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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
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
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