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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
Ángel's political disillusionment and the subsequent deaths of his mother and daughter throw him
into crisis. Having lost his political cause and the objects of his filial rebellion and paternal love, he
finds himself completely disoriented: « Con el tiempo la soledad aumentaba, pues cada día hallábase
Guerra más agobiado y triste, y con la soledad, iba tomando cuerpo la idea de que su vida no tenía ya
ningún objeto » (1278). Two new preoccupations then fill this void, his recently inherited fortune
and Leré. Ángel perceives the change effected by his affluence (« yo he sido un poco socialista;
pero, francamente, eso me pasaba cuando no tenía dinero. El reparto de la riqueza me parecía muy
bien cuando a mí nada podía sobrarme » [1285]), but, particularly because he refuses to reflect
on it, the source of Leré's influence remains mysterious. Nevertheless we can find certain apparent
psychological causes for it, for she seems to become a substitute for both his mother and his daughter:
she is strong-willed like Doña Sales, and treats Ángel rather like a child, and he continually associates
her with Ción. 226
Aside from these possible motivations, Ángel is attracted to Leré because he sees in her an idealism
similar to his own in its fervor if not in its content, and he recognizes the attraction that her strong
religious convictions exercise: « tu santidad [la de Leré] me cautiva, y si no fueras como eres, si
no tuvieras esa fe a toda prueba y esa vocación irresistible, se me figura que me gustarías menos.
He pensado mucho en esto, pero mucho. 'Si me quisiera ella a mí como yo a ella... se vulgarizaría, y
entonces, perdido el encanto y deshecha la ilusión, no valdría para mí lo que vale y no me cautivaría
tanto' » (1293). Although Leré does not stand in revolutionary opposition to the status quo, her
position is clearly distinct from the banality that Guerra feels is characteristic of the bourgeois norm.
These characteristics make Leré an appropriate mediator of his new situation since by emulating her,
he must only renounce his revolutionary pretensions (which were becoming uncomfortable anyway)
and not his dedication to ideals or his desire to remain independent of the bourgeois norm. As was the
case with his political activity, Ángel's religious fervor is psychologically motivated; his « exaltación
humanitaria » (1269) has turned into an « exaltación religiosa ».
mock the vain heroics of Guerra, at the same time that he details his suffering» (Monroe Z. Hafter, «
Bálsamo contra Bálsamo » in Ángel Guerra , AG , 4 [1969], 39-48, p. 39).
226 Sherman Eoff ( The Novels of Pérez Galdós [St Louis: Washington University, 1954]) notes that
Ángel «finds in the strong-willed and orderly Leré what he did not find in Dulcenombre: a substitute
for his mother; and he transfers to her both his ingrained submissiveness and his longing for sympathy
and understanding» (p. 76).
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