Galdós - Amazon Web Services

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
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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