration (fiction); 2) fiction is unbelievable; 3) fiction 

is truth attractively garbed; 4) truth is unbelievable; 5) I, the creator, am confused by my creation. 

141 Galdós' quaint use of chapter titles in this novel is a game that requires separate attention. 

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With fiction's complexity thus posited, the ensuing irony is less jolting: at the very moment when 

Máximo awakens from a dream to a recognition of the creative power of rational consciousness, he 

also becomes fully aware (Chs. XL and XLII) of his loss of power over his creations. The autonomy 

of events and characters from their creator and the chasm that exists between them, as well as the 

illusion of reality that this autonomizing process bestows on the fiction, are expressed in words that 

could not have been lost on Unamuno: « Después de tal inverosimilitud, viene la más grande y 

fenomenal de todas las de aquel día. Esta sí que es gorda. Estoy seguro de que nadie que me lea tendrá 

tragaderas bastante grandes para ella; pero yo la digo, y protesto de la verdad de su mentira con toda 

mi energía » (XL, 251). 

Manso's narration also draws attention to itself as fiction through the device of contrasting its 

potential and its actual course. Immediately after confronting Manuel about his relationship with 

Irene, the narrator sets up a dichotomy between what the conventions of sentimental literature would 

demand under the circumstances and the strange truth of his reactions: 

No puedo, al llegar aquí, ocultar un hecho que me pareció entonces, y aún hoy me lo parece, 

rarísimo, fenomenal y extraordinario. Bien quisiera yo, al contar que comí, aparecer conforme con lo 

que es uso y costumbre en estos casos, es decir, pintarme desganado y con más ánimos para vomitar el 

corazón que para comerme un garbanzo; pero mi amor a la verdad me impone el deber de manifestar 

que tuve apetito, y que comí como todos los días. Bien se me alcanza que esto resulta en contradicción 

con lo que afirman los autores más graves que han hablado de cosas de amor, y aun los fisiólogos que 

han estudiado el paralelismo de las funciones corporales con los fenómenos afectivos; pero sea lo que 

quiera, como pasó lo cuento, y saque cada cual las consecuencias que guste. 

(XXXIX, 242-43) 

The reader of these lines is forced into an open consideration of the literary art; he becomes ally to 

the narrator in passing judgment on conventions that run contrary to the realities of life; and he is 

prevented from sentimentalizing the action by having his attention thrust on the mechanism of the 

narration exactly as Manso's craving for food brakes his emotional response. When that response does 

arrive, it has been rendered as bookish as the books under attack. 142 

142 Further such instances are a scene with Doña Cándida concerning Irene: « Me rodeaba una 

atmósfera de drama. Presentía la violencia, lo que en el mundo artificioso del teatro se llama la 

situación » (XXXV, 217); and after José María's sheepish retreat from Irene's quarters: « No había 

habido drama, cosa en extremo lisonjera para todos » (XXXVI, 227). In another work, such comments 

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Accompanying El amigo Manso's perambulations through the mysteries of fiction and its relation 

to reality is a series of reflections on the ways of the novel. Again operating on the dual plane of 

paradox, Galdós can have Manso cry, « Orden, orden en la narración » (1, 2), at the same time 

as he unabashedly subverts narrative order and with the next breath jabs at readers' expectations of 

chronology, motivation, background, context, and sequence. It is suggested that the novel has its own 

order, a private, non-chronological order (e. g., VI, 40), so private, in fact, that the reader of El amigo 

Manso is led to ruminate all at once the need for and the absurdity of novelistic order. Máximo 

divulges his method as he proceeds: « Ocupándome ahora de lo externo, diré »; « Estoy impaciente 

por hablar de mi ser moral » (I, 5, 10); and the opening of Chapter XXII is a description of narrative 

progress through plot complication and of the narrator's alternatives as witness and participant. All 

the while that he does what is expected of a narrator, Máximo says with a twinkle, «I'm doing this 

because that's what's expected in a narration». Or he warns us when he departs from the expected. In 

either case he is telling us that this is a novel. 

In its declared status as work of art and novel, El amigo Manso is also, at moments, an expression of 

esthetic concern and a disquisition on style. The difficulties of creation and the inadequacy of words 

to express certain ideas and emotions are underscored: « son cosas muy distintas sentir la belleza 

y expresarla » (IV, 24; see also Ch. XVI). Manso as a writer is self-conscious: « Las ideas sobre 

lo bello llenaban mi mente y se revolvían en ella » (III, 16), he says; and he complains bitterly 

about Manuel's stylistic insensitivity (VII, 40). After learning of Irene's clandestine friendship with 

would inject a note of verisimilitude into the fiction (only real people go to the theater!). In this book, 

the statement is yet another reminder of its fictionality as well as a criticism of a certain sort of fiction. 

This procedure takes hold early in the novel: « ruego a mis lectores que por nada del mundo pasen 

por alto este capítulo, aunque les vaya en ello una fortuna, si bien no conviene que se entusiasmen 

por lo de vecina, creyendo que aquí da principio un noviazgo, o que me voy a meter en enredos 

sentimentales, No. Los idilios de balcón a balcón no entran en mi programa, ni lo que cuento es más 

que un caso vulgarísimo de la vida » (III, 14). Of course, it is that and it is not. At other times, this 

technique of a truncated potential is replaced by a duality produced through parody. For example: « 

-Luego... aquí-, dije, y en el momento en que tal decía, me acordaba de la solemnidad con que los 

actores suelen pronunciar aquellas palabras en la escena. / De la manera más natural del mundo yo me 

volvía melodramático » (XXX, 182). The solemn conjugation of verbs in the imperfect subjunctive 

that encloses this scene lends both the scene and language their deserved weight. 

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Manuel, Máximo writes a paragraph of resounding reproaches in the best declamatory style, but he 

then represents that outburst as hypothetical and opts for simplicity, thereby slapping at the practices 

of others. When Manso's taste lapses or when he takes liberties with his own standards, then the text's 

self-consciousness turns his self-consciousness into self-parody, as in the following jocular displays: 

« Doña Javiera era... (me molesta el sonsonete, pero no lo puedo evitar) viuda » (IV, 21); « Esto le 

dije; estuve elocuente, y un sí es no es sutil o caballeresco » (XXXIV, 209); « Usando una figura de 

género místico y muy bella, aunque algo gastada por el uso de tantas manos de poetas y teólogos, diré 

que algún ángel había descendido a mí y consoládome durante mi sueño » (XXXIX, 244-45). 143 

If El amigo Manso is an examination and revelation of its generic self, it is natural that its parodic 

component should also be directed against the novel and the novel's medium, language. Throughout 

the work Galdós satirizes the commonplaces and the spent formulas of novel writing. The surprising 

shape he gave to El amigo Manso -not his most deeply human novel but certainly his most brilliant 

tour de force- is his cry for originality and for renovation of the genre 144 . In its focus on its own raw 

material, this novel already demonstrates its literariness, and in its relentless attack on the rhetorical 

tradition, it subjects the word to destruction through the word. It annihilates the signifier that has 

suffered the loss of its signified (a social commentary via language) and thereby subverts the sign 

143 The use of dreams as a narrative device also finds its open justification in this novel. At one point 

Manso recounts a nightmare he had and concludes by ridiculing the stale device of the surprise-ending 

tale: « Concluiré esta febril jornada diciendo con la candidez de los autores de cuentos, después que 

se han despachado a su gusto narrando los más locos desatinos: / Entonces desperté. Todo había sido 

un sueño » (XXV, 151). But he reverses the satirical thrust when he sees in the dream he had an 

indecipherable logic that connects it to his wakeful state of the evening before. With further thought, 

Manso succeeds in relating the dream to events in reality and endowing it with an equal measure of 

truth. The result is, on the one hand, a justification on Galdós' part for the inclusion of dreams in 

his novels and, on the other, a moment's insight into his deep understanding of the function of the 

dream in the human psyche. Most significantly, the act of dreaming is posited as yet another creative 

process, a fictive construct built on reality. 

144 Nimetz (p. 61) understands that Galdós has used Manso's narration to cast barbs at stagnant 

artistic modes and to suggest that art requires constant reinvigoration. Had he stood farther back from 

Manso's words, Nimetz would have seen that all of El amigo Manso is in itself a rejection of antiquated 

artistic patterns. 

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on which the novel is dependent (a literary commentary). On the rubble of the destruction he has 

perpetrated for readers of El amigo Manso to contemplate, Galdós is to build a new type of novel 

that has been linguistically cleansed. 

Galdós throughout his career unleashed his venom at the ingrained Spanish penchant for rhetorical 

expression and in particular at the nineteenth century's oratorical tradition. In El amigo Manso that 

posture surfaces in several ways. As the novel's only narrative voice, Manso bears the sanitizing 

responsibility, and he carries it out both by default and actively. He himself becomes the unwitting 

butt of Galdós' satire when he falls into pedantry and jejune rhetoric in his writing 145 . Conversely, it 

is he who descries the incompatibility between lucid ideas and rebellious language. « No hay nada 

más difícil que hablar poco de una cosa grande », he says (XXIV, 145), and in the preparation of his 

speech for the charity gala, he voices his awareness of three requirements: to style the speech in such a 

fashion as to achieve a harmonious structure; to make it clear, direct, and brief so that it will be really 

grasped; and to banish from it the surface effects of dazzling oratory. His own guilt notwithstanding, 

he hammers away at those who neglect these ground rules. « Ante todo, España es el país clásico de la 

oratoria », he says sarcastically (XVII, 105), and oratory sits enthroned where its damage is greatest: 

in the political arena. José María's entry into politics provides the opportunity for repeated attacks on 

the debasement of language, which Máximo sums up twittingly: « Nuestro Congreso, que tan alto 

está en la oratoria, tiene también su estilo flamenco » (XV, 93). Ramón María Pez, the political orator, 

145 A good example, capped with a delightfully ironic judgment, is the following: « Soy el aprendiz 

que aguza una herramienta, que mantiene una pieza; pero la penetración activa, la audacia fecunda, 

la fuerza potente y creadora me están vedadas como a los demás mortales de mi tiempo. Soy un 

profesor de filas que cumplo enseñando a los demás lo que me han enseñado a mí, trabajando sin 

tregua; reuniendo con método cariñoso lo que en torno a mí veo, lo mismo la teoría sólida que el hecho 

voluble, así el fenómeno indubitable como la hipótesis atrevida; adelantando cada día con el paso 

lento y seguro de las medianías; construyendo el saber propio con la suma del saber de los demás, y 

tratando por último de que las ideas adquiridas y el sistema con tanta dificultad labrado, no sean vana 

fábrica de viento y humo, sino más bien una firme estructura en la realidad de mi vida con poderosos 

cimientos en mi conciencia. El predicador que no practica lo que dice, no es predicador, sino un púlpito 

que habla » (11, 5). lt is a favorite trick of Galdós' to undermine a series of resoundingly elevated 

exclamations with a playfully self-revealing final sentence. See, e.g., the first paragraph of Ch. VIII, 

entitled « ¡Ay mísero de mí! » 

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is subjected to the most merciless satire in this terrain 146 , and the effects of his emphatic phrases 

on Máximo are graphically portrayed: « sus huecos párrafos resonaban en mi espíritu con rumor 

semejante al de un cascarón de huevo vacío cuando se cae al suelo y se aplasta por sí solo » (XII, 

72). Manuel Peña's fustian speech in the theater is enough to assure his political and social future and 

catapults him into prominence, though even José María is impelled to comment: « ¡Lo que vale aquí 

la oratoria brillante y esa facultad española de decir cosas bonitas que no significan nada práctico! 

» (XXXI, 1891-90). As pervasive as political oratory is, poetry has not escaped the damaging touch 

of rhetoric either. Galdós' frequent derision of poets, from La Fontana de Oro on, for the sins they 

have visited upon the Spanish language is well known. In El amigo Manso , Francisco de Paula de 

la Costa y Sainz del Bardal, to whom Máximo refers as « Este tipo » (XII, 71), is the poetaster 

who thrives on a doting and tasteless moneyed class. From his name to his beard to his health to his 

character to his address to his talents as a versifier, this « caballerito ignorante » is unrelentingly 

caricaturized. The pompousness of his self-esteem is comparable only to that of his odes. 147 

The reflexive nature of El amigo Manso filters through this attention to the word to a consideration 

of literary styles. Manso knows that his brother's house is six minutes or 560 paces away from his, 

and he phrases his report about Doña Javiera thus: « un día se metió en mi casa (tercero derecha) 

sin anunciarse »; « cuando entraba en su casa (principal izquierda) » (III, 14, 15). Along with 

the ridicule these details heap on Manso's exaggerated sense of precision, they also show Galdós 

laughing at his way as a novelist, at the realistic novel's insistence on exactitude in its descriptive 

technique. More frequently, however, it is the romantic style that the author of Marianela chooses 

to burlesque 148 . Time and again in his narration, Manso adopts romantic postures and language 

146 For his portrait and a snippet of his prose, see Ch. XXVI. 

147 One is reminded of Leopoldo Alas' several satirical incarnations of this literary type in his stories: 

Miguel Paleólogo Bustarnante in « Bustamante » ( Pipá [Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1886]; Don Tristán 

de las Catacumbas, the protagonist of « El poeta-buho »; Don Ermeguncio de la Trascendencia in 

« Don Ermeguncio o la vocación »; Don Teopompo Filoteo de Belem in « Versos de un loco », 

whose calling card identifies him as a « Poeta esotérico ultratelúrico » (all in Doctor Sutilis [ Madrid: 

Renacimiento , 1916]). 

148 Nimetz (p. 14), like Casalduero before him, points out that Galdós frequently satirizes 

romanticism and romantic taste in the Novelas contemporáneas , but he does not mention El amigo 

Manso in this connection. The subject of Galdós' romantic parodies in his later career has provided 

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only to collapse them by exaggerating 149 , by announcing them as hypothetical 150 , or by revealing 

them for what they are. The flowery, metaphoric language that Manso uses to describe Irene's first 

contacts with Manolo is immediately reduced to parody when he interjects: « No dirá usted que no 

estoy poético » (XLI, 255) 151 . The reader perhaps swept up momentarily by the attractiveness of 

the language is roughly returned to his circumstance as reader of a text and made to reflect on the 

options of artistic expression. The mock epic language used to describe Doña Cándida (IV) and the 

derogatory assessment of the declamatory style of the contemporary theater (XIV, XV) are further 

elements of this anti-rhetorical stand, while Máximo's death is the positive highpoint of that posture: a 

simple exit, with no gestures, no drama, no bombast. In all these instances, El amigo Manso exposes 

fuel for a minor polemic between Pablo Cabañas and Edwin Place in the Hispanic Review , 39 (1971), 

473-74. 

149 « ¡Oh, negra tristeza! / Fúnebre y pesado velo, ¿quién te echó sobre mí? ¿Por qué os elevasteis 

lentos y pavorosos sobre mi alma, pensamientos de muerte, como vapores que suben de la superficie 

de un lago caldeado? Y vosotras, horas de la noche, ¿qué agravio recibisteis de mí para que me 

martirizarais una tras otra, implacables, pinchándome el cerebro con vuestro compás de agudos 

minutos? Y tú, sueño, ¿por qué me mirabas con dorados ojos de búho haciendo cosquillas en los míos, 

y sin querer apagar con tu bendito soplo la antorcha que ardía en mi mente? Pero a nadie debo increpar 

como a vosotros, argumentos tenues de un raciocinio quisquilloso y sofístico... » (XXIX, 177-78). 

The paragraph that follows is an apostrophe to the imagination. 

150 « Irene callaba. Iba junto a mí en el asiento delantero, y con el movimiento del coche su codo y 

el mío se frotaban ligeramente. Si fuera yo más inclinado a hacer retruécanos de pensamiento, diría 

que de aquel rozamiento brotaban chispas, y que estas chispas corrían hacia mi cerebro a producir 

combustiones ideológicas o ilusiones explosivas... » (XXVIII, 175). 

151 The following example piles self-revelation onto a passage whose extended structuring and 

grotesque metaphor already give it a parodic tone: « No sé, no sé lo que pasó en mi interior. La 

efusión de mi oculto cariño, que se expansionaba y se venía fuera, cual oprimido gas que encuentra 

de súbito mil puntos de salida, hallaba obstáculos en el temor de aquella soledad traicionera, en el 

comedimiento que me parecía exigido por las circunstancias; y así, cuando las más vulgares reglas del 

romanticismo pedían que me pusiera de rodillas y soltara uno de esos apasionados ternos que tanto 

efecto hacen en el teatro, mi timidez tan sólo supo decir del modo más soso posible: / 'Veremos eso, 

veremos eso...' » (XXXIV, 207). 

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itself as a fiction about fiction, and the text assumes the power to create and to destroy through the 

word, one in the process of the other. 

Manso, for that matter, is a word, a sign. He/It signals an apparent deficiency. In terms of the 

characterization in the inner novel, Manso is no man of action because he is a philosopher, a cerebral 

person. At that level, one can read his declaration of non-existence as the accurate self-assessment 

of an individual so meek that his existence has no significance. From the other perspective, that of 

fictionality, Manso's distance from vital existence is consistent with his proclaimed non-existence 

because he is a creature born of thought who, by the standards of tangibility, remains a thought. 

Part of Galdós' game is to imbue the imagined flesh-and-blood figure he has penned with the very 

nature of fictionality. As a result, Manso is a rare character in that his personality as a man does not 

transcend his fictionality but rather is determined by it. Clearly, the individual living out the patterns 

of a predetermined existence (his autonomy is predetermined) and who harmonizes, as Manso does 

and as Manuel does not, with the particular cosmic scheme responsible for his nature is by definition 

meek. Accordingly, if we sit in condemnation of the abulic philosopher who lionizes the symbols of 

bourgeois values, as Nimetz suggests that Galdós does (pp. 60-61), we miss the mark. Galdós knew 

full well that when the Book of Psalms proclaims that «the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall 

delight themselves in the abundance of peace» (37: 11), it establishes an equivalency between the 

meek and the righteous in opposition to the wicked. The biblical promise, furthermore, is that the Lord 

will beautify the meek with salvation (Psalms 149: 4). On both the interior and the framing level of the 

novel, Manso has been so beautified. In the novel-within-the-novel, Manso's retreat is the deliverance 

of the righteous from the wicked. After having been sucked for a period into the sullied terrain of 

the petty bourgeoisie, he meets a fate that corresponds to the moral and intellectual distinction of his 

character and is permanently distanced from that besmirched world. Through the framing structure, 

Manso's lord and master has accorded his meek-willed invention the beauty and salvation inherent 

in the artistic creation. 

Gerald Gillespie has defined Manso as a disabused intellectual who in his «real» existence lives in 

anguished alienation 152 . «To be sure». But the spatial parameters of this alienation encompass two 

directions: not only the usual conception of existing «outside» but also the idea of «above». Modern 

literature's alienated characters exist in an ironic zone where their apartness tends to demean their 

worth in the eyes of those who share their fictional world but causes in the reader a recognition of their 

152 «Reality and Fiction in the Novels of Galdós», Anales Galdosianos , 1 (1966), 19. 

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superiority. That superiority, which unfortunately does not preclude insufficiency in the face of life's 

demands, is at least visible in the power of their intellect. Had he not himself been an ironist, Manso 

might have written his notes from underground and foreshadowed an Aschenbach, a Roquentin, or a 

Meursault. Gillespie poses what is perhaps the most important question that the reader of El amigo 

Manso can ask: whether or not Manso's understanding in a state of alienation is a kind of liberation. 

The answer without a doubt is yes. If later on the instinctively vital Benina achieves a success and 

wreaks the miracle denied to the powers of Manso or of Nazarín, that does not prevent Manso (or 

Nazarín) from being superior to his circumstance, first in social-ethical terms and ultimately by virtue 

of his self-conscious fictionality. Redemptive powers lie in both spheres. 

Perhaps sadly the superior moral posture here accrues to the individual whose fictionality is what 

defines his special worth and whose morality therefore lies outside social realities, but his moral 

distinction is diminished neither by the fact of his fictionality nor by the idiosyncratic weaknesses 

that lead to his passing entrapment by society. It is too easy to forget that, despite the bias of a first- 

person narration, Máximo is serious, honest, generous, and good. Celibacy, cleanliness, and an ordered 

existence are surely not moral defects. An individual whose professional duty it is to lecture to a class 

on the subject of the reciprocal relationship between moral conscience and the will may be lacking 

a strong will but cannot be oblivious to the demands of a moral conscience. Whatever his reformist 

incapacities, Manso is better able than anyone else around him to « distinguir la patria apócrifa de la 

auténtica » (IX, 59). By the standards of Máximo's far more reasoned perspective, a society that still 

has recourse to the duel can seem nothing short of barbaric, regardless of whether the contest is played 

out tragically or farcically. Manso's failure as an orator juxtaposed with the enthusiasm bestowed on 

Peña merely shows the audience's gullibility and ignorance. Manso exists in but stands apart from a 

society, the one that Manolo joins, where « el devoto del bien, o se hace inmune cubriéndose con 

máscara hipócrita o cae redondo al suelo, muerto de asfixia » (XLIX, 305) 153 . In this structure, life is 

153 Gullón (p. 73), in his interpretation of Manso as society's antagonist, and Earle, who views Manso 

as the incarnation of purity, instrumental in revealing the baseness of human nature, are not as far apart 

in their readings as Earle's note 14 (p. 126) would seem to infer. Both capture his superiority, as does 

Rodgers (p. 443): « Por incapaz que sea Máximo de enfrentarse con la naturaleza humana tal como 

es, permanece' al final en posesión de las únicas realidades dignas de ser perseguidas -la verdad, la 

caridad, la sabiduría, mientras que los hombres 'prácticos' viven en un mundo de ilusiones ». Since it 

is a fact, as Denah Lida observes in « Sobre el 'krausismo' de Galdós », Anales Galdosianos , 2 (1967), 

1-27, that Peña succeeds on the social and political scene of immediacy while Máximo enjoys the 

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on the side of disorder, existence conflicts with ethics. If the victory in this world, in this novel, is not 

Máximo Manso's, it belongs to his creator, but certainly not to Manolo or to José María, appearances 

notwithstanding. By temperament and talent Máximo was unable to enter the reigning bourgeoisie's 

power structure: that is to his credit. 

We must of course concede that this morally and intellectually superior individual is constitutionally 

defective in terms of the demands placed on him by his historical circumstance. As a man of his time, 

measured by his practical achievements, among which the acquisition of a new wet nurse is probably 

his most momentous, Manso does not loom large. When we fathom the narration's ironic distance, 

however, Manso's insignificance can be taken at face value no more than the assertion that this book 

is « un trabajillo de poco aliento » (1, 3), for he is never fully disengaged from his literariness. 

If Manso's trajectory describes the self-creation of a fictional character, then his fictionality is the 

realization of a goal. To transcend that fictionality into life would devalue it. Newton, in her study 

(p. 125), already sensed El amigo Manso's overriding implication: that literature carries with it an 

immanence of meaning that lived experience cannot hold 154 . Correa accurately conveys the idea 

contained in the text: 

eternal and the profound and that Máximo is the enabling agent of Peña's triumph, she need not have 

been so hesitant in designating Manso's failure as relative. And, out of sympathy as I must confess 

to being with Pattison's approach to the novel, I heartily agree with his conclusions about Máximo: 

«He has indeed been manso with all the meekness, docility, and lack oi virile spirit which this word 

connotes. But if, as he states, there is something above and beyond the facts and events of everyday 

life, he can console himself in the knowledge that in this superior realm he still holds the advantage. 

Now he is manso in another sense: the bellwether who leads the stupid sheep. The man of action 

carries off the superficial and transitory victories; the man of thought moves in the world of truth and 

is the guide of society towards a better organization in which egoism and individualism will no longer 

corrupt the ideal» (p. 148). 

154 In comparing El amigo Manso to an Anatole France novel (« Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard , 

a Possible Source for El amigo Manso », Symposium , 17 [1963], 123-29), Monroe Z. Hafter has 

noticed that in a juxtaposition of fiction and reality, the imaginary may prove to be the more real 

of the two. Máximos contradictory nature as a self-conscious fiction of flesh and blood leads Hafter 

to conclude that the ultimate battle on the level of action and practical resolution is won by the 

figment of the imagination. Had Hafter and Russell gone far enough into Galdós' game playing to 

detail the supremacy of fiction, they would have been able to resolve the contradiction of Máximo's 

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Finalmente, una vez establecida la naturaleza de su ser de ficción, surge la pregunta fundamental y 

paradójica, de si acaso su inexistencia no sea una manera más plena de existencia, precisamente por 

abarcar en forma comprensiva los atributos generales del ser 

De esta manera, queda esclarecido uno de los aspectos más importantes del ser de ficción 

consistente en su carencia de tangibilidad concreta, si bien dotado, al mismo tiempo, de una forma 

de existencia que es susceptible de una potencialidad significativa y existencial, superior a la de los 

seres vivos de la tierra. 

(pp. 101-02) 

The game of autonomy ¡s the instrument that projects this notion as it casts the character in the roles 

of both creator and creation. 155 

When Manso complains of having lost control over his disciple/creation and sees him assuming 

strange shapes, Manolo protests: « -¡Oh! no, -exclamó Peña con vehemencia, dándose una puñada 

sobre el corazón y un palmetazo en la frente. -Algo queda. Mucho hay aquí y aquí, maestro, que 

permanecerá por tiempo infinito. Esta luz no se extinguirá jamás, y mientras haya espacio, mientras 

haya tiempo... » (XX, 121). The irony that lurks behind the hollow rhetoric and in the accompanying 

gestures does not diminish the truth of these words as they pertain to the fictional creation and to the 

power of the creator. Manso gives full vent to the significance of his role in man's order in a series of 

pronouncements where philosopher and artist are interchangeable terms: 

El filósofo actúa en la sociedad de un modo misterioso. Es el maquinista interior y recatado de 

este gran escenario. 

El filósofo descubre la verdad; pero no goza de ella. 

dual parentage that troubles them. The very fact of his fictionality gives Máximo life and allows the 

illusion of reality to take over. One need not be surprised that his creator is forgotten once Manso has 

contracted with him for his existence: such is the way of fiction. 

155 The conviction that the poet has the capacity to discover the truth behind the mask was basic 

to the Symbolist esthetic of the time. André Gide picked up the idea in his first work, Les Cahiers 

d'André Walter (1891): «the poet's imagination brings out more clearly the ideal truth hidden behind 

the appearance of things» ( The Notebooks of André Walter , trans. Wade Baskin [London: Peter 

Owen, 1968], p. 32). 

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El hombre de pensamiento descubre la verdad; pero quien goza de ella y utiliza sus celestiales dones 

es el hombre de acción, el hombre de mundo, que vive en las particularidades, en las contingencias 

y en el ajetreo de los hechos comunes. 

(XXXIX, 245-46) 

Which of the two plucks more enjoyment from life is clear, but if the formula is valid, it is also 

clear whose contribution is the greater. Manso plainly affirms the power of the creative spirit: « 

Desde su oscuro retiro, el sacerdote de la razón, privado de los encantos de la vida y de la juventud, 

lo gobierna todo con fuerza secreta. La conciencia es creadora, atemperante y reparadora. Si se la 

compara a un árbol, debe decirse que da flores preciosísimas, cuya fragancia trasciende a todo lo 

exterior » (XXXIX, 246). These words, like all of El amigo Manso , need to be read simultaneously 

with their opposing connotations: as a rationalization that turns Máximo into the object of irony and 

as a serious evaluation of the cerebral being's creative function. The thinker, the philosopher, the artist 

gives life, invents the existence of others. The reason for his being is the existence of those he has 

created. The philosopher and the artist create so that others might understand and enjoy. The objects - 

ideas, fictions, characters- through which these others gain understanding and joy then exist alone for 

the reader or perceiver, autonomously, while their creator, essential though his role has been, fades 

from existence. 

When Manso feels his spirit suffused with Irene's, the sentiment causes him to say that everything 

appeared beautiful and gratifying to him, like a projection of himself. The wonder of creative 

inspiration, here the encapsulation of an ideal, confers upon the artist the power to transfigure reality 

while reality appears transfigured in his eyes. Nothing is what it is and everything transcends what it 

is. The artistic imagination not only improves on reality, but gives birth to a new circumstance. When 

Manso from his vantage point in limbo talks of the earthly « desgraciadas figurillas » disdainfully as 

playthings that entertained man in his childish state, he is, among other things, seeing them -« ¡Pobre 

gente! » -from the creator's perspective as insignificant objects designed for a moment's distraction. 

Supremely powerful, he conjures them at will as Galdós conjured him. 156 

If the artist as creator sits with God and with Nature in his possession of a singular authority, his 

invention -both the fiction as such and the fictive creature- wins uncommon prominence. The creator 

may berate his creations in their symbolic state as mortals, but the autonomy device allows neither 

the reader nor the creator to forget that the mortality of the fictional creation is not nearly so fragile 

156 Cf. Infante's final words to Equis in La incógnita (V, 786). 

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as theirs. A character not granted such fictional self-awareness is real in his own world and therefore, 

from the inner perspective of the work itself, no more immortal than the real characters of the real 

world. In other words, special as Manso may be for his creative capacity, he is more special yet as a 

fiction. It is well to recall that, by contrast with Niebla , in El amigo Manso the creator approaches 

the creation: « Este tal vino a mí hace pocos días » (I, 2). Moreover, Manso's tone before his creator 

-« este tal »- is condescending at worst and compassionate at best, superior in either case: « le 

tuve tanta lástima que no pude mostrarme insensible a sus acaloradas instancias » (I, 3). But the 

fictional creation's superiority is not limited to his condition relative to his inventor; it is absolute. 

A mythical creature who can say in truthfulness, « no soy, ni he sido, ni seré nunca nadie » (I, 

1), may in his earthly function wear the mask of a Don Nadie of woeful mortality and carnality, but 

he can make such a statement precisely because he is quite the opposite of that. In his autonomous 

modality he is conscious of his transcendence, so that he can follow up the initial declaration with 

what amounts to an affirmation of that transcendence: « me pregunto si el no ser nadie equivale a 

ser todos, y si mi falta de atributos personales equivale a la posesión de los atributos del ser » (I, 2). 

Pirandello's characters echo this sentiment when they loudly proclaim their superiority over people 

who breathe and wear clothes. A product of the imagination, barring a coincidence or a miracle, is 

not palpable, and Manso's greatness is as non-existent, yet every bit as existent, as he is. The likes 

of Doña Javiera, to whom Manso addresses the words, « Invisible es todo lo grande, toda ley, toda 

causa, todo elemento activo » (L, 307), are not blessed with the sensitivity that the special status of 

fiction demands for its recognition. We, on the other hand, are, and we can join him in his happy state. 

The game of literary reflexivity in which Galdós luxuriates in El amigo Manso is a component of the 

novel which any reading of the book must embrace. That the novel should undertake an appraisal of its 

own constitution is enough to dispel the charge of gratuitousness that might be burled at this absorption 

in game playing. The metanovelistic undertaking, however, is judged as sterile by those convinced 

that its view onto itself excludes the world, that which really counts. In El amigo Manso , though, the 

game is not gratuitous because the work's investigation of fictionality and the socialideological planes 

are fully integrated. The reader's acquisition of consciousness of the problematics of fiction permits 

him to capture all the more readily the corresponding social structure that evolves in the context of 

this self-examination of fiction. Doña Cándida is an example. « Llena de pomposos embustes » 

conceived « en su mente soñadora », she lives a lie in her new house: the silverware is not silver, the 

champagne is cider, the table is missing a leg. But she believes in her own creation. « De su infeliz 

estado hacia ridícula comedia » (V, 29). A fiction has overtaken the reality from which it sprang. 

Like Doña Cándida, the members of this bourgeois society are fictional beings not only in the sense 

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that they are the inventions of Galdós, but in that they have created themselves into something they are 

not and function in a society structured on such fictions. In the same way that any novelistic creation 

is given life through language, José María's family's birth into a new social role is legitimized in its 

fictionality by the members' adoption of new linguistic signs (Lica > Manuela, Belica > Isabel, etc.). 

The purchase of titles of nobility is the crowning step in their creation of a fictional identity. Máximo 

himself, who is ostensibly -but only ostensibly- independent of his creator, is also only ostensibly 

independent of this society where the clock strikes eleven at the hour of five. But just as the failure of 

Nazarín's peculiar evangelism is a measure not simply of his ineptitude but of the spiritual sterility of 

nineteenth-century bourgeois society, so too is Manso's sense of uselessness and ultimate withdrawal 

an indictment of a society in which the gentle, the learned, and the morally pure have no place. 

Any judgment of Manso's nature that leaves his circumstance untouched falsifies the relationship 

between the two. Still, as we have shown, through the device of fictive autonomy Galdós distances 

the reader of El amigo Manso from Máximo and his bourgeois world. In doing so, he draws attention 

to the workings of the esthetic object that is at once his creation and his medium. He causes the reader 

to fasten not on the social signification alone, but on the novel as signifier. His endeavor, like any 

metalingual enterprise, is semiotic and epistemological at the same time: it ventures in the telling of 

the tale to unravel that tale's system of signs and to probe the nature of knowledge dressed as fiction. In 

this art that exposes itself, the child in us that is normally swept into the game of belief is suppressed. 

That level here is literally reserved for the child, as when Pepito María hides his face in terror at the 

sight of the devil on stage. We are pitched, rather, into a more sophisticated game for adults. In words 

that Ortega was to echo some forty-five years later, Manso exalts the child's ingenuous faith before the 

work of art over the analytical process: « ¡Ni qué cosa humana habrá que a tal análisis resista! Pero es 

una desdicha conocer el amargo placer de la crítica, y ser llevado por impulsos de la mente a deshojar 

la misma flor que admiramos. Vale más ser niño y mirar con loco asombro las imperfecciones de un 

rudo juguete » (XIV, 85). In this by no means rough-hewn plaything, Galdós has us not live the novel 

but view it as object, constrains us to become aware of ourselves as readers/players, and even edges us 

into a critical analysis of our awareness. In composing a novel that takes its own creation as its theme, 

Galdós joins a host of twentieth-century writers of metanovels, Proust, Gide, and Beckett among 

them. He makes a Pirandello play look much less astonishing than it did at first blush. He connects 

with the modern cinema's penchant for reflexiveness: Fellini's 8 ½ and Bergman's Persona come to 

mind immediately. lf these names seem to constitute odd company for the likes of Don Benito « el 

garbancero », one must keep sight of the fact that there is a difference between Galdós and the others. 

The nineteenth century's ever-increasing isolation of the artist from its social currents has pushed the 

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modern writer to take refuge in an artistic hermeticism. When Galdós creates a self-referential art and 

leads his readers to experience a specific novel as an examination of the novelistic genre, he does 

so without jettisoning the bourgeoisie. Like Máximo Manso, he is not estranged from, or even by, 

the practices and values of the bourgeois society to which he belongs. He too is critical subject and 

corruptible object of his petty circumstance. El amigo Manso therefore functions both in the sphere 

of socio-political commentary and in the hermetic realm of esthetic introspection. 

The radicality of Galdós' procedure in his time lies in the fact that, narrators' interventions 

notwithstanding, the realistic novel does its best to hide its identity as a novel, while Galdós in El 

amigo Manso creates an illusionist art that signals the coming break with illusionism. «You think El 

amigo Manso is life?» he asks us, straight in the tradition of Cervantes. «Don't deceive yourselves! 

This is a novel!» We must remain awake to the fact that when we read a novel we are engaging in a 

game. Children play games to fill their time, to learn and grow. So do adults. Reading novels is one 

of our games. We know the rules beforehand; we learned them long ago. To play El amigo Manso 

requires a few new rules, because it is a game that plays with the game that it plays. The critic's game 

is to discover that game and its rules. 

Cornell University 

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The Ghostly Lover: The Portrayal of the Animus in Tristana 

Kay Engler 

When Benito Pérez Galdós' Tristana first appeared in 1892, his fellow novelist and critic Emilia 

Pardo Bazán proclaimed Galdós' pathetic tale of a young girl's seduction and enslavement at the 

hands of a decadent don Juan and the ultimate failure of all her attempts at self-liberation and self- 

realization as the promise of a great novel never written. She chided Galdós for abandoning his theme 

(the moral slavery of women), for leading the reader astray through extraneous adventures (the affair 

with Horacio), and for failing to fulfill the promise of his central characters (a strong-willed, self- 

aware Tristana; an authentically evil, monstrous Don Lope). But Pardo Bazán correctly perceived that 

the essence of the novel was not Don Lope's seduction of Tristana, nor the love affair with Horacio, 

nor her incapacitating illness, nor her final marriage to Don Lope, but rather a woman's struggle 

for self-awareness and self-realization. In Doña Emilia's words: « El asunto interno de Tristana, 

asunto nuevo y muy humano, pero imperfectamente desarrollado, es el despertar del entendimiento 

y la conciencia de una mujer sublevada contra una sociedad que la condena a perpetua infamia y no 

le abre ningún camino honroso para ganarse la vida... » 157 

As an ardent feminist and a champion of the rights of women in her own society, Pardo Bazán 

saw Tristana's struggle for self-awareness, liberation and self-realization in sociological terms. The 

«awakening of consciousness» she speaks of is what contemporary feminists call «the raising of 

consciousness» to the realities of woman's position in society. Society and its institutions are to blame 

for Tristana's initial predicament and, it is implied, for her own personal failure at self-liberation. It 

seems clear that Pardo Bazán, in criticizing Galdós for abandoning his original intent and for not 

allowing Tristana to become an independent woman, is not really judging the novel on its own terms 

but is, in fact, criticizing Galdós for not having written the novel she herself would like to have written. 

Clarín disagreed profoundly with Doña Emilia about the novel's value and purpose. He saw the novel, 

not as an account of a woman's frustrated attempt to free herself from moral slavery, but rather as « 

la representación bella de un destino gris atormentando un alma noble, bella, pero débil, de verdadera 

fuerza sólo para imaginar, para soñar, de muchas actitudes embrionarias, un alma como hay muchas 

en nuestro tiempo de medianías llenas de ideal y sin energía ni vocación seria, constante, definida » 

157 Emilia Pardo Bazán, « Tristana » in Obras completas , vol. 3 (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973), p. 1120. 

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158 . Tristana, for Clarín, is a prototypal heroine of the realist novel of systematic disillusionment, like 

her spiritual sisters Emma Bovary, Ana de Ozores, Isidora Rufete and so many others, vainly reaching 

toward the crystalline sphere of the ideal and fatefully pulled by their own weight into the ordinary, 

humdrum world of reality. In Clarín's view, Tristana's failure at self-realization results neither from 

societal restrictions nor authorial bad faith, but rather from the character's own weakness, her dreamy 

temperament and her own lack of will to carry through to completion her embryonic dreams, to control 

and direct her fantasies into productive channels. 

These two initial critical judgments outline the essential dimensions of Tristana's character and the 

nature of her struggle, but leave many important and intriguing unanswered questions and some 

apparently irreconcilable contradictions. What is the exact nature of Tristana's struggle? What is 

she really searching for? What is the true nature of her demand for liberation and independence? 

Is it, as Pardo Bazán suggests, merely sociological: freedom from woman's socially determined 

role of total dependence on men? Or is her search, as Clarín implies, at once more personal and 

more profoundly universal in nature: an almost metaphysical search for the Ideal? What precipitates 

Tristana's awakening to consciousness? What determines the nature and course of her efforts at 

self-determination? What explains the constant metamorphoses of her modes of self-expression, the 

apparent dissipation of her energy in the pursuit of a dozen dilettantish pursuits? What roles do 

Don Lope and Horacio play in the complication or resolution of Tristana's dilemma? Are they, as 

Pardo Bazán suggests, incidental to the central drama, serving merely to distract the reader's attention 

from the basic matters at hand, or are they, in fact, central to the understanding of Tristana's story? 

Why, finally, does Tristana fail? Can we reconcile Pardo Bazán's view of Tristana as a victim of her 

society, of circumstance, with Clarín's view of Tristana as a victim of her own weakness? Or must 

we ultimately decide in favor of one or the other view? 

The key to understanding Tristana and the real nature of her struggle lies with the long-neglected 

figure of Horacio, the third member of the ill-fated triangle. Of the three principal characters in the 

novel, Horacio, in and of himself, is decidedly the least interesting. Pardo Bazán dismisses him as 

unimportant, declaring that Tristana's love affair with Horacio is « una intriga amorosa como otra 

cualquiera... que no tiene nada que ver con la novela iniciada en las primeras páginas del libro », and 

that, even more significantly, as a result « la lucha por la independencia ya queda relegada a último 

158 Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), Galdós, Obras completas , vol. I (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1912), p. 252. 

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término: puede decirse que suprimida » 159 . Yet, somehow, one feels that Pardo Bazán's dismissal 

of Horacio is too abrupt. The account of Tristana's relationship with him fills chapter after chapter; 

his presence is keenly felt throughout most of the novel. However uninteresting Horacio himself may 

be, there is no denying his importance to Tristana. What is significant is not Horacio as a real human 

being, but what he tomes to represent for Tristana. 

Horacio Díaz is a pleasant young man, a somewhat mediocre painter of still lifes, landscapes and 

portraits. His life story is not unlike Tristana's. Orphaned at an early age, he spent a lonely, isolated 

childhood under the watchful eye of a tyrannical grandfather who denied him every opportunity to 

develop his artistic talents and frustrated any effort at self-expression. After his grandfather's death, a 

long sojourn in Italy enabled Horacio to study the work of the masters and perfect the techniques of 

his craft. It proved to be as well a time of initiation into the sensual pleasures of life and the ways of the 

world. The affair with Tristana constitutes his initiation into the mysteries of love and the intricacies 

of human relationships. 

There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of Horacio's affection for Tristana, nor the authenticity 

of his initial attraction to her. Tristana plays a very important role in Horacio's life, being, as it were, 

his first love. But even before his departure for Villajoyosa, Horacio has begun to back away from 

Tristana, frightened by the intensity of her convictions and the absoluteness of her ideals, intuiting 

the growing disparity between the Tristana he has imagined and the Tristana who really exists. In 

the letters he receives from Tristana during his stay at Villajoyosa, Horacio becomes equally aware 

of the disparity between the Horacio Tristana has created and the real Horacio, so that the dramatic 

meeting with Tristana following her operation is, for Horacio, somewhat anticlimatic, only confirming 

the mutual disillusionment he had long expected. The half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, at the 

rekindling of the earlier passions, are doomed to failure, and Horacio slowly drifts away, ultimately 

into marriage with another woman. 

Yet the whole experience, for Horacio, is not a negative one. He emerges from it relatively unscathed. 

If anything, the experience for Horacio is beneficial: he is introduced to the mysteries of love, and 

learns some very valuable lessons about the nature of human relationships. 160 

159 Pardo Bazán, op. cit. , p. 1122. 

160 Leon Livingstone, in his article «The Law of Nature and Women's Liberation in Tristana », Anales 

galdosianos 7 (1972), 93-99, judges Horacio much more harshly, seeing him as the quintessential 

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For Tristana, the experience with Horacio is, on the other hand, profoundly destructive. An 

experience which might have led to spiritual fulfilment and to the realization of self, leads instead to 

spiritual annihilation, the pathetic re-enslavement of self. It is this self-annihilation which contributes 

most to the moral and spiritual emptiness which fills the final pages of the novel and leaves the reader 

himself temporarily devastated. 

Why should Tristana's experience with this rather innocuous young artist have been so upsetting? 

The answer lies in the fact that Tristana never experiences Horacio as Horacio Díaz, a real human 

being of flesh and blood, but as the incarnation of what Jungian psychologists call the Ghostly Lover. 

Tristana never sees or accepts Horacio Díaz as he really is, but rather projects onto him her images of 

the ideal self, a compendium of her own values, aspirations, wants and needs. As such, he becomes 

an integral part of her struggle for self-realization and the ultimate failure of that struggle. In Jungian 

terms, Horacio Díaz is clearly an animus figure. 161 

predatory male (like Juanito Santa Cruz of Fortunata y Jacinta ). But, as we shall see, Horacio's 

apparent rejection of Tristana is perhaps only in recognition of the fact that by the end of the novel, 

no living human being could have satisfied Tristana. 

161 In the theory developed by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, the «inward face» of the human 

personality is called the anima in men and the animus in women. The anima archetype is the 

feminine side of the male psyche, while the animus is the masculine side of the female psyche. Jung 

believes that the human personality is characterized by its «contrasexuality», that is, that every human 

being exhibits both masculine and feminine qualities, kinds of behaviour, attitudes, feelings which 

have traditionally been considered masculine or feminine. In men, «masculine» qualities such as 

assertiveness, agressiveness, initiative, strength, emotional invulnerability, rational thinking, etc. are 

dominant while «feminine» qualities like passivity, tenderness, intuitive or «irrational» thinking, etc. 

are recessive. The opposite is true in women. Jung states that the individual only reaches his maximum 

potential when he has fully accepted his contrasexuality and has brought his masculine and feminine 

qualities into balance in a truly androgynous ideal. For a clear discussion and summary of Jung's 

theories of the animus and anima (which are scattered throughout his writings) see Calvin S. Hall and 

Vernon J. Nordby, A Primer of Jungian Psychology , (New York: New American Library, 1973) and 

M.-L. von Franz, «The Process of Individuation» in Man and his Symbols , conceived and edited by 

Carl G. Jung, (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964), pp. 158-280. 

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Jungian psychologist Esther Harding explains that a young woman may fall in love with a man 

whom, in the absence of the glamour resulting from her own state of mind, she might find not even 

likeable or attractive: «The glamour and attraction she feels for him are effects produced by forces in 

her unconscious which have been stirred to activity through her contact with the man. She projects 

onto him some important element from her unconscious, her masculine soul, her animus... Her animus, 

projected the outside world, draws her irresistibly». 162 

Harding goes on to point out how the phenomenon of animus projection often appears in literature 

in plays or novels where the girl is portrayed as having a lover who is not of this world, but belongs, 

instead, to the spirit or ghost world (i.e. the dybbuk of Jewish folk literature). The girl may be haunted 

by the ghost of a dead youth with whom she was in love, or may continue to be obsessed by her 

continued love for a departed or lost lover. In fact, the lover may never have existed as an objective 

reality at all, but is only a subjective effect within the woman's psyche 163 . The ghostly, or fantastic, 

quality of the animus is explained in Jung's statement in The Secret of the Golden Flower that the 

animus is the «air spirit». In contrast to the anima, the earth spirit who draws men toward the center 

of the earth or the depths of the water (representing their own unconscious), the animus, or Ghostly 

Lover, draws women up into the air. Says Esther Harding: «To the woman her animus is up in the 

air, if she goes with him it is to meet him in the realms above the earth». 164 

Such is the spiritual force of the animus that the Ghostly Lover sometimes takes on the appearance 

of the Divine Lover, and the attraction to the Ghostly Lover takes on mystic overtones. As Harding 

explains: «The idea of the Ghostly or Spiritual Lover is not a new one. Religious mystics of all ages 

and creeds have all sought for union with a Divine Lover». 165 

In any case, the experience of the Ghostly Lover is an inner or subjective one. In Harding's words: 

«Whether we conceive of the Divine Lover as God, in either case he may be perceived by [the 

woman] as being outside her conscious personality and yet he is one with whom she can converse only 

subjectively, that is to say, within herself. Even where an actual man carries the values of the Ghostly 

162 Esther Harding, The Way of All Women (New York: G. P. Putman, 1970), p. 37. 

163 Ibid. 

164 Ibid. , p. 50. 

165 Ibid. , p. 41. 

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Lover, it is still possible in every case to demonstrate the subjective or psychological character of the 

energy which the Ghostly Lover wields». 166 

From the moment of her first encounter with Horacio, Tristana seems aware that he is, somehow, a 

part of herself. The narrator describes the scene of their first meeting: « Antes de aproximarse a los 

incendiarios vio a un hombre que hablaba con el profesor de los sordomudos, y al cruzarse su mirada 

con la de aquel sujeto, pues en ambos el verse y el mirarse fueron una acción sola, sintió una sacudida 

interna, como suspensión instantánea del correr de la sangre. ¿Qué hombre era aquel? Habíale visto 

antes, sin duda; no recordaba cuándo ni dónde, allí o en otra parte... » 167 In her first letter to him, 

she writes: « Te quise desde que nací... » (p. 1555) and in the third, « Te estoy queriendo, te 

estoy buscando desde antes de nacer ». (p. 1556) The Ghostly Lover within makes Horacio appear 

hauntingly familiar. 

In the beginning, Tristana even seems minimally aware of the tendency of her own fantasy to distort 

the real Horacio: « Asombrábase ella del engaño de sus ojos en las primeras apreciaciones de la 

persona del desconocido. Cuando se fijó en él, la tarde aquella de los sordomudos, túvole por un señor 

sí, como de treinta años. ¡¡Qué tonta!! ¡Si era un muchacho! » (p. 1555) But this discriminatory 

power is soon lost, and she succumbs gradually to the fantasy created by her own psyche. 

The idealization of Horacio (or, if you will, the realization of the Ghostly Lover) begins early in 

the novel. Listening to Horacio's account of his life, Tristana thinks him unique among men, a kind 

of romantic saint deserving inclusion in the most sacred of martyrologies. She believes « que el 

hombre que le había deparado el Cielo era una excepción entre todos los mortales y su vida de lo más 

peregrino y anómalo que en clase de vidas de jóvenes se pudiera encontrar: como que casi parecía 

vida de un santo, digna de un huequecito en el martirologio ». (1558-9) 

Horacio has an almost magical effect on her, ridding her of all her fears and anxieties (« Desde 

que te quiero..., no tengo miedo a nada, ni a los toros ni a los ladrones. Me siento valiente hasta el 

heroísmo, y ni la serpiente boa ni el león de la selva me harían pestañear ». p. 1561), and pulling 

her ever upward toward the airy regions of the ideal: « Soy tan feliz », she writes, « que a veces 

166 Ibid. , p. 45. 

167 Benito Pérez Galdós, Tristana in Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 4.ª edición, 1965), V, p. 

1554. All further page references included in parentheses in the text are to this edition. 

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paréceme que vivo suspendida en el aire, que mis pies no tocan la tierra, que huelo la eternidad y 

respiro el airecillo que sopla más allá del Sol ». (p. 1579) 

With Horacio's absence, the process of spiritualization, and the presence of the Ghostly Lover, grow 

more evident. In her first letter written to Horacio at Villajoyosa, Tristana has already begun to doubt 

Horacio's real nature: « ¿Es verdad que me quieres tanto y que en tanto me estimas? Pues a mí me da 

por dudar que sea verdad tanta belleza. Dime: ¿existes tú, o no eres más que un fantasma vano, obra 

de fiebre, de esta ilusión de lo hermoso y de lo grande que me trastorna? » (p. 1579) In the course of 

time, the image of the real Horacio begins to fade: « Lo más raro de cuanto me pasa es que se me ha 

borrado tu imagen: no veo tu lindo rostro; lo veo así como envuelto en una niebla, y no puedo precisar 

las facciones, ni hacerme cargo de la expresión de la mirada. ¡Qué rabia!... A veces me parece que 

la neblina se despeja..., abro mucho los ojitos de la imaginación y me digo: 'Ahora, ahora le voy a 

ver.' Pero resulta que veo menos, que te oscureces más, que te borras completamente, y abur mi señor 

Juan. Te me vuelves espíritu puro un ser intangible, un... no sé cómo decirlo. » (p. 1584) Tristana's 

imagination struggles against the force of reality: « Yo te engrandezco con mi imaginación cuanto 

quieres achicarte, y te vuelvo bonito cuando te empeñas en ponerte feo... No te opongas a mi deseo, no 

desvanezcas mi ilusión; te quiero grande hombre y me saldré con la mía. Lo siento y lo veo... no puede 

ser de otra manera ». (p. 1591) and finally succeeds in replacing the real Horacio with the ideal being. 

The triumph of the Ghostly Lover is complete. In her last letters to Horacio, Tristana abandons 

completely the special lover's vocabulary she had previously shared with him. The narrator comments: 

« Todo ello se borró de su memoria, como se fue desvaneciendo la persona misma de Horacio, 

sustituida por un ser ideal, obra temeraria de su pensamiento, ser en quienes se cifraban todas las 

bellezas visibles e invisibles... El Horacio nuevo e intangible parecíase un poco al verdadero, pero 

nada más que un poco. De aquel bonito fantasma iba haciendo Tristana la verdad elemental de su 

existencia, pero sólo vivía para él, sin caer en la cuenta de que tributaba culto a un Dios de su propia 

cosecha. » (p. 1592) As the narrator points out, it is only out of force of habit that the letters were still 

being sent to Horacio at Villajoyosa. They were in fact meant for someone else, the Ghostly Lover 

within: « En realidad debían expedirse por la estafeta del ensueño hacia la estación de los espacios 

imaginarios ». (p. 1592) 

Ultimately, the Ghostly Lover becomes the Divine Lover. In a letter written to Horacio after her 

operation, Tristana exclaims: « Yo te veo más lejos aun que antes te veía, más hermoso, más 

inspirado, más generoso y bueno. ¿Podré llegar hasta ti con la patita de palo, que creo me pondrán?... 

Te adoro lejos, te ensalzo ausente. Eres mi Dios, y como Dios, invisible. Tu propia grandeza te aparta 

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de mis ojos...; hablo de los de la cara..., porque con los del espíritu bien claro te veo... » (p. 1599) The 

wise old Don Lope understands only too well the identity of Tristana's lover. She is, he tells Saturna, 

« enamorada de un hombre que no existe, porque no puede existir, porque si existiera, Saturna, sería 

Dios y Dios no se entretiene en venir al mundo para diversión de las muchachas. » (p. 1602) 

As if it were not already clear, the narrator makes the transformation explicit: 

El ser humano y perfecto que amó, construyéndolo ella misma con materiales tomados de la 

realidad, se había desvanecido, es cierto, con la reaparición de la persona que fue como génesis de 

aquella creación de la mente; pero el tipo, en su esencial e intachable belleza, subsistía vivo en el 

pensamiento de la joven inválida. Si algo pudo variar ésta en la manera de amarle, no menos varió en 

su cerebro aquella cifra de todas las perfecciones. Si antes era un hombre, luego fue Dios, el principio 

y fin de cuanto existía... Fue la mudanza del hombre en Dios tan completa al cabo de algún tiempo, 

que Tristana llegó a olvidarse del primer aspecto de su ideal, y no vio al fin más que el segundo, que 

era seguramente el definitivo. 

(p. 1610) 

The workings of the Ghostly Lover in the psyche of the individual woman often take the form 

of what Jung calls «the sacred conviction» 168 , strongly held values, ideas and opinions which 

are the motivating force of a woman's behavior in the real world and which somehow parallel the 

transformations of the Ghostly Lover himself. 

In Tristana, the «sacred conviction» takes the form of a desire for complete liberation from 

dependence on others, for total self-affirmation. It begins as a kind of vague restlessness, a still 

unformed desire arising from the subconscious. The narrator explains: « Anhelos indescifrables 

apuntaron en su alma. Se sentía inquieta, ambiciosa, sin saber de qué, de algo muy distante, muy alto, 

que no veían sus ojos por parte alguna... » (p. 1548) This vague desire is soon translated into an 

explicit expression of her desire for freedom and self-affirmation. In her conversation with Saturna, 

Tristana cries: « Yo quiero vivir, ver mundo y enterarme de por qué y para qué me han traído a esta 

tierra en que estamos. Yo quiero vivir y ser libre... » (p. 1549) In a subsequent letter to Horacio she 

complains: « El problema de mi vida me anonada más cuanto más pienso en él. Quiero ser algo en 

el mundo, cultivar un arte, vivir de mí misma. El desaliento me abruma. ¿Será verdad, Dios mío, que 

pretendo un imposible? » (p. 1580) 

168 M.-L. von Franz, op. cit. , p. 189. 

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In the society in which Tristana lived, the greatest obstacle to freedom and self-affirmation for a 

woman was marriage itself. « ¿No te parece a ti », she says to Saturna, « que lo que dice [don 

Lope] del matrimonio es la pura razón? Yo..., te lo confieso, aunque me riñas, creo como él que eso de 

encadenarse a otra persona por toda la vida es invención del diablo ». (p. 1549) And as she later writes 

to Horacio, « Si encuentro mi manera de vivir, viviré sola. ¡Viva la independencia! sin prejuicio de 

amarte y de ser siempre tuya. Yo me entiendo: tengo acá mis ideitas. Nada de matrimonio, para no 

andar a la greña por aquello de quien tiene las faldas y quien no. Creo que has de quererme menos si 

me haces tu esclava; creo que te querré poco si te meto en un puño. Libertad honrada es mi tema... 

» (p. 1572) 

Freedom and self-affirmation to Tristana mean the ability to do anything, to be anything. « Di 

otra cosa », she says, « y no puede una ser pintora y ganarse el pan pintando cuadros bonitos?... Y 

no podría una mujer meterse a escritora y hacer comedias? » (p. 1549) Ultimately it means a kind 

of Faustian desire to know everything. Tristana begins to read avidly in a frenzied effort to absorb 

all knowledge. As she explains to Horacio: « He empezado por traerme un carro de libros, pues en 

casa jamás los hubo. Son de la biblioteca de su amigo el marqués de Cicero. Excuso decirte que he 

caído sobre ellos como loco hambriento, y a éste quiero, a éste no quiero, heme dado unos atracones 

que ya, ya... ¡Dios mío, cuánto sabo ! En ocho días he tragado más páginas que lentejas dan por mil 

duros. Si vieras mi cerebrito por dentro, te asustarías. Allí andan las ideas a bofetada limpia unas con 

otras... Me sobran muchas, y no sé con cuálas quedarme... y lo mismo le hinco el diente a un tomo de 

Historia que a un tratado de Filosofía... Yo con todo apenco. Quiero saber, saber, saber. » (p. 1584) 

Conversely, this desire for absolute independence, for absolute self-affirmation, is expressed as a 

desire to be loved more and more by the Ghostly Lover (Horacio). As she confesses to Horacio: « Sólo 

un recelo chiquillo y fastidioso... me estorba... y es la sospecha de que todavía no me quieres bastante, 

que no has llegado al supremo límite del querer ¿qué digo límite, si no lo hay? al principio del último 

cielo, pues yo no puedo hartarme de pedir más, más, siempre más, y no quiero, no quiero sino cosas 

infinitas, entérate... todo infinito, infinitísimo, o nada... » (p. 1579) In effect, then, paralleling the 

transformation of Horacio into the Ghostly and then the Divine Lover, Tristana's «sacred conviction», 

her struggle for liberation and self-affirmation, has become a search for the Absolute. 

Esther Harding explains a third way in which the Ghostly Lover may manifest himself. He may 

appear, she says, «in the form of visions or values which are seen or sensed deep in the unconscious, 

the inner world. Many people are lured by such fantasies. For instance, the would-be artist who sees 

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marvellous pictures which she never paints, or the author whose poem or novel remains unwritten, or 

the theosophist who lives in a world which can never be realized in practical life -all are lured away 

from reality by the Ghostly Lover. If the artist tries to paint her picture, the meagerness of the reality 

product discourages her». 169 

Tristana's struggle for self-expression takes a dozen different forms -painting, public speaking, 

languages, acting, music, cooking- but all are vaguely amateurish and dilettantish in nature, and all 

are short-lived. She seems incapable of directing, channeling and utilizing her energies, of realizing 

her innate talents. The narrator describes Tristana's initial enthusiasm for painting: « Después de 

ver trabajar a Díaz, se prendó más de aquel arte delicioso, que le pareció fácil en su procedimiento, y 

entráronle ganas de probar también su aptitud... ¡Qué risa! ¡Si resultara que también ella era pintora! 

No le faltaban disposiciones, porque la mano perdía de hora en hora su torpeza, y si la mano no la 

ayudaba, la mente iba muy altanera por delante, sabiendo cómo se hacía, aunque hacerlo no pudiera. 

» (p. 1569) Tristana herself describes her attempts to write novels and plays: « Puedes creerme 

que estas noches últimas, desvelada y no sabiendo cómo entretener el tiempo, he inventado no sé 

cuántos dramas de los que hacen llorar y piezas de las que hacen reír, y novelas de muchísimo enredo 

y pasiones tremendas y qué sé yo. Lo malo es que no sé escribir..., quiero decir, con buena letra; 

cometo la mar de faltas de gramática y hasta de ortografía. Pero ideas, lo que llamamos ideas, cree 

que no me faltan ». (p. 1550) 

Tristana feels herself innately capable of anything, but blames a restrictive society or a lack of 

education for her inability to realize her innate talents. Yet at the same time, she is aware of her own 

lack of practicality, her inability to carry things out on a real level. « No puedo enterarme de las 

menudencias prácticas de la vida », (p. 1572) she explains to Horacio, « Lo que he pensado de mí, 

estudiándome mucho, porque yo me estudio, ¿sabes?, es que sirvo, que podré servir para las cosas 

grandes; pero que decididamente no sirvo para las cosas pequeñas ». (p. 1576) 

The metamorphoses of her modes of self-expression are not completely fortuitous. They, too, obey 

the same process of spiritualization we have witnessed previously. Painting (at least the style of 

painting practiced by Horacio) involves as much imitation of the outer world as creation through 

fantasy. Learning English and German and reading volumes of philosophy lead her into the world of 

the intellect. Music, for Tristana, serves finally as a means of communication with the sublime world 

169 Harding, op. cit. , p. 54. 

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of the spirit. In the mystic state produced by the music she plays, Tristana becomes totally oblivious 

to the world around her. 

At this point the presence of the Ghostly Lover as a living reality in Tristana's life has been thoroughly 

documented. But the question remains, what does it all mean? How does Tristana's inner experience 

of the Ghostly Lover reflect, and thus explain, the course of her own psychological development? 

What does it tell us about Tristana's awakening to consciousness, her struggle for liberation, and the 

reason for her ultimate failure? As Esther Harding explains, «The Ghostly Lover is a living reality 

to every woman... As he is a part of her so she is bound to him; she must find him and consciously 

assimilate him if she is not to suffer the pain and distress of disintegration. For he is her soul-mate, her 

'other-half', the invisible companion who accompanies her throughout life» 170 . Tracing the course 

of Tristana's fateful encounter with the Ghostly Lover, and analyzing her inability to «consciously 

assimilate» him should enable us to explain the ultimate and devastating disintegration of self she 

suffers in the end. 

Jungian psychologists believe that there are four stages in the development of a woman's psyche. The 

first stage of feminine development is one of psychic unity where there is no separation of the ego from 

the unconscious. As Anne Ulanov explains: «At this stage woman exists within the self-conserving 

matriarchal circle symbolized by the close mother-daughter relationship symbolized by Demeter and 

Kore. Everything is self-evident and natural. A man is an outsider for her: she experiences him but 

never surrenders to him» 171 . As the novel begins, Tristana, an only child, is living alone with her 

widowed mother, an hysterical woman whose obsessive mania for cleanliness is a clear indication 

of frigidity and hostility to men. The Tristana who, after her mother's death, comes to live with Don 

Lope is a doll-like creature with no sense of her own identity and apparently no psychic life of her 

own. She appears unaware of herself as a psychological entity independent of others. 

The narrator's initial description of Tristana creates the image of a woman of total purity and 

innocence, physically and psychologically virgin in every sense of the word: « Pero lo más 

característico en tan singular criatura era que parecía toda ella un puro armiño y el espíritu de la 

pulcritud, pues ni aun rebajándose a las más groseras faenas domésticas se manchaba. Sus manos, de 

170 Ibid. , p. 38. 

171 Anne Bedford Ulanov, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and Christian Theology (Evanston: 

Northwestern University Press, 1971), p. 242. 

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una forma perfecta... tenían misteriosa virtud, como su cuerpo y ropa, para poder decir a las capas 

inferiores del mundo físico: ' la vostra miseria non mi tange '. Llevaba en toda su persona la 

impresión de un aseo intrínseco, elemental, superior y anterior a cualquier contacto de cosa desaseada 

o impura... » (p. 1542) 

The second stage of feminine development is, in effect, a kind of awakening to consciousness, the 

first awareness of self. In Jungian terms: 

the second stage of feminine development still is focused on the containing uroborus, but it is invaded 

by the paternal and hence dominated by the Great Father archetype. The masculine is experienced as 

an anonymous, transpersonal and overpowering numinosum , completely other than ego, thereby 

making the ego conscious of its own limits. The image of divinity now appears as a male figure 

and first emerges mythologically as power groups of demonic masculine characters... A woman 

experiences this invading masculine, carried by a man or by the animus, as a transpersonal ravishing 

penetrator, who breaks into her consciousness, overpowers her, transports her outside of herself, 

connects her to her own instinctual nature, and fundamentally changes her personality. 172 

The moment of Tristana's awakening to consciousness of self occurs shortly after she has come to 

live with Don Lope. More importantly, it also coincides with the moment of Don Lope's seduction of 

his innocent ward. Don Lope ravishes Tristana, an act which sets in motion an unconscious process 

which eight months later bursts forth into her conscious mind. As the narrator describes it: 

Este despertar de Tristana no era más que una fase de la crisis profunda que hubo de sufrir a los ocho 

meses, aproximadamente, de su deshonra, y cuando cumplía los veintidós años. Hasta entonces la hija 

de Reluz, atrasadilla en su desarrollo moral, había sido toda irreflexión y pasividad muñequil, sin ideas 

propias, viviendo de las proyecciones del pensar ajeno, y con una docilidad tal en sus sentimientos, 

que era muy fácil evocarlos en la forma y con la intención que se quisiera. Pero vinieron días en que 

su mente floreció de improviso, como planta vivaz a la que le llega un buen día de primavera, y se 

llenó de ideas, en apretados capullos primero, en espléndidos ramilletes después. 

(p. 1548) 

It is a moment in which Tristana issues her own Cartesian declaration of existence. « Aquí estoy. 

¿No ves cómo pienso cosas grandes? » she declares. (p. 1549) But the declaration of existence must 

also be a declaration of independence, for as the narrator explains, « a medida que se cambiaba en 

172 Ibid. , p. 246. 

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sangre y médula de mujer la estopa de la muñeca, iba cobrando aborrecimiento y repugnancia a la 

miserable vida que llevaba bajo el poder de don Lope Garrido... » (p. 1549) Don Lope's despicable 

act has made her aware not only of her own ego (I exist), but of the limits on the ego (The Other 

exists). She begins to chafe under - the limits placed on her freedom, and to plan with Saturna the 

afternoon excursions to escape from Don Lope's watchful eye which eventually lead to her encounter 

with Horacio Díaz. 

Ironically, if Don Lope's seduction of Tristana and subsequent enslavement of her make her aware of 

her own ego and the limitations on it, he also provides her with the impetus and the means to transcend 

those limitations. As he ravishes her physically, he also plants deep within her psyche the desire for 

freedom and the seeds which eventually flower as her «sacred conviction». The narrator explains: « 

Era que don Lope, sin que ninguno de los dos se diera cuenta de ello, habíala hecho su discípula, y 

algunas ideas de las que con toda lozanía florecieron en la mente de la joven procedían del semillero de 

su amante y por fatalidad maestro ». (p. 1549) Tristana's abhorrence of matrimony seems patterned 

after Don Lope's doctrine of social anarchy (every man, and woman, for himself). But, in fact, what 

in Don Lope is merely an excuse to satisfy his monumental ego whenever and wherever he pleases, 

becomes, in Tristana, an authentic: demand for self-realization and a protest against individuals and 

social institutions which prevent that. It is the protest against marriage which provides the ideological 

framework for her subsequent struggle for self-liberation and self-realization. 

As Anne Ulanov explains, 

In the third stage of feminine development, the masculine assumes an individual and personal 

form, represented archetypally by a hero who, frees the daughter from bondage to her father and then 

establishes an equal relationship with her... The hero can be an outer man or an inner animus figure... 

and most often he is both, because women usually project masculine qualities of consciousness 

onto actual men. Thus either a 'real' man and partner assumes the freeing role of consciousness and 

dissolves the old form of encompassment in the unconscious, or else it can be an 'inner' man, a power 

of consciousness in the woman herself which accomplishes the freeing. 173 

It is at this point in the novel, after Tristana has experienced the first vague stirrings of self-awareness, 

has shaped them into an ideology of sorts, and has made the first tentative attempts to escape the 

tyranny of Don Lope, that Horacio appears. He has all the markings of the archetypal saviour. As he 

173 Ibid. , p. 255. 

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recounts Tristana's first meeting with Horacio, the narrator ponders its significance: « ¿Qué dijo a 

Tristana el sujeto aquel? No se sabe. Sólo consta que Tristana le contestó a todo que sí, sí, sí! cada 

vez más alto, como persona que, avasallada por un sentimiento más fuerte que su voluntad, pierde en 

absoluto el sentido de las conveniencias... Fue su situación semejante a la del que se está ahogando y 

ve un madero y a él se agarra, creyendo encontrar en él su salvación... Voces hondas del instinto de 

salvación eran las breves y categóricas respuestas de la niña de don Lope; aquel sí pronunciado tres 

veces con creciente intensidad de tono, grito de socorro de un alma desesperada... » (p. 1555) 

Jung explains that as a woman projects her animus outward onto a real man (or a succession of 

men), the animus, too, undergoes four stages of development: «He first appears as a personification 

of a mere physical power, for instance, as an athletic champion or 'muscle man.' In the next stage he 

possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action. In the third phase, the animus becomes the 

'word,' often appearing as a professor or clergyman. Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is 

the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes a mediator of the religious experience 

whereby life acquires new meaning». 174 

Initially, Tristana seems most aware of Horacio's physical presence. He seems, at first, larger than 

life -taller, bigger, handsomer, perhaps older and more experienced than he really is. (Tristana is 

surprised to learn, upon closer inspection, that the man she had supposed to be thirty is really only a 

boy.) In the early stages of their relationship, Horacio is jokingly called « señó Juan », referring to 

his brute strength as a kind of popular hero. At this point, Tristana's perception of Horacio as physical 

power reflects her experiencing her own power to escape from Don Lope. In addition it is Horacio 

who takes the initiative in starting the relationship, who acts to draw her out of herself and away from 

Don Lope. The early stages of their relationship are characterized by an abundance of movement, as 

Tristana and Horacio ride, walk and run incessantly through the streets, plazas and parks of Madrid. 

Tristana herself grows bolder and more open in defiance of Don Lope's restrictions on her freedom 

of movement. 

The next stage of their relationship is dominated by the word. Movement has stopped, as they pass 

hours together talking incessantly, alternately listening and speaking, pouring out their souls to one 

another. Horacio becomes Tristana's teacher, allowing her to use her intellect, introducing her for the 

first time to art as a means of self-expression. Tristana herself becomes more self-confident as she 

174 M.-L. von Franz, op. cit. , p. 184. 

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talks, trying out her ideas on Horacio and simultaneously convincing herself of the authenticity of 

her beliefs. 

It is at this point the real Horacio begins to disappear in the shadow of the Ghostly Lover, the 

animus as the incarnation of meaning, he who is capable of leading Tristana toward liberation and 

self-realization, toward an encounter with the true meaning of her life. 

The fourth stage of feminine development «is marked by stages of confrontation and individuation, 

by self-discovery and by self-giving» 175 . Ideally, in this stage, the woman confronts the Ghostly 

Lover, recognizes him for what he is. That is, she learns to distinguish and accept the real man on 

whom she has projected her own animus, and assimilates the Ghostly Lover into herself. She learns 

to act on the values of the Ghostly Lover she had formerly projected onto another. Esther Harding 

explains: «Thus it is that the Ghostly Lover disappears and in his stead is born a new spiritual power 

transforming the life of the individual. Through the redeemed animus the woman gains a relation to 

the masculine principle within herself... The redeemed animus is a mediator between the conscious 

and the unconscious. He brings the values of the creative sources of the unconscious within reach of 

that human being who has had the courage and the strength to overcome the Ghostly Lover». 176 

But for Tristana there is, as we shall see, no authentic confrontation with the Ghostly Lover. The final 

meeting with Horacio does not lead toward further individuation, to self-discovery and a realization of 

self in the world, but rather to a retreat from reality, a negation of self-discovery, a total and ultimate 

surrender to the Ghostly Lover, accompanied by an apparent accommodation to the facts of external 

existence. Again, the question is why? Why does Tristana fail to realize herself? In Jungian terms, why 

does she fail to «assimilate her Ghostly Lover»? Any attempt to answer the question must ultimately 

deal with the other two central elements of Tristana's story: the enslaving power of Don Lope and 

Tristana's incapacitating illness. What, in fact, do these two external realities have to do with Tristana's 

inner drama? 

The reader intuitively believes that Tristana's failure is in some way related to Don Lope's diabolical 

machinations. In the first place, Don Lope's seduction of Tristana has left her dishonored, permanently 

stigmatized as a virtual pariah in a society in which a woman's chastity is her primary virtue. Don 

Lopes act has severely limited Tristana's possibilities for success or acceptance by that society. Too, 

175 Ulanov, op. cit. , p. 184. 

176 Harding, op. cit. , p. 68. 

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with what appears at times to be diabolical cleverness, Don Lope plays with Tristana's emotions, 

alternately giving her more freedom and pulling her back toward him; at times being understanding, 

affectionate, and paternal; at other times, becoming insanely jealous and tyrannical. Tristana is left 

emotionally unsure of herself, and her feelings toward Don Lope become increasingly ambivalent. 

Yet, in the course of the novel, Don Lope becomes less monstrous, more human, and indeed shows 

some genuine affection for Tristana. The fact is that he does nothing actively to prevent Tristana 

from becoming free, from realizing her self. Indeed, he encourages all her efforts at self-expression. 

He becomes increasingly tolerant of Tristana's relationship with Horacio, offers to write the letters 

to Horacio which Tristana dictates to him, and in the end even allows Tristana to see his rival. Don 

Lope, sure of his ultimate victory, is content to play a waiting game. The worldly-wise old rake 

understands very well Tristana's idealistic temperament, Horacio's mediocrity, and the real nature of 

the relationship between them, which he knows is bound to end unsatisfactorily. 

At the same time, the reader cannot help but feel that Tristana's illness, the cancer which results 

in the amputation of her right leg, is equally responsible for her failure. If Don Lope's seduction of 

Tristana first placed limits on her freedom, it is the incapacitating illness which seals her fate, leaving 

her a complete invalid, totally dependent on others. Her illness further limits her possibilities to act, 

and the operation which follows leaves her a «mutilated woman», even less desirable to men. 

Yet, although these two factors set up the external limits of Tristana's freedom, they do not 

completely explain the internal dynamics of her psychological development. As we have already seen, 

Don Lope's seduction of Tristana may have reduced her freedom in society, but it was at the same time 

the occasion of her awakening to consciousness and the impetus toward self-realization. Tristana's 

illness is, in fact, only the ultimate manifestation of her innate incapacity to act in the real world. 

Tristana herself intuitively associates her illness with Don Lope. As she writes to Horacio for the 

first time of the pain in her leg, she explains: « Es que don Lope me ha pegado su reuma. Hombre, no 

te asustes; don Lope no puede pegarme nada, porque... ya sabes... No hay caso. Pero se dan contagios 

intencionales. Quiero decir que mi tirano se ha vengado de mis desdenes comunicándome por arte 

gitanesco o de mal de ojos la endiablada enfermedad que padece. » (p. 1585) We may ask, what 

justification is there for this intuitive understanding that Don Lope is somehow « responsable » 

for her illness? 

The fact is that Tristana's illness, and the subsequent amputation of her diseased limb which leaves 

her an invalid, incapable of acting on her own, accomplish precisely what Don Lope has always 

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wanted: Tristana's complete enslavement, her total physical and emotional dependence on him. Don 

Lope's very real mental anguish over her health, his frantic efforts to cure her, in spite of whatever 

latent guilt feelings may be present, are designed primarily to make Tristana feel eternally grateful, to 

make her morally indebted to him forever. One can only wonder, then, if Don Lope, too, should not be 

seen as the incarnation of a part of Tristana herself, an incarnation of her own inertia, self-doubt and 

lack of will, her inability to realize her «sacred conviction», the same inertia which manifests itself 

physically as her incapacitating illness? In the inner drama taking place in Tristana's psyche, is Don 

Lope the negative animus which takes revenge on the Ghostly Lover which was leading her toward 

realization of her self, by leading her back, through loss of ego, to unconsciousness? 177 

This inner unconscious drama precedes, and indeed, foreshadows the resolution of the external 

drama, the fateful encounter with Horacio in which Tristana must ultimately come to terms with 

the Ghostly Lover. Tristana intuitively anticipates what the result of this encounter will be. She 

is profoundly upset by the news of Horacio's re-appearance on the scene, first trying to deny its 

possibility (« abrigaba en su interior cierta desconfianza de la realidad de aquel suceso ») (p. 1604), 

then vainly struggling to avoid it. « Al propio tiempo », explains the narrator, « el deseo puramente 

humano y egoísta de ver al ser querido, de oírle, luchaba en su alma con aquel desenfundado idealismo, 

en virtud del cual, más bien que buscar la aproximación, tendía, sin darse cuenta de ello, a evitarla. 

La distancia venía a ser como una voluptuosidad de aquel amor sutil, que pugnaba por desprenderse 

de toda influencia de los sentidos ». (p. 1604) 

The moment of desengaño is inevitable. As Horacio enters her room, he appears a stranger to 

her. She cannot recognize him. His voice is totally foreign to her. The narrator explains: « En los 

primeros momentos sintió Tristana una desilusión brusca. Aquel hombre no era el mismo que, borrado 

de su memoria por la distancia, habíala ella reconstruido laboriosamente con su facultad creadora 

177 M.-L. von Franz explains that in this negative form, «the animus personifies all those semi- 

conscious, cold, destructive reflections that invade a woman in the small hours, especially when she 

has failed to realize some obligations of feeling... A strange passivity and paralysis of all feeling, 

or a deep insecurity that can lead almost to a sense of nullity, may sometimes be the result of an 

unconscious animus opinion. In the depths of the woman's being, the animus whispers: 'You are 

hopeless. What's the use of trying? There is no point in doing anything. Life will never change for 

the better.'» op. cit. , p. 191. 

134


y plasmante ». She knows he is not the same, yet as she confesses to Don Lope, « no ceso de 

representármelo como antes era ». (p. 1607) 

The shock is such that Tristana is momentarily confused and disoriented. She listens with apparent 

interest and enthusiasm to Horacio's glowing descriptions of the joys of domestic life in Villajoyosa. 

She at times even appears to share Horacio's newfound disdain for art. Horacio's perfunctory efforts 

to rekindle her old interest in painting are futile, as Tristana loses all interest and whatever talent she 

may have shown, defeated by her own loss of faith. Finally she stops painting altogether. Horacio and 

Tristana's visits are spent in silence, as if they no longer had anything to say to one another. Tristana 

appears totally unmoved by Horacio's increasingly frequent absences. 

But the disorientation is only temporary. As if to compensate for his momentary defeat, the Ghostly 

Lover returns with a vengeance, luring Tristana ever upward with promises of bliss in another world. 

The narrator explains: « Del marasmo espiritual en que se encontraba salió Tristana casi bruscamente, 

como por arte mágico, con las primeras lecciones de música y de órgano. Fue como una resurrección 

súbita, con alientos de vida, de entusiasmo y pasión que confirmaba en su verdadero carácter a la 

señorita de Reluz... » (p. 1608). As her hands fly over the keys of the organ, Tristana is totally 

transfigured, lost in a kind of mystic trance, completely absorbed in the world of the ideal: « Su rostro 

se transfiguraba, adquiriendo celestial belleza; su alma se desprendía de todo lo terreno para mecerse 

en el seno pavoroso de una idealidad dulcísima. » (p. 1608) She becomes more and more oblivious 

of the real world and indifferent to its demands: « Como quien se arroja a un piélago tranquilo, 

zambullose la señorita en el mare magnum musical, y allí se pasaba las horas, y sumergiéndose en 

lo profundo, ya saliendo graciosamente a la superficie, incomunicada realmente con todo lo humano 

y procurando estarlo con algunas ideas propias que aún la atormentaban ». (p. 1609) 

She no longer is concerned about her own physical appearance, but dresses simply and 

unpretentiously. She gives up all attempts to learn to walk on crutches with her new artificial limb, 

and is content to be pushed about in her wheelchair. She meekly accepts her guardian's maiden aunts' 

ultimatum that she marry Don Lope. The narrator explains: « Contra lo que él creía, la señorita no 

tuvo nada que oponer al absurdo proyecto. Lo aceptó con indiferencia; había llegado a mirar todo lo 

terrestre con sumo desdén... Casi no se dio cuenta de que la casaron, de que unas breves fórmulas 

hiciéronla legítima esposa de Garrido, encasillándola en un hueco honroso de la sociedad. No sentía 

el acto, lo aceptaba como un hecho impuesto por el mundo exterior, como el empadronamiento, como 

la contribución, como las reglas de policía ». (p. 1611) 

135


It is as if, in these final pages of the novel, the deep schism in Tristana's psyche has become final, 

irreparable. A part of her has finally succumbed to the celestial music of the Ghostly Lover; the other 

has inevitably submitted to the benign tyranny of a now senile, bourgeois Don Lope. Tristana's failure 

to «assimilate the Ghostly Lover», to redeem her animus, to act upon her own values, to realize in 

the world her most sacred conviction, has led to the inevitable pain and suffering and desintegration 

of self of which Esther Harding spoke. The inner conflict with the Ghostly Lover, however much its 

dramatic intensity may be muted by years of existence under the destino gris of life in Restoration 

society, will never be resolved. It is precisely this irresolution of Tristana's inner drama which creates 

the perplexing ambiguity of the novel's ending. As he contemplates the kind of life which Tristana 

may lead with Don Lope in the years left to her, the reader, along with Galdós himself, can only 

speculate: «¿Eran felices uno y otro? Tal vez ». (p. 1612) 

University of Virginia 

136


Galdós' Tristana , Anatomy of a «Disappointment» 

Roberto G. Sánchez 

Tristana (1892), thirteenth among Galdós' novelas contemporáneas , received little attention for 

many years; not until Gonzalo Sobejano's article, « Galdós y el vocabulario de los amantes », 

appeared in 1966 was there a scholarly attempt to study any aspect of the novel in depth 178 . Today, 

perhaps due to the success of Luis Buñuel's cinematic version, there is renewed interest in the work 

and particularly in its unique heroine who strives for personal independence and declares no interest 

in matrimony. As a consequence, most recent studies have focused on discussions of feminism and 

its possible reflection in the novel, leaving aside, for the most part, a series of disturbing questions 

regarding its merits and deficiencies. 179 

« No es de las mejores novelas de Galdós », wrote Sobejano in his celebrated article but, 

concerned primarily with the stylistic aspect he was pursuing, he elaborated no further. The fact is 

that-disappointment with the work was expressed from the outset. « No creo que Tristana debe 

incluirse en el número de las mejores novelas de Galdós, y quizá pueda calificarse de bastante inferior 

con respecto a otras recientes... » wrote Emilia Pardo Bazán in a review following the novel's 

publication. 180 The condemnation persisted thereafter, if not declared openly certainly implied by 

178 Anales galdosianos , I (1966), 85-100. Reprinted subsequently in his book, Forma literaria y 

sensibilidad social , Madrid, 1967. 

179 A few articles relating the novel to the film are: José Manuel Ibarrola, « Don Benito Pérez 

Galdós y el cine », Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos , N.º 250-52, 650-55; Alberto Omar, « Tristana de 

Galdós, Tristana de Buñuel », Camp de l'Art , N.º 7, 33-35; David Grossvogel, «Buñuel's Obsessed 

Camera: Tristana Dismembered», Diacritics , II, 51-56. Among the articles relating the novel to 

feminism the following stand out: Emilio Miró, « Tristana o la imposibilidad de ser », Cuadernos 

Hispanoamericanos , N.º 250-52, 505-22; Marina Mayoral, « Tristana ¿una feminista galdosiana? 

» Ínsula , Nº 320-21, 28. «The Law of Nature and Women's Liberation in Tristana », Anales 

galdosianos , VII (1972), 93-100; Ruth A. Schmidt, « Tristana and the importance of opportunity», 

Anales galdosianos , IX (1974), 135-44. 

180 Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1973) III, 1119. Clarín disagreed somewhat with Doña Emilia 

and wrote: « Tristana no ha obtenido la atención que merece por parte de la crítica... » (« Tristana 

137


simply ignoring the work. The resurgence of interest in Galdós in our century did not change its status. 

In 1943 Joaquín Casalduero objected to what he considered the author's flagrant manipulation of the 

plot, the gratuitous catastrophe that befalls the heroine, dashing her hopes of liberation, and wrote: « 

El fracaso de Tristana es arbitrario, arbitrariedad que se traduce en la novela lamentablemente » 181 

. But it was Berkowitz who in 1948 pointed to the work as being especially problematic: « Tristana 

might be figuratively termed the unfinished opus of his repertory. Its theme of feminine independence 

-a fairly new one in Spain- is suggested but not developed... Whatever his initial intentions, he 

definitely lost sight of them in the process of composition... He may have left the theme of Tristana 

unfinished because he wrote it at the height of his preoccupation with the staging of his first drama. 

The very brevity of the work is perhaps a reflection of his momentary concern with the problem of 

artistic compression...» 182 More recent works on Galdós echo the early judgement. Sherman Eoff, 

for example, declares: « it is one of the novelist's inferior works, a mete sketch rather than a fully 

developed story...» 183 

It will not be my intention to prove such distinguished critics wrong and make of Galdós' thirteenth 

novel a superior work. (Certainly, all of Don Benito's writings need not be gems.) Rather I would 

like to explore the motivations underlying this artistic «disappointment». Berkowitz, we have seen, 

vacillated between calling Tristana an outright failure, a victim of circumstance and an experiment 

of sorts. 

The novel was conceived at the height of that period in Galdós' development when he questioned 

with avid concern, not only the nature of reality and art but the role of the creator himself. Tristana 

was yet another adventure and it is my belief that if Galdós did make errors of judgement he proceeded 

» in Galdós , [Madrid, 1912], pp. 251-52.) The brevity of the article that he dedicates to the novel, 

however, does not denote great enthusiasm. 

181 Vida y obra de Galdós ( Buenos Aires: Losada , 1943), p. 106. 

182 H. Chonon Berkowitz, Pérez Galdós , Spanish Liberal Crusader (Madison, 1948), p. 314. 

183 The Novels of Pérez Galdós (Washington University Studies, St. Louis, 1954), p. 50. Even the 

latest articles, concerned primarily with the ideological aspect, have expressed, explicitly or implicitly, 

some disappointment with the novel. « No es, desde luego, una de sus obras cimeras », writes Emilio 

Miró. ( Op. cit. , p. 503) Marina Mayoral echoes Casalduero's objection: « Como testigo de su tiempo, 

Galdós toma elementos del naciente feminismo. Como creador, hace con ellos un personaje 'a su 

gusto' y se reserva, además, el papel de destino. » ( Op. cit. ) 

138


here with complete deliberateness. Also, by examining the objections brought against the novel we 

may be able to shed some light on the feminist theme that has so intrigued critics today. 

Berkowitz tells us (although he does not document the assertion) that Galdós looked on the work 

with disdain 184 . Further, the idea that the theatrical activities connected with the staging of Realidad 

might have interfered with the novelist's writing of Tristana came to the scholar (although he does 

not say so) from Pardo Bazán 185 . There is no such indication from Galdós. In fact, in his Memorias 

de un desmemoriado Don Benito makes it a point to insist that « en el bullicio teatral no olvidaba 

yo la plácida y silenciosa novela... » 186 

Any suggestion that the writing of the novel was a perfunctory task can have no basis in fact. The 

very theme of the new work was very much in the air; it was one for which the eminent novelist had 

been preparing the ground for some time. « La emancipación de la mujer es un tema que Galdós 

no podía dejar de tratar », declares Casalduero 187 . And Carmen Bravo Villasante wrote recently: « 

Hasta 1892 parece que no le preocupa muy intensamente el problema de la emancipación femenina 

o del llamado feminismo. Le interesó sí la educación de la mujer y en muchas obras documenta este 

interés ». 188 

It is idle to speculate whether Galdós was or was not a feminist and at which point he may have 

become one. There is no arguing, however, with his interest in women characters and feminine 

psychology; the titles of his many novels attest to that. While Bravo Villasante does not see the 

appearance of the «new woman» in Galdós' work until the Isidora of Voluntad (1895) -followed by 

such characters as Electra and Mariucha- it is clear that Tristana often voices ideas that are patently 

feminist. This is certainly the case when she rejects the idea of matrimony and writes to her lover: 

« No veo la felicidad en el matrimonio. Quiero, para expresarlo a mi manera, estar casada conmigo 

misma, y ser mi propia cabeza de familia... Protesto, me da la gana de protestar contra los hombres, que 

184 He obviously got this from Clarín who declares: « El mismo autor mira con cierto desdén esta 

obra suya. » ( Op. cit. , p. 251). 

185 Op. cit. , p. 1122. 

186 Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1951) VI, 1685. 

187 Op. cit. , P. 101. 

188 Galdós visto por sí mismo , (Madrid, 1970), p. 118. 

139


se han cogido todo el mundo por suyo, y no nos han dejado a nosotras más que las veredas estrechitas 

por donde ellos no saben andar... » 189 Before, she had said to him: « Yo te quiero y te querré 

siempre; pero deseo ser libre. Por eso ambiciono un medio de vivir; cosa difícil, ¿verdad? Saturna me 

pone en solfa, y dice que no hay más que tres carreras para las mujeres: el matrimonio, el teatro, y... 

» (V, 1570). Saturna had indeed expressed such thoughts and Tristana had retorted: « Pues mira tú, 

de esas tres carreras, únicas de la mujer, la primera me agrada poco, la tercera menos, la de enmedio 

la seguiría yo si tuviera facultades; pero me parece que no las tengo... Ya sé, ya sé que es difícil eso 

de ser libre... y honrada. ¿Y de qué vive una mujer no poseyendo rentas? Si nos hicieran médicas, 

abogadas, siquiera boticarias o escribanas, ya que no ministras y senadoras, vamos, podríamos... Pero 

cosiendo, cosiendo... Calcula las puntadas que hay que dar para mantener una casa... Cuando pienso 

lo que será de mí, me dan ganas de llorar. ¡Ay, pues si yo sirviera para monja, ya estaba pidiendo 

plaza en cualquier convento! Pero no valgo, no, para encerronas de toda la vida. Yo quiero vivir, ver 

mundo y enterarme de por qué y para qué nos han traído a esta tierra en que estamos. Yo quiero vivir 

y ser libre... » (V, 1549). 

I will not pursue the feminist theme any further. If I have done so to this extent it has been to point out 

that this iconoclastic feminine character did not appear in Galdós' production from out of nowhere but 

is, as the novel itself is, a link in an evolutionary process. He had, in the companion works, Tormento 

and La de Bringas , for instance, presented examples of the same rebellion in an embryonic stage. 

Amparo and Refugio, the two penniless orphans, had attempted to earn a living « cosiendo, cosiendo 

» and, as Tristana reasoned, to no avail. Refugio, the younger, had turned to the third profession 

indicated by Saturna and thereby brought shame on her sister. Amparo then, hoping to find salvation in 

marriage to the wealthy and respected Agustín Caballero, tries to reform Refugio. The latter answers 

her in a manner that is both an apología pro vita sua and a vehement protest of her feminine state. 

« ¿Por qué es mala una mujer? Por la pobreza... Tú has dicho: 'si trabajas.' ¿Pues no he trabajado 

bastante? ¿De qué son mis dedos? Se han vuelto de palo de tanto coser. Y ¿qué he ganado? Miseria 

y más miseria... Asegúrame la comida, la ropa, y nada tendrás que decir de mí. ¿Qué ha de hacer 

una mujer sola, huérfana, sin socorro ninguno, sin parientes y criada con cierta delicadeza? ¿Se va a 

casar con un mozo de cuerda? ¿Qué muchacho decente se acerca a nosotras viéndonos pobres?... Y 

ya sabes, desde que la ven a una tronada y sola, ya no vienen a cosa buena... » (IV, 1489). 

189 Obras Completas , (Madrid: Aguilar, 1961), V, 1580. All quotes from Galdós' works will come 

from this edition and will henceforth be indicated in the text. 

140


The second iconoclast, Rosalía Bringas, « a quien jamás la maledicencia había hecho ningún agravio 

» (IV, 1474), is very proud of her spotless reputation. For many years she withstands with great 

resignation her husband's avarice -having to account for every penny spent, having no means of her 

own- until one day when she yields to a whim and purchases a manteleta . As she gets deeper in debt 

and pressures increase she contemplates the unthinkable: to sell herself for profit. She then muses: « 

La necesidad... es la que hace los caracteres. Ella tiene la culpa de muchas desgracias, y considerando 

esto, debemos ser indulgentes con las personas que no se portan como Dios manda. Antes de acusarlas 

debemos decir: Toma lo que necesitas; cómprate de comer; tápate esas carnes... ¿Estás bien comida, 

bien vestida? Pues ahora... venga moralidad » (IV, 1652). Thus she seems to paraphrase the very 

ideas expressed before by Amparo's delinquent sister, and yet there is great irony here. She shows 

little compassion to Refugio and in her final interview with her in the second novel she takes a superior 

stance although both have come to the same end. The pressures imposed by society on women, Galdós 

makes clear, are devastating. 

Neither Refugio nor Rosalía consider for a moment the possibility of achieving independence 

through some profession. Tristana is clearly ahead of them when she laments those restrictions that 

will not allow her to become a lawyer or doctor. And yet she is still far from being an example of the 

«new woman»; she harbors serious contradictions. 

Casalduero relates Tristana to Amparo, not to Refugio 190 ; and Carmen Bravo Villasante compares 

her to the mania-prone Isidora of La desheredada 191 . While our heroine does not share Amparo's 

timidity -Galdós constantly calls the older of the Emperador sisters « débil » and « medrosa » 

she is not as resolute as she would like to think. Not for one moment does it cross her mind to escape 

from the home of her guardian as well she could. For all her dedication to the study of languages and 

the piano, there is a basic insecurity in her; she cannot find herself and will later, in the same spirit, 

turn to religion and the culinary arts. That she has an inquiring nature, is restless and impatient, there 

is no doubt, but we come to question whether she is indeed talented. She herself has these doubts 

and exclaims: « Quiero tener una profesión y no sirvo para nada, ni sé nada de cosa alguna. Esto 

es horrendo » (V, 1580). 

190 Op. cit. , p. 104. 

191 Op. cit. , p. 119. 

141


This is the source of her suffering: querer y no poder , and thus her only outlet is to dream, to 

fabricate energies and hopes that will persuade- her of eventual success. In this regard, she is very 

close indeed to Isidora Rufete, Galdós' quijotita , whose origins can be traced to el Toboso . Both 

share the same antecedents: one a mad father, the other a demented mother. As the novel advances, 

the reality of Tristana's potential becomes clouded and fantasy seems to share the balance. Emilio 

Miró is correct when he states that Galdós « ha hecho de Tristana un símbolo ambiguo » 192 ; and 

this contradiction is one of several that we will attempt to clarify. 

One important article which was provoked by Buñuel's film and is unrelated to the feminist theme 

is Francisco Ayala's « La creación del personaje en Galdós » 193 . In it Ayala traces the literary 

relations which form part of the characterization of the two main protagonists. In Don Lope (his real 

name was Juan López Garrido) he sees an echo of a figure from Baltasar del Alcázar's Cena jocosa , 

combined with many of the traits, both honorable and dishonorable, of Don Juan Tenorio. The name 

of Tristana, given to her by her deranged mother, suggests to Ayala a world of chivalry and romance 

which he finds reinforced in the references that compare her to the heroine of Dante's masterpiece. 

And he justifies the process: 

No se piense, sin embargo, que esta construcción del personaje ficticio sobre un modelo tomado 

de la literatura misma, aunque ello sea en forma tan deliberada y obvia como aquí se hace, implica 

desvío frente a la realidad, ni siquiera -aunque a primera vista pudiera parecerlo- infidelidad o traición 

a los principios del realismo, sino tal vez un refinamiento mayor y una más resuelta penetración 

en la estructura misma de la vida humana que la novela trata de representar. Pues la literatura, la 

tradición literaria, se encuentra muy profundamente engranada en la experiencia práctica; más aún: 

contribuye en medida sustancial a organizar la vida en sociedad mediante los oficios de la imaginación, 

ya que ésta, operando en diversas vías, establece tanto los mitos colectivos portadores de valoraciones 

192 Ibid. , p. 521. 

193 La novela: Galdós y Unamuno , (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1974) pp. 85-105. The essay appeared 

in La Nación of Buenos Aires (March 28 and April 25, 1971) and has also been reprinted in Los 

ensayos: teoría y crítica literaria , (Madrid: Aguilar, 1972). Ayala's essay serves as a point of departure 

for Germán Gullón's recent article « Tristana : Literaturización y estructura novelesca », Hispanic 

Review , Vol. 45, 13-27. Professor G. Gullón's excellent study also deals with the relationship between 

literature and life but does so from a perspective wholly different from mine. 

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reconocidas y acatadas por el grupo, como los dechados de humanidad a que cada individuo pretende 

ceñirse. 194 

The literary allusions examined by Ayala are to isolated and individual characters. I would like to 

suggest, however, that equally important are the allusions made throughout the novel -again with 

equal deliberateness- to stock literary situations and formulas. Let us look at some of these. 

Don Lope Garrido may have been a swashbuckling figure and a great lover at one time but that is 

all in the past. He retains only a haughty hidalguía , an echo of another age. When we meet him he 

is fifty-seven, «que no por bien conservados eran menos efectivos», (V, 1541). Soon his efforts to 

safeguard his union with Tristana by appearing and acting youthful only serve to achieve the opposite 

results. The girl, Galdós tells us, « bruscamente vio en Don Lope al viejo », (V, 1548). Poverty and 

old age overtake him; he acquires a persistent cough, rheumatism and chest congestion. « Y para 

colmo de desdichas, veíase precisado a dormir con la cabeza envuelta en un feo pañuelo, y su alcoba 

apestaba a los mejunjes que usar solía para el reúma o el romadizo », (V, 1552). 

Thus we have the disparity of ages in a marriage, a stereotyped situation which appears in so many 

literary works dating back to Roman comedy, the farces and fabliaux of the Middle Ages, and, in 

Spain, the traditional ballads of « la mal maridada ». Most important, this same situation is recreated 

time and again by Cervantes: in his exemplary novel, El celoso extremeño and particularly in his 

entremeses, El viejo celoso, La cueva de Salamanca , El juez de los divorcios . Mariana, the young 

wife in the last mentioned work, bemoans her married state and pleads for a divorce « porque no 

puedo sufrir sus impertinencias, ni estar de continuo atenta a curar todas sus enfermedades, que son 

sin número, y no me criaron a mí mis padres para ser hospitalera ni enfermera ». 

The basic elements of the formula are all in Tristana , although, as we shall see, many are altered and 

even subverted. Chapter VI, for example, sums up the many facets of the conventional circumstance: 

the heroine is a prisoner in her own home -« cautiva infeliz » the narrator calls her-.; her guardian, 

unsure of himself, is jealous and watches over her with zeal. Tyrant and captive, « el viejo y la niña 

», live in. fear of one another. Suspicious, he questions her persistently and threatens her: « Si te 

sorprendo en algún mal paso te mato, cree que te mato », (V, 1552). Succeeding stock developments 

follow: the young man who will catch the heroine's eye, (he clever and mischievous servant who will 

serve as go-between. 

194 Ibid. , p. 93. 

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There is another element in Galdós' novel that relates it to a more modern treatment of the same 

stock situation: the education of women as found in Molière and Moratín 195 . The latter's El sí de las 

niñas criticizes the senseless education given to young girls in Spain, but it is to Molière's L'Ecole 

des Femmes that we must turn in order to find a suitable parallel. There, Arnolphe is the guardian of 

the young Agnes. He plans to marry her and keeps her in reclusion so that he might better prepare her 

to assume the role of perfect mate. He instructs her patiently with exemplary lessons. 

Le mariage, Agnès, n'est pas un badinage: 

A d'austères devoirs le rang de femme engage , 

Et vous n'y montez pas, à ce que je prétends , 

Pour être libertine et prendre du bon temps. 

Votre sexe n'est là que pour la dépendence: 

Du côté de la barbe est la toute-puissance. 

Bien qu'on soit deux moitiés de la société , 

Ces deux moitiés, pourtant n'ont point d'égalité: 

L'une est moitié suprême et l'autre subalterne; 

L'une en tout es soumise à l'autre qui gouverne; 

Et ce que le soldat, dans son devoir instruit , 

Montre d'obeissance au chef qui le conduit , 

Le valet à son maitre, un enfant à son père , 

A son supérieur le moindre petit Frère , 

N'approche point encor de la docilité , 

Et de l'obéissance, et de l'humilité , 

Et du profond respect où la femme doit être 

Pour son mari, son chef, son seigneur et son maitre. 

(Act III, Sc. ii) 

195 Pablo Cabañas has studied the presence of Moratín in the works of Galdós. See, « Moratín en 

la obra de Galdós », Actas del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas , Instituto Español de 

la Universidad de Nimega , (Holanda, 1967) pp. 217-26. No mention of Tristana is made, however. 

Berkowitz lists Oeuvres de Molière , (Paris, 1844), among the books in Galdós' personal library. La 

biblioteca de Benito Pérez Galdós , [ Ediciones del Museo Canario , 1951], p. 185. 

144


Don Lope, to be sure, never planned to marry Tristana. « Conviene advertir que ni por un momento 

se le ocurrió al caballero desposarse con su víctima, pues aborrecía el matrimonio; teníalo por la 

más espantosa fórmula de esclavitud que idearon los poderes de la tierra para meter en un puño a la 

pobrecita humanidad », (V, 1548). He did, however, play a role of guardian-teacher similar to that of 

Arnolphe, although in a less deliberate fashion. « Era que Don Lope, sin que ninguno de los dos se 

diese cuenta de ello, habíala hecho su discípula, y algunas ideas de las que con toda lozanía florecieron 

en la mente de la joven, procedían del semillero de su amante y por fatalidad maestro. Hallábase 

Tristana en esa edad y sazón en que las ideas se pegan, en que ocurren los más graves contagios del 

vocabulario personal, de las maneras y hasta del carácter », (V, 1549). And to which ideas was the 

girl so susceptible? To those of Don Lope, of course, and more precisely to those having to do with the 

relations between men and women. It is he who planted the seed of her feminist arguments, for the old 

man « sostenía que en las relaciones de hombre y mujer no hay más ley que la anarquía, si la anarquía 

es ley; que el soberano amor no debe sujetarse más que a su propio canon intrínseco... » (V, 1547). 

These teachings, we can readily see, are a complete reversal of the schooling given by Arnolphe to 

Agnès in Molière's play, and yet both guardians are motivated by selfish concerns 196 . Later Don 

Lope encourages her iconoclastic ideas in order that she may not think of marriage to another and 

hence abandon him. « Has nacido para algo muy grande que no podemos precisar aún », he tells 

her. « El matrimonio te zambulliría en la vulgaridad. Tú no puedes ni debes ser de nadie, sino de 

ti misma », (V, 1589). 

Seen in this light, Tristana's feminism loses some of its verisimilitud. It does not spring from within 

her as naturally as we supposed; it is something borrowed, arrived at second hand, as it were. But 

this is of secondary importance. What is important to us here is that Galdós follows a stock situation 

196 Similarly in Galdós' La familia de Leon Roch (1878) the hero explains his marriage plans to a 

friend and comments on the character of his intended. « Su educación ha sido muy descuidada, ignora 

todo lo que se puede ignorar; pero si carece de ideas, en cambio, hállase, por el recogimiento en que 

ha vivido, libre de rutinas peligrosas, de los conocimientos frívolos y de los hábitos perniciosos que 

corrompen la inteligencia y el corazón de las jóvenes del día. ¿No te parece que es una situación 

admirable? ¿No comprendes que un ser de tales condiciones es el más a propósito para mí, porque así 

podré yo formar el carácter de mi esposa, en lo cual consiste la gloria más grande del hombre casado? 

» His friend warns him: « Eso de casarse para ser maestro de escuela es del peor gusto » (IV, 776). 

As it turns out the marriage is a complete disaster. 

145


only to subvert it. Don Lope does not marry his ward but seduces her; he indoctrinates her in order 

to prolong their unnatural union, and in the process, shares with her his egocentric philosophy. And 

the subversions multiply further. 

In the traditional stock situation the old husband was kept in the dark as to the secret meetings of 

the young lovers and hence was the butt of the joke. In Cervantes' El viejo celoso , for example, 

the suitor enters the wife's chamber by slipping in behind a « tapiz » that is being exhibited to 

Cañizares. In La cueva de Salamanca when Pancracio returns unexpectedly, the amorous sacristan 

is explained as a devil, materialized through the magic learned in the cave of Salamanca. In these 

farces the gullibility of the old men is unbounded. Not so in Molière. There Arnolphe learns of the 

budding affair of the young couple and when he encounters the suitor it is to confuse him and thwart 

their plans to meet further. In Galdós it also does not take long for Don Lope, old fox that he is, to 

discover what is going on behind his back, but he decides to bide his time. He seems to know that the 

affair is doomed. When Tristana is ill and downcast the old man attempts to cheer her, encourages 

her to write to her lover and even tries to dictate a letter himself. At this point Don Lope assumes the 

role of father to Tristana, in much the same way as Don Diego finally looks upon Doña Paquita as 

a daughter in El sí de las niñas . 

The height of reversal occurs when Don Lope, aware of the gravity of the heroine's illness, seeks out 

his rival, the artist Horacio. (Can it be mere coincidence that Molière's young man is called Horace?) 

Rather than prohibit the couple's meeting he invites the boy to visit Tristana. « No me opongo a 

que usted honre mi casa », Don Lope explains, « al contrario, tendré satisfacción en ello. ¿Creía 

tal vez que yo iba a salir por el registro del padre celoso o del tirano doméstico? No señor... No, no 

es decoroso que ande el novio buscándome las vueltas para entrar en casa », (V, 1603). The final 

destruction of the formula occurs in the last chapters: the young man disappears, the old man marries 

his ward and the bizarre couple lives happily ever after. Happily? No, Galdós will not go that far. « 

¿Eran felices uno y otro? » he asks in the concluding words of the novel, and answers: « Tal vez ». 

The result of these subversions of the stock situation is not only to turn against literary traditions, 

but to bathe what was traditionally a divertissement in an ominous sense of pessimism and bitterness. 

But in Galdós, as in Cervantes, all poison must have an antidote and it is to this antidote that we must 

now turn. 

« Galdós concibe su novela partiendo de Tormento », wrote Joaquín Casalduero. « El caso de 

Tristana y Amparo son análogos, con la diferencia de que el seductor de aquélla es el viejo Garrido y 

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el de ésta es un sacerdote; pero las dos se enamoran después de seducidas, surge en ellas la necesidad 

de confesar su situación, y a partir de este momento las dos novelas toman rumbo distinto » 197 

. The parallel drawn by the distinguished critic may be questionable as far as some details go, but 

the analogy is just as to the sentimental make-up of the two characters. Both are orphans, penniless, 

subject to another's influence and domination -in short, victims. On one level Tristana may belong to 

the « viejo y la niña » tradition of farce and fabliaux, but she has none of the feminine character's 

mischief and picaresque traits that are its trademarks and which Cervantes, for example, imbued in 

his Leonarda of La cueva de Salamanca or Lorenza of El viejo celoso . (García Lorca, I might add, 

did similarly in our century in La zapatera prodigiosa .) 

Amparo is meek and frightened but she, too, yearns for a place in the sun and is aware of the injustice 

done to women. « ¡Ay! don Agustín », she says to her rich suitor, « dichoso el que es dueño de sí 

mismo, como usted. ¡En qué condición tan triste estamos las pobres mujeres que no tenemos padres, 

ni medios de ganar la vida, ni familia que nos ampare, ni seguridad de cosa alguna como no sea de 

que al fin, al fin, habrá un hoyo para enterrarnos!... Eso del monjío, qué quiere usted que le diga, al 

principio no me gustaba; pero va entrando poquito a poco en mi cabeza, y acabaré por decidirme... 

» (IV, 1476). Actually she has no more a calling for convent life than Tristana, but for both the world 

is a trap and a deception. In at least the first part of their respective novels they are akin to Galdós' 

early heroine, Clara of La fontana de oro , another orphan, penniless, cloistered and victimized. To 

put it briefly, all three derive, more or less , from the star-crossed heroines of the folletín . 

We know that Galdós' early novels have a kinship with the « novelas por entregas » and the 

folletín . And we also know that, like Dickens, he continued to be intrigued with the genre even 

later in his development as a novelist. Tormento , the work seen by Casalduero as a starting point 

for Tristana , is notable in this regard. Its much discussed prologue -the exchange between Felipe 

Centeno and Ido del Sagrario- deals with the two poles of fiction: art and artifice. Ido, working for 

a hack writer, is engaged in composing a melodramatic concoction which features his neighbors, 

the Sánchez Emperador sisters. In his opus the girls are virtuous orphans who are threatened with 

dishonor by a scheming Marquis -a situation very different from the version Galdós gives us, Ido 

seems to be aware that he is taking liberties with the truth, but he considers this evasion precisely the 

moral obligation of his task as writer. « Tú no entiendes de arte », he tells Felipe. « Cosas pasan 

estupendas que no pueden asomarse a las ventanas de un libro porque la gente se escandalizaría... 

197 Op. cit. , p. 104. 

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prosas horribles hijo; prosas nefandas que estarán siempre proscritas en esta honrada república de las 

letras! » (IV, 1458). Then Felipe, as if speaking for Galdós, suggests to his friend that he use his 

genius to convert the vile prose of reality into the poetry of art, but Ido, a captive of his world of 

fantasy and cheap literary conventions, cannot understand him. Galdós, however, no captive, was to 

put these conventions to his own use. 

Emilio Miró believes that Don Lope has a power over Tristana that is akin to that of Don Juan 

Tenorio over his conquests. He gives the following quotation from the novel to illustrate his point: « 

Los penetrantes ojos de Don Lope, clavados en ella la sobrecogían, la dominaban, causándole terror... 

Con gran esfuerzo quiso vencer la fascinación de aquella mirada » 198 . To me, however, such a 

description is reminiscent of the fearful domination that the villains of gothic novels usually exert 

over their victims; the evil Svengali over Trilby, for example. We have here the contrast between good 

and evil that Francisco Yndurain identifies with the folletín . « Por lo que hace a los sentimientos, 

folletín y melodrama, movilizan una sentimentalina muy afín: bondad y maldad extremas y simples, 

contrastes absolutos ». 199 

That this is the case here, I believe, is made clear by the scene that initiates the encounter. 

Terminada la comida, retirose [Don Lope] a su cuarto y encendió un puro, llamando a Tristana 

para que le hiciese compañía; y estirándose en la butaca, le dijo estas palabras, que hicieron temblar 

a la joven: 

«No es sólo Saturna la que tiene un idilio nocturno por ahí. Tú también lo tienes. No, si nadie me 

ha dicho nada... Pero te lo conozco; hace días que te lo leo... en la cara, en la voz.» 

Tristana palideció. Su blancura de nácar tomó azuladas tintas a la luz del velón con pantalla que 

alumbraba el gabinete. Parecía una muerta hermosísima, y se destacaba sobre el sofá con el violento 

escorzo de una figura japonesa, de esas cuya estabilidad no se comprende, y que parecen cadáveres 

risueños pegados a un árbol, a una nube, a incomprensibles fajas decorativas. 

(V, 1565) 

198 Op. cit. , p. 513. 

199 Galdós entre la novela y el folletín , (Madrid: Taurus, 1970, p. 59). The article reappears in the 

author's collection of critical essays: De lector a lector , (Madrid: Escelicer, 1973), pp. 95-135. 

148


The contrast between good and evil is obvious, but we should emphasize that Galdós describes it 

with great deliberateness. He artfully manipulates the trite elements in a manner that anticipates the 

sensorial technique of Valle Inclán in his Sonatas . A look at a similar scene in an early Galdós novel 

will show the transformation to which I refer. It comes from La fontana de oro : 

El fanático llegó y se acercó a la mesa; pero al poner en ella su sombrero, chocó éste con el vaso, 

que cayó al suelo, soltando las flores y vertiendo el agua en las mismas piernas del realista. 

El hombre montó en cólera, y mirando con furor a la huérfana, que estaba temblando, gritó: 

-¿Qué flores son éstas? ¿Quién te ha mandado comprar estas flores? Clara, ¿qué devaneos son 

éstos? ¡Coqueta! No hay remedio. Te has echado a perder. También quieres llenarme de flores la casa? 

Clara quiso contestarle; pero, aunque hizo todo lo posible, no le contestó nada. Elías pisoteó las 

flores con furia. 

-Estoy resuelto a tomar la determinación. 

Otra vez la determinación. ¿Qué determinación sería aquélla? -pensaba Clara, en el colmo de su 

confusión y de su miedo. Después, retirada a su cuarto, pensó en lo mismo, y decía para sí: «¿Querrá 

matarme?» 

Aquella noche no pudo dormir. A eso de las doce sintió que Elías se paseaba en su cuarto con 

más agitación que de ordinario. Hasta le pareció oír algunas palabras, que no debía ser cosa buena. 

Levantose Clara muy quedito, movida de la curiosidad, y, poco a poco, se acercó con mucha cautela 

a la puerta del cuarto de Elías, y miró por el agujero de la llave. Elías gesticulaba marchando; de 

pronto se paró, se acercó a una gaveta y sacó un cuchillo muy grande, muy grande y muy afilado, 

resplandeciente y fino. Le estuvo mirando a la luz, examinándolo bien, y después lo volvió a guardar. 

Clara, al ver esto, estuvo a punto de desmayarse... 

(IV, 47) 

This last sequence is melodramatic in the extreme; a series of perfectly gratuituous actions take place 

for the sole purpose of sharpening the contrast between Don Elías' malevolence and Clara's ingenuous 

mortification. What other reason could there be for the presence of the flowers other than to give rise 

to the old man's anger? And what of the knife, « muy grande, muy grande y muy afilado », that Elías 

contemplates? Nothing more comes of it and we never see it again, but it is there to further terrify the 

innocent victim and, in the process, to win for her -as if it were still necessary- the reader's sympathy. 

149


The appeal is, in every sense, to the most childish of minds. Beyond question, the scene is gross and 

unworthy of Galdós even at that early stage of his career. 

In the novelas contemporáneas , however, when he used the elements of the folletín , he was 

perfectly aware of their nature and artificiality. Yndurain makes note of this evolution. « Bastantes 

años después, y cuando había ya ahondado en la novela de naturaleza más psicológica y actual, todavía 

le quedan no pocos resabios de folletín; pero ya es capaz de verlos desde fuera y no sin nota de humor 

irónico » 200 . True. At one point in Tormento, for example, after Galdós has painted the portrait of 

the Bringas household happily gathered around the dinner table, he describes Amparo, downcast and 

alone, climbing the stairs to her miserable flat and adds the following parenthetical comment: « que 

me digan que esto no es sentimental » (IV, 1481). And yet we must realize that Galdós found life itself 

often filled with folletinesque situations; that is, with its own protective crust of artificiality. Thus he 

felt justified in making these allusions. Furthermore, he meant the humor and the sentimentality to 

have a leavening effect on the somber world of these novels. 

But it is time that we return to our initially stated purpose and look once again at the declarations of 

disappointment that the novel elicited since its appearance. We are now in a better position to judge 

those objections and arrive at some logical explanation. 

I have already dealt with Berkowitz's speculations regarding the circumstances surrounding the 

composition of the novel. There is no evidence that would lead one to assume that Tristana received 

less attention from its author or concerned him less than his other works. The idea that it «might 

be figuratively termed the unfinished opus of his repertory» is more complicated. It stems from the 

scholar's belief that «its theme of feminine independence is suggested but not developed». 

La Pardo Bazán shared this dissatisfaction. She too felt that the central idea had been betrayed; « 

idea -que en Tristana aparece embrionaria y confusa, al través de una niebla, como si el novelista 

no se diese cuenta clara de la gran fuerza dramática que puede encerrar... » Her arguments, lucid 

and forceful as always, deserve attention. She begins a summary of the work with these words: « 

El asunto de Tristana cabe en un puño, y la trama puede decirse que es nula. » She defends the 

simplicity of plot in novels, and yet goes on to attack Tristana declaring that, for all that, it abounds 

precisely in plot complication. She is aware of the contradiction in her argument and explains the need 

to distinguish between « el asunto interno y externo, entre lo que acontece y lo que permanece, 

200 Ibid. , p. 67. 

150


entre lo que se ve y lo que se esconde ». Thus she can say: « Tristana, a pesar de su sencillez 

de asunto, aún le sobra parte de él: para el asunto interno no hacía falta Horacio, ni la ausencia de 

Horacio, ni la pierna cortada, porque el asunto interno en Tristana no es realmente ni la seducción 

de don Lope, ni el enamoramiento de Horacio, ni la ruptura, ni el casamiento final... » 201 

Critics that came later would agree with her: Casalduero and Marina Mayoral, who condemned 

Galdós for arbitrarily crippling his heroine in more ways than one; Emilio Miró who declares: « 

Galdós ha escrito una novela muy cruel. Parece que se ha burlado sangrientamente de su criatura, que 

se ha complacido en abatirla, en humillarla » 202 . Along with Berkowitz, they would also agree with 

la Pardo Bazán's description of the theme, or asunto interno , as: « el despertar del entendimiento y la 

conciencia de una mujer sublevada contra la sociedad que la condena a perpetua infamia... » and here 

is the crux of the matter. For, what if that were not the actual theme? What if Galdós meant to convey 

something else? After all, Doña Emilia found the central idea to be « embrionaria y confusa ». 203 

I said before that it is fruitless to speculate about Galdós's attitude toward feminism. I meant that 

we should not try to see in him either a defender or enemy of women's rights. I would say that what 

intrigued him most in the matter is the conflict that a feminist is heir to -the conflict in terms of inter- 

personal relationships and, only in a secondary way, the social and economic implications that might 

arise from her stance. Again, this does not mean that he discounted the importance of the latter but 

simply that in him the «artist» took precedence over the «sociologist». 

To be sure, Galdós was sympathetic to the plight of Spanish women. He seems to acknowledge the 

injustice in the circumstances that barred Tristana from being a lawyer, doctor or minister, but he is 

more concerned with her personal quandary (her yearnings and her doubts) and with the way men 

would take to her and she to them. The world of feminine emotions had always fascinated Galdós and 

in Tristana's rebellion he heard discordant voices that held his attention. He was no longer the liberal 

reformer who would protest against injustice explicitly; his message could only come through in an 

implicit manner; any thesis must now succumb to the drama of his fictional characters. Inherent in the 

201 Op. cit. , p. 1120. 

202 Op. cit. , p. 521. 

203 Clarín disagreed with Doña Emilia: « La señora Pardo Bazán ve no sé qué esbozos de gran novela, 

que no llega a escribirse, y cuyo asunto sería la esclavitud moral de la mujer. No creo que Tristana 

represente tal cosa ». ( Op. cit. , p. 252.) 

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« problemática » of La casa de Bernarda Alba, for instance, is the dearth of opportunities afforded to 

women in provincial Spain -there is even a note of protest in the work- but there can be no doubt that 

Lorca's drama is fundamentally about sexual and spiritual frustration, about Bernarda's daughters and 

their existence vis-à-vis Pepe el Romano. So too in Galdós: Tristana's ambivalent feelings (admiration 

and hatred) for Don Lope and her passion for Horacio and subsequent disillusionment with him are 

crucial; they cannot be dispensed with. Frustration exists here too, but the situation is sparked with 

irony and mellowed with sentimentality. Lorca was to follow Galdós' lead in this type of bittersweet 

treatment in his Doña Rosita la soltera . 204 

Irony and sentimentality indeed color the theme of Tristana and it is through both of these 

perspectives that Galdós would inevitably see the problem of feminism in Spain. It was no accident 

that he should resort to the time honored literary formulas of the «deceived husband» and the folletín 

; for, each, in turn, offered these ingredients. Furthermore, each was a commentary on the traditional 

relationships between men and women as reflected for centuries in popular forms of literature. 

He saw this cruelty and mischief as expressions of an authentic folk mentality which is epitomized in 

the old Spanish maxim, « mujer casada, pierna quebrada y en casa » 205 . The critics are right: Galdós 

arbitrarily, and with malice of forethought, cripples his heroine. But such malfeasance hides a purpose. 

By filtering the question of feminism through these popular and literary aphorisms, he seems to be 

saying that here is the battle of the sexes; here are the mythic roots of the relationship: the husband 

deceived and the woman victimized. (The conflict is indeed immemorial, repeated in literature from 

the Hombre que casó con mujer brava of Don Juan Manuel to James Thurber's embattled males 

and females.) Galdós also seems to be asking: Can it be otherwise? His answer, implied in the final 

outcome, is in the negative. 

He had asked the same question three years before in the novel Realidad and reached a similar 

conclusion. There Augusta, the erring wife, is given the opportunity to confess her guilt and thereby 

meet her husband on a higher plane of morality. The husband, Orozco, would like to encourage her 

to the task: « Yo había pensado educarte en estas ideas, iniciarte en un sistema de vida que empieza 

204 For an examination of the relationship of Galdós to this work see: Roberto G. Sánchez, « García 

Lorca y la literatura del siglo XIX: Apuntes sobre Doña Rosita la soltera », Ínsula , N.º 290. 

205 Emilio Miró suggests a relationship of this maxim to the novel but in an entirely different sense. 

( Op. cit. , p. 520.) 

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siendo espiritual y difícil, y acaba por ser fácil y práctico. Ahora no sé si debo insistir en mi propósito 

», (V, 895). He has reason to be apprehensive: Augusta cannot rise to the occasion and persists in her 

silence. Thus they continue to live together physically but are divorced spiritually. 

But the same year that Galdós wrote Tristana he raised the question again in La loca de la casa , 

this time proposing an affirmative answer. The protagonists are Cruz and Victoria, husband and wife, 

symbols of two disparate social classes and philosophies who in the end reconcile their differences. 

« Victoria y Cruz no son tan sólo símbolos de ideas abstractas en oposición », writes Ángel del 

Río in the best study devoted to this dialogue-novel 206 . « Son además paradigma de las diferencias 

entre los sexos. Cruz, el hombre, cuyo atributo primordial es la fuerza; Victoria, la mujer, personifica 

la gracia y la espiritualidad en sus diferentes formas. » He follows this with a comment that is very 

much to our point: « Galdós vio el papel de la mujer en la vida de una manera distinta a la de otros 

grandes autores europeos de su tiempo. Aunque no falten en su obra los personajes femeninos que se 

esfuerzan por conseguir su independencia, en lo fundamental a Galdós no le preocupa, como a Ibsen, 

el problema de la emancipación social de la mujer, y a través de esa emancipación el de la conquista 

de su plena libertad. » And returning to the conflict of opposites that he had posed, he asked: « ¿Cuál 

es la actitud de Galdós ante esta disociación de facultades del alma? ¿Cómo conciliar la oposición 

que entre ellas existe? » And he answers: « Buscando el equilibrio y tratando de coordinarlas para 

los altos fines de la vida. El predominio absoluto de cualquiera de ellas produce la catástrofe. » 

Regarding Galdós' moral philosophy at the time, del Río says: « no recuerdo haber visto estudiadas 

en ninguna parte las relaciones de Galdós con los krausistas españoles. Habrá entre éstos y Galdós 

diferencias evidentes de temperamento, actitud e ideología. Pero es indudable que la obsesión 

galdosiana por encontrar una fórmula de síntesis y armonía, patente en todas estas últimas obras, 

desde La loca de la casa hasta El caballero encantado, germina y se desenvuelve en un mismo clima 

intelectual, moral e histórico ». 207 

Indeed, there may well be an echo of krausismo in these problematic unions of men and women. In 

Ideal de la humanidad the German philosopher gives great importance to the institution of marriage 

considering it « la expresión primera y la más íntima de la unitaria humanidad ». « La familia se 

funda en la oposición de los sexos », he goes on, « en el contraste característico de la humanidad 

206 « La significación de La loca de la casa », Estudios galdosianos , (Zaragoza, 1953), pp. 41-81. 

207 Ibid. , pp. 64, 66, 72. 

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masculina y la femenina, los amantes se buscan, porque en espíritu y cuerpo se necesitan uno a otro 

para formar un todo superior humano ». Man should recognize his need for a superior mate and hence 

work « para restablecer el santo derecho de la mujer al lado del varón, para mejorar su educación, 

haciéndole más real, más elevado, más comprensivo... Semejante espíritu anima también a la mujer 

respecto al varón, de suerte que con su peculiar carácter y prendas regocije y embellezca la vida... » 208 

Don Lope Garrido, who maintained that « en las relaciones de hombre y mujer no hay más ley que 

la anarquía », represents the very antithesis of this ideology. His union with Tristana is a grotesque 

deformation of what marriage should be, and the lessons he imparts to her the most unhealthy and 

corrupting of educations. With her egocentric obsession, Tristana is equally guilty. And this, I believe, 

is what Galdós was trying to say in this his thirteenth novel. 

Tristana was not the only Spanish novel of the period to treat the institution of marriage -sacrosanct 

in 19th century society- in an unorthodox fashion. The reading public had already been shocked 

by Realidad (1889), where the deceived husband forgives the erring wife, and Clarín's Su único 

hijo (1890), where the hero finds domesticity in his mistress and sensuality in his mate. But such 

heterodoxy did not end with the thematic material. The novels were also to reveal new experimentation 

with form. This was clearly evident in Realidad , Galdós' first dialogue novel, and it has also been 

recognized of late in Su único hijo , Clarín's groping anticipation of the esperpento . It is now 

important to acknowledge at least such an intent in Tristana also. Detailed exploration on this aspect 

would constitute a separate study, but we can point here to some salient features of this search for 

novelty. 

In the opening lines of his novel Galdós establishes the locale: « En el populoso barrio de Chamberí, 

más cerca del depósito de Aguas que de Cuatro Caminos... » Precision seems to be the note here and 

yet, as the novel progresses, Madrid evaporates before our eyes. Horacio and Tristana take walks but 

they are always in the outskirts; we know that Don Lope frequents cafés but we don't see them. The 

exchange of letters, a substantial part of the novel, transports us to a world of the mind and emotions. 

208 Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, Ideal de la humanidad para la vida , con introducción y 

comentarios por Don Julián Sanz del Río, (Madrid, 1871), pp. 95, 58, 94. If in Realidad it is the man 

who invites woman to join him in a higher plane of the spirit, in La loca de la casa it is the other 

way around: Victoria rescues Cruz from a lower level of self-realization. In Tristana both man and 

woman are lost in selfish pursuits. 

154


In short, the sense of urban life, so important in most of the author's work, is missing here. This fact 

made it easy for Buñuel to transport the action of his film to Toledo. 

The same abstraction dominates the temporal sphere. There is no reference to historical events, so 

typical of the early novelas contemporáneas ; there are no specific dates as to months or years; the 

letters give only the days of the week. The narrative pace is slow in the early chapters, hurried in the 

final ones. All of this gives one the impression of a strong realistic portrait, full of minute detail and 

yet divested of temporal or spatial density. However, it was in the area of point of view and especially 

the role of the narrator that Galdós was most intent in breaking new ground. 

In the early chapters of Tristana the narrator is very much present; he inhabits the world of the 

novel but keeps his characters at ami's length. He expresses little sympathy for them. On the contrary, 

he identifies with the society whose rules the protagonists flaunt. He is scandalized: « Inútil parece 

advertir que cuantos conocían a Garrido, incluso el que esto escribe, abominaban y abominan de tales 

ideas, deplorando con toda el alma que la conducta del insensato caballero fuese una fiel aplicación 

de sus perversas doctrinas... se nos ponen los pelos de punta sólo de pensar cómo andaría la máquina 

social si a sus esclarecidos manipulantes les diese la ventolera de apadrinar los disparates de D. Lope... 

» (V, 1547). For all that, he makes an effort to be objective and later assumes the role of mere collector 

of the correspondence between the young couple. 

« Tristana es una de las novelas de Galdós en que éste deja menos libertad de acción a sus personajes 

», objects Marina Mayoral. « En toda la primera parte (hasta el 'accidente' de Tristana), el autor 

nos cuenta lo que piensan, lo que sienten. Si les vemos actuar o hablar, en seguida Galdós nos da la 

interpretación de los hechos... » 209 . This is true, but it is beginning with the letters that Galdós 

radically changes his approach. 

The letters contain much of the « vocabulario de los amantes » that Sobejano has studied so well; 

they also open the novel to the perspective of the epistolary form with which Galdós had experimented 

only three years before. But what was basically a monologue in La incógnita becomes now a dialogue 

between lovers. By means of the correspondence he sought to duplicate -in another form- the technique 

of the sistema dialogal that so concerned him during that period 210 . There is a marked appellative 

209 Op. cit. 

210 Roberto G. Sánchez, « El sistema dialogal en algunas novelas de Galdós », Cuadernos 

Hispanoamericanos , Nº 235, pp. 155-67. 

155


function in the letters; they not only convey feelings and emotions, fears and aspirations, but aim also 

to provoke reactions in the person they address. 

In the last third of the novel the narrator (and Galdós) retreat into the shadows: « se repliega al papel 

de observador », as Marina Mayoral puts it. He no longer interprets: he limits himself to reporting 

events, and toward the end admits to being in the dark as to the character's motivations and intentions. 

« ¿sería, por ventura, aquella su última metamorfosis? » the narrator asks regarding Tristana's new 

religious inclinations. « ¿O quizá tal mudanza era sólo exterior, y por dentro subsistía la unidad 

pasmosa de su pasión por lo ideal? » (V, 1610). He doesn't know. And the characters live in similar 

ignorance of themselves. « Guardábase bien el viejo de hablar a la niña del que fue su adorador, y con 

toda su sagacidad y experiencia, nunca supo fijamente si la actitud triste y serena de Tristana ocultaba 

una desilusión, o el sentimiento de haberse equivocado profundamente al creerse desilusionada en los 

días de la vuelta de Horacio. ¿Pero cómo había de saber esto D. Lope, si ella misma no lo sabía? » (V. 

1609). Reality thus becomes a limbo of uncertainty, and the narrator who spoke with such authority 

in the beginning can only wonder at the end: « ¿Eran felices uno y otro?... Tal vez ». 

As we have seen, the fabric of the novel is made up of numerous strands, many of them departures 

from the 19th century novelistic norm in both content and form. To recapitulate: contrary to the 

expectations of friends and critics, Galdós could only see the social phenomenon of feminism as 

something problematic; creatively he could only approach it in terms of the character's inter-personal 

relationships. Women who have been denied sell-realization for so long, he concluded, will proceed 

with fear and self-doubt. Thus he gives us in Tristana a creature of contradiction who, even in moments 

of bravado, feels insecure and weak and must bolster her spirit with dreams and illusions. In her search 

for fulfillment the only models she can follow are men. To her they are the enemy and paradoxically 

her salvation. A relationship with them can offer no true communion. 

Galdós views this discord with ironic: sadness and a rueful retrospective glance at tradition. The 

literature of the past, he implies, offers mostly examples of this spiritual alienation between the sexes. 

By subverting the literary formulas -satiric or romantic images of victim and victimizer- he means to 

upset, or at least question, the conventions that maintain men and women at odds. The literature of 

the future, he would soon propose, must pave the way for reconciliation and understanding. 

Recent studies have pointed to possible autobiographical elements in the novel. The character of 

Tristana and her letters are said to have been inspired by real models, and Don Lope and Horacio 

156


to reflect Galdós himself 211 . Might this have led him to obfuscate the plot and form of the novel 

by mixing reality with elements of farce and sentimental fiction, by manipulating and shifting 

perspectives? Or was it all born solely from his desire to question and challenge both fiction and 

reality at every turn? It is difficult to know. But one thing is certain: questioning and challenging 

characterize this period of his evolution as a novelist. His early manipulation of the plot and characters 

in Tristana , contrasted with a pose of authorial. ignorance and helplessness later, are part of a spirit 

of experimentation, the same spirit that three years earlier had led him to view Federico Viera's death 

from two different perspectives. He had for so long labored to give the impression of freeing the 

characters from the grasp of their creator -the sistema dialogal was such a tool, as he explains in the 

prologue to El abuelo 212 - that a reversal such as we find in the first part of Tristana can only be 

deliberate, a recurring game of hide-and-seek. 

That the game is not in the long run successful is another matter 213 . «The critics are right: the novel 

seems somehow truncated, unrealized. Still, considering the complex circumstances that surround it, 

Tristana is neither a failure nor the ordinary disappointment that many had imagined. It is a significant 

211 Carmen Bravo Villasante, who, has brought to light some of the correspondence of la Pardo 

Bazán with Galdós, suggests that her letters served as models for those of Tristana. ( Vida y obra de 

Emilia Pardo Bazán , [Madrid, 1973], p. 153) In a letter of Doña Emilia to Galdós, published in the 

Mexican newspaper Excelsior (November 14, 1971) and reproduced by Pattison, she addresses him as 

Horacio. (See, W. T. Pattison, «Two women in the life of Galdós», Anales galdosianos , VIII [1973] 

23-31.) Tristana is also supposed to have been a certain Concha-Ruth Morell, with whom Galdós had 

an affair that year. (See A. F. Lambert, «Galdós and Concha-Ruth Morell», Anales galdosianos , VIII 

[1973], 33-49, and Gilbert Smith, «Galdós' Tristana and letters from Concha-Ruth Morell», Anales 

galdosianos , X (1975), 91-120.) 

212 « Con la virtud misteriosa del diálogo parece que vemos y oímos, sin mediación extraña, el 

suceso y sus actores, y nos olvidamos más fácilmente del artista oculto que nos ofrece una ingeniosa 

imitación de la Naturaleza. » ( Obras completas , VI, p. 11.) 

213 Clarín was dubious as to the wisdom of some of these experiments; for example, he considered 

the form of the dialogue novel a mistake. (Clarín, Obras selectas , [Madrid, 1947], pp. 1164-75.) For 

more of this see Laureano Bonet, De Galdós a Robbe-Grillet , (Madrid: Taurus, 1972), particularly 

pages 79-94. 

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disappointment in that it complements other novels to throw some light on a most interesting period 

in the career of Galdós.» 

University of Wisconsin - Madison 

158


The Problem of Individual and Social Redemption in Ángel 

Guerra 

John H. Sinnigen 

Throughout his work Galdós displays a profound discontent with the society in which he lived. 

This discontent is manifest not just in the portrayal of brutal social conditions (e. g. the poverty in 

Misericordia ) and retrograde attitudes and institutions (e. g. intolerance in Gloria , the bureaucracy 

in Miau ) but more importantly in the problematic of the novels themselves. The realism of 

particularly the contemporáneas is more than a social document or a «mirror» of reality. These 

novels are rather fictional structures which mediate the novelist's understanding of his individual- 

historical situation. And in the contemporáneas the primary focus of Galdós's concern is: where is 

Restoration society going? Thus the form of the novel serves as a filter through which social-historical 

problems pass and receive their expression, most commonly in the interrelation of characters, the 

most important of which are «types» in the Lukácsian sense of the word 214 . By portraying the 

struggles between different individual-typical characters, the novels become fictional representations 

of Galdós's perception of the social dynamic. 

Although a generally negative vision predominates throughout the contemporáneas , clearly Galdós 

does not find society irredeemable. To the contrary, a predominant theme is the search for social 

renovation. Frequently the problematic of the novels is a kind of question: given a decaying social 

order (typified by certain characters), can the introduction of any given value, quality, or combination 

of values and qualities (typified by other characters who for different reasons stand outside the status 

quo) provide an alternative? Thus each novel is a kind of hypothesis through which the novelist tests 

out possibilities for redeeming society. 

A good example of such a hypothesis is Fortunata y Jacinta 215 . Here, especially in Part I, 

Restoration society is presented as an -albeit imperfect- best-of-all-possible-worlds, typified by the 

self-satisfied señorito , Juanito Santa Cruz. This society pretends that it is a harmonious social whole 

in which the class struggle has been peacefully superseded by « una dichosa confusión de todas las 

214 See, for example, the Introduction to Studies in European Realism, trans. Edith Bone (New York: 

Grosset and Dunlap, 1964). 

215 See my «Individual, Class, and Society in Fortunata y Jacinta », Galdós Studies II, ed. Robert 

J. Weber (London: Tamesis, 1974), 49-68. 

159


clases, mejor dicho, la concordia y reconciliación de todas ellas » 216 . But Fortunata gives the lie 

to this farce, for she is exploited by Juanito and denied the possibility of marrying him because she 

is a mujer del pueblo . That is, she is excluded from the supposed organic social order because of 

her class origin. 

Fortunata does not accept this exclusion, and in her struggle to overcome it, she articulates an 

alternative to the status quo. A crucial part of her struggle involves the working out of the internal 

contradiction between her desire to be honrada and her intense love for a man who is not her husband. 

This contradiction, which takes different forms (especially her attitudes toward Jacinta), is based on 

her temporary acceptance of the bourgeois definition of honradez . Thus the social dynamic of the 

class struggle is expressed both in interpersonal conflicts (between Fortunata and her middle class 

companions) and in the internal conflict of the protagonist. And when, through her idea , Fortunata 

succeeds in resolving the internal conflict, she also resolves the interpersonal conflict. She overcomes 

the barriers society had placed in her way as the Santa Cruz are obliged to recognize her son as the sole 

« hijo de la casa ». Moreover, her success leads to changes in the «social order» of the novel. Jacinta 

rejects Juanito and begins to imitate Fortunata's language and thoughts; Fortunata has given Jacinta 

not only the much desired child, but also a new awareness. The conclusion of the novel therefore 

suggests the possibility of a social rebirth based on a genuine overcoming of class barriers. 

In Fortunata y Jacinta , then, the question is asked: can the values and vitality of the pueblo , 

which Fortunata typifies, renovate society? The hypothesis is worked out in the following way: the 

false order of bourgeois society is challenged by Fortunata who in her struggle must overcome 

internal and interpersonal contradictions as she articulates an alternative order . Thus the answer 

to the question is a tentative yes, but only after a long and hard struggle. This fictional hypothesis is 

rooted in Galdós's understanding of the class struggle, and Fortunata y Jacinta probably represents 

his most profound treatment of this social dynamic. Yet this is not a revolutionary novel, for Fortunata 

brings the possibility of redemption -and not revolution- to bourgeois society. Her son is the product 

of the union of the pueblo and the bourgeoisie and not of the overthrow of the latter by the former. 

Furthermore he will grow up in bourgeois surroundings, regardless of how Jacinta's new awareness 

may change them. Finally, her death is presented in the context of a religious sacrifice. Thus in spite 

216 Benito Pérez Galdós, Obras completas , vol. V., ed. Sainz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, (1950), 

p. 65. 

160


of the profound historical (or materialist) vision which imbues this novel, the conclusion is still posed 

in spiritual (or idealist) terms. 

This oscillation between the historical and the spiritual is present throughout the contemporáneas . 

But whereas in Fortunata y Jacinta the historical predominates, in later works the reverse is true. A 

shift in this direction has been generally accepted by critics. Joaquín Casalduero has noted: « Fortunata 

y Miau llevan directamente a Galdós a sentirse perdido ante la realidad, a ver en la realidad una 

incógnita, que puede despejarse únicamente con ayuda del espíritu. A partir de La incógnita el drama 

individual se le aparece en toda su intensidad » 217 . With specific reference to Ángel Guerra, Nazarín 

, and Halma , Gustavo Correa refers to « el proceso que podemos denominar de espiritualización 

» in which « las limitaciones que encierra la realidad ambiente y circunstancial quedan superadas en 

un plano de trascendencia que brota de las honduras del sentir religioso ». 218 

The historical conjuncture of the 1890's in Spain certainly provided little hope for favorable 

developments, and this fact helps to explain Galdós's search for a spiritual solution. The bourgeois 

revolution had still not achieved its completion in Spain, and no class other than the bourgeoisie 

was yet able to provide a concrete alternative 219 . Moreover, the conjuncture was characterized by a 

217 Vida y obra de Galdós (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), pp. 97, 98. 

218 Realidad, ficción, y símbolo en las novelas de Pérez Galdós (Bogotá: Caro y Cuervo, 1967), p. 

163. 

219 Antonio Jutglar ( Ideologías y clases en la España contemporánea [Madrid: Cuadernos para el 

diálogo , 1968]) has observed the following about the irregular development of Spanish capitalism: 

España entró en lo que viene denominándose Edad Contemporánea, contando con una plataforma, 

económica, social y política, desigual y claramente tipificada, muy vinculada a los esfuerzos y 

tensiones dieciochescos. En este sentido, se ha señalado la patentización, a lo largo del XVIII, de 

las disparidades de un dualismo español, que hace coexistir un comercio pujante y una creciente 

tendencia (sensibilización) hacia el movimiento que conducirá al industrialismo en Europa occidental, 

junto con la permanencia, inmovilista, de unos extensos sectores de economía agraria fundamental 

vinculada a seculares sistemas técnico-jurídicos en plena decadencia . (pp. 15, 16) In another place 

(« Fenomenología social de la Revolución », RO , 67 [1968], 116-142) Jutglar attributes the Spanish 

bourgeoisie's failure to fulfill its historiec tasks to its fears of the potential power of the proletariat: 

« los núcleos burgueses observaban que si los sectores conservadores y tradicionales, más o menos 

apegados a las fórmulas y privilegios del antiguo orden tenían fuerza y empuje tan considerables, los 

161


general economic depression, stemming from the end of the fiebre de oro in 1886, which received 

its sharpest manifestations in the crises of 1892 and 1898 220 . And if things were bad economically, 

they were no better politically; the turno pacífico disintegrated after 1890 and the outbreak of a new 

núcleos proletarios de toda España estaban inquietos y dispuestos a la acción. De manera particular, 

la cuestión de la Internacional obrera preocupaba, en gran manera, a todos los sectores acomodados 

del país, hasta tal punto que, en momentos decisivos, el fantasma de la Internacional acabaría de 

decidir a los empresarios y demás núcleos burgueses afines a renunciar a una parte (y la culminación) 

de sus vocaciones de clase -la plena conquista del Poder-, para buscar una serie de seguridades 

que consiguieran conjurar el hipotético peligro de ser barridos por la organización revolucionaria 

de obreros y campesinos » (p. 126). Peter B. Goldman («Historical Perspective and Political Bias: 

Comments on Recent Galdós Criticism» AG , 6 [1970], 113-124) observes that the working class 

was not yet strong enough to carry out its own revolution: The social revolution of 1936-1937 in 

Republican Spain was clearly impossible in Spain during the thirty years following the Revolution 

of 1868. Juan Díaz del Moral has reviewed the growth and disintegration of the workers' movement 

during the years 1874-1900. He observed that the socialists, who along with the anarchists comprised 

by 1936, the vast majority of the workers, did not become even a semblance of an organized group until 

1878 when the Socialist Party was secretly founded. In 1888 the socialist-affiliated U.G.T. (Unión 

General de Trabajadores) was established. Nevertheless, until 1898 the Socialist Party was unable 

to get off the ground as a leading organization of workers. And until 1910, no candidate from the 

Socialist Party was elected to the Cortes. On the other hand, the anarchist movement, outlawed in 

January, 1874, and suppressed until 1881, flourished during 1881-1882. But this movement began to 

break apart after 1882; its disintegration was almost complete by 1888. (p. 114) 

220 Jaime Vicens Vives ( Manual de la historia económica de España [Barcelona: Editorial Vicens 

Vives, 1967]) observes: « Durante diez años el Estado de la Restauración ha vivido un milagro 

económico: un movimiento coyuntural alcista en medio de una depresión general. Cuando ésta cesa, 

aquél se desploma. Ello acaece en 1892. En esta fecha se desata una notable crisis, provocada por el 

derrumbamiento del mercado exterior del vino y del hierro » and « Respondiendo a las fluctuaciones 

de la economía y del signo monetario, la Bolsa conoce una profunda crisis en 1898. La flexión de 

las curvas es el signo del malhumor de la burguesía, que ve frustradas sus esperanzas de terminar su 

centuria en paz, orden y prosperidad » (p. 675). 

162


Cuban uprising in 1895 signalled the disaster of 1898 221 . Both the economic infrastructure and the 

political superstructure of the Restoration regime were falling apart. But in the face of this weakness 

on the part of the bourgeoisie, the working class was unable to offer an alternative. Its movement was 

deeply divided between anarchists and socialists and had experienced considerable repression since 

1884. Without trying to argue a one to one relationship between economic and political phenomena on 

one hand, and artistic creations such as novels on the other, I think we can see how the virtual collapse 

of the Restoration, the lack of any viable alternative to it, and the pessimism that this situation imbued 

in all sectors of society, were important social factors which contributed to Galdós's turn away from 

historical process in search of ahistorical solutions. 

Nevertheless this shift does not mean that the historical is eliminated from these novels. Rather, as 

we shall see in this study of Ángel Guerra , the oscillation continues. In spite of Galdós's efforts to 

find a spiritual alternative, materiality continues to permeate his search. The emphasis may now be on 

the spiritual, but the historical problems refuse to go away. The spiritual and the historical continue 

to form a duality which is expressed primarily in contradictions in the development of Ángel as a 

character and in the proposed resolutions the novel offers. 

Ángel Guerra is Galdós's first effort to understand the evangelical vision of charity in the terms 

of the modem world. The question which is posed here is, in its broadest terms: how can a spiritual 

factor predominate in an increasingly urbanized society whose way of life is based on the steam 

engine and the exchange of commodities? The artistic problems which are posed stem from a historical 

base, for Galdós understood that the New Testament concept of charity was enunciated in a world far 

less complicated and skeptical than nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Thus the spiritual-historical 

duality is present in the basic hypothesis of the novel. 

In the working out of this hypothesis, the dynamic developed in Ángel Guerra is the opposite 

of Fortunata y Jacinta . In the latter work, Fortunata is an outsider who seeks to be integrated into 

bourgeois society (although on her own terms), and the renovation of society is dependent on the 

success of her efforts. In the former, on the other hand, Ángel is a bourgeois who rejects the values and 

institutions of his class. He strives continually to achieve a radical break with society, first through 

violent social revolution and then through the establishment of a messianic religious order which will 

function as an alternative external to the status quo. Whereas in Fortunata y Jacinta the renovation 

221 See particularly the chapter «The Restoration and the Disaster, 1874-1898» in Raymond Carr, 

Spain 1808-1939 , (Oxford: Oxford. U. Press, 1966.) 

163


of society is posed as a transformation from within in Ángel Guerra it is based on a total rejection 

of the established order. 

Ángel Guerra is born in Madrid, the son of a family of the haute bourgeoisie , and he is educated 

according to the customs of that class. He does not, however, accept the role which society would 

have him play and becomes an «outsider» to the extent that he is an outspoken opponent of bourgeois 

values. Nevertheless, unlike Fortunata, Ángel's separation has a psychological rather than historical 

base. That is, he does not discover the fraudulence and hypocrisy of the bourgeois norm by testing 

it against his own historically conditioned values, but rather his rejection of that norm is linked to 

his effort to break away from a domineering mother; his struggle for independence from a restrictive 

social norm goes along with his need to achieve independence from a restrictive family environment. 

For example, he finds his revolutionary fervor to be the result of an ongoing conflict with his mother: 

« Culpa más bien a tu carácter absorbente y despótico [he supposes he is talking to his mother], que 

no admite ni la desobediencia más leve, ni la réplica, ni siquiera la opinión de los demás. Encontreme 

atado con mil lazos, algunos legítimos, otros no; quise romper los que me oprimían, y tirando, tirando, 

se rompieron todos. Soy revolucionario por el odio que tomé al medio en que me criaste y a las 

infinitas trabas que poner querías a mi pensamiento » (1251) 222 . When Ángel leaves home he 

separates himself temporarily from both his family and his class, but, as this passage indicates, this 

separation represents the culmination of the mother-son conflict. His rebellion, in spite of its initial 

revolutionary appearance, can be described better in terms of the generation gap than in those of the 

class struggle. 223 

222 All references to Ángel Guerra will be to volume V of the Sainz de Robles edition of the Obras 

completas (cited above). In this quotation that edition gives « Culpa más bien a su carácter », which 

I have corrected according to the first edition. 

223 In a discussion of the possible role which students might play in the revolution, Trotsky made a 

comment that I find particularly applicable to Ángel Guerra: «The fact it that very often radicalism 

is a sickness of youth among what are actually petty-bourgeois students... You find this radicalism 

among youth in every country. The young person always feels dissatisfied with the society he lives 

in-he always thinks he can do things better than his elders did... Here we have the real psychological 

motor force. The young feel shut out; the old take up all the space, and the young can't find any outlet 

for their abilities. They are dissatisfied quite simply because they themselves are not sitting in the 

164


From the very beginning, the ease with which Ángel is disillusioned suggests the lack of earnestness 

of his political convictions. A slight wound, participation in the killing of an artillery officer, and the 

frustration of one abortive uprising lead him to reject his revolutionary ideals. He explains to Dulce: 

« Treinta años tengo, querida mía. En la edad peligrosa cogiome un vértigo político, enfermedad de 

fanatismo, ansia instintiva de mejorar la suerte de los pueblos, de aminorar el mal humano..., resabio 

quijotesco que todos llevamos en la masa de la sangre. El fin es noble; los medios ahora veo que son 

menguadísimos, y en cuanto al instrumento, que es el pueblo mismo, se quiebra en nuestras manos 

como una caña podrida » (1204). Ángel's description of his political commitment in terms of a 

sickness underlines the primarily psychological basis of his activity. Furthermore, his attitude toward 

the pueblo is disdainful and elitist. This attitude along with the fact that, although he espouses the 

cause of the working class, he continues to live on handouts from his mother and never works himself, 

suggests that this interlude in his life constitutes merely another « visita al cuarto estado » 224 . Ángel 

pretends to want to help the lower classes while in reality he seeks mainly the satisfaction of certain 

personal needs. Thus, after the night of the uprising he is much more concerned with his own fate 

and reputation than he is with the condition of the pueblo , and his disillusionment leads him to 

return quickly to the fold. 

The ironic context of his recovery further discredits Ángel's grave pretensions. The narrator relates 

Guerra's rhetorical retelling of the events of the previous night to the « caza » of the bee which 

torments our protagonist: « Procedió Dulcenombre, bien instruida de esta táctica, a la cacería del 

himenóptero, pero él le ganaba, sin duda en habilidad estratégica..., etc. » (1202). The use of military 

terminology here parallels Guerra's language and ironically reduces his tale to the level of triviality 

225 . Right from the first chapter, then, we see that Ángel Guerra's pretensions should not be taken 

at face value. 

driver's seat. But as soon as they are sitting there, it's all over with their radicalism» («Trotsky's Views 

on the Role of Students, Intellectuals», Intercontinental Press, 13 November 1972, p. 25). 

224 The reference here is, of course, to that chapter in Fortunata y Jacinta which describes the visit 

of Guillermina Pacheco and Jacinta to the home of José Ido. In his use of the lower classes for the 

fulfillment of personal, psychological needs, Ángel is quite similar to Guillermina. 

225 «The insect is not simply another irritant, a negligible element in the episode. Dulce's pursuit of 

the little pest is described partly as if drawn from a military history and partly as if exploits recited in 

ballads. The exaggerated diction reserved for this minor happening betrays the author's intention to 

165


Ángel's political disillusionment and the subsequent deaths of his mother and daughter throw him 

into crisis. Having lost his political cause and the objects of his filial rebellion and paternal love, he 

finds himself completely disoriented: « Con el tiempo la soledad aumentaba, pues cada día hallábase 

Guerra más agobiado y triste, y con la soledad, iba tomando cuerpo la idea de que su vida no tenía ya 

ningún objeto » (1278). Two new preoccupations then fill this void, his recently inherited fortune 

and Leré. Ángel perceives the change effected by his affluence (« yo he sido un poco socialista; 

pero, francamente, eso me pasaba cuando no tenía dinero. El reparto de la riqueza me parecía muy 

bien cuando a mí nada podía sobrarme » [1285]), but, particularly because he refuses to reflect 

on it, the source of Leré's influence remains mysterious. Nevertheless we can find certain apparent 

psychological causes for it, for she seems to become a substitute for both his mother and his daughter: 

she is strong-willed like Doña Sales, and treats Ángel rather like a child, and he continually associates 

her with Ción. 226 

Aside from these possible motivations, Ángel is attracted to Leré because he sees in her an idealism 

similar to his own in its fervor if not in its content, and he recognizes the attraction that her strong 

religious convictions exercise: « tu santidad [la de Leré] me cautiva, y si no fueras como eres, si 

no tuvieras esa fe a toda prueba y esa vocación irresistible, se me figura que me gustarías menos. 

He pensado mucho en esto, pero mucho. 'Si me quisiera ella a mí como yo a ella... se vulgarizaría, y 

entonces, perdido el encanto y deshecha la ilusión, no valdría para mí lo que vale y no me cautivaría 

tanto' » (1293). Although Leré does not stand in revolutionary opposition to the status quo, her 

position is clearly distinct from the banality that Guerra feels is characteristic of the bourgeois norm. 

These characteristics make Leré an appropriate mediator of his new situation since by emulating her, 

he must only renounce his revolutionary pretensions (which were becoming uncomfortable anyway) 

and not his dedication to ideals or his desire to remain independent of the bourgeois norm. As was the 

case with his political activity, Ángel's religious fervor is psychologically motivated; his « exaltación 

humanitaria » (1269) has turned into an « exaltación religiosa ». 

mock the vain heroics of Guerra, at the same time that he details his suffering» (Monroe Z. Hafter, « 

Bálsamo contra Bálsamo » in Ángel Guerra , AG , 4 [1969], 39-48, p. 39). 

226 Sherman Eoff ( The Novels of Pérez Galdós [St Louis: Washington University, 1954]) notes that 

Ángel «finds in the strong-willed and orderly Leré what he did not find in Dulcenombre: a substitute 

for his mother; and he transfers to her both his ingrained submissiveness and his longing for sympathy 

and understanding» (p. 76). 

166


To pursue this new course, Ángel must follow Leré to Toledo. This geographical shift corresponds 

to the change in Ángel's preoccupations. Toledo, in which there is a strong emphasis on history 

and religion, represents the opposite of the modern Madrid, where life is oriented toward politics 

and business. This compatibility between Toledo and Ángel's internal reorientation facilitates his 

journeys into the realm of contemplation « buscando como una comunicación honda y clandestina 

con el mundo ultrasensible » (1321). Both in Toledo and within Ángel there is a preoccupation 

with the distant past that indicates a movement from the world of ongoing historical process into 

that of archaeology. This movement is emphasized by the concern of the narrator and most of the 

characters for the city's monuments and traditions, by Palomeque's investigations, and by Guerra's 

own reflections, such as « No le resultaba aquello ciudad del occidente europeo, sino más bien 

de regiones y edades remotísimas, costra calcárea de una sociedad totalmente apartada de la nuestra 

» (1317). Ángel also relates Leré to the archaeological past: « Es figura de otros tiempos... y asisto 

a una milagrosa resurrección de lo pasado » (1343). 

This orientation toward the past culminates in Guerra's desire to found a new order based explicitly on 

the New Testament: « En lo esencial quiero parecerme a los primitivos fundadores y seguir fielmente 

la doctrina pura de Cristo. Amparar al desvalido, sea quien fuere; hacer bien a nuestros enemigos; 

emplear siempre el cariño y la persuasión, nunca la violencia; practicar las obras de misericordia en 

espíritu y en letra, sin distingos ni atenuaciones, y por fin, reducir el culto a las formas más sencillas 

dentro de la rúbrica » (1471). That is, through this order, Ángel will seek to introduce New Testament 

charity into the modern world. He is motivated in this direction, however, by factors which are not 

completely charitable. He is not unconcerned with the glory which this undertaking will bring him, 

and he sees it as a way of holding on to Leré, a kind of « mística unión » (1447) that he is forced to 

settle for because of her unshakeable convictions. Furthermore, there are many aspects of his attitudes 

and behavior associated with these new plans that are the same as those which were a part of his 

political activism. Thus in spite of his desires to redeem mankind, he can only endure being with 

a select few of his fellows, and so he isolates himself in Guadalupe, demonstrating his continuing 

elitism and misanthropy. He also continues to be affected strongly by the atmosphere in which he 

lives; whereas « la influencia del conjunto » had made him a « sectario como otro cualquiera 

» (1270), now a « contagio místico » leads him along the religious path. And at the end of the novel 

167


his inability to overcome his anger leads to his death 227 . Finally, he never abandons his messianic 

pretensions: « Yo no lo veré, quizá. Pero otras generaciones de doministas se encontrarán dueñas 

de una inmensa fuerza espiritual, y, sin quererlo, se les formará entre las manos, por pura ley física, 

la sociedad nueva » (1514). His vision of this new society, which will even do without a state, is 

a religious version of his old anarchistic pretensions and represents the continuation of his idealistic 

desire to supersede the bourgeois norm. 228 

We can see, then, that in spite of Ángel's conversion, he has really changed very little. Rather, a 

combination of psychological and material factors have led him to exchange politics for religion 

as the means through which he would seek the fulfillment of personal needs, especially his quest 

for independence and affection. This lack of change is also indicated by the fact that the narrator 

treats Ángel's religious convictions with the same irony with which he had presented his political 

pretensions. For example, as Monroe Hafter has again pointed out, through the juxtaposition of the 

two « bálsamos », Ángel's religious and Dulce's alcoholic, «we see the hero's 'balm' also a means 

to palliate bereavement, although in addition, a means possibly to hold the woman he loves». 229 

On his deathbed Ángel is able finally to realize the error of his religious « exaltación »: « Declaro 

alegrarme de que la muerte venga a destruir mi quimera del dominismo, y a convertir en humo mis 

ensueños de vida eclesiástica, pues todo ha sido una manera de adaptación o flexibilidad de mi espíritu, 

ávido de aproximarse a la persona que lo cautivaba y lo cautiva ahora y siempre » (1531). With 

this final conversion, Ángel claims that he has learned that there is « una cosa que vale más que 

la vida misma: el amor » (1531). This statement is undoubtedly a sincere expression of Ángel's 

charitable sentiments. Nevertheless it is not adequate, and it shows again his blindness with respect 

to his situation since it isolates one need (for love and affection) from the other psychological drive 

(independence) which has been so important in his life and, as we shall see, from the society which 

has provided the context of both his political activism and his religious devotion. 

227 Here his reversion to his «old self» is particularly noteworthy since Leré's first commandment 

to him was « que no se enfade nunca » (1284). 

228 Even Casado understands this constancy in Ángel's character: « Por mucho que se modifique 

externamente, entusiasmándose con el simbolismo católico y volviéndose tarumba con la poesía 

cristiana, detrás de todos estos fililíes está el temperamento de siempre, el hombre único, siempre 

igual a sí mismo » (1515). 

229 Hafter, p. 41. 

168


Ángel's quest is also frustrated by the continual emergence of materiality as the underlying basis of 

this ostensibly spiritual world. For example, the narrator observes that the Socorro nuns receive him 

so readily not only because Leré is a model novitiate but also because « [Ángel] atendía, generoso, 

a las necesidades presentes de la casa, y se esperaba de él que acudiese a mayores necesidades del 

porvenir » (1385). And when Mancebo rejoices that the pharmacist Zapatero had «miraculously» 

refused to accept a payment due him, Ángel recalls, « A ese Zapatero le hice yo un favor en 

Madrid años ha » (1499). The appearance of charity is always tinged by the material necessities and 

preoccupations of modern life. 

Thus, along with his psychological needs, Ángel's wealth is an essential aspect of his religious 

conversion. We have already observed the initial influence which his inheritance exercised on him, 

leading to the renunciation of his socialist convictions. Later, without this fortune he could not so 

easily have abandoned Madrid for Toledo nor the city for his cigarral , and he certainly could 

never have contemplated seriously the foundation of a new order, without which luring Leré away 

from the socorristas would have been impossible. At least materially all these changes are easy for 

Ángel Guerra, and the privilege provided by his fortune calls into question his intended sacrifices. 

For example, when he flees Toledo for Guadalupe, the narrator notes: « A semejante vida del yermo 

ya nos podríamos abonar todos, y si se dieran facilidades para emprender tales penitencias, el mundo 

estaría lleno de anacoretas tan convencidos como lo era Guerra por aquellos días » (1362). This 

retreat turns out to be not much of a sacrifice at all since it can be rescinded at any time and is, in 

fact, quite comfortable. 

Ángel's privileged position therefore proves incompatible with his saintly pretensions. Consequently 

his espousal of moral preachings is vulnerable to attack by those who have never enjoyed the comforts 

of wealth. Fausto Babel challenges him effectively on this basis. Early in the novel he explains why 

he had forged Ángel's signature to obtain 1000 reales: « las riquezas están mal repartidas, tú lo 

has dicho mil veces. Por ley de equidad, algo de lo que a ti te sobraba debía venir a nosotros que 

no habíamos encendido lumbre en dos días... ¡Ay, chico! Mientras no sepas lo que es el hambre, no 

hables una palabra de moral » (1289) 230 . And again, near the end of the novel, Fausto levels a 

similar attack: « ¡Dichosos los ricos que pueden ser buenos y hasta santos siempre que les dé la gana! 

El pobre es esclavo de la maldad, y cuando quiere sacudirse la cadena, no puede » (1522). Fausto 

230 This defense is particularly apt since it comes just at the close of Ángel's «revolutionary» phase 

during which he had decried the unequal distribution of the wealth. 

169


Babel is no exemplary character, but here his words ring true because they are supported by the action 

of the novel. We remember, for example, that Ángel had been freed of the obligation of paying for 

his political crimes because of his social position 231 , and clearly the degree of freedom which his 

wealth allows him to exercise is unparalleled in this novel. 232 

This relation between wealth and freedom. reveals the contradictory nature of Ángel's fortune. On 

the one hand, it allows him to reject at least those aspects of bourgeois ideology -like politeness 

and pragmatic religion- which he finds especially distasteful. But since this rejection depends on 

his wealth, that is, his personal participation in the material basis of that ideology, he is unable to 

separate himself successfully from that which he despises; in spite of his intense, idealistic desire to 

supersede the bourgeois norm, he is tied to the material basis of that norm, and this connection proves 

to be stronger than his desire. At least within the context of this novel, materiality remains ultimately 

unaffected by spiritual forces. 

For the first time in Ángel Guerra, Galdós dealt extensively with the problem of understanding the 

New Testament vision of charity in the terms of the modern world. In this novelistic effort to examine 

the question of how a spiritual factor could predominate in bourgeois society, the following hypothesis 

operates. Seen schematically, Leré represents the evangelical past and Ángel the present-future. His 

potential conversion to her beliefs followed by the dedication of his fortune and his energy to a new, 

231 Thus his comment to Arístides, «No, yo no te mando a la cárcel, Te propuse que te impusieras 

tú mismo esa pena infamante, como expiación de tus delitos » (1504), is especially hypocritical. 

232 To an extent the Babeles, whose freedom is restricted severely by their material poverty, represent 

the other side of this wealth-freedom coin. The major parallel between the Babel family and Ángel is 

their intense, although ultimately futile, intellectual creativity. This creativity ranges from Catalina's 

raving about her aristocratic lineage, to Simón's unscrupulous business dealings, to Pito's drunken 

visions, to Arístides' and Fausto's money-making schemes. Although these «creations» are different 

among themselves and quite distinct from Ángel's revolutionary and religious plans, they are all 

similar in that they are projections which serve to mediate the various characters' inconformity 

with reality without really attacking that reality. Thus Fausto is unwilling to seek employment in a 

workshop since he wants « independencia, libertad, iniciativa » (1289), just as Ángel will not accept 

the role society would have him play because of his desire for independence. And in spite oi his 

recognition of the unequal distribution of the wealth, Fausto trusts in his own ingenuity rather than in 

the strength of the unity of the oppressed to solve this problem, at least as far as he is concerned. 

170


charitable order could conceivably open the way to a new role of social redemption for Christianity, 

leading to a society based on charity. He «qualified» as a vehicle for this task since his wealth allowed 

him to be materially independent of unworthy existing institutions, and his dedication to idealism 

made him apparently spiritually independent of them also. Furthermore, although he had rejected 

the bourgeois norm, he had also renounced violent revolution as a means of superseding that norm, 

choosing instead the path of religious redemption in keeping with the ideal of charity. Finally, to 

facilitate his conversion the setting of the novel was moved from Madrid to Toledo where the heavily 

religious atmosphere should have provided good materia novelable for the study of the theme of 

charity. 233 

But this effort fails, in part because of weaknesses in Ángel Guerra as a character. Ángel is unable 

to resolve his inner conflicts, for he never understands the relation between his desire for love and 

affection on one hand and his need for independence on the other. Rather than dealing with these 

drives (which at times conflict) and trying to understand how they motivate his behavior, he prefers 

to avoid them by seeking to play a messianic role; he tries to resolve his inner conflicts through 

different utopian collective projects. Previously, we saw in the case of Fortunata a close link between 

the working out of internal and interpersonal (social) contradictions. In Ángel Guerra, rather than a 

link. we find an effort to substitute one set of problems for another. 

More important, however, is the fact that the spiritual is not successfully separated from the 

historical; the oscillation between the two poles continues. This failure is particularly evident in the 

critical importance of Angel's wealth for his religious plans; it is a necessary material base for the 

fulfillment of his charitable intentions. Consequently the spiritual is unable to achieve an independent, 

causal role, and the articulation of a spiritual alternative to the established order is impossible. 

233 The result however, is the opposite. Rather than enhancing Ángel's saintly pretensions, the shift 

to Toledo weakens them since, by reducing the conflict between interiority and exteriority, it further 

decreases the amount of sacrifice he must endure. Thus everything seems to be disposed to his 

following a religious vocation except his own character. Setting the bulk of the novel in Toledo is 

not propitious to the study of evangelical charity in terms of the modern world, precisely because 

Toledo is not representative of the modern world. With the temporal conflict: reduced, the relation 

between the authorial subject and his content is to0 facile and, consequently, unconvincing. Nazarín 

and Halma show a similar flaw. There Galdós strives to achieve a separation from modern society by 

way of a physical escape, and both of these efforts fail. 

171


At the moment of his final conversion, Ángel partially realizes his errors. When he renounces his 

dominismo , he recognizes that he has been substituting a utopian collective solution for an individual 

problem (his relation with Leré). But in his new dedication to love (« el amor, si iniciado como 

sentimiento exclusivo y personal, extendido luego a toda la Humanidad. Me basta con esto » [1531]), 

he commits a reverse error, for he presumes that this strictly individual solution is sufficient. Its 

insufficiency, however, is immediately obvious in the concern of other characters about their share 

of Angel's estate; they will measure his love for them in material terms. There is, then, a separation 

between the adequacy of Angel's conversion for his own needs (at least as far as he is concerned 

at that moment) and the inadequacy of his «discovery» for the other problems which have been 

presented here. In this novel we have seen the development of genuine conflicts, both psychological 

and material, and the panacea of love hardly seems sufficient to begin to resolve them. As Fausto 

Babel would surely point out, what good is love -like morality- without bread? 

In each of the three resolutions Ángel proposes (social revolution, dominismo , love), he is seeking 

to remould a fragmented reality into a new totality. He is trying to overcome his alienation (from 

the moment of his break with his mother) by achieving a harmony between his individual needs and 

those of the collectivity, for he recognizes -although inadequately- the relation between his personal 

problems and the injustice of the social order. That is, he is striving to understand the meaning of his 

own life by giving a new sense to the world he lives in. And Angel's quest is analogous to that of 

the novelist who was seeking through this fictional mediation a new spiritual totality as a response to 

the historical disintegration of Restoration society. And just as Ángel failed in his quest, so Galdós 

failed in his. In his Theory of the Novel , Lukács suggests that such a failure is dictated by the 

form of the novel: «The inner form of the novel has been understood as the problematic individual's 

journeying towards himself, the road from dull captivity within a merely present reality... towards 

clear self-recognition. After such self-recognition has been attained, the ideal thus formed irradiates 

the individual's life as its immanent meaning; but the conflict between what is and what should be has 

not been abolished in the sphere wherein these events take place -the life sphere of the novel; only 

a maximum conciliation- the profound and intensive irradiation of a man by his life's meaning -is 

attainable» 234 . Of course, according to my reading of Ángel Guerra , the «maximum conciliation» is 

not even attained since Ángel's total commitment to love does not achieve «the profound and intensive 

irradiation of a man by his life's meaning», for love is not a sufficient explanation of the complex 

234 The Theory of the Novel , trans. Anna Bostock, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 1971), p. 80. 

172


of circumstances which led to both his political activism and his religious fervor. He does, however, 

obtain a «glimpse of Meaning» 235 , but this glimpse in no way suggests a resolution of «the conflict 

between what is and what should be» in the rest of the novelistic world. The maintenance and, in 

fact, reinforcement of the dualities, spiritual-historical and individual-collective, through Ángel's final 

conversion, underline the difficulty of finding any spiritual solution to the problems of modern society, 

even within a novel; at least within the context of Ángel Guerra the spiritual redemption of any one 

individual can be nothing more than that. 

University of Maryland, Baltimore County 

235 Ibid. , p. 80. 

173

Documento 


174


La perspectiva de Galdós en El asesinato del obispo Martínez 

Izquierdo 

Matilde L. Boo 

Robert Ricard, en su artículo «El asesinato del obispo Martínez Izquierdo», aparecido en el Volumen 

I de Anales Galdosianos , comenta el trágico suceso relacionándolo con el estado del clero madrileño 

en época de Galdós. Basándose en el libro del P. García Figar, Vida del Excmo. e Ilmo. Sr. Doctor 

Don Narciso Martínez Izquierdo, obispo de Salamanca y primer obispo de Madrid-Alcalá , Madrid, 

1960, el crítico francés se refiere a la ilustre personalidad del obispo, destacando el carácter oscuro 

de los móviles del crimen. 

Benito Pérez Galdós se ocupa del mismo suceso en tres artículos para La Prensa de Buenos 

Aires, periódico del que era asiduo colaborador. Estos artículos revisten interés porque denotan la 

perspectiva de un novelista preocupado por captar la realidad subyacente en un drama que provocó 

gran conmoción por el carácter ilustre de la víctima. Además, presentan cierto atractivo para el 

estudioso interesado en descubrir las fuentes de inspiración galdosiana. Los artículos, aparecidos con 

fecha del 21, 30 de mayo y 9 de octubre del año 1886, respectivamente en los números de La Prensa 

del 22, 30 de mayo y 7 de noviembre del mismo año, fueron publicados por Alberto Ghiraldo en el 

volumen VII de sus Obras inéditas de Galdós. 

Ricard, aunque no se ocupa de ellos, hace notar la «sencillez rayana en la banalidad» con que están 

escritos. No creemos que el juicio sea del todo acertado, pues el crítico francés no tiene en cuenta los 

límites a que debió someterse el novelista en la redacción de un hecho de esta naturaleza, destinado 

a la información popular. No obstante, el relato es vívido y dramático. 

Como lo hacía en sus novelas, Galdós descubre la interioridad de conciencia de sus personajes para 

presentar la verdad oculta bajo la apariencia (hace decir a Cisneros en La incógnita, que la verdad 

absoluta sólo puede encontrarse en la intimidad de las conciencias); frente a un hecho real su propósito 

es semejante. Don Benito trata de sondear el alma del asesino, buscar sus móviles secretos, sus odios 

y pasiones. Con ese fin va a visitarlo a la cárcel y, más tarde, entrevista a Tránsito Durdal, el ama de 

llaves, acerca de la cual circulaban rumores variados. 

El primer artículo, del 21 de abril, está encabezado por una escueta información del asesinato: 

consternación general por la muerte del obispo, tiempo y lugar del crimen, el asesino, sus actitudes 

y móviles: 

175


El obispo de Madrid ha sido asesinado en el momento de entrar en la catedral para celebrar la fiesta 

de las palmas. El asesino ha sido un sacerdote... El obispo fue herido el Domingo (sic) a las cinco 

y cuarto de la tarde. El asesino no hizo resistencia a la policía y confesó en el acto los móviles de 

su espantoso acto. 

Galdós considera este crimen consecuencia directa del estado de relajación del clero madrileño por 

ausencia, hasta 1885, de un poder central que lo rigiera. En ese año se puso al frente de la diócesis, 

por bula pontificia, al obispo de Salamanca, Martínez Izquierdo. 

Para destacar la gravedad del suceso, Galdós presenta un esbozo de la personalidad de la víctima. 

Martínez Izquierdo se destacó desde muy joven por sus brillantes dotes oratorias, ganándose, incluso, 

la admiración de sus adversarios políticos. Cuando fue nombrado obispo de Madrid inició abierta 

lucha contra la corrupción y el desorden reinantes en el clero. Galdós alude reiteradamente al peligro 

en que se hallaba el obispo, expuesto a la venganza de sacerdotes disconformes con la nueva disciplina: 

Apenas tomó posesión de la sede madrileña el obispo de Salamanca, emprendió una campaña ruda 

y tenaz contra los abusos... Las quejas de muchos clérigos contra los rigores del prelado no tardaron 

en hacerse oír. 

El novelista aporta datos concretos sobre las reformas introducidas por Martínez Izquierdo: 

Hizo que cada clérigo se inscribiera en determinada iglesia para impedir las misas dobles y 

cuádruples, sujetó a examen a todos los sacerdotes residentes en esta villa, y empezó a retirar las 

licencias de todos aquellos que por su conducta no debían, a juicio del prelado, disfrutarlas. 

Los sacerdotes descontentos recurrieron a los periódicos para expresar su desagrado contra las 

medidas de Martínez Izquierdo. El Progreso , diario republicano, recibe cartas de Galeote y Cotilla, 

el futuro asesino, quejándose de que el obispo le había retirado la misa y se negaba a recibirlo. 

Estas cartas fueron publicadas al día siguiente del asesinato. Galdós, basándose en ellas y en las 

declaraciones del asesino durante su entrevista en la cárcel, expone los antecedentes y móviles del 

crimen. Subraya el hecho de que el asesinato fue premeditado y no consecuencia de la pasión del 

momento. Antes de consumar el crimen, Galeote se presentó a la redacción de El Progreso con un 

paquete que contenía copia de las cartas ya enviadas al mismo periódico y otra pidiendo al director 

las conservase «por si pronto necesitara hacer uso de ellas». 

176


Don Benito relata los preparativos del crimen, creando cierto suspenso novelesco. El domingo de 

Ramos el sacerdote, que vive en una casa humildísima en compañía de una «sobrina o ama de 

gobierno», Tránsito Durdal, sale temprano. Después de desayunar en un café se pasea por el pórtico 

de la catedral, nervioso, excitado, aguardando a su víctima. Presenta luego, el escenario de la tragedia: 

la catedral hormigueante de gente por ser la primera vez que se celebra allí la fiesta de las palmas. 

Va graduando la tensión por la acumulación de pequeños detalles: la hora exacta de la llegada del 

obispo, la expectación de la gente ansiosa por besar el anillo de su Ilustrísima. Repentinamente, un 

sacerdote irrumpe entre la multitud y, ante el estupor general, hiere mortalmente al obispo. El grito del 

asesino, «Estoy vengado», desata la furia de los presentes que se arrojan sobre él, debiendo intervenir 

la policía para librarlo de una segura muerte. 

La primera impresión que el novelista tiene de Galeote es la de un criminal frío y calculador, 

convencido del carácter justiciero de su acto: «insistió en la justicia de su causa y en que sus móviles no 

debían ser juzgados con ligereza». Lo pinta como un hombre de «soberbia extraordinaria», de «temple 

moral completamente depravado y natural quisquilloso y levantisco y rebelde a toda disciplina». 

Concluye luego, en contra de lo manifestado por los periódicos que tachaban a Galeote de masón: 

«no, es un fanático ni ha obedecido a una idea extraviada, sino al impulso de su soberbia y de sus 

rencores personales». 

Don Benito ve en el crimen «un resultado de la relajación a que ha llegado, por desgracia, una parte 

del clero». 

Más tarde, después de la conversación con el sacerdote y con Tránsito Durdal, su opinión sobre el 

asesino cambia sensiblemente. No lo ve ya como un criminal empedernido, sino como un infeliz, digno 

de compasión. La impresión del encuentro con el sacerdote es muy penosa para el novelista que, al 

contemplar sus gestos y actitudes, comienza a sospechar de la normalidad del personaje. La excitación 

en que se encontraba «daba a su rostro contracciones muy extrañas y su tartamudez era extremada». 

«A veces, su torpeza de expresión parecía marrullería, a veces perturbación física y moral». Se refiere 

luego a su actitud: «Se manifestó como perseguido y vejado y arrastrado a la vindicación de su honor 

por la fuerza incontrastable de las circunstancias». 

Galdós hace hincapié en la falta de vocación de este sacerdote a quien no agrada el confesionario y 

que había tomado los hábitos sólo por complacer a su padre. 

177


Dudando de que la locura de Galeote sea superchería, el novelista decide entrevistar a la persona más 

allegada al asesino, Tránsito Durdal, con la esperanza de descubrir nuevos indicios que lo iluminen 

sobre la verdadera personalidad del sacerdote. Además, siente cierta curiosidad por conocer a la mujer 

en quien tanto se había cebado la maledicencia periodística. Se asombra agradablemente al comprobar 

que es muy diferente a como se la había imaginado. Se ve frente a una mujer «de treinta y cinco años, 

de figura esbelta, fisonomía inteligente y modales corteses», que le hace exclamar con admiración: 

«No es una mujer vulgar». 

Doña Tránsito pinta al sacerdote como un hombre de buenos sentimientos, víctima de sus superiores, 

pero, al mismo tiempo, sugiere en él cierto desequilibrio mental: «Y algo debía haber de esto porque 

durante los tres meses que antecedieron al crimen, Galeote no comía ni dormía, se había dejado crecer 

la barba, y sus actos no eran propios de una persona sensata». 

Esta entrevista no termina de aclarar sus dudas, pues Galdós se da cuenta de que Doña Tránsito 

considera que el único recurso para salvar a Galeote es «declararlo irresponsable de sus actos». 

En el artículo del 9 de octubre, en la escena del juicio oral, que por su dramatismo parece 

reproducción de algún episodio de sus novelas, Don Benito presenta al acusado frente al tribunal. 

Galdós nota en su comportamiento signos inequívocos de desequilibrio mental: 

Dentro de la sala y frente al tribunal, el reo se ha permitido las mayores extravagancias, ya 

desconociendo la autoridad del presidente, ya interrumpiendo a cada instante las declaraciones de 

los testigos. Pasando bruscamente del llanto a la ira, siempre agitado y nervioso, sus palabras, sus 

apóstrofes, ora epigramáticos, ora terribles, han excitado vivamente el interés público. 

Este extraño comportamiento renueva la duda del novelista y le hace exclamar: «Y en resumidas 

cuentas, ¿está loco o no?» 

A raíz de este juicio, Don Benito se plantea un problema legal que todavía preocupa a los hombres 

de leyes: la dificultad de determinar los límites de responsabilidad en un criminal al que la medicina 

considera demente. Galdós piensa que debe ser encerrado a perpetuidad en un manicomio. Luego 

se retracta, contradiciendo su afirmación anterior: «Si se sostiene la necesidad de los manicomios 

penales, se reconoce que hubo responsabilidad en el loco que cometió un crimen, pues, de otro modo, 

no sería justa la reclusión perpetua». Según Ricard, a Galeote se le conmutó la pena de muerte por 

el manicomio y fue encerrado en el de Leganés. 

178


Al leer estos artículos se puede comprobar el gran interés del novelista por la causa criminal y la 

suerte del asesino. ¿Qué huella dejó este suceso en su alma? ¿De qué manera se refleja en las novelas 

de este período? Se ha comentado reiteradamente de lo mucho que atraían al novelista sucesos de 

esta naturaleza. Existe un interesante estudio acerca de la influencia del crimen de Fuencarral en La 

incógnita 236 . El asesinato de Martínez Izquierdo, no parece haber influido directamente en el tema 

de ninguna de sus novelas, pero es posible detectar algunas semejanzas físicas y morales entre las 

dos personas que Galdós entrevistó -Galeote y Doña Tránsito- y ciertos personajes novelescos. Al 

referirse a Nicolás Rubín, el cura hermano de Maxi en Fortunata y Jacinta , el novelista parece haber 

tenido presente los rasgos de Galeote. Dice de Nicolás: 

La cara era desagradable, la boca grande y muy separada de la nariz, corva y chica, la frente 

espaciosa, pero sin nobleza. 

Y de Galeote: 

nariz pequeña y corva, la boca muy grande y muy separada de la nariz, los ojos negros y vivos, la 

frente despejada. 

Es evidente que la atractiva ama de llaves del sacerdote produjo impresión duradera en el novelista. 

Existe marcada semejanza entre ella y Augusta, personaje de La incógnita . Manolo Infante, al hablar 

a su amigo Equis de su prima Augusta declara: 

una de las mayores seducciones de mi prima es su boca... ¡vaya que es grandecita!... tiene mi prima 

unas ojos negros que te marcan... Buena talla sin ser desmedida; buenas carnes sin gorduras; curvas 

hermosísimas... La edad la fijo en treinta años y lo más, lo más que añado, si en ello te empeñas, es 

dos o tres a lo sumo. 

De Tránsito Durdal, dice Galdós: 

De treinta años... Los que la han visto dicen que es guapetona, alta, ojos negros, boca grande y 

conjunto agradable. 

El comportamiento anormal de Galeote y su obsesivo sentimiento del honor ultrajado que lo arrastra 

al crimen, debió haber influido en la creación del personaje de Federico en la novela dialogada 

236 Véase Denah Lida, «Galdós, entre crónica y novela», Anales Galdosianos , Año VIII, 1973, pág. 

62. 

179


Realidad . Como Galeote, vaga enloquecido por las calles, como él, está obsedido por la idea de 

la pérdida de su honor y también como él, se siente impulsado a la violencia (suicidio) como única 

solución. 

Ricard apunta que existen en las novelas de esta época frecuentes críticas al clero madrileño. Se 

puede notar que son muy semejantes a las que aparecen en estos artículos. Dice Galdós, al hablar de 

los clérigos que frecuentan los cafés vestidos con ropas seglares: 

En Madrid hay muchos clérigos que apenas usan el traje eclesiástico; otros frecuentan los cafés y 

aun sitios peores, los hay que dicen dos o tres misas al día, en diferentes iglesias y por fin las prácticas 

rigurosas del celibato eclesiástico no suelen ser en bastantes casos más que una vana fórmula. 

El narrador de Fortunata y Jacinta , presenta, en las coloridas escenas de café, la distribución de 

los curas en las mesas y critica sus costumbres: 

después seguían los «curas de tropa», llamada así porque a ella se arrimaban tres o cuatro sacerdotes 

de estos que podríamos llamar sueltos y que durante la noche y parte del día hacían vida laica. 

Se refiere también a algunos curas a quienes se les había retirado las licencias por mala conducta. 

La perspectiva de Galdós no es, en consecuencia, la del cronista preocupado por el aspecto 

sensacional del crimen, ni la del juez severo e implacable, sino la del ser humano que siente interés y 

piedad por su prójimo, en quien ve, no un criminal empedernido sino un ser infeliz y desequilibrado. 

Como todo novelista genuino sabe captar la realidad tras las apariencias. Así, sucesos y personajes de 

la vida cotidiana, transfigurados por su arte, pasan a integrar el mundo de sus novelas. 

University of Mississippi 

180

Reseña 


181


An Evaluation of Bibliografía de Galdós, I by Manuel 

Hernández Suárez 

Hensley C. Woodbridge 

Galdosianos have long felt the lack of a bibliography of material by and about the great Spanish 

author. The Galdós bibliographer faces challenges not faced by those who prepare bibliographies on 

authors of less importance. Galdós was a prolific author; his works went through numerous editions. 

Outside of Cervantes, he is probably Spain's most translated author. He contributed to numerous 

newspapers and journals. Many of his works have been made into textbooks and parts of his works 

appear in numerous anthologies for world literature. Several of his works have been made into movies 

and their scripts published. In regard to biographical and critical studies on Galdós, in academic circles 

in the United States there would appear to have been written more dissertations on him than Cervantes 

and Galdós, especially in recent years, has been the subject of books, articles and lectures wherever 

Spanish is spoken or taught. 

All studens of Benito Pérez Galdós will find themselves immeasurably in the debt of Manuel 

Hernández Suárez and his Bibliografía de Galdós , I, [Las Palmas], Ediciones del Excmo. Cabildo 

Insular de Gran Canaria, 1972 (the colophon is dated 1974), xiv, 553 pp. His efforts in compiling 

this volume and the one to follow, a bibliography of material about Galdós, can only be highly 

applauded. It may be that only another bibliographer can truly appreciate the long and tedious hours 

that Hernández Suárez has spent in compiling this bibliography. He has centered his research in the 

libraries of Madrid (chiefly the Biblioteca Nacional) and the Museo Canario and the Casa-Museo 

Pérez Galdós in Las Palmas. Many of the title pages that are reproduced are from material found in 

the Casa-Museo. Hernández Suárez has worked many years on this bibliography and his care and 

devotion to his subject are apparent throughout. This is a first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography 

of material by Galdós. It would seem that the compiler hoped to cover Galdós' publications through 

the mid-1960's, for there are very few items listed published after 1965 and none after 1968. For 

material by and about Galdós published after this date the interested student and scholar should use 

the carefully classified bibliographies of Galdós that Hernández Suárez has contributed on an almost 

annual basis to the Anales galdosianos . Hernández Suárez began publishing his supplements to this 

main volume even before it had been published. 

182


This review is divided into two main parts. The first part is an outline of the bibliography's contents 

and arrangement. The second part details some of the types of material omitted in an effort to show 

a few of the volume's limitations. 

Part I, pp. 17-24, deals with the Obras completas of 1941-1942. Part II, « Novelas », pp. 29-168, 

arranges the novels in chronological order of their publication. Each novel is divided in two parts: a 

listing of those published in Spain in Spanish and « Otras ediciones », Spanish editions or translations 

published outside of Spain arranged by country as well as Catalan translations. Thus the 51 items 

under Doña Perfecta begin with its publication in the Revista de España followed by the first edition 

of 1876, items 3-16 provide data on editions published in Spain, whereas the other entries deal with 

it as published in Argentina, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, U. S. A., France, Holland, Hungary, 

England, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Rumania, Russia rather than Soviet Union, Sweden, Uruguay and 

Yugoslavia. This listing will really provide us with a knowledge of Hernández Suárez's data on 

translations by country, but it does not necessarily provide data concerning the number of languages 

into which a given work has appeared. From the data provided under Czechoslovakia it would appear 

that Doña Perfecta has appeared in both Czeck and Slovak. Hernández Suárez provides no data 

concerning the language of the Yugoslav translation. 

It must be emphasized that to a great extent this is an enumerative bibliography rather than a 

descriptive one. The first edition of Doña Perfecta is described in only two lines. It is also to be 

noted that though Galdós sometimes revised his works (this was particularly true for the ending of 

several novels), Hernández Suárez provides no notes that would call such textual matters to the user's 

attention. One would be entitled to believe that the texts of all Spanish editions are the same. A note 

at the end of the Spanish section of those novels whose endings were changed or in which numerous 

textual changes were made might have referred the reader to pertinent critical studies on this point. 

In this section Hernández Suárez lists four reviews (pp. 48, 86, 137). He would have done better 

either to have listed all known reviews along with the edition or translation reviewed or listed all 

reviews in a special section of volume two when it appears. It makes no sense to list only four reviews 

of the hundreds that must exist. 

Part III, pp. 171-348, is a bibliography of the Episodios nacionales with the same arrangement as 

part II. Part IV, pp. 350-390 is « Teatro ». Part V, pp. 392-396, is « Adaptaciones teatrales » 

and presents data on six plays based on Galdós' novels dramatized by others. Part VI, pp. 398-410, « 

Narraciones » presents data on 23 short pieces of fiction and Memoranda . 

183


Part VII, pp. 412-440, provides a description and contents of the twelve volumes of the Obras 

inéditas edited by Alberto Ghiraldo. Hernández Suárez has not located the original publication of 

the vast majority of the works printed in this collection of Obras inéditas . In view of Shoemaker's 

remarks concerning Ghiraldo's editing of material from the Buenos Aires La prensa , it might be 

helpful to know the publication source of the original, so that this could be used rather than the 

Ghiraldo version. 

Part VIII, pp. 442-444 is « Memorias ». Part IX, pp. 446-460 is « Prólogos ». Part X, pp. 462-470 

is « Viajes ». Part XI, pp. 472-478 is « Discursos ». Part XII, pp. 481-482 is « Poesías ». 

Part XIII, pp. 485-515 is « Artículos » arranged by journal and material is chronologically listed 

under the name of the journal. 

Part XIV, « Cartas », pp. 517-532, provides bibliographical data on Galdós's published 

correspondence. These forty-two references are valuable because they reprint the text of slightly more 

than a dozen letters, which will allow scholars to have more ready access to them as some of them 

were published originally in newspapers and periodicals that are not readily available. Hernández 

Suárez has done all Galdosians a great favor in this section of his bibliography. 

It is to be noted that Hernández Suárez omits from this list William H. Shoemaker, « Una amistad 

literaria: La correspondencia epistolar entre Galdós y Narciso Oller », Boletín de la Real Academia 

de Buenas Letras , 30; 247-306 (1963-1964). One could with little effort expand this section. 

Part XV, p. 533, provides data on Galdós' translation of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers. Part XVI, 

pp. 539-541, is « Misceláneas », i. e., « Declaraciones » and « Entrevistas ». The index covers 

pp. 545-553. Unfortunately there is no title index or index of editors and translators. 

One is struck by the fact that many bibliographical sources such as the Index translationum , 

the printed catalogs of such libraries as the Library of Congress and the British Museum, Ludmilla 

Buketoff Turkevich, Spanish literature in Russian and in the Soviet Union 1734-1964 (Metuchen, 

The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1967), pp. 143-148, national bibliographies and the 1965 Harvard Ph. 

D. dissertation by Leo Jerome Hoar, «Pérez Galdós and his critics, Galdós and the Novelas 

contemporáneas as seen in the Spanish press of his day», apparently were not available to Hernández 

Suárez or as in the case of the Index transtationum not fully utilized. 

Our list of omissions is made not with the idea of being critical of Hernández Suárez, for it would 

be hard to produce a comprehensive bibliography of an author of Galdós' importance without the 

184


assistance of a rather large body of correspondents scattered throughout the leading countries of the 

world, but it is hoped that it will indicate some of the types of material which for one reason or another 

Hernández Suárez found it impossible to include. 

The use of Turkevich would have provided data on fourteen Russian and Lithuanian translations 

(see items 852-55, 858, 860-63, 866, 868-71) as well as a translation of a Pérez Galdós short story 

found in item No. 1759. In addition the use of this volume would have provided additional data on 

the Russian items included such as the name(s) of some of the translators and would have provided 

the Russian titles of certain of the translations for which Hernández Suárez provides only the title of 

the Spanish original. 

One-of the largest bibliographical gaps in the Hernández Suárez bibliography is that of Galdós' 

publications in newspapers and periodicals that he was unable to examine and list. Thus, on p. 506 

he writes: « Galdós publicó numerosos artículos en el diario La Prensa de Buenos Aires... A pesar 

de nuestros esfuerzos nos ha sido imposible conseguir la relación completa de los artículos de don 

Benito. Anotamos los siguientes, reproducidos en periódicos de Las Palmas ». He then lists two 

items. We now know thanks to William H. Shoemaker, Las cartas desconocidas de Galdós en «La 

Prensa» de Buenos Aires (Madrid, 1973) that this Argentine newspaper published 176 « cartas » 

or articles by Galdós. 

On p. 504, Hernández Suárez disposes of Galdós' contributions to the Revista del movimiento 

intelectual de Europa in seven lines. He notes that Leo J. Hoar's, Jr, edition of these articles (Madrid, 

Insula, 1968) reprints forty articles by Galdós that appeared in this periodical. He notes that « Muchos 

de ellos tratan los mismos temas o son fragmentos de los publicados en La Nación ». Individuals 

who wish data on contributions to this Revista ... will not find it in this bibliography. They will be 

forced to consult the Hoar compilation. 

Access to the Hoar dissertation would have allowed him to expand his data concerning selections 

from the Novelas contemporáneas published in Spanish newspapers during his lifetime. Hoar notes 

that «Many of these secondary publications or fragments were often published in the press to coincide 

with the publication of, and create interest in, the novel from which they were taken, or, in order to 

celebrate some event directly related to Galdós and his career» (leaf 419). 

The following list shows several dozen items that I do not find in the Hernández Suárez bibliography: 

La batalla de los Arapiles : 

185


«The battle of Salamanca: a tale of the Napoleonic war», tr.: R. Ogden, Lippincott's Monthly 

Magazine , 55:721-822 (1895). 

Cádiz : 

Kadisa , tr.: E. Plaudis, Riga, Latzgosizdat, 1961, 291 pp, 

La campaña del Maestrazgo : 

« La campaña del Maestrazgo », Cojo ilustrado (Caracas), 8:469-470 (1899). Chapters 14, 24. 

Los condenados : 

« Una escena de Los condenados, el último drama de Pérez Galdós », Revista Azul, 3: 39-40 

(1895). 

La Corte de Carlos IV : 

«The first night of a famous play, in the year 1807», tr.: Clara Bell in C. D. Warner, Library of the 

world's best literature , N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1896, 11:6163-6166; also in The Columbia University 

course in literature , N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1929, 8:203-204. 

Doña Perfecta : 

Doña Perfecta. Misericordia , nota preliminar de Teresa Silva Tena, México, Porrúa, 1968, 257 

pp. (Colección « Sepan Cuantos », 107). 

« El combate », William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, editors, Modern Spanish prose 

reading 1830-1930, N. Y., D. Appleton-Century, 1936, pp. 143-54. 

There are also printings of 1900 and 1902 of the Marsh text edition and a 1931 edition of the Lewis 

text edition of this novel. 

Doña Perfecta ... N. Y., P. F. Collier, n. d., 333 pp. ( Foreign Classical Romances , 14). 

Doña Perfecta , tr.: Egon Hartmann, Berlin, Aufbau-Verlag, 1963, 297 pp. 

Lady Perfecta , tr.: Mary Wharton, London, Unwin, 1894, vii, 267 pp. 

186


«Doña Perfecta's daughter», tr.: M. J. Serrano, C. D. Warner, Library of the world's best literature 

, N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1896, 11:6166-6169; also in The Columbia University course in literature , 

N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1929, 8:205-207. 

«The disagreement continued to increase and threatened to become discord», tr.: M. J. Serrano in 

Seymour Resnick and Jeanne Passmantier, An anthology of Spanish literature in English translation 

, N. Y., Frederick Ungar, 1958, 2:504-510 (apparently the same as item 42, page 49 that Hernández 

Suárez gives as being published in Great Britain). 

« Orbajosa », tr.: David Hannay in John Clark Ridpath, The Ridpath Library of Universal 

literature , N. Y., Globe, 1898 and N. Y., Fifth Avenue Library Society, 1899, 11:37-38. Pp. 38-39 

of this volume present three short excerpts from this novel by an anonymous translator. 

Electra : 

The anonymous translation listed by Hernández Suárez also appears in Philo M. Buck, ed: An 

anthology of world literature , N. Y., Macmillan, 1934, pp. 942-75. 

La familia de León Roch : 

Leon Roch: a romance , N. Y., W. S. Gottesberger, 1888, 2 vols. 

« Florencia... »: 

« Florencia: Impresiones de un viaje », El Imparcial , el 30 de 1897. Hernández Suárez notes 

its publication in Ghiraldo's Obras inéditas of Galdós works, but does not provide data on its first 

appearance. This is typical of the way he treats much of the material published in this set. 

Gerona : 

On p. 218, the translator should be listed as Susette M. Taylor and not M. Taylor Susette. 

Gloria : 

«Religion and Love» selection from Gloria translated by Clara Bell in The International library 

of famous literature compiled by N. H. Dole, et al., New York, Merrill & Baker, 1898, 20:9346-9354. 

Halma : 

« Páginas nuevas: Un capítulo de Halma », Revista Azul , 4:179-180 (1896). 

187

La incógnita : 


«In the Spanish Cortes», excerpts selected and translated by R. Ogden, Critic , 17:134-135 (Sept. 

13, 1890). 

« Junio ». 

«In praise of June», tr.: Jean Raymond Bidwell, Living Age , 225: 741-749 (1900). 

La de Bringas : 

«Above-stairs in a royal palace», tr.: William H. Bishop, C. D. Warner, Library of the world's best 

literature , N. Y., Peale and Hill, 1897, 11:6170-6173. 

La loca de la casa : 

La matta di casa , tr.: Antonio Gasparelli, Catania, Ed. Paoline, 1967, 194 pp. 

Marianela : 

Marianela , México, Editorial Orión, 1966, 189 pp. (Colección literaria Cervantes). 

Marianela , tr.: Mary Wharton, London, Digby and Long, 1893, 354 pp. 

Miau : 

Miau , the J. M. Cohen translation listed on page 117 as having only appeared in England has also 

been published as follows: Baltimore, Penguin, 1963, 282 pp.; Dufour Editions, Chester Springs, Pa., 

1965, 311 pp.; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967, 283 pp. (Penguin Classics). 

Excerpt tr.: Ellen Watson, Richard Garnett, L. Vallee and A. Brandl, The universal anthology , 

N. Y., Merrill and Baker, 1899, 31:87-101. 

Miau , tr.: Jean Marey, Paris, Les éditeurs français réunis, 1968, 413 pp. 

Misericordia : 

Misericordia , México, Editorial Orión, 1964, 258 pp. (Colección literaria Cervantes). 

« Tres mendigos de la iglesia », William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, Modern Spanish 

prose readings 1830-1930 , N. Y., D. Appleton Century, 1936, pp. 154-156. 

188


Compassion , tr.: Joan MacLean, N. Y., American R. D. M. Corp., 1966, 159 pp. (A Study Master 

publication T-42.) 

« La mula y el buey » 

In E. C. Hills and Louise Reinhardt, eds., Spanish short stories , Boston, D. C. Heath, 1910, pp. 

61-78. 

«The mule and the ox», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories , Boston, D. C. Heath, 

1910, pp. 61-78. 

«The mule and the ox», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories from French and Spanish 

writers, Chicago, McClurg, 1892, pp. 177-199. 

Prim : 

Excerpt in J. B. Trend, Civilization of Spain , London, Oxford University Press, 1944, pp. 165-167 

(Home University Library); 1967 ed., pp. 104-106 (Oxford Paperback University Series, Opus 19). 

« La princesa y el granuja »: 

«Princess and the ragamuffin», tr.: Antoinette Ogden in her Christmas stories from French and 

Spanish writers , Chicago, McClurg, 1892, pp. 59-89. 

« Theros »: 

« Theros », Revista Moderna , 4:35-40 (1901). 

Torquemada en la hoguera : 

«Torquemada in the flames», tr.: Willard Trask, Ángel Flores, ed., Great Spanish stories , N. Y., 

Modern Library, 1956, pp. 113-146. 

Trafalgar : 

Trafalgar , tr.: Clara Bell, London, Kegan Paul (also published by Trübner), both 1884, 255 pp. 

« Trafalgar », tr.: Clara Bell, Henry Major Tomlinson, Great sea stories of all nations , Garden 

City, N. Y., Doubleday Doran, 1930, 1937, pp. 816-830; also London, Harrap, 1930. 

Trafalgar , tr.: Vincenzo Josia, Roma, Gremese, 1967, 154 pp. 

189

Trafalgar , tr.: R. Pohlebkin, Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1961, 184 pp. 


Hernández Suárez lists only the 1921 ed. of Trafalgar edited by F. A. Kirkpatrick. According to 

the copyright page of the 1961 printing it was first published in 1905 and was reprinted in 1921, 

1930, 1951 and 1961. His 13-line note on this edition misspells Kirkpatrick, twice writes Cambrige 

for Cambridge and first appears as firts. 

« Vino »: 

« Vino », Revista Azul , 2:417-418 (1895). 

Zaragoza : 

« Una guerrilla », William E. Knickerbocker and Bernard Levy, eds., Modern Spanish prose 

readings 1830-1930 , N. Y., D. Appleton-Century, 1936, pp. 135-143. 

« El sitio de Zaragoza », David Rubio and Henri C. Néel, Spanish anthology , N. Y., Prentice- 

Hall, 1934, pp. 172-175. 

Saragosa , tr.: Anna Georgieva, Sofia, Nar. Mladez, 1968, 207 pp. 

I fail to find the following anthologies based on Galdós' works listed: Galdós : selección hecha 

por Margarita Mayo, Madrid, Instituto - escuela, 1922, 229 pp., El pensamiento vivo de [Galdós] 

presentado por [Arturo Capdevila], Buenos Aires, Editorial Losada [1944], 238 pp. (Biblioteca del 

pensamiento vivo, 28), Antología ; selección y prólogo por Amado de Miguel, Madrid, Doncel, 

1960, 144 pp. (Lo español y los españoles, 6). 

Individuals may explore in greater detail some facet of the publication history of Galdós' works, 

but it seems to me that Hernández Suárez has well covered Galdós' works published in Spain. As we 

learn more concerning Galdós' contributions to newspapers and periodicals additional data will be 

discovered with the passage of time. Yet it is good now to have this bibliography made available to 

students of Galdós and his works. In his « Nota preliminar » Hernández Suárez writes: « No han 

faltado las sorpresas, como son los primerizos trabajos de Galdós aparecidos en la revista juvenil La 

Antorcha, los artículos publicados por Galdós en el periódico El Omnibus, enviados desde Madrid y 

firmados con el pseudónimo 'H. de V.', hasta ahora desconocido; la fecha exacta de la primera edición 

de La Fontana de Oro... » (xii). It will be noted that Hernández Suárez has unearthed much that 

is new and for his time (« Comenzamos a trabajar en la Bibliografía de Galdós hace unos siete 

190


años y este primer tomo lleva dos en la imprenta », xi) and effort galdosianos throughout the world 

can only be most grateful. I, for one, look forward with interest to the second volume of this Galdós 

bibliography and know that as with this volume my knowledge will be greatly extended of both the 

man and his works. 

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY 

191

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