Degeneration Theory in Naturalist Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós

Degeneration Theory in Naturalist Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Michael Wenley Stannard IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ofelia Ferrán, Advisor April 2011 © Michael Wenley Stannard 2011 i Acknowledgements I should like to record my sincere thanks to Ana Paula Fereira, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) for having given me the opportunity to realize a dream of many years. My graduate career in Minnesota has been a life-changing experience, and I would not have missed it for anything. Financial support from the department to study at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, to study Portuguese at the Universidade de Lisboa in Lisbon and to contribute to a conference at Universidad Complutense in Madrid helped significantly in rounding out my graduate student experience, as well as enabling me to collect essential material for this dissertation. I should like to thank my adviser, Ofelia Ferrán, for her help and guidance and to record my additional debt to Toni Dorca and Jaime Hanneken, who listened generously and counseled. To Toni Dorca I owe my introduction to Galdós‘s Naturalist novels which has formed the background of this dissertation. I have seen myself fundamentally as a galdosista at heart ever since. I should like to thank J.B. Shank for allowing me to prevail upon him to direct me in a course of reading that proved invaluable preparation for the study of biological and medical thought in eighteenth and nineteenth century France. I should also like to thank Nicholas Spadaccini for being prepared to serve on my committee and to chair the proceedings of the defense. Like many others, I have learned to revere him as a model of kindness and scholarly distinction. I should like to add grateful recognition of Chris Isett, Tom Misa and Dan Philippon, whose passion for teaching caused them to welcome a somewhat untypical graduate student to their classes, and whose enthusiasm and knowledge made a deep impression on me. Some of the debates in their classes left me with a feeling of having experienced graduate education at its best. I should like to record with gratitude the kindness shown to me by professors Rafael Huertas García-Alejo and Ricardo Campos Marín both of the Insitituto de Historia of ii the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid. Foremost historians of psychiatry, public health and degeneration theory in nineteenth century Spain, I have capitalized on their extensive contributions in these fields, as the following pages show. They offered generous interest, support and advice at the time this dissertation was being planned I should like to express my admiration and appreciation for the achievement of Wendy Lougee, chief librarian, and all at the Wilson, Wangensteen, Walter, Biomedical and McGrath Libraries who, from my point of view, appear to run a very complex organization with immense competence. My personal experience of the libraries has made me regard them as a model of what a good university library system should be. I should like to thank Rafael Tarrago, librarian of Iberian and Latino studies, for his assistance. I owe special thanks to the staff of the Illiad inter- library loan service who scoured two continents for unusual medical texts on my behalf and, particularly, to Alice Welch, who showed rare skill in finding copies of obscure texts when my searches were fruitless. I should like to express my gratitude to the University of Minnesota‘s Department of Academic and Professional Development, and to Noro Andriamanalina its director, for organizing such a spectacular program of workshops and support groups for graduate students to help see them through their theses and beyond. Though I attended only a fraction of the available sessions, I always found them useful and have very much appreciated the support and interest that they demonstrate. Finally, on a more prosaic but no less important plane, I should like to pay tribute to the University and to the staff running the Campus Connector service, whose efficiency and dedicated throughway make it the most enlightened urban transit system I have experienced iii Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my parents, Elsie (Elsa) Stannard and Wenley John Stannard, and to my wife, Becky, without whose love and support it would have been impossible. iv Table of Contents Introduction........................................................................... p. 1 Chapter 1: Degeneration Theory in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century France and the Rise of Naturalism..................p. 52 Chapter 2: Degeneration Theory and Naturalism in Spain.......p. 118 Chapter 3: La desheredada......................................................p. 183 Chapter 4: El doctor Centeno...................................................p. 231 Chapter 5: Lo prohibido..........................................................p. 258 Chapter 6: Fortunata y Jacinta.............................................. p. 288 Chapter 7: Conclusions........................................................... p. 331 Works Cited............................................................................p. 351 1 Introduction Every theory is a critical response to the interests of the theorist One can think of causal belief as an explanatory tool for understanding the physical world and it is programmed into our brains Lewis Wolpert The point of departure for this dissertation was my study in 2007 of Galdós‘s La desheredada. I became aware that Galdós had incorporated the theory of degeneration, one of the great explanatory myths 1 of the nineteenth century, into the narrative of the novel. The discourse of this theory permeated philosophy and the biological and social sciences of its time and encountered a striking resonance in 1 the great explanatory myths: I use this phrase advisedly to indicate not only, ―A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief‖ (Oxford English Dictionary [OED]), but also ―a story [...] that at one time functioned to explain ways of the world [...] at one time regarded as true by a specific cultural group, but is only discussed as myth if it is not held as true by those involved in the discussion‖ (―myth,‖ Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism). An alternative term used in relation to the theory of degeneration in this dissertation is discourse, which I employ in the Foucauldian sense of a, ―specific form of language‖ as in academic, medical, legal and military discourse that, ―governs the production of knowledge within it‖ and describes, ―the surface linkages between power, knowledge, institutions, intellectuals, the control of populations and the modern state‖ (Bové 54-55). Another summary is that of, ―systems of thoughts, composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak‖ (Lessa, 285). The conception of Foucault is rewarding as far as knowledge/power/control are concerned but less accurate in relation to its restriction, given the widespread diffusion of degeneration theory in the discourses of numerous disciplines (see below). If the discourse of degeneration was limited in any way, it was to the professional middle classes, predominantly those in the practice of medicine, rather than to any specific discourse community. A third equivalent term for degeneration that I employ is that of metanarrative in the sense of, ―a piece of narrative, especially a classic text or other archetypal story, which provides a schematic world view upon which an individual's experiences and perceptions may be ordered‖ (OED). The ancient roots of degeneration theory indicate that it was nothing if not an archetypal story. 2 contemporary discoveries in the realm of physics. I learned that, although of ancient origin, it was elaborated as a scientific metanarrative in the new circumstances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by a community of thinkers, most of whom were physicians. The combination of the growth of cities with the emergence of medicine and psychiatry of the masses produced an, ―interaction at a particular phase in European history, of the culture of the city, psychological medicine and Darwinian natural selection [that] authorized a specialization of the discourse of degeneration not known before‖ (Greenslade 30). This more far-reaching version of that discourse became prevalent throughout Western Europe and extended to the Americas. In the context of Spanish literature, further reading revealed that the theory was expressed in other novels of the 1880s by Galdós and that, while the majority of critical writing about Galdós‘s Naturalist novels relates to their literary and historical contexts, there has been much less attention paid to the medical and biological milieux in which he wrote. This is surprising given Galdós‘s profound admiration, not to say envy, of the medical profession, and his links with close friends who were prominent doctors. This dissertaton seeks to redress a lacuna in Galdós studies by tracing the development of degenerationist thought in the nineteenth century, its introduction into Spain via medicine, its later incorporation into Zola‘s Naturalism, and its subsequent immanence in a group of Galdós‘s novels written in the 1880s. 1) Development of the theory 2 of degeneration 3 2 theory: I use

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