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Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
charitable order could conceivably open the way to a new role of social redemption for Christianity,
leading to a society based on charity. He «qualified» as a vehicle for this task since his wealth allowed
him to be materially independent of unworthy existing institutions, and his dedication to idealism
made him apparently spiritually independent of them also. Furthermore, although he had rejected
the bourgeois norm, he had also renounced violent revolution as a means of superseding that norm,
choosing instead the path of religious redemption in keeping with the ideal of charity. Finally, to
facilitate his conversion the setting of the novel was moved from Madrid to Toledo where the heavily
religious atmosphere should have provided good materia novelable for the study of the theme of
charity. 233
But this effort fails, in part because of weaknesses in Ángel Guerra as a character. Ángel is unable
to resolve his inner conflicts, for he never understands the relation between his desire for love and
affection on one hand and his need for independence on the other. Rather than dealing with these
drives (which at times conflict) and trying to understand how they motivate his behavior, he prefers
to avoid them by seeking to play a messianic role; he tries to resolve his inner conflicts through
different utopian collective projects. Previously, we saw in the case of Fortunata a close link between
the working out of internal and interpersonal (social) contradictions. In Ángel Guerra, rather than a
link. we find an effort to substitute one set of problems for another.
More important, however, is the fact that the spiritual is not successfully separated from the
historical; the oscillation between the two poles continues. This failure is particularly evident in the
critical importance of Angel's wealth for his religious plans; it is a necessary material base for the
fulfillment of his charitable intentions. Consequently the spiritual is unable to achieve an independent,
causal role, and the articulation of a spiritual alternative to the established order is impossible.
233 The result however, is the opposite. Rather than enhancing Ángel's saintly pretensions, the shift
to Toledo weakens them since, by reducing the conflict between interiority and exteriority, it further
decreases the amount of sacrifice he must endure. Thus everything seems to be disposed to his
following a religious vocation except his own character. Setting the bulk of the novel in Toledo is
not propitious to the study of evangelical charity in terms of the modern world, precisely because
Toledo is not representative of the modern world. With the temporal conflict: reduced, the relation
between the authorial subject and his content is to0 facile and, consequently, unconvincing. Nazarín
and Halma show a similar flaw. There Galdós strives to achieve a separation from modern society by
way of a physical escape, and both of these efforts fail.
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