Galdós - Amazon Web Services

II
Anales galdosianos [Publicaciones periódicas]. Año XII, 1977
Various critics have expressed what they believe is the novel's commentary on social values, or
its presentation of Spain's historical situation. Gonzalo Sobejano 84 , for instance, sees the novel's «
formas literarias », i. e., monologues and soliloquies, as « formas de sensibilidad social » (p. 105),
i. e., « la soledad el secreto, la desconfianza » (p. 103) of bourgeoise society. Joaquín Casalduero
85 considers the novel to be a presentation of « las ideas históricas de Galdós sobre España » (p.
394): Viera is « la España tradicional en lucha con el Tiempo » that « se ve vencida y obligada
a desaparecer si no quiere terminar en la ignominia », while Orozco is « la nueva conciencia, el
hombre nuevo » (p. 396). Since Realidad is Galdós' «literary approximation to the complexity
of reality itself» (Penuel, «The Ambiguity of Orozco's Virtue...», p. 417), both of these views can,
within a Cervantine perspectivism, be admitted. The present analysis, however, directs us toward an
interpretation of this work which has not previously been expounded.
Infante, in one of his letters to Equis, makes this statement apropos of the question of Orozco's virtue:
No niego que pueda existir en nuestros tiempos la santidad; pero me resisto a admitirla en las altas
clases. Existirá en las Ordenes religiosas, o en los desiertos habitados por una sola persona; pero en
el mundo activo, en la sociedad, en el matrimonio, en medio de los chismes, de las envidias, de la
soberbia, del lujo... Vamos, Equisillo, que se te quite eso de la cabeza.
(p. 778)
This statement might be counted as just one more example of Infante's unreliability, because, as
we have already seen, it certainly does not represent Galdós' own religious thinking. It is tempting,
though, to see this statement as the proposition which Galdós systematically sets out to disprove
in Realidad and in succeeding novels, where, by playing with reality and illusion, he explores and
represents « la santidad » in different social classes and in varying degrees and shades. Galdós
does not completely and satisfactorily disprove this proposition until Misericordia . As Robert H.
84 « Forma literaria y sensibilidad social en La incógnita y Realidad », RHM, 30 (1964), 89-107.
85 « Ana Karénina y Realidad », BH , 39 (1937), 375-396, rpt. in his Estudios de literatura española ,
2nd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1967), pp. 179-201.
57