Galdós - Amazon Web Services

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
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
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