Galdós - Amazon Web Services

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
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.
121