REALIST STRATEGIES: THE FUNCTION OF THE CHILD IN NOVELS BY GALDÓS by Michael Adam Carroll BA, College of the Holy Cross, 2007 MA, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2010 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish and Portuguese 2014 This thesis entitled: Realist Strategies: The Function of the Child in Novels by Galdós written by Michael Adam Carroll has been approved for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese ____________________________ Dr. Ricardo Landeira ____________________________ Dr. Javier Krauel Date______________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Carroll, Michael Adam (Ph.D., Spanish Literature, Department of Spanish and Portuguese) Realist Strategies: The Function of the Child in Novels by Galdós Thesis directed by Professor Ricardo Landeira This dissertation explores the function of the child in the Novelas españolas contemporáneas (1881-97) by Benito Pérez Galdós, Spain’s foremost nineteenth-century author. Children play a central role in the genre of realism, from Charles Dickens, to Emily Brönte, and Henry James. Galdós follows in this tradition, but sets his work apart by placing the child at the margin of the stories he tells, rather than as protagonists. While critics have tended to view these marginalized children as either verifications of social issues contemporary to the novelist or as symbols that underscore themes, this dissertation analyzes children by considering how they socially affect adults and how characters perceive them. In this respect, this project takes a narratological approach, and argues that narrators and adult characters in the Novelas produce the child figure, a living vessel that contains the social identities and structural positions of those that observe children. The dissertation examines how the absence, presence, and death of children impact Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-7), the Torquemada tetralogy (1889-95), La de Bringas (1884), and Miau (1888). The dissertation contributes to studies on Galdós by demonstrating that the adult-child relation organizes plot and impacts the characterization of characters, which fills the gap in the literature between humanist and structuralist readings. Galdós capitalizes on the child figure’s aesthetic distance, and stresses the significance of the child—especially the male heir—as a part of the survival of the bourgeois family in Madrid. These novels renovate the figure of the child and situate Galdós alongside other major European novelists. iv CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 I. Purpose of the Study ......................................................................................................... 1 II. Scope of the Study........................................................................................................... 4 III. Child’s Play: A History of the Child and its Image ....................................................... 8 IV. Realism, Representation, and the Figure of the Child in Galdós ................................. 13 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................. 22 ABSENT CHILDREN IN GALDÓS’ FORTUNATA Y JACINTA........................................... 22 I. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 22 II. Opening and Closing Frames: Jacinta, the Child Figure, and the Women of Fortunata y Jacinta ................................................................................................................................... 24 III. Narrating the Child: Jacinta and the Affect ................................................................. 30 IV. Three Deaths and a Resurrection: For Whom the Child Figure Tolls ......................... 42 CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................. 59 MOURNING THE CHILD: ..................................................................................................... 59 CHILDREN AND THEIR TYRANNY IN TORRQUEMADA ................................................ 59 I. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 59 II. Inversions in Opening Frames: Torquemada and the Child Figure .............................. 61 III. Picturing the Child: Valentín’s Portrait and Torquemada’s Retreat ............................ 69 IV. Haunting the Family: The Child and the Grotesque .................................................... 81 CHAPTER 4 ................................................................................................................................. 99 LIVING WITH CHILDREN: ................................................................................................... 99 REALIST STRATEGIES IN LA DE BRINGAS AND MIAU .................................................. 99 I. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 99 II. Connecting the Narrator to the Reader: The Child Figure as Mise en Abyme ............ 101 III. Setting the Scene: the Child as Framing Strategy ...................................................... 110 IV. A Brief Case Against Luisito Cadalso: He is a Real Boy .......................................... 121 CHAPTER 5 ............................................................................................................................... 137 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 137 I. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 137 II. Chapter 1: Fortunata y Jacinta ................................................................................... 140 III. Chapter 2: The Torquemada Tetralogy ...................................................................... 146 IV. Chapter 3: La de Bringas and Miau ........................................................................... 153 V. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 158 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 160 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I. Purpose of the Study In the novel of the European nineteenth century, the survival of a family hinges on the child, and especially the male heir. Children perpetuate social class, inheritance, and legitimize the marriage of the bourgeoisie, yet the child in realism appears portrayed as physically unrealistic. Critics have suggested these children of fiction as angelic and demonic, representations of good and evil, truth and deceit. Others have disputed these symbolic children as anything but plausible representations of human characters. Charles Dickens’ Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) remains one of the most divisive. A. C. Swinburne, writing over seven decades after the novel’s publication, argues that Nell represents an unrealistic childhood and that the girl might as well be a two-headed baby (182-3). On the other hand, some reportedly cried when they read of her death, including Lord Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review (Tomalin 113-4). Many have agreed that children in the nineteenth-century novel function as figures, detached from the humanity they critique.1 More recently, though, scholars have suggested that the child becomes a figure when interacting with and observed by others: the child figure embodies the historical and personal imagination of the novelists that create it and the characters that gaze at it.2 Scholars of the Spanish realist novel have echoed the phenomenon of conflicting yet suggestive images of children, especially in Benito Pérez Galdós’ Novelas españolas contemporáneas (1881-97), his influential series of interlocking social novels.3 Upon the publishing of La desheredada (1881), for example, noted critic Leopoldo Alas “Clarín” reacted to the depiction of street orphans: “angelitos cínicos… presentados con elocuente realidad… 2 sugieren reflexiones tristísimas” (La literatura 136). These foundlings function as characters and symbols; they appear realistic and aesthetically distant. In current studies, scholars have attempted to understand the elusive nature of children in Galdós by categorizing them as previous critics have. Gabriel Cabrejas uses the labels of the divine (predictive) and bourgeois (social) for children in the Novelas.4 Jeffrey S. Zamostny situates the visions of Isabelita in La de Bringas (1884) as premonitory of her parents’ failing marriage and the nation’s crumbling government. Lisa Surwillo’s cultural studies work on Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-7) proposes that the foundlings in the story represent