Galdós - Amazon Web Services

Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
blame for his downfall must therefore be laid at her door 64 . «Secondly, and even more important,
her enslavement to false social values corrupts her whole moral being. If, in chapter XIII, she is able
to resist the crude advances of Joaquín Pez, because to sell herself in this fashion does not accord
with her ideal of aristocratic conduct, later, when her illusions are shattered (albeit temporarily) by her
interview with the marquesa, her one and only moral bulwark -pride in her «position»- collapses, albeit
temporarily, and her descent into immorality is the inevitable result. In Part II, her illusions partly
restored, the realisation of her dream world becomes conditional on the outcome of the seemingly
interminable lawsuit, with the result that the gulf between the dream and reality yawns ever wider and
her morality also comes to be governed by the same conditional mode of thought. Aristocratic pride,
thus weakened, proves an insufficient guardian against moral laxity at a time when her continuing
impracticality and inability to trim her financial sails against the wind of hard times forces her into
a series of progressively more degrading relationships, culminating, when her illusions are finally
dashed by the revelations of Muñoz y Nones, in the destruction of the last vestiges of her moral and
spiritual being. The way is therefore prepared for her acceptance of the overtures of the repulsive
Gaitica and, finally, her descent into common prostitution.
Isidora's decline is thus an object lesson in the perils of imaginación , with Galdós frequently at pains
to emphasise the connection between her social illusions, her financial irresponsibility and the moral
collapse which results from both. Nor does he scruple to employ the weapons of explicit didacticism
against his heroine, to the extent even of preaching a sermon (chapter 12) to her in his own voice (to
say nothing of the moraleja at the end). Yet for all his remorseless cataloguing of Isidora's defects,
it is clear that Galdós' attitude to her is neither unremittingly didactic nor totally unsympathetic. If
there are times when Isidora is snobbish, it is equally true that she possesses a genuine refinement
of sensibility which contrasts favourably with the cruder attitudes of those around her. It is hard, for
example, not to feel some sympathy for her, her snobbery notwithstanding, when she receives what
is surely an excessively cruel beating at the hands of her distinctly unrefined aunt, the redoubtable
Sanguijuelera , in chapter III. Her horror at the nature of Mariano's employment, which she regards,
rightly, as « trabajo para mulas », also contrasts favourably with the money-grubbing insensitivity
of Encarnación -an insensitivity which is part and parcel of the latter's « gran sentido para apreciar la
64 V. «The Medical Background...»
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