Galdós - Amazon Web Services

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
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
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