A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS OF JUAN
Transcripción
A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS OF JUAN
A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS OF JUAN VALERA by TERESIA ELIZABETH LANGFORD TAYLOR, B.S., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN SPANISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Aooroved August, 1992 AG LB Copyright 1992, Teresia Elizabeth Langford Taylor ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the long list of students who claim my director. Dr. Janet Perez, (an acknowledged expert in nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish literature, and an editor's editor) as a mentor, I am proud to add my name. Her colleagues respect her scholarship, but only her students know about her demand for excellence which does not demean because of the caring, kind way it is exacted. Committee members, Drs. Andrews, Aycock, Bravo, McVay and Oberhelman offered valuable suggestions for improving the document, and they are appreciated. Felicia Nelson, a good friend and student at Hardin-Simmons University, provided the printing "equipment"; and Sue Wiggins, who has seen me through a bachelor's and a master's degree, Sarah Payne and Fran Strange proofed endless pages of copy. My colleagues at Hardin-Simmons and other HSU personnel, together with dozens of other friends and family members, supported the research in significant ways. Without ques- tion, I am also indebted to my husband, Julius Taylor, for his personal sacrifices and his emotional strength. 11 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. LOVE BETWEEN A WOMAN AND A PRIEST, CONTRASTING FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN PEPITA JIMflNEZ AND DONA LUZ 16 III. FEMALE STEREOTYPING IN EL COMENDADOR MENDOZA AND JUANITA LA LARGA 61 IV. V. VI. WOMEN TREATED AS COMMODITY IN PASARSE DE LISTO AND GENIO Y FIGURA 98 MARGINALIZED WOMEN WHO TRIUMPH IN LAS ILUSIONES DEL DOCTOR FAUSTINO AND MORSAMOR 134 CONCLUSIONS 182 WORKS CITED 192 111 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Don Juan Valera (1824-1905) produced eight full-length novels over a period of twenty-five years, beginning with his most popular novel, Pepita Jimenez in 1874 and ending with Morsamor, published in 1899, just a few years before his death. During most of this time Valera fluctuated between financial "embarrassment" and economic comfort moving from one diplomatic post to another, often spending for appearance's sake much more money than he could comfortably afford.^ Although he chose the diplomatic corps as his vocation, this nineteenth-century Spanish critic, novelist, poet, and playwright also left an extensive epistolary corpus which sheds light on his personality, financial status, political affinities, and literary theory.^ ^For a comprehensive study of Valera's life see Carmen Bravo-Villasante, Biografia de Don Juan Valera (Barcelona; Editorial Aedos, 1959); Carmen BravoVillasante, Vida de Juan Valera (Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hisp^nica, 1989); Bernardo Ruiz Cano, Don Juan Valera en su vida v en su obra (Jaen: Imprenta Cruz, 1955) ; Pedro Romero Mendoza, Don Juan Valera. Estudio bioqr^fico-critico (Madrid: Ediciones Espanolas, 1940). ^Insight into Valera's constant money struggle may be gained by reviewing his correspondence, especially Cyrus DeCoster and Matilde Galera Sanchez, Juan Valera. Cartas a su muier (Cordoba: Imprenta Provincial de Cordoba, 1989). Unfortunately, contemporary literary historians may cite Valera as the critic who first noted the importance of Ruben Dario, or as a "contemporary" of Perez Galdos, or as a friend of Menendez Pelayo, yet treat most of his fictional work in a cursory fashion. Since Juan Valera is perhaps most studied today as a novelist, it is somewhat ironic that Valera wrote novels primarily as a source of income when he was a "cesante" during Spain's period of Restoration and to obtain supplementary income after he had retired from diplomatic service (Thurston-Griswold 89). The double irony is that income from the sale of Valera's novels, even considering that they were often widely circulated "novelas de entrega," was very scant. Luis Monguio provides interesting insight into the plight of some of Spain's nineteenth-century novelists, among them Valera. He quotes Valera as saying that the money earned from the sale of Pepita Jimenez was not even enough to buy his wife a ball gown (111). From Valera's contemporaries to the most recent relevant scholarship, critics have attempted to analyze Valera's eclectic style by appealing to models of classicism, realism, naturalism or other critical modes as measures against which to position his work. points out that Valera loves everything and Marias concentrates on nothing (584), while according to Havelock Ellis, Valera had a "practical moral attitude towards his fellow-men, which he himself called his Panphilism" (268) . This attitude is illustrated by the count entitled "Parsondes" in Cuentos. Di^logos v Fantasias. Valera's Parsondes affirms: Needless troubles kill the fool, and no one is more a fool than he who worries himself to censure the vices of others merely because he has had no opportunity of falling into them himself, or else has failed to fall into them from ignorance, bad taste, or rusticity. (264)3 A frequently repeated critical evaluation of Valera's eclectic nature comes from his contemporary Leopoldo Alas: "Podr^n no ser dramas, pero son joyas literarias. £,C6mo las llamaremos? Ustedes diran. entretanto, las llamo 'cosas de Valera'" (305). Yo, In one of the first comprehensive studies of Valera's novels, Montesinos prefaces his analysis of the major novels with a statement subsequently echoed by all serious scholarship, Valera ocupa una posicion unica en la literatura espanola del siglo XIX, escriba [sic] novelas, cuentos o cualquier otra cosa. Todo cuanto hace es valeresco y queda forzosamente fuera de las clasificaciones usuales. No es posible sumar a Valera a los otros grupos de noveladores, rom^nticos o realistas. (1) 3 This is Havelock Ellis's translation of Parsondes's speech. Many critical studies of Valera's work are genre studies which usually begin with a biography, a traditional approach defended by Valera's contemporaries as well as later critics. Cesar Barja, writing a chapter of literary history in 1964, reminds the reader that there is "una relacion esencial . . . entre la personalidad del hombre y la personalidad del escritor" (234). DeCoster argues that the key to understanding Valera's work and why it defies classification lies in discovering where "Valera the man differs from his contemporaries" (DeCoster 1974, 37). Gonzalez Lopez makes no apologies for his reliance on biographical information as a source for understanding the psychology of "Valera's women," affirming that Vamos haciendo un estudio literario, no critica, de las mujeres de Valera y fuerza es asomarnos a su educacion filosofica, a sus modalidades, a su apetencia de saber, a su erudicion y agudeza, a las caracteristicas de su arte, a sus dudas y creencias; y porque hablamos de mujeres, a sus amores tambien. (54) Finally, Manuel Bermejo Marcos reminds us that Valera, himself, never tried to hide the fact that "toda su obra rezumaba autobiografia" (75) . Biographical information is important when studying Valera, but equally important to most critical studies is his aesthetic credo. Barja claims that Valera is "uno de los poquisimos que, . . . tiene verdadera estetica, verdadero arte literario" (238). Writing in 1968, Bermejo Marcos reflects that lo que el artista buscaba no era la novela, el poema, o el drama en si mismos, sino la belleza que podia obtenerse por medio de la palabra, bajo cualquiera de sus formas poeticas. (75) Valera's belief in "Art for art's sake," as evidenced in his own writing, is the subject of ThurstonGriswold 's 1990 study. His aim is to give evidence that Valera, indeed, adhered to his own philosophy of art. During the nineteenth century Leopoldo Alas (Clarin) referred to his fellow countryman as "un autor olimpico" and "un aristocrata del talento" (313) and even as "la esfinge literaria del memento" (240). Today is it possible to view Valera as more than a man out of time and place in his own century. Modern literary theory offers an opportunity to reread Clarin's "esfinge literaria" without the necessity of locating him aesthetically or philosophically. Femi- nist literary theory with its "inextricable link between theory and practice" (Humm x) provides a new model for analyzing discourse in order to unearth, rediscover, and reevaluate (Selden Practicing Theorv. 138) the patriarchal ideology underlying a text. A rereading of Juan Valera's novels in light of what Lacan calls the "patriarchal and phallocentric" culture (199) is not only justified, but scholarship demands that the major fictional contribution to the canon by this important nineteenth-century Spanish author be reexamined. Feminist literary theory has its roots in the feminist movement. There are many nineteenth-century milestones: Susan B. Anthony was born in 182 0; Margaret Fuller published Woman In the Nineteenth Century, in 1845; and the Women's Rights Convention held at Seneca Falls in 1848 marked the beginning of what was to become the international women's movement (Miller 213). In 1957 Virginia Wolfe shocked the literary community by claiming that the manner in which men and women produce literature is different. Today the list of femi- nist critics and critical methods is monumental, and the discipline has been split between those who study representation of women characters in the literary canon and those who practice "gynocritics," studying women writers and how they have often been omitted from the canon.'^ Patrocinio Schweickart suggests that feminist critics should apply what they've learned from ^ See Janet Perez, Contemporary Women Writers of Spain (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988) for a general overview of the often neglected or patronized contemporary female peninsular writers. gynocritics about the way women write to general reading by being acutely aware of the way they read male texts. Annette Kolodny, one of the most sophisticated feminist theorists, contends that the goal of the feminist critic is simply to offer new and sometimes different interpretations, claiming as her right the prerogative of chosing "features of a text she takes as relevant because she is asking new and different questions of it" (157). Adrienne Rich who coined the term "re-vision" suggests that feminist criticism is a rewriting of patriarchal culture because it challenges the existing canon to be examined again in an historical, cultural and psychic way. Such analysis becomes an "act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical approach" (35). And, although Elaine Showalter argues that all feminist criticism is somewhat revisionist because it questions the adequacy of accepted conceptual structures (182), Sandra Gilbert reminds us that all feminist criticism aims to do is to "decode and demystify all the disguised questions and answers that have always shadowed the connections between textuality and sexuality, genre and gender, psychosexual identity and cultural authority" (6). Jonathan Culler, though not a feminist critic, nonetheless indirectly 8 suggests the relevance of feminist readings of the literary canon when he asks, "If the meaning of a work is the experience of the reader, what difference does it make if the reader is a woman?" (42) . As this sampling of feminist theory suggests, the possible critical approaches are as varied and multifaceted as were the early activities of the women's liberation movement. No one voice speaks to all the possiblities for literary analysis. Contemporary literary theory offers new means and methods whereby the eight completed novels of Juan Valera may be read. Although social issues often underlie literary theory, it is not my purpose to view Valera's female characters as examples of "mistreated" women, nor to label Don Juan Valera as a "closet" nineteenth-century misogynist. Rather, the analysis of the fictional women, and by extension, the novels in question will utilize a descriptive point of departure in order to focus on what Charnon-Deutsch calls the "narrative, mythological, archetypal, and psychological implications" (17) of Valera's representation of women. Because feminist literary study would not be complete without a discussion of feminine space and because Spanish encierro is so significant, space will provide another focus. Lacan's phallocentrism relegates women to the margin, dismissing them as unstable, unpredictable and fickle.^ This study will examine how Juan Valera's female characters are objectified within a phallocentric society so that they are always signified—never signifier, always marginalized. Femi- nine discourse and evidence of the silencing of the female voice will be analyzed, demonstrating the truth of Toril Moi's belief that "there is no pure feminist or female space from which to speak" because "all ideas including feminist ones, are 'contaminated' by patriarchal ideology" (118). Helene Cixous offers yet another avenue for exploring the representation of female in Juan Valera's novels: every theory of culture, every theory of society, the whole conglomeration of symbolic systems—everything, that is, that's spoken, everything that's organized as discourse, art, religion, the family, language, everything that seizes us, everything that acts on us—it is all ordered around hierarchical oppositions that come back to the man/woman opposition, an opposition that can only be sustained by means of a difference posed by cultural discourse as "natural," the difference between activity and passivity. (44) To dismiss a writer's creative work as autobiographical is a dangerous thing, but failure to point out significant biographical correlations could ^ See Raman Selden, "Feminist Criticism" in A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory 2nd ed. (Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1989), 134-154. 10 represent a potentially serious omission when studying a male author and the representation of women in his discourse. Therefore, this aspect will not be ignored Finally, Charnon-Deutsch reminds us that "nineteenthcentury readers responded enthusiastically and naively to the invitation to accept the novel as a complete world" (12). Hence, some attention will also be focused on the relationship between nineteenth-century social mores and their representation in the novels studied. Critical examination of Valera's women characters is not new. Valera's contemporaries as well as later critics found much to analyze in his treatment of the female. So many of his novels are titled or subtitled with women's names and so much attention is drawn to the women characters in his novels that it has become almost commonplace to use the expression, "las mujeres de Valera" (Carilla 187). Early in the twentieth century, four studies analyzed "Valera's women."^ All singled out the female characters noting their ^Francisco Arias Abad, Las mujeres de don Juan Valera (Andujar, 1935); Alice K. Abbott, "A Study of the Women Characters in the Novels of Juan Valera" (Master's Thesis. U of Illinois, 1927); Alfa C. Christiansen, "The Women Characters of Juan Valera" (Master's Thesis. University of Arizona, 1937); Luis Gonzalez Lopez, Las mujeres de don Juan Valera (Madrid Aguilar, 1933). 11 motivation, and their fundamental characteristics or qualities making them "female," in what amounts to a catalog of nineteenth-century female types. Gonzalez Lopez even formulated his study of Valera's women characters in an epistolary fashion, addressing his observations to a female reader. Much has been written about whether Valera•s characters, especially the female ones, are realistic representatives of an age or prescriptive according to Valera's idea of aesthetics. Manuel Bermejo Marcos defends the notion of Valera's prescriptive representation of women, arguing that Valera, indeed, does not attempt to teach women how to behave, but is rather showing how the ideal woman draws closer and closer to "belleza ideal y superior, por la que todo artista debe luchar al ponerse a realizar toda obra de arte" (64). Praising Valera's ability to "escudrinar los sentimientos de sus personajes," Manuel Azana reminds us that Valera knew the value of the internal or psychological experience. According to Azana, this understanding produced texts in which Valera probed the psyche of his characters: "Alumbrar lo que ocurre de grande y de bello en el fondo del alma de personas vulgares por la apariencia o la condicion, fue el proposito trascendente de Valera novelista" (213). 12 Azana has also been credited as one of the first to call this "internal" character study a psychological approach to character development. Luisa Elena Delgado argues that Valera was not a realist, relegating the author to the position of an "ironic" narrator. She cites his psychological treatment of characters as proof of his "detenimiento en la reproduccion fiel de la realidad exterior" (460). On the other hand, Roxanne Marcus provides quite a convincing argument for her thesis that Valera's realism is evident in his "recreation of nineteenth-century life and society," even if somewhat "out of the mainstream" of the defined limits of realism (463). She argues that Valera's realism is more of a realistic foundation or background which she cites as the psychological analysis of his protagonists, all of whom, though most representative of universal and eternal passions that stir the human heart, are identified, either directly or indirectly, with realities peculiar to nineteenth-century life (463.) In "Arte nuevo de escribir novelas," Valera himself said that the novel is an "espejo de la vida y representacion artistica de la sociedad toda" (Obras completas 2: 671). There is thus widespread agreement that Valera did not mimic reality in the fashion of Galdos, and the comparable lack of verisimilitude of 13 his characters makes it impossible to dar con una Pepita Jimenez, una dona Luz o un doctor Faustino de una sola pieza y, como quien dice, a la vuelta de la primera esquina, es, en cambio, facilisimo dar con infinitas mujeres y hombres que nos recuerdan con esencial exactitud a esos personajes. (Barja 245) Given the numerous variations on the love theme present in all eight novels, examination of Valera's treatment of women might most logically be coupled with a study of love and courtship. The extent to which Valera's novels may be classed as "courtship" novels (as defined by Beth Miller and Katherine Sobba Green) will be discussed in the chapters on Pepita Jimenez. Dona Luz. and Juanita la Larga. Carole Rupe's 1986 study of love in Valera's fiction illustrates three types of love: physical versus platonic love; religious zeal versus physical love; and love between an old man and a younger woman. Her observations will be examined and applied where relevant in later chapters. Using extant critical studies on the representation of women in Valera's novels as building blocks, this dissertation will re-examine Valera's representation of female characters in his eight full-length completed novels in light of recent theory. They will be analyzed as types, mythological archetypes, as marginalized in space and discourse, and as 14 representatives of an age. Binary opposites will be identified, and I will examine how they result in a hierarchal order, indicating the difference Valera employs in his treatment of characters, and calling attention to his previously unobserved lack of insight into the female psyche. Although Valera's writing reveals that his description of female characters varies little throughout his writing career, he employed another tactic unnoted by any critics to date. Female representation is so similar in certain novels that there results an almost "natural" pairing of the works. Therefore, rather than adhering to a strictly chronological presentation like that of so many other studies, I organized my analysis of the novels into the following four units: (1) Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz which contrast the female representation in two apparently similar novels; (2) El Comendador Mendoza and Juanita la Larga which reveal Valera's penchant for female stereotyping; (3) Pasarse de listo and Genio v figura which feature women treated as commodity; (4) Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor which point out the triumph of female characters despite their marginalized state. Research and close reading of these novels raise previously unaddressed issues concerning Valera's representation 15 of women. For, regardless of the fact that he has been credited as being skilled in the presentation of women and as privileging women characters, the investigation which follows implies otherwise. Women in all eight novels, (even those in dominant roles) are, in fact, marginalized, definitely stereotyped, and in many cases mythologized. Women who exhibit characteristics, unbecoming of the culturally accepted norm of the day, are punished or otherwise degraded. The power of the archetype frequently dominates the narratives. CHAPTER II LOVE BETWEEN A WOMAN AND A PRIEST, CONTRASTING FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN PEPITA JIMfeNEZ AND DONA LUZ Pepita Jimenez (1874) and Dona Luz (1879) mark the beginning and end of what is considered Juan Valera's first novelistic period."^ Although Dona Luz is not as widely read today as Pepita Jimenez. Ellis acknowledges its similarity to Pepita Jimenez recognizing that "it is developed with the same delicacy and skill,—indeed, perhaps in an even greater degree,—and takes high rank among Valera's books" (259); Bravo-Villasante calls dona Luz a Pepita Jimenez "al reves" (Biografia 1959, 218). Clearly, the narratives are marked by a com- monality in more than one aspect, and the likeness between the two female protagonists, Pepita and Luz, is so extraordinary that it is propitious to study them in tandem. This chapter will first explore the simi- larities and differences between the two novels in setting, theme, basic conflict, and character motivation, as well as general ways in which Pepita and Luz are "^ See Jeremy T. Medina's Chapter V in Spanish Realism: The Theory and Practice of a Concept in the Nineteenth Century (Potomac, MD: Studia Humanitatis, 1979) . 16 17 alike, and then provide an amplified study of each novel which focuses on the representation of these two female characters. Both stories take place in an almost idyllic Andalusian countryside. Roxanne Marcus makes a good case for her thesis that Valera's Andalucia is an idealized picture of life as it should be rather than as it is because of the novelist's "omission of ugly, repugnant, sordid, violent, and depressing details of external and historical reality" (460) . The following description of the Andalusian region seen during the evening is just one of many examples of the idealized setting in Pepita Jimenez. While trying to avoid thinking about Pepita, don Luis, the male protagonist, recognizes his admiracion por la belleza de las cosas creadas; por el cielo, tan lleno de estrellas en estas serenas noches de primavera y en esta region de Andalucia; por estos alegres campos, cubiertos ahora de verdes sembrados, y por estas frescas y amenas huertas, con tan lindas y sombrias alamedas, con tantos mansos arroyos. . . . (Obras completas 1: 126)® We are told that Villafria, the setting for Dona Luz, is not Villabermeja, but is so amenable that Si cualquier hombre de mundo, conocedor de la vida de Madrid o de otra gran capital de 8 This, and all future quotes from the novels, are from the 1968 Aguilar edition of Juan Valera's Obras completas. complete bibliography for which is given in Works Cited. Future references will be cited OC. 18 Europa, y conocedor del modo de vivir de nuestros lugares de Andalucia, hubiera entrado alii, se hubiera sorprendido agradablemente y hubiera dudado de lo que veian sus ojos. (OC 1: 46) The most significant similarity between the two works, however, is not the setting, but the love theme. DeCoster points out that the situation of dona Luz who finds herself attracted to an inaccessible priest is analogous to that of Pepita Jimenez, but with an important distinction: Luis, only recently graduated from the seminary, had not taken his final vows. So when he realized that his calling was false, he was free to marry Pepita. Enrique, on the other hand, had been a dedicated priest for years. His vows were indissoluble; the novel could only end tragically. (Valera 1974, 126) In both novels there exist internal as well as external conflicts created as a result of human need for physical love. The difference between platonic love among men and women and shared spiritual love in the mystical tradition is highlighted in both stories. The central conflict in both novels turns on the love theme. As will be demonstrated in the text-specific discussions which follow, the trajectory of the love theme in Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz is quite different. Barja argues against the possibility of any conflict between flesh and spirit in Pepita Jimenez^ claiming that there is simply psychological probing: 19 Propiamente, en Pepita Jimenez no hay tal conflicto entre el amor divino y el amor humane. Ni siquiera hay conflicto de ninguna clase. Hay simplemente la revelacion psicologica de un personaje, un joven, don Luis de Vargas, que ha equivocado la vocacion. 0 dicho de otra manera, de un joven en quien el amor divino es petulancia y vanidad. Lo que el autor nos presenta es solo el desvanecimiento de una ilusion ante una realidad. (247) Internal conflict motivates the main characters in both novels. It is interesting to note that Gonzalez Lopez, who analyzed Valera's female characters in 1933, limits most of his discussion of character motivation in Pepita Jimenez to lists of reasons for Pepita's doing what young, pretty women are "supposed to do," namely (according to this study) to fall in love, get married, and dedicate the rest of their lives to pleasing their husbands. Gonzalez Lopez even explains Pepita's "vida retirada," her first marriage to an older man, and her intended marriage to don Pedro as "normal and natural," arguing that she wants to be happy like other mortals (116) . Death of a relative by marriage or consanguinity is also motivation in the plots of both novels. Although Pepita Jimenez is widowed and dona Luz is orphaned, in both circumstances, Valera places his female protagonists in a position of "needing" another man. Gonzalez Lopez argues that Valera's feminine rep- resentation is normative vis-a-vis nineteenth-century 20 Spanish custom, affirming that "en Cabra, ayer como hoy, en cada reja hay un amor y para cada moza 'ventanera' hay un don Luis" (93). The patriarchal myth that man is woman's master and sole source of happiness lies at the root of this portrayal. Despite the fact that the widowed Pepita Jimenez has a fine home, gardens, lands and servants, she is planning to marry again; dona Luz spends much time explaining why she must seclude herself because she suffers from a feeling of inferiority. She chooses to remain dependent upon Acisclo (known first as Acisclillo, then as tio Acisclo) rather than to exert her independence from him. Acisclo, on the other hand, was such a fine administrator of her wealth that he managed to acquire most of it and soon became known as don Acisclo. In Pepita Jimenez, the heroine's mission in the novel is marginalized because (despite the phallocentric view that husbands are women's sole source of bliss), the important thing is not Pepita's happiness. That is secondary, for Medina points out that the depth of Valera's psychological realism is revealed mostly through his characterization of Luis. (He, and not Pepita, is, in fact, the true protagonist of the novel; his Cervantine reactions and adjustments to reality constitute the entire narrative "action"). (130) This is major evidence of the marginalization of Pepita. Citing from Dona Luz, Whiston reminds us that 21 Luz's illegitimacy is another important source of character motivation (55): La misma impureza de su origen, el vicio de su nacimiento, la humilde condicion de su desconocida madre, obraban por reaccion en su ^nimo y casi convertian su orgullo en fiereza. Para limpiar aquella mancha original, queria ser dona Luz mucho m^s limpia y mucho mas pura. (OC 1: 38) Not only are Pepita and Luz much alike, they also have much in common with other female protagonists in Valera's fiction. Romero Mendoza argues that, during the course of his novelistic career, Valera's descriptions of women changes and evolves only slightly from his presentation of Pepita in his first novel of 1874 to his portrait of Juanita, the heroine of Juanita la Larga of 1895: Don Juan, que ha pintado siempre el mismo tipo de mujer, en cuanto se refiere a ciertas prendas personales—la belleza y la discrecion estan vinculadas en sus heroinas como patrimonio inalienable—otorga a Juanita un ingenio en nada inferior al de sus companeras, si bien mas natural y por eso mas humane. Pepita Jimenez y dona Luz, son mujeres de cultivada inteligencia, de sutil y refinado espiritu, cosa poco comun en las lugarenas, aunque don Juan intente probar lo contrario valiendose de pueriles argumentos. (204) One of the most obvious points of coincidence between the two female protagonists is the description of their physical appearance. Pepita, saying. In Pepita Jimenez, Luis describes 22 No afecta vestir traje aldeano, ni se viste tampoco segun la moda de las ciudades; mezcla ambos estilos en su vestir, de modo que parece una senora, pero una senora de lugar. Disimula mucho, a lo que presume, el cuidado que tiene de su persona; no se advierten en ella ni cosmeticos ni afeites. (OC 1: 124) That description matches closely what the narrator says of dona Luz: gallarda y esbelta, tenia toda la amplitud, robustez y majestad que son compatibles con la elegancia de formas de una doncella llena de distincion aristocratica. La salud brillaba en sus frescas y sonrosadas mejillas; la calma, en su Candida y tersa frente, coronada de rubios rizos; la serenidad del espiritu en sus ojos azules, donde cierto fulgor apacible de claridad y de sentimientos piadosos suavizaba el ingenito orgullo. (OC 1: 37) The two coincide in their conservative, discreet taste in clothes, their simple good taste, and unadorned, natural, wholesome beauty. These and other simi- larities between them lead Montesinos to declare that the physical descriptions of the "heroinas"—a term I would question—is so close that they could be the same woman: ambas son rubias, tienen proximamente la misma edad, las mismas facciones, la misma elegancia natural, el mismo garbo, la misma distincion. Ambas montan admirablemente fogosos caballos, observan un aseo meticuloso; sus casas resplandecen en el mayor orden. (127) Similarly, the novels resemble each other considerably because these two women are alike in several other important ways. 23 (1) Both give themselves to religious devotion although distinct from each other in form and practice; both have their private picture of Christ—Pepita has a Christ child and Luz has a suffering Christ. (2) Both have rejected numerous suitors. (3) Valera's novels are replete with characters who suffer from isolation and estrangement, often resulting in a deeply psychological search for meaning. Pepita and Luz are no exceptions. Both women live a "vida retirada" with little contact with any excepting a select group of companions, and both women spend time in contemplation, struggling with their carnal desires for men of religious vocation. (4) Both women face the ultimate patriarchal opponent: God. They must compete with God himself for the human love of a man who has made a decision to be "married" to the church. (5) Several important motifs are used in both novels. The horse which is used in accord with Spanish literary tradition as the symbol of domination and/or masculinity and the letter which is used to mark commitment or reveal truth are two of the most important. Another motif mentioned by Medina is the arrival of a stranger who signals the change of the social structure in both works (13 0). 24 (6) Enrique Rubio and Cyrus DeCoster remind us that pride, too, is a personality trait which both women have in common (Rubio 20; DeCoster 1974, 125). (7) Physical touch implies acquiescence and intimacy in both stories. In Pepita Jimenez, it is her hand which Martha Ann Garabedian calls the symbol of "la belleza, la caridad, el matrimonio, el orgullo y la vanidad, el misterio y el amor" (30). Dona Luz's kiss to the dying Enrique marks "el momento de la compenetracion espiritual" (Paolini 415) . The feminist implications of theme, motivation, and characterization in these two works may perhaps be explained using Beth Miller's impression of the "courtship" novel as another interpretive lens. This critic traces fictional heroines from the earliest medieval exempla of the fourteenth century through the Golden Age drama, and the eighteenth century. She contends that the nineteenth-century courtship novel reflects "courtship as an athletic contest [which] is common in the mythology of various lands and is very much in consonance with the warrior-huntresses of amazonian folklore whose motive it [sic] is to depreciate men" (61). In Pepita Jimenez especially, there are several times when Pepita is evoked via "warrior woman" imagery in what Valera labels a battle for Luis's affection. 25 Katherine Sobba Green's discussion of the courtship novel of the eighteenth century, as a "feminized genre" includes the contention that, coincident with the new understanding of individual rights that developed during the eighteenth century, there came also a shift in the rites of courtship and marriage (1). According to her reasoning, this new attitude called for a novel representation of women in narrative space in what is termed a "revisionist" view of women. Although the courtship novel subgenre reflected the idea that women were now marrying for more than familial convenience, the newly created feminized space (that brief period of autonomy between a young woman's coming out and her marriage) celebrated also "heightened awareness of sexual politics within the gendered arena of language, especially with regard to defining male and female spheres of action" (2). Despite the fact that neither woman's life stage falls clearly and completely within that fine limit between "coming out and marriage," both novels devote a great deal of attention to courtship (more loosely defined), and a close reading of Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz will provide details of "rituals" of courtship in the two works. 26 Pepita Jimenez Pepita Jimenez, considered Juan Valera's masterpiece, is certainly his best known work. Within its pages, the nineteenth-century reader had an opportunity for one of the first times in the history of the novel to probe the inner sanctum of the characters' minds to discover secret fears and hidden longings. Between the lines of Luis de Vargas's epistles to his uncle, the reader may see clearly what Luis understands as truth many months later: his love for Pepita Jimenez. The bulk of evidence suggests, however, that Valera's presentation of Pepita, the main female character, is steeped in male subjectivity. His varying models of female behavior, in this and all his novels, were profoundly influenced not only by his own aesthetics but also by the patriarchal culture that engendered that stance. Culture, as defined by M. L. Andersen in a 1983 study entitled Thinking about Women: Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, is "a pattern of expectations about what are appropriate behaviors and beliefs for members of the society" (47) . Ellen S. Silber reminds us that "every culture has its own notions of gender, the characteristics and behaviors expected of males and females" (10). Nineteenthcentury notions of accepted behaviors in Spain were a 27 result of various influences. Ann Pescatello offers a historical perspective for the female in Iberian families, societies and cultures. Socially, she says, the family was bound together in the "premodern" family through the establishment of households and social kin relationships replenished through marriage and mating which functioned as a transmitter of property, life, and legal names (8). By the eleventh century there had begun an exaggerated veneration of Mary, the Virgin (9), echoed in the expectation of virginity and chastity for unmarried women, and during the fourteenth century "requirements for dowry had become such that less fortunate families had to send their dowryless daughters to convents" (10). During the sixteenth century, following the Reformation and CounterReformation, a married woman was placed under legal authority of either her husband or the law (12). In many ways, Pepita incarnates a stereotypical nineteenth-century Spanish representation of female norms whose origin can be traced back to the middle ages, as Pescatello's study indicates. At the beginning of the novel, Pepita appears as a widow at the tender age of eighteen. Having already rejected many suitors, she is being courted by a man old enough to be her father when she meets Luis, 28 himself a charming, if somewhat inexperienced, young man approximately her own age. Whether or not Pepita Jimenez is considered to be a courtship novel, the plot, however slightly developed, turns primarily on Luis's inner conflict between entering the priesthood or, as most critics have stated, "succumbing" to Pepita's charms. Textual citations which follow reveal that Pepita has little if any voice and almost no space in the narrative. She is defined, confined, or as Mary Anne Ferguson terms it, "fenced in" (5), by a narrative that is closely linked to Spanish society as it existed before and during Valera's lifetime. Pepita exists less as a woman than as an image, a stereotype of what nineteenth-century Spain expected women of her generation to be. In matters of the heart, Pepita had never had choices. Her first husband was the eighty-year-old don Gumersindo whom Valera describes as "un viejo que no inspiraba repugnancia" who was "afable, servicial, compasivo, y se desvivia por complacer y ser util a todo el mundo" (OC 1: 119). This same uncle "era el viejo mas amigo de requebrar a las muchachas y que mas las hiciese reir que habia en diez leguas a la redonda" (119). Tio Gumersindo's most "selling" feature in the eyes of Pepita's aging mother as a future husband for 29 her daughter was that he was "el genio de la economia" who had amassed quite a fortune from the interest he collected in his money-lending business, but was certainly not considered to be an "usurero!" (OC 1: 119). To use Simone de Beauvoir's expression, Pepita's mother becomes "comrades in captivity" (515) to the prevailing patriarchal system via her intervention when her daughter stammers and blushes in pain at the thought of marrying Tio Gumersindo. Pepita's voice is silenced because her mother colludes with the patriarchal establishment, answering for her, "Nina, no seas mal criada; contesta a tu tio lo que debes [emphasis mine] contestar: 'Tio, con mucho gusto; cuando usted quiera" (OC 1: 120). Don Gumersindo's proposal, itself a formal one, begun by addressing Pepita as "muchacha" was devoid of affection or love. Consciously or uncon- sciously Valera echoes the patriarchal stereotype expressed in binary opposition: "El era poderoso; ella, pobre y desvalida" (OC 1: 119). And, while this novel is touted as a study in psychology, Valera's wellplaced disclaimers lead the unwary reader to believe that he truly does not attempt to understand the female psyche for he often states that he has no right to penetrate the female mind. Nonetheless, he imposes his authorial voice by pointing out, for example, that 30 Pepita upon the marriage to Tio Gumersindo, "vivio en santa paz con el viejo durante tres anos," implying that "holy" and peaceful domesticity with an octogenarian is an acceptable state for a fifteen-year-old girl. Pepita's next significant suitor is also advanced in age. Luis's father, known in his younger years as a ladies' man, has decided to settle down to a respectable lifestyle, including a respectable "young" woman at his side. Luis's initial acceptance of the seemingly inevitable marriage between his father and Pepita is yet another evidence of patriarchal dominance. This biologically abnormal situation further degrades Pepita by casting her in the role of a seductress whose amorous female needs force her to compromise even her piety in order to gain the object of her affection, a man her own age. Structurally, Pepita is forced to compete with Luis for the position of protagonist. Although her name claims the title of the novel, it is Luis who claims the center of the narrative. If Luis is in the center, then Luis's preoccupations also take center stage. Whiston concurs, emphasizing that Valera draws a fine line between what he sees as genuine religious sentiment and false religiosity. And since Luis is never far from the centre of the action, either as narrator or protagonist, other characters of consequence are forced to respond to his 31 intensely religious approach to life. In this way a significant part of the characterization of the novel turns on characters' attitudes to religion. (44) Pepita's only possible space in the narrative is relegated to the opposite/other. The effect of discourse upon narrative space is perhaps more powerful than any other tool that a male author uses when representing the female characters. Deeply concerned about the female literary voice, Jane Gallop warns that its use and abuse result from a form of myth which she calls a "male fantasy construction" where "women are objects described, not speaking subjects" who produce culture. Furthermore she cautions, "the dealings of men-as-men with women-as-women (which are, after all, sexual relations) had to be predicated upon the body of knowledge compiled-by men about Woman" (274). Valera effectively relegates Pepita to object, not a speaking subject, by his choice of narrative structure and viewpoint, for the first mention we have of her comes in Luis's letter of March 2 2 to the deacon. The text metaphorically casts Pepita in the ancient role of Eve since it implies that Luis will soon "eat of a forbidden fruit." After discussing how family and friends alike have joined in the effort to "fatten him up" because the only defect they see in him 32 is that he is "muy delgadito a fuerza de estudiar" (OC 1: 118), Luis remarks, Manana como en casa de la famosa Pepita Jimenez, de quien usted habr^ oido hablar, sin duda alguna. Nadie ignora aqui que mi padre la pretende. (OC 1: 118) The symbolism of temptation and fall (in the biblical sense of original sin) is further reinforced when Luis accompanies his father and friends to Pepita's garden, a virtual Eden of beauty and purity with its "cascada de agua limpia y transparente . . . formando espuma" (OC 1: 128). Here the sexual imagery becomes even more explicit as Luis's letter of April 8 reports: nos agasajo Pepita con una esplendida merienda, a la cual dio pretexto el comer las fresas, que era el principal objeto que alii nos llevaba . . . y nos fueron servidas con leche de algunas cabras que Pepita tambien posee. (OC 1: 129) Luis's "taste" of womanhood has been prepared for him by his father. The aging don Pedro is smart enough to recognize quickly the electricity which flows between the two young people, and although the text never states it explicitly, we may infer from the repeated delay of Luis's return to take his orders that don Pedro may have anticipated and condoned the match. It is quite clear (from the deacon's revelation late in the narrative that he has shared the content of Luis's letters with don Pedro from the outset) that Luis's 33 father could easily have aborted the romance by sending his son away, yet chose not to do so. The deacon has served as a spiritual father to Luis and, as the following quote from the text proves, don Pedro is obviously a willing accomplice in Luis's Bildungsroman: He acompanado a mi padre a ver casi todas sus fincas, y mi padre y sus amigos se pasman de que yo no sea completamente ignorante de las cosas del campo. (OC 1: 12 8) G. Grant MacCurdy's study of Pepita Jimenez as a novel of mysticism, love, and illumination emphasizes the view that the narrative conveys "an axiomatic truth of mythology, folklore, and literature." Luis must sever the umbilical cord and choose "an appropriate partner with whom to share his life" (327). Luis will, with the help of Pepita, turn his attention from "Mother Church" to what C. G. Jung calls the anima figure (MacCurdy 329). So while Luis's initiation into manhood is, in fact, the true plot motivation, his female "teacher" in the drama is disdained as temptress, seducer, conniver, and amazon woman. Such stereotyping has in the past been accepted as legitimate representation as evidenced by Luis de Oteyza's description of Pepita, whom he lauds for her authenticity. He likens her to all women: "tienen alma y cuerpo, espiritu y materia, enamoran, seducen, poseen y hacen parecer que tales sucesos ocurrieron al contrario" (111). 34 Not all critics have relegated Pepita to an inferior position. Joan Cammarata who studies Luis as an Oedipal figure argues that Pepita is a matriarch who "represents the earth mother and all that is sensual, voluptuous, fertile, flourishing, and life-giving on the earth" (220). At the other extreme is a thorough study of language prepared by Robert E. Lott in 197 0. Lott analyzes, among other things, the semantics of the language used in the novel. Relevant to my thesis are his observations about the word "^ngel." Referring to his mother, Luis says she is "un angel de bondad y mansedumbre," but his "Angel de la Guarda" is his conscience, and Pepita is "como angel que toma forma humana" (31). In spite of illegitimacy, readers are told that Luis is watched over by the spirit of his mother, even while he is reared by two men. (His father and the deacon care for him from the age of ten.) He, therefore, comes by his ignorance of women naturally. Luis's false pride and foolish justifications may be humorous unless one considers how they serve to evoke a false representation of Pepita. Since most of what is said about Pepita comes from the perspective of Luis, it is not surprising that she engages ridicule from those who would blame her for his fall from grace. Luis's letters contain naive, conceited ramblings about 35 her beauty and his mistaken assumption of imperviousness, or his replies to the deacon's counsel against the "evils" potentially represented by the "temptress" Pepita. Furthermore, the critic Gonzalez Lopez concurs with the deacon's words of precaution saying that Luis neither resists the lure of the woman, nor is at all responsible for this spell: Nota el joven aspirante a sacerdote que no se compagina bien su olorcillo de santidad con el vaho sensual de la campina cordobesa. . . El no tiene culpa de que el aire mananero traiga, deshechas en polvo sutil, las esencias enervadoras. (35) Gonzalez Lopez claims that even he, a twentieth-century male, has fallen under the spell of the "cautivadora Pepita" (47). The impending battle between good and evil with Woman representing evil is foreshadowed early in the narrative when Luis describes Pepita's eyes. He sets the stage for the final confrontation between them where he implicity reveals his love for Pepita in his allusion to la mayor parte de las mujeres jovenes y bonitas [both of which he believes is true of Pepita], que hacen de los ojos un arma de combate y como un aparato electrico o fulmineo para rendir corazones y cautivarlos. (OC 1: 130) Her tears will later crumble his pious, self-righteous defenses as Pepita permeates Luis's facade. In his research, Leonardo Romero finds at least two areas in which Pepita Jimenez became a precursor of 36 the modern novel: "en torno a su tema mostrenco (sacerdote enamorado)" and "respecto al modelo del personaje femenino" (45). He also enumerates several feminine types/archetypes including "la mujer insatisfecha, la joven enganada, o la bella decidida" as typical of Valera's female representation (47). Jane Gallop reminds us that the myth of Woman as essentially untruthful contributes to a scenario wherein it has elements of the self-fulfilling prophecy: she speaks only to deceive and ensnare (274). There is evidence to suggest that Valera perpetuates these myths; certainly he alludes to them. Upon reflection, Luis writes of Pepita: Yo me paro a pensar si todo esto sera estudiado; si esta Pepita sera una gran comedianta; pero seria tan perfecto el fingimiento y tan oculta la comedia, que me parece imposible. (OC 1: 130) Luis's character is so weak that he disguises his own blindness in religious trappings. If he is to continue in his chosen vocation as a priest in the Catholic Church, the only way he can reconcile love of Pepita is to remake her in the image of the most popular Hispanic archetypes: great mother (Mother of God/Virgin Mother), the giver of life. Once he firmly plants this image in his subconscious, his conscious mind fills in the blanks using Pepita incarnate. Although she is 37 widowed, this image allows him to purify her femaleness so that he can place her on the pedestal which will sanctify his adolescent fantasies, cloaking them in mystical religious devotion. At one point in his fan- tasy he even hints that her previous marriage was not consummated, saying of Pepita's devotion to the church: En su devocion a la Virgen se descubre un sentimiento de humillacion dolorosa, un torcedor, una melancolia que influye en su mente el recuerdo de su matrimonio indigno y esteril. (OC 1: 133) Like a child justifying his improprieties to his mother, Luis writes that even the local senor vicario has high esteem for Pepita, calling her "una santa." The subtle ways in which Valera casts Pepita in the role of seductress who entraps Luis illustrate the way he manipulates this plot. Charnon-Deutsch directs attention to the fact that Pepita is exactly what she should be at each stage of her life: [T]o her first husband she is not just a humble spouse but a much prized nurse, to the vicar she is a spiritual marvel who opens new horizons of devotion and mystical experience, to the townspeople she is a symbol of hope because she ascended from their ranks yet remembers her humble origins, to the town's bachelors she is the single most valued prize worth risking a life for. (22) The novelistic universe where Pepita lives and breathes relegates her to Other in character representation, in speech patterns, and in narrative space. For the first 38 half of the story she is essentially silenced but spoken about, and when she is finally given voice, it is not rational or thoughtful, but that of an out-ofcontrol female whose emotions have brought her to the verge of hysteria. Jimenez Fraud quotes Menendez y Pelayo as saying that Pepita Jimenez can be entitled "Victoria de Amor" (170). But while critics during Valera's time debated the morality issue, none noticed that Pepita was not a real woman, and thus this was no real victory, but rather a mythic representation of what a male author grounded in the patriarchal tradition of Iberian ideology, expected Pepita to be. Dona Luz In Dona Luz, Valera creates another female character so like Pepita Jimenez that many critical studies gloss over the novel as if it merited little or no individual scrutiny. Without doubt many of the ele- ments found in Pepita Jimenez reappear with little alteration in this, Valera's fifth novel which appeared serially in the Revista Contempor^nea in 1878 and in book form the next year. Montesinos asserts in his study of 1957 that "Dona Luz se derivaba facilmente de varies de los contenidos de Pepita Jimenez y es en cierto mode Pepita Jimenez repensada y vuelta del 39 reves" (127). DeCester's evaluation of Dona Luz. however, is one which I believe to be mere valid. He maintains that "Enrique and Luz are universal figures who live in a virtual vacuum and are scarcely affected by their exterior surroundings" and argues that "the central action [of the novel] is psychological" (Valera 1974, 131). Marcus, who appears to be in accord with DeCoster, further suggests that Valera's psychological study of Luz and Enrique involves individuals who are net typical of rural daily life and customs in Andalucia (457). As noted earlier in this chapter, the setting, theme, character motivation, and general characteristics of the two main female characters are quite similar, but analysis of the psychological journey into the "dark night of the soul" made by dona Luz will reveal ways in which Valera's representation of this woman differs significantly from that of Pepita. The female protagonist of Dona Luz is a nineteenth-century woman who today would be considered to be psychologically abused nearly to the point of self-destruction. Hers is a fiercely private battle which is wen only at the level of myth.^ The text privileges masculine ^ See Gilbert Paolini, "Interaccion del mundo artistico y psicelogico en Dona Luz." Anales de literatura espanola (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1983: 409-17) for ways in which dona Luz reenacts myths from oriental cultures. 40 ideology so much that her character, if net her personality, is edged from the center of the narrative in what amounts to masochistic, self-imposed physical and emotional isolation. Luz begins her journey inward at the age of fifteen when, upon the death of her putative biological father, the marques de Villafria, the illegitimate girl "quedose, pues, sin titulo," and "come buena hija, lament© y Hero . . . pero su humilde y cristiana resignacion era grande" and therefore "estaba cenforme en pasar en Villafria la vida entera" (OC 1: 1377). She rejects her young male suitors as beneath her socially, but has no hope of marrying "a su gusto." The text impugns this choice by observing that "Todo era en ella frialdad tranquila y contentamiente suave" (OC 1: 38). Her constrained physical space becomes further limited by fixed traditional mores defining permissible space for women. Elizabeth Janeway warns that "woman's place is a shorthand phrase which sums up a whole set of traits and attitudes and ways of presenting themselves which we think proper to women, along with the obligations and restrictions that it implies" (9). The narrator in Dona Luz reminds us that from her patio, an acceptable space for Spanish women, "cuidaba dona Luz con esmere" (OC 1: 41). At the age 41 of twenty-one, Luz decided to move from Acisclo's home to her own and "intento varias veces irse a vivir sola a su casa; pero don Acisclo la retenia suave y carinesamente" (OC 1: 45), reminding her of the negative social implications of being a solterona house alone. in a Without argument, she accepts this space and instead of protesting her solitude and isolation, asks herself, "^A donde ire yo que no este mas fuera de mi sitio, mas aislada que en Villafria? £,Donde me pre- sentare que no sea mirada como una aventurera? Casi estoy fuera de toda clase social" (OC 1: 50). Her only apparent pleasure consists of spending hours in philosophical debate with the older men of the village and the newly arrived Father Enrique, who comes to Villafria from a prolonged missionary stay in the Orient and India. Life for Luz in Villafria is, as suggested by the village name, far from warm and inviting. This rural community is not as benign as was the pueJblo of Pepita Jimenez. For, as Marcus argues, "beneath the prima facie elegance and refinement of reality and the sympathetic portrayal of figures who are bound to the Andalusian scene" lies a pueJbio capable of passing harsh judgment on the relationship between a young woman and her priest (460). Luz begins to worry about 42 "que diran" when she is warned by dona Manolita, her close friend, confidante, and the daughter of the seventy-year-old doctor Anselmo, that her behavior in the presence of Enrique hints at something beyond intellectual stimulation. Of course, it should not be forgotten that philosophical debate and intellectual pursuits generally were not considered appropriate for women in nineteenth-century Spain. Criticism leveled at Gomez de Avellaneda and other women writers, as well as Valera's own polemics with Pardo Bazan (La cuestion palpante) attest to the hostile climate for female intellectuals in an environment where many believed females incapable of any abstract thought. Centuries of masculine-imposed sexual role stereotyping created a cultural residue suggesting that Luz must be interested in Enrique as more than a spiritual and intellectual stimulant to her lonely life. According to Carole Rupe's study of love, Valera is in agreement with Jose Ortega y Gasset that between man and woman, platonic love does not exist, only sexual attraction (Rupe 19). Actually, this slight distortion of Ortega's dictum accurately represents a generalized attitude among Hispanic males, not only in Valera's day, but in subsequent generations as well. In this text Luz, like other women in literature and life, is stereotyped in what amounts to a Freudian 43 myth contained in the Latin expression Tota mulier in ^^e^Q (The whole woman is the womb), a myth so widespread and durable that Selden speculates it has come to be accepted as natural and normal (Contemporary Theory 136). Luz's life is pictured as so incomplete without a man that it is tan monotona, tan sin accidentes que diferenciasen unos dias de otros dias, que habian pasado los anos, y en la memoria de ella eran como sueno fugaz, donde todo estaba confundido. (OC 1: 145) The phallocentric focus excludes all possibility of self-realization for Luz except in relation to a man. The narrator undermines Luz and positions her for her eventual tragic and complete withdrawal from a society where she fits in neither intellectually nor emotionally because she breaks with patriarchally-defined norms for feminine behavior. Not surprisingly for a male reader. Arias Abad believes that Luz has so many problems because she is like other women who live "en perpetuo sueno de hadas" (157). Furthermore, Arias Abad, clearly a phallocentric observer, accuses women in general of being weak-willed: "Al fin y al cabo, dona Luz, como mujer, era mas debil que su misma voluntad" (179). Valera himself shares much of the stereotyped male vision of women, as appears in his exercise of the authorial privilege of passing judgment 44 on women. Remarking on the uniqueness of dona Luz's personality, he hastens to excuse it saying, "Las mujeres son curiosisimas, dona Luz lo era mas que las otras mujeres" (OC 1: 58). After her confrontation with Manolita concerning how her relationship with Enrique appears to the good people of Villafria, Luz ponders the situation, ultimately accepting the traditional patriarchal perspective wherein she is guilty by definition: atendidas la natural reserva que deben tener las mujeres, y la modestia y timidez con que deben velar y mitigar los movimientos e inclinaciones del corazon, ella habia dado mayor motive al padre para que el la creyese enamorada que el que el [sic] le habia dado a ella para que de su parte lo creyese. (OC 1: 78) Here and throughout the novel Luz does battle at the psychic level, but her handicap is her gender. She will be forced further and further into self-doubt and self-deception by a masculine community that defines her according to its own needs. Acisclo's fatherly protection is little more than penance for his former sins against her father; Jaime will (because of the legal code of the day) claim her inheritance as a result of his fraudulent show of gallantry and love; and Father Enrique goes to his deathbed concealing his love for her. Luz, unlike Pepita, will lose her strug- gle both at the mental and physical levels because of 45 the emotional and/or economic abuse she suffers at the hands of every man in her life. Luz must reevaluate her social and psychic situation. The degree to which she conforms to the male- oriented myth of love is soon revealed. When Manolita, anticipating her own marriage, encourages the cloistered Luz to break her self-imposed isolation and mingle with the young men her age, Luz replies, "El amor no ha de buscarse: ha de aparecer" (OC 1: 50). Her philosophy of love, which follows, reveals the extent to which she accepts myth as truth: Yo me incline a creer que no hay varies amores, cada cual para su objeto, sino que el amor es uno; y aunque cambie el objeto, no cambia el amor. Si es asi, como yo le desee, mi amor despertara y se empleara todo en la hermosura del cielo, en Dies que le ha creade, en las flores, en la poesia, y quien sabe si hasta en la ciencia, dado que en mi estreche cerebro de mujer quepan sus grandes verdades, sus obscures misterios y sus temeroses problemas. (OC 1: 51) Not only dees Luz implicitly view love of a man as the God-given purpose for her life on this planet, but she expects it to achieve the miracle whereby her "estreche cerebro de mujer" will be endowed with understanding. So thoroughly has she internalized the patriarchal definition of woman's mission in life that she doubts her right to choose, to live to please herself. Luz has seme sense that her rejection of the patriarchally 46 defined destiny for women is selfish or prideful and therefore sinful. Blaming her own overdeveloped sense of pride for her decision to remain single, Luz comments, "lo tengo yo tambien en el alma mia; pero un orgullo que no se funda en razones, una repugnancia nacida de la manera con que he side educada, se opone a que yo me case" (OC 1: 50). Pride, according to the patriarchal spokesman Arias Abad, causes women to vacillate between reason and emotion. He does not sug- gest that men hesitate because of similar weaknesses. And furthermore, this critic is quick to judge Luz as Everywoman: "Por la vanidad vacila la mujer, y por vanidad vacilo dona Luz, quien al cenvertir su satisfaccion en gratitud, se entregaba inerme en brazes de la voluntad ajena" (186). Although dona Luz reasons, analyzes and ponders her dilemma, Gonzalez Lopez undermines her further, "reasoning" that "una mujer cabal no razena el amor, lo siente" (185). In other words, Luz is not a "real" woman because she thinks too much. She is not suffering from pride, according to this study by a male critic, but rather is very cunning (exactly what that cunning profits her remains unclear). The author of Dona Luz leaves no doubt about his personal reservations when it comes to love, even suggesting that the book's value might be as a 47 cautionary tale because of the "severas leccienes que contiene." Valera hastens to add what is, in fact, advice to men concerning the temptation to earthly love. His dedication cites the Spanish translation of Pietro Bembe in El Cortesano: [E]nderece su desee a la hermosura sola, y cuanto mas puede la contemple en ella misma simple y pura, y dentre en la imaginacion la forme separada de toda materia, y form^ndola asi la haga amiga y familiar de su alma, y alii la gece, y consigo la tenga dias y noches en todo tiempo y en lugar sin miedo de jamas perdella [sic], y acordandose siempre de que el cuerpo es cosa muy diferente de la hermosura. . . . [Y] asi no sentira celos, ni sospechas, ni desabrimientos, ni iras, ni desesperacienes, ni otras mil locuras llenas de rabia, con las cuales muchas veces llegan los enamorados locos a tanto desatino, que aun a si mismos quitan la vida. (OC 1: 33) Luz's psychological battlefield in matters of love has been discussed by several critics. Bravo- Villasante asserts that dona Luz definitely wrestles with her conscience, and that battle results in suffering from the consequences of "un amor sensual desprovisto de espiritualidad" (Biografia, 220), an impossible love for an unattainable man. Bravo- Villasante, although a female critic, is not a feminist one. Reflecting the patriarchal values internalized in her socialization as well as the strict Victorian morality of the Franco era, she judges Luz harshly. Paul Smith argues that dona Luz suffers from an 48 inferiority complex which forms "an objective basis and is, psycho-logically speaking, self-created" as a result of her illegitimate birth (Smith 1968, 808). This stance is supported by the text which reveals Luz's preoccupation with the fact that her father "habia tenido aquella nifia [Luz] en una mujer oscura" (OC 1: 3 6). A feminist reading would surely note that Luz has been deprived of the mother-daughter bond, that she lacks a feminine role model, and has internalized the phallocentric double standard to such an extent that she, too, condemns her mother. She cannot identify with her mother so that (logically for contemporary psychology) her problems with feminine role definition are normal. Patriarchal values have even robbed Luz of her memories of her mother: she recalls nothing positive. She feels that she must atone for her father's indiscretion: "Para limpiar aquella mancha original, queria ser dona Luz mucho m^s limpia y mucho m^s pura" (OC 1: 38). Ruiz Cano attributes her unhappy emotional state first to her pride but then decides it is not pride at all, but "anhelos no alcanzados" ( 8 0 ) — in other words, sexual frustration. This critic defends Valera's representation of women saying, "No hay, pues, nunca en Valera posicion antifeminista" (80) . The statement is curious, since no such 49 accusations had been made, but it does not follow that the absence of a "posicion antifeminista" is equal to a pro-feminist stance, any more than Valera's "liking women" or enjoying sexual relationships makes him a feminist. In many ways Luz's longings mirror Valera's own frustrated love experiences. Fishtine reminds us that Valera was not content with the purely intellectual relationship he had with Lucia Palladi, Marquesa de Bedmar. He was infuriated when "La Muerta," as she was called, all too clearly aware of her declining health and of love's illusions, insisted to the end that the two of them be only friends. To Valera, such a relationship seemed absurd and superhuman. He disliked all deviations from the natural and in Asclepigenia derided men, who, like Proclo, deluded themselves into believing that by virtue of their superiority they had not the needs of vulgar men, and could enjoy love on a spiritual plane alone; indeed any form of platonic love was a target for Valera's ridicule (8). Narrative space for Luz is gradually reduced to the one spot in her life that is completely private: her bedroom. Both Pepita and Luz have in their bedrooms a cloistered and private image of Christ. But, whereas the image for Pepita is the innocent 50 Christ child, that of Luz is quite different. There hanging hidden from public eye is un cuadro horrible y bello a la vez. . . . la figura de Cristo, de medio cuerpo, de admirable beldad y de un trabajo delicadisimo y prolijo. . . . Era un Cristo muerto: la hendidura livida del clavo atravesaba su diestra . . . . El pintor habia acertado a unir, con inspiracion monstruosa, la imagen de una criatura proxima a disolverse, y la forma sobrehumana que el mismo Dios habia tomado. (OC 1: 47) It is impossible to read this passage and miss the psychological implications inherent in the Christ figure preferred by each woman. Luz's choice reflects masochistic tendencies (flagrant self-flagellation) as proven by the following quotation: El cuadro era tal, que una mujer mas delicada, menos briosa que dona Luz, ni le tendria en su cuarto ni le miraria con tanta frecuencia. . . . Pero dona Luz era muy singular y hallaba extrano deleite en la larga contemplacion de aquel cuadro (OC 1: 47). The myths and symbols in the text intensify the effect of the masculine-dominated script. The most powerful of these myths is that of the Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Dona Luz and Manolita talk more than once of the love in Luz waiting to be awakened by the arrival of her Prince Charming. Poignant and painful is Luz when she claims, "Duerma el amor en mi seno. A mi razon serena y fria toca velar para que no le despierte sino quien deba" (OC 1: 50). Later when she 51 realizes the longings are dormant sexual needs, Valera comments on his textual Sleeping Beauty, asi el anhelo de amar y todo el ser apasionado del virgen corazon de nuestra heroina despertaron de repente, reprimidos hasta entonces por la prudencia y como dormidos hasta los veintiocho anos. (OC 1: 85) . Before that awakening kiss, Luz "belongs," to one man or another. She was "la joya m^s hermosa que aun poseia en este mundo" to her father (who did not see fit to recognize that possession with legitimation) as well as "un sol que estaba en el cenit" [sic] to the young men of Villafria (OC l: 37). Symbolically her roles are myriad: "bailaba como una silfide; en el andar airosa asemejabase a la divina cazadora de Delos y montaba a caballo como la reina de las amazonas" (OC 1: 37). On another occasion Luz "parecia una garza real, una emperatriz, una heroina de leyendas y de cuentos fantSsticos; algo de peregrine y de fuera de lo que se usa; el hada Parbanu; la m§s egregia de las huries" (OC 1: 38). But the symbolism used to represent Luz is not all positive. Don Acisclo warns that if she were to live alone in her casa the pueblo solariega, would consider her to be "una vaca sin cen- cerro" (OC 1: 45). On the other hand, when she decides to marry Pimentel, she becomes a jewel to be exhibited as a prize: "Dona Luz es una perla oriental, y la perla 52 no repara en el pescador ni en si vale o no vale; lo que pretende es que la pesque y la lleve a lucir en el Olen del Oclaye" (OC 1: 87). While Luz is a gem metaphorically speaking for both her father and her husband, she is most emphatically an object, a possession, not a subject. Several powerful sexual symbols contribute to Luz's representation. Two important kisses betray her. The first is her kiss of the suffering Christ image which she keeps hidden in her room. Caballero Pozo identifies Luz's kisses as some of the most important in Spanish literature: "Los besos de dona Luz son los besos mas tristes, mas frios y mas inquietantes de toda la literatura erotica y mistica espanola" (192). Per- haps most important is Luz's final kiss to the dying priest when she says "En los besos que estampe en su noble rostro, cuando moria, hubo mas verdadero amor que en todos los abrazos que al otro prodigue alucinada" (OC 1: 115). The powerful erotic symbol of the large horse present also in Pepita Jimenez reappears in Dona Luz with enhanced significance. Luz often rode two or three hours, trotting and galloping and making dangerous jumps. When she is planning to marry, Manolita suggests that Luz's black horse is a symbol of virility and power, explaining to Luz that Pepe Giieto 53 "ira a pedir a mi senor padre esta blanca mano, que tomara la rienda y le obligara a salir de su paso de mula de canonigo y a brincar y a estar mas avispado que tu hermoso caballo negro" (OC 1: 48). Already noted above is Luz's ability to mount her horse like a "reina de las amazonas." The sexual implications of the horse in Dona Luz become glaring especially as concerns padre Enrique who, after Luz's near fall from the horse, "prometio no volver a salir nunca mas a caballo, y cumplio la promesa" (OC 1: 58), thus signaling his retreat from her physical world. When don Jaime Pimentel proves victorious in his political game, don Acisclo announces that "El primer pueblo en que se presentaria habia de ser Villafria, desde, donde, a caballo, y con la pompa correspondiente, habia de pasar a recorrer y visitar los otros pueblos" (OC 1: 75). Readers are assured that his political victory will be eclipsed in importance only by his amorous conquest of Luz. He will be lodged in Luz's house and will, in fact, be offered her "hermoso caballo negro," (OC 1: 75) , a gesture whereby the vehicle of her freedom becomes the symbol of his masculinity. The narrative signifies Luz's self betrayal to masculine domination when it is reported that "Dona Luz tuvo que acceder a todo!" (OC 1: 75). 54 Juxtaposed with Luz is the representation of Manolita. Most critics have agreed that she, with her explosive, raucous personality is a foil to the demure Luz. While this is relatively accurate, Manolita, according to traditional male values, observes proper behavior regarding the men in her life. She admits to Luz that she has a place in her heart for husband and children that was empty fantasy she had created. [emphasis mine] except for a Even when at one point, she rebukes her father claiming that he doesn't know what he is talking about, she immediately decides to give him "un par de carinosos besos para endulzar aquella mortificacion de amor propio" (OC 1: 57). Always subservient to men, always Other in the hierarchy, even a comparably powerful woman like Manolita is portrayed as deceptively submissive. Having traced the trajectory of Luz's love interests from her shady beginnings, through a deceitful courtship and marriage, we can see how both the novel and her inward journey come to an end. Her vow never to marry carried powerful weight when viewed in retrospect. Although she legally married Jaime Pimentel y Moncada, submitting to him physically, she never stopped loving Father Enrique. Luz honors their spiritual union by naming her only son after this, her 55 mystical husband. Early in the narrative Valera's des- cription of this spiritual union was replete with sexual imagery: su deleite mayor [era] hablar con el de Dios y del alma, y de toda verdad, y de toda bondad y hermosura. En fin: el padre Enrique, sin confesarselo a si mismo, vino poco a poco a persuadirse de que con su espiritu iba como a llenar y compenetrar el espiritu de dona Luz, y noto que ella se ensenoreaba ya por entero del espiritu de el, aunque con cierta subordinacion y dependencia de otros sentimientos e ideas de valer muy superior. (OC 1: 65) Valera himself is unlikely to have been unaware of the erotic implications of "compenetrar" or to have chosen the verb by accident. After she has learned how blatantly deceptive Pimentel had been and how blindly she had fallen for his false claims of love, the saddened and pregnant Luz reveals to Manolita the depth of her love for the dead priest saying. Mi espiritu concibe este ser. Mi pensamiento y mi voluntad, durante largos meses, le han prestado y le prestaran forma, y le han dado y daran alma semejante a la de aquel que me lo dio todo. (OC 1: 115) Arias Abad convicts Luz of a fatal flaw saying that the sadness and tragedy in the novel come from the fact that she never learned from her mistakes. This critic not only thinks of Luz as more than a fictional character, but he finds nothing admirable in her. appears he cannot forgive her for wanting something It 56 more than the patriarchal establishment had in store for her. Thus, he insists upon the error of Luz's ways, arguing that any time one believes that love "se presenta como Salome present© la cabeza del Precursor" (191) , the same kind of mistakes will be made. Arias Abad also argues that if dona Luz were to come to life again, "su vanidad seria la misma, su ingenuidad tambien, y su natural disposicion a deslumbrarse con los agiles artificios del mal, correria parejas con su ingenuidad y con su ambicion" (191) . He condemns her saying that her bad luck was caused by unreal expectations: "Romantica a su manera, espero sin esperar, como si todo fuera suyo y hubiera de llegar a sus manos por deber, por necesidad o por designio" (177). Smith stops short of condemnation of Luz, alleging that "the novel closes with the pious woman's character fundamentally unchanged and, as in the first, shaped by circumstances of her birth and childhood" (Smith 1968, 808). Gilbert Paolini, however, elevates Luz's last kiss to the sublime arguing that "se ha cumplido la sagrada union arquetipica de dos almas, la union espiritual de los elementos contraries" (415). It is curious that early, traditional patriarchal critics (e.g. Arias Abad and Gonzalez Lopez) apparently felt threatened by Valera's women, or thought he was 57 setting a dangerous precedent by expressing feminine sexual desire. Yet Valera by no means advocates sexual freedom for the female. In this novel, Valera has suggested that women are so flattered and blinded by the prospect of love that they lose all semblance of common sense. I maintain that she was not blinded—she was intimidated and abused until her soul recoiled. Her impregnated state at the end of the novel symbolizes her absolute domination by masculine ideology. Conclusion Given the multiple points of coincidence between Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz. prior critics have been quick to note the similarities between the two, especially the "sensational" aspect of a woman loving a priest. However, the characters of Pepita and Luz are verifiably different. Pepita is young, almost child- like, sensual, hedonistic, and "gets her man" to live "happily ever after"—thus reconciled with the patriarchal establishment; Luz is a mature woman, an intellectual and something of a rebel, who has a masochistic streak and ends "tragically"—from the establishment viewpoint, because she "wrecks" her marriage by leaving her husband simply because he deceived and humiliated her. Male critics have judged Luz 58 harshly, not so much because of her love for a priest, as because she rejected the "marriage or convent" option. That posed a threat to the patriarchal value system, and they could not approve of her. Pepita, on the other hand, posed no threat to either the patriarchal value system, nor really to the Catholic establishment. As quickly as Luis owns his love for her, he assumes control of the situation by their mutual consent. Any earlier vows he had taken to the church that are broken are considered to be the devotion of an adolescent not yet mature enough to be serious--hence they are not really broken. Pepita has just been acting like women are supposed to act, and continues to do so by becoming Luis's wife. The fact that Luz makes choices—in effect, is the mistress of her own destiny—even if some of those choices have no visible verification—renders her a female representation obviously radical for her day, and perhaps nearly revolutionary, especially for a village in Andalucia. She chooses to rear her child as a single parent, a choice which male critics couldn't see as an acceptable solution. Her strong will may also be a fictional creative representation of Valera's experience with strong-willed women in his own life—women who at least in spirit defied domination. 59 The illegitimacy issue, noted by many critics, weaves its way through every Valera novel. Its impor- tance in a feminist critique may lie is an observation of the difference between a male bastard and a female one. Don Luis and dona Luz are both illegitimate. In both cases, their fathers are "respectable," revered, and suffer no stigma to their social status in the community. Nor does the author chastise them for the men- tal cruelty of making their children grow up with the stigma of illegitimacy in spite of being free to recognize and legitimize them legally (even without marrying the mother). But a really significant difference exists in the way Luz and Luis—whose fathers have obviously supervised their education—have been taught to view their mothers: Luis sees his mother as an "angel de bondad"; Luz remembers her mother as "esa mujer oscura." explainable. The difference in these views is easily The "example" or "error" of Luis's mother poses no threat to him if he follows her example whereas Luz must struggle throughout her life against such a pattern. No doubt many readers will continue to see Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz as love stories about women who fall in love with priests. Sympathies will lie with whichever woman's spirit touches a chord resonating 60 within the reader, but evidence forces us to recognize the distinction between the two women to be more than their choice of priest. Pepita Jimenez is really more about Luis de Vargas than Pepita, but Dona Luz plumbs the depths of Luz's psyche revealing truths about women that many nineteenth-century readers may not have accepted in a flesh and blood woman. CHAPTER III FEMALE STEREOTYPING IN EL COMENDADOR MENDOZA AND JUANITA LA LARGA Taken chronologically, Juan Valera's second novel, published very soon after Pepita Jimenez in 1875, is Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino. Judged by most critics to be pointedly autobiographical, its theme and female representations are so different from Valera's other novels that I will examine it along with Morsamor in the last chapter of this study. It was not until the winter of 1876 that his next novel. El Comendador Mendoza. began to appear in El Campo. Female represen- tation in El Comendador Mendoza resembles in many ways, however, that of a novel published in 1895, some sixteen years later—Juanita la Larga. Seemingly the two works have little in common except for the fact that the stories end in a light-hearted way, with all main characters except dona Blanca in El Comendador Mendoza happily married. However, the implicit association between the novels becomes apparent if certain intrinsic thematic and representational elements are isolated. In each novel a female character (Clara in El Comendador Mendoza and Juanita in Juanita la Larga^ is represented as nearly obsessed with the desire for 61 62 marriage, a state which patriarchal ideology mythologizes. And, to intensify the ideology, the reader's attention is directed to the fact that another woman (dona Blanca in El Comendador Mendoza and dona Ines in Juanita la Larga) wants to prevent the realization of that desire. Both dona Blanca and dona Ines are portrayed as egotistical, self-serving shrews who will go to any lengths to accomplish their selfish, narrow-minded purposes. Furthermore, their very motivations for disapproving of the relationships embody the thesis of each novel. For, although Valera denied writing except to entertain, both stories make a crucial social statement at the expense of female characters who implicitly receive the blame for causing others to suffer. Dona Blanca's motherhood, a previously sacred space for women, is subjected to censure by the text. This male author has failed to realize the inherent error in his reasoning, opting to imply that Blanca's protectiveness is almost animal like in its nature, rather than nurturing. Valera focuses attention on the result, rather than the cause of dona Blanca's obsessive behavior: misguided religious fervor perpetuated by guilt. In Juanita la Larga, dona Ines takes all the blame for reinforcing the prejudice between social classes. Here again, as 63 in dona Blanca's case, her strength (evidenced by the effect Ines has on virtually every segment of life in Villalegre), is presented as a negative rather than a positive trait. What goes unsaid is that if don Paco were a stronger man, he would not sneak around behind his daughter's back, nor in any way need her permission for his adult choices of female companionship. The traditional parent/child roles are reversed so that her "masculine" tendencies (i.e., to take charge of situations) are maximized. Hence, she appears bad/wrong because she is exercising what phallocentric ideology deems sacred behavior for men. Other women in each story do not have such parallel representation, but Valera's popular and repetitive theme of love between an older man and a young woman, first broached in Pepita Jimenez, appears between Mendoza and Lucia (his niece) in El Comendador Mendoza and takes center stage in Juanita la Larga. Juanita in Juanita la Larga and Clara in El Comendador Mendoza command much narrative space, but Valera conforms to traditional patriarchal views and avoids the creation of living, breathing women. Both Juanita and Clara are no more than stereotypes which conform to masculine ideology of nineteenth-century Spain's template of young women. Two other women in the stories, who apparently enhance 64 the narrative structure, actually remain marginal. Lucia in El Comendador Mendoza. Clara's closest friend, is willing to forego her social life, pretending to be interested in Clara's own don Diego so that dona Blanca will not discover the truth. Lucia marries Mendoza in what seems to be an afterthought at the end of the novel (DeCoster, Valera. 119). Juana, Juanita's mother, is also marginalized. Her narrative function falls somewhere between confidante and foil for Juanita, her illegitimate daughter who aspires to become an accepted member of female society in Villalegre. Without doubt, the heritage of centuries of patriarchal cultural indoctrination operates in El Comendador Mendoza and Juanita la Larga. Every impor- tant female character in the texts devotes her energies and directs her attention to a man, an obvious masculine fantasy in which the all-important male is Subject and the female is Other. Beginning with El Comendador Mendoza. we may deconstruct the female representation in each novel, realizing that although each plot is propelled by different motivation, the paradigm of male domination is notably obvious in both works. El Comendador Mendoza Given the title of this novel, one might expect a story in which Mendoza plays the lead. Surprisingly, 65 the adventure of don Fadrique, el Comendador Mendoza, is not a perilous battle like the ones he survived in Peru, the Orient or even France. The text elaborates Fadrique's feats and philosophy with animated detail before revealing that his next challenge (which a man of his accomplishments is sure to meet with success) will be to break the will of dona Blanca, a former lover with whom he fathered a child. The plot turns not on Blanca's earlier infidelity to her husband, don Valentin, although that is a consideration, but upon the upholding of patriarchal "laws of patrimony" in which marriage passed goods and wealth to the husband. Montesinos interprets dona Blanca as a woman de desmesurado orgullo, combinado en ella con un feroz fanatismo religiose, todo le cual no pude impedir que incurriera en adulterio con el Comendador cuando convivian en Lima. (131) Rupe describes El Comendador Mendoza as a "retrate psicelogico de dos fuertes persenajes enfrentados con un case de conciencia" (67), an interpretation which I believe to be false. It is significant that den Fadrique makes no attempt to confront his transgressions, while presentation of dona Blanca's interior monologues is minimal. We read, instead, about the results of her guilty conscience. After a lengthy introduction in which the reader learns about Fadrique's precocious childhood and his 66 mischievous nature, she/he becomes privy to Fadrique's unique brand of religiosity. While serving Spain in Peru, he was horrified by the atrocities committed against the natives, and learned to abhor "actos que produzcan dolor" as well as "el fervor religiose y guerrero" (OC 1: 374). Patriarchal critics have found it convenient to match this sincere concern for others with dona Blanca's selfish stubbornness, dismissing her as wrong and elevating him to hero. The author's clever choice of biographical background sets the stage for his portrayal of don Fadrique de Mendoza as a worldly, but wise gentleman of fifty who is noble, generous and kind. him. His travels have matured and tamed Before arriving, he writes to his good friend padre Jacinto, "Entonces [during his youth] estaba yo cerril; pero ya usted se hara cargo de que me he pulido bastante peregrinando por esos mundos" (OC 1: 375). With no attempt at subtlety, readers are shown that Fadrique was once a womanizer who, nonetheless, sets high standards for the type of woman he would marry. He has remained single, he writes to padre Jacinto, because he has not found anyone worth marrying: "En este punto he sido poco feliz. No he hallado mas que 67 mujeres ligeras casquivanas, frivolas y sin alma" (OC 1: 376). Returning to Villalegre, the "ilustre comendador Mendoza" is given a hero's welcome. Soon, Fadrique learns from his niece Lucia that her good friend Clara (who is incidentally his daughter) is enamored of a music student who veils his affections in love songs about fictitious lovers. Fadrique is enraged upon discovering that Clara's mother intends to marry her to the aged Casimiro, (a childhood rival) rather than allowing love to take its course with the young student. He does not have to speculate long on the motive behind this arrangement. Casimiro is Valentin's (Blanca's husband) only heir, and Blanca knows only too well that her daughter is not her husband's rightful heir. Most conveniently, one may now collude with Fadrique against Blanca as we read, El punto final de las meditaciones de don Fadrique era siempre el mismo, por cuantas sendas y rodeos tratase de llegar a el. No queria a Clara poseedora de lo que le constaba que no era suyo; no la queria mujer de don Casimiro; no la queria monja tampoco, y no queria dar escandalo ni amargar la vida de don Valentin con afrentoso desengano. Era, pues, indispensable que el fuese el liberatador, el rescatador de Clarita. (OC 1: 418) Don Fadrique has much in common with other male characters in Valera's novels and with the author himself. He has, like padre Enrique in Dona Luz, traveled far from his home, but returns to find himself 68 welcomed, nurtured, and respected. Like don Pedro in Pepita Jimenez, he has experienced the pleasures of many women, but remains unmarried at fifty. Bravo- Villasante notes the autobiographical nature of El Comendador Mendoza saying that el retorno de don Fadrique Lopez de Mendoza a su pueblo es semejante al de Valera a Cabra y Dona Mencia, y el matrimonio final del Comendador, que tiene cincuenta anos, con Sofia [sic] de dieciocho, es fiel reflejo de su caso personal. (Vida. 157) His friendship and collusion with padre Jacinto against dona Blanca reaffirms patriarchal values as the two men share privileged and private information in a brotherhood of camaraderie where women are always excluded and unwelcome. Mendoza comments to Jacinto who "tocaba en los setenta anos" that he has come to consult with him about "nada menos que de un caso de conciencia" (OC 1: 3 09), and we might believe that he is sorry for having fathered a child which, until recently, he had not seen nor acknowledged in any way. Mendoza has not re-examined his past actions. Unlike a woman going to her priest/confessor about a similar subject, he has no remorse, expects no condemnation. On the contrary, the two men conspire to sabotage dona Blanca's plans, mutually detailing all her faults and self-serving religious fanaticism. Upon learning the circumstances which motivate Blanca's interest in 69 marrying Clara to Casimiro, the priest in whom Blanca had confided for years says of her "jsi es un erizo! Yo . . . , perdoneme su ausencia . . ., no la creia impecable, pero no la creia capaz de pecar por amor" (OC 1: 404). Much like her sisters in Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz, Blanca finds herself in a struggle with a priest. In this case, however, she is a woman unaware of the conspiring of two men except through a conveniently stereotyped representation. Her own "female intuition" causes her to question padre Jacinto until he admits that he has received privileged information, not as a result of prayerful meditation, but rather as a tip-off from Blanca's sworn enemy, don Fadrique. The two men embark on a course of action which indeed changes Blanca's destiny, but also supports the masculine hierarchy. She has no place in the narrative but Other—other than good, i.e., evil, conniving, and fanatically religious. Toril Moi directs attention to the fact that the binary oppositions listed by Helene Cixous in Le Jeune nee (Cixous and Clement 1975) are "heavily imbricated in the patriarchal value system" because "each opposition can be analyzed as a hierarchy where the 'feminine' side is always seen as the negative, powerless stance" (211). Careful observation of 70 the way dona Blanca is subjectively depicted points to the fact that the oppositions she portrays in El Comendador Mendoza are correspondingly powerless and negative. Viewed in terms of every meaningful rela- tionship, Blanca is defeated: to her husband Valentin she is overbearing; to her daughter Clara she is coldhearted; padre Jacinto, her priest, avers "harto se yo quien es dona Blanca" and proceeds to debase her to another parishioner; and to her former lover Fadrique she is "una mujer exaltada por el fanatismo religiose." Just as she was once duped by his don Juan charms, she is now the target of his inflated, if somewhat tardy, sense of justice concerning their daughter Clara. Blanca reigns as a shrew. Dona Clearly, Valera sets her up in binary opposition inherent to the weak don Valentin: Don Valentin, timido y pacifico, enamorado de su mujer en los primeros anos de matrimonio, y lleno despues de consideracion hacia ella, no se atrevia a chistar en su presencia, si ella no le mandaba que hablase. (OC 1: 389) Blanca, on the other hand, is constructed as domineering and overbearing, a kind of female ruler imbued with what most readers of Valera's day would agree should be masculine traits: en su casa, dona Blanca es quien lo decide todo. Ella manda y los demas obedecen. No se atreven a respirar sin su licencia. . . . pero, a pesar de tantas virtudes y excelentes prendas, nada tiene de amable. Antes al contrario, es terrible. (OC 1: 388) 71 Gonzalez Lopez shows sympathy for the "mistreated" don Valentin terming this henpecked husband hecho un cordero de obediencia, empaquetado en la nocion de su deber como vigia de las Pandectas, venia a ser un valor subalterno, como hay muchos, junto a la prestancia, la severidad y el orgullo fan^tico de la esposa. (164) As a mother, dona Blanca fails also by most maleoriented standards. Montesinos emphasizes that her religion and her guilt have distorted her motherly instincts: "en su espiritu, amor y odio andan mezclados, y de extrana manera, pues la preocupacion religiosa no le deja saber donde empiezan o acaban el odio y el amor" (134). has no motherly Arias Abad deplores her, saying she (emphasis mine) instinct: Para que una madre sepa educar le basta con su instinto y con su amor. Dona Blanca no tenia ni uno ni otro. Por eso, de la educacion de su hija, pretendio hacer un negocio. (107) Her daughter's speech, fraught with melodramatic resignation to suffering, encourages all readers to concur with Abad's conclusion: aun siendo tan nina, soy una miserable pecadora y bastante tarea tengo con llorar mis locuras y apaciguar la tempestad de encontrados sentimientos que me destrozan el pecho. . . . Estoy apuradisima. No tengo a nadie a quien confiar mis cosas, con quien desahogar mis penas, a quien pedir consejo y remedio. (OC 1: 393) Padre Jacinto neither chastises Fadrique for his sins, nor has any patience with his longtime friend and 72 supporter, dona Blanca. The narrator indicates that "el pobre fraile estaba sofocado, rojo hasta las orejas" (OC 1: 412) in dona Blanca's presence and describes her countenance in animal imagery, "no dejo percibir a ojos tan linces como los de su interlocutora" (OC 1: 410). When the priest tries to dissuade her from the arranged marriage with Casimiro, Blanca responds to padre Jacinto in a stirring denial of female passion: La mujer no ha venido al mundo para su deleite y para satisfaccion de su voluntad y de su apetito, sino para servir a Dios, en esta vida temporal, a fin de gozarle en la eterna. . . . [P]ero aun es mejor casarse sin quemarse a fin de ser la fiel companera de un varon justo y fundar o perpetuar con el una familia cristiana, ejemplar y piadosa. Este concepto puro, cristiano y honestisimo del matrimonio no es facil de realizar; mas para eso he educado yo tan severamente a Clarita; para que con la gracia de Dios tenga la gloria de realizarlo, en vez de buscar en el casamiento un medio de hacer licito y tolerable el logro de mal regidos deseos y de impuras pasiones. (OC 1: 414) The most blatant discrepancy in representation lies, however, in the way don Fadrique and Blanca are contrasted. He is always good and altruistically motivated while she is selfish and fanatically driven. His plans to reconfigure the wealth are wise and constructive while hers are ill-conceived and destructive. Even his marriage to Lucia at the novel's end is portrayed as tender and filled with bliss while hers 73 with Valentin is symbolized by the description of her husband's degenerated state before her death: [P]orque no hay cosa que envejezca y arruine m^s el brio y la fortaleza voluntaria y espantosa, a que por raro misterio de la voluntad se someten muchos, cediendo a la persistencia endemoniada de sus mujeres. (OC 1: 390) After Blanca dies, we read that Valentin experienced "cierto alivio, cierto desahogo, cierto infame deleite en su alma, como si le quitaran un enorme peso de encima, como si le libertaran de la esclavitud" (OC 1: 448). The novelist's phallocentric bias is clear when Fadrique's superior moral representation is juxtaposed with dona Blanca's religious fanaticism as he maintains that "una mujer exaltada por el fanatismo religiose puede hacerse insufrible" (OC 1: 435). Even her argument that his sin was that of looking only for "satisfaccion de un capricho, un gece facil, un triunfo de amor propio" (OC 1: 435) fails to compensate for her lack of motherly love when compared to the imagery inherent in the touching scene at the "Nacimiento," the forest area near the source of a river where the young people and Fadrique enjoy a leisurely afternoon. Here the text describes a symbolic "birth" of (tardy) fatherly love, with the blessing in which Fadrique "alzo las manos come para bendecir a la muchacha, temo 74 SU cabeza entre ellas y le dio en la frente un beso" (OC 1: 387). Of course it is easy for Fadrique to have a moment of "love" or inspiration in this idyllic scene of beauty where his past transgressions are unknown and where complying with his daughter's wishes makes him feel like a hero. It is less easy to maintain that same sentiment over a lifetime filled as it always is between parents and children with disagreements and conflicting wills. Dona Blanca's sacrifice of a lifetime is marginalized as unimportant by comparison with one afternoon Fadrique shares with Clara in the countryside. Gender bias imbues Valera's scene of a mother who has devoted her life to a child in the absence of its biological father, and Paul Smith claims that dona Blanca "exemplifies a human type frequently encountered in Valera's novels: the obsessed person" (Smith 1968, 8 07) while Arias Abad argues that "la unica vez que hemes viste a Dona Blanca en su verdadero papel de madre, fue en su agonia" (95) likewise viewing her morality as inferior to Fadrique's. Gonzalez Lopez convicts dona Blanca of irresponsibility and loose morals (166) and of being one who makes an "escude de su fanatismo" (170). This same critic pointedly 75 elevates Fadrique to a position of superiority at the expense of the dying Blanca: El Comendador fue el gran senor que se comporto como tal. Tuvo dignidad para todos, incluso para la culpable (emphasis mine). El Destine se valio de el para salvar a Clarita de su naufragio y permitio, come se ha dicho antes, que los amagos de lucidez que Dona Blanca tuvo en el memento preagonice los aprevechara para descorrer el velo de su pasado y mostrarlo como era. (OC 1: 110) Like a modern day rape victim judged guilty by the masculine ideology which argues that a woman who does not die in the process of her attack is somehow equally responsible for the crime perpetrated against her, dona Clara is culpable because she gave in to Fadrique's desires as if she forced him to seduce her. When Charnon-Deutsch discusses Valera's female representation, hers is a more gender-conscious interpretation. She reminds us that "as in all other works of the period, this religious fanaticism, although tolerated, is regarded as deviant feminine behavior" (22), and that "women who are central to the story and who exhibit even slight masculine tendencies either undergo a change of character by novel's end or are punished in some form befitting their extravagance" (21). In ether words, it is acceptable for the male to "go off the deep end" (morally), but strictly unacceptable for the female to act the same way. This 76 double standard regarding sexual activity holds no surprises for today's female readers who have come to expect it. DeCoster makes us aware that dona Blanca dominates the action in the novel because "she is ever present, constantly in everyone's mind, the motivating force behind every conversation and action" (Valera 1974, 115). Clara, on the other hand, is a stereotype. What is more significant is that she is a pawn in the narrative, definitely not a subject but an object for all. Her part is limited to being an obedient daughter to Blanca and a loving one to Fadrique. Rupe gees se far as to say that "Clara no existe para su madre como una persona independiente, con sus propias caracteristicas" (74). Clara exists neither for her mother, nor for critics generally, like Montesinos who argues: Cuando figuras de ninas Candidas, que parecen sacadas de cuentos de hadas, aparecen en novelas, suelen resultar tipos berresos y aun muy falses, traides come un elemento de la fdbula que permite equilibrar la economia del relate, y movides por tanto segun las reglas de un juego arbitrario: tal la Clarita de El Comendador Mendoza. (207) In an intriguing study of female psychological problems, Phyllis Chesler uses myth to provide models for varying female behaviors, especially pathological ones. Her research suggests an avenue for understanding Clara's image in El Comendador Mendoza: 77 Most women are glassed into infancy, and perhaps into some forms of madness, by an unmet need for maternal nurturance. Thus, female children turn to their fathers for physical affection, nurturance, or pleasurable emotional intensity—a turning that is . . . predicated on the female's (his daughter's) innocence, helplessness, youthfulness, and monogamous idolatry. (19) Clara's inability to support wholeheartedly her mother's wishes for her, coupled with her mysterious and unexplainable attraction to Fadrique drives her to the edge of madness. She retreats further and further both from society and from narrative space in a recreation of the nineteenth-century romantic heroine who pines away for her lover, usually to be rescued tee late for happiness. Valera permutates this image insofar as Clara is destined to be rescued from her self-imposed reclusion by the "knight in shining armor" of this work: her father don Fadrique. With her mother dead and the guilty secret of the earlier love tryst revealed, Clara can reciprocate Fadrique's parental love with complete freedom. Consistent with masculine ideology, the text proposes that all Clara's problems are solved new that she is free to marry her "prince." If Clara is the perfect daughter figure, Lucia qualifies as the perfect nineteenth-century "angel." Everything about her is sweetness, gingerly laced with "typical" feminine characteristics: she is nosy, 78 talkative, and self-sacrificing. Her future union with Fadrique is foreshadowed early in the story when he asks her if the "viejo rabad^n" of which the poet sings is he. She serves as a faithful "go-between" when needed, and as an impatient, but willing accomplice to her future husband's meddling schemes. Lucia's place is se limited that she supplements the narrative in only a token way. Her narrative voice even glorifies the male representation, describing Fadrique in a way which further degrades Blanca, admiraba en su tio la discrecion, la nobleza de car^cter, el saber y la elegancia natural del perte y de los modales. Le encontraba hermoso, de varenil hermosura, y no le parecia posible hubiese otro tal hombre come el en todo el mundo. (OC 1: 451) Her marriage to the fifty-year-eld Comendador will be exceeded in marital bliss only by another of its same ilk, as the discussion of Juanita la Larga will demonstrate. Juanita la Larga The novelistic universe of Juanita la Larga is the creation of an aging and nearly sightless don Juan Valera. In 1895, at seventy-one years of age he dic- tated what Entrambasaguas deems to be "la novela mas pura, m^s tecnicamente, [sic] de todas las de Valera" (516) . Its light-hearted portrayal of life in a city 79 whose name means happy is certainly to be expected. Edith Fishtine argues that "if the novelist has any aim ether than that of creating something beautiful for beauty's sake, it is not to make his reader better or wiser, only happier" (36). Marcus affirms that The effect of Valera's humor, irony, wit, and restraint is to reinforce the atmosphere of popular realism in nineteenth-century country towns by allowing the inhabitants of Villalegre to demonstrate convincingly and in an entertaining way that contemporary issues and trends of thought did affect the daily life of Spaniards of various social classes and intellectual levels and were discussed at tertulias. (458) Romero Mendoza sees celestinesque and picaresque elements portrayed in a sympathetic way (203), and Paul Smith reminds us that "humour relies on a community of like-minded persons to whom it is directed" (Smith 1989, 86). Jaime Vidal Alcover emphasizes that Juanita la Larga "es una narracion contada con el amor que ha dejado en nuestro espiritu, como un revestimiento acolchado que suavizara siempre las tempestades interlores, una infancia feliz" (xii). Although the Galdosian satire is missing in Juanita la Larga, the narrative is replete with innuendos as well as direct assaults on the status quo. Valera's dedication proclaims that the work is a realistic representation, but when compared 80 to his other novels, especially those in the "second" novelistic period, there appears to be a noticeable and intentional spooning effect—no soul searching about life or love issues, no philosophical questioning about the religious experience, no introspection. Yet many of Valera's favorite motifs attest his novelistic genius at work. The important letter, the pious female, and the ever-present priest are among the most obvious of these motifs. In El Comendador Mendoza, the "casuistic problem brought about by religious fanaticism" (DeCoster 1974, 13 3) immediately draws our attention to Valera's representation of dona Blanca as an antipathetic character. To discover the "main" character in Juanita la Larga, however, it is necessary to deconstruct the narrative to determine where power lies. Without doubt, the familiar triangle, so favored by Valera in his other novels, is present in this plot, too. Here we have the young Juanita, the aging don Paco, and his married and quite prolific daughter dona In^s. The text deceptively positions Juanita in the role of female protagonist with don Paco playing the part of antagonist. What is actually depicted, but cleverly dis- guised, is the male hegemony inherent in the conflict. Paco, an aging civil servant, dependent on an 81 established political boss, falls in love with this vivacious young woman whose background and social position is quite questionable. The courtship ritual which ensues appears to be more about acceptable matches between different social classes than it is about honoring one's own feelings and trusting one's own heart when choosing a spouse. The relationship between Juanita and don Paco is pushed further and further to the edge of the narration as the conflict between dona Ines and Juanita grows in importance. What is unfortunate about the trajectory of affairs is that textual male ideology betrays both women. Dona Ines, like dona Blanca in El Comendador Mendoza, is represented as a vicious, pretentious, falsely pious woman who is at first jealous and later lives vicariously as she observes her younger "rival," Juanita. Juanita, who might be considered by some to be the heroine of the novel (as implied by the title), is little more than a type. She represents Valera's idea of the symbol of a social class stripped of dignity by a political and social hierarchy. Because of her marginalized state, Juanita's new position as well as her "happy" marriage is bought at the price of her own dignity and her absolute rejection of her own feelings and needs. 82 Entrambasaguas recognizes that "Villalegre . . . es una fusion de Cabra y Dona Mencia, cuyas costumbres y gentes conoce don Juan desde nino y ha remozado continuamente, en el recuerdo, con sus estancias all^" (516) , and many have noted the autobiographical similarity in the theme of love between an older man and younger woman. Manuel Bermejo Marcos points out that "el don Paco de Juanita la Larga como el heroe del El Comendador Mendoza tienen algo mas que unos pocos puntos comunes con el car^cter de los anos de madurez de don Juan" (92). In a conference honoring their favorite son/author held in Dona Mencia in 1989, several papers concerning Dona Mencia in the nineteenth century as well as geneology of the Valera-Alcala family were presented. The content of these works con- firms the authenticity of many character types and local customs of the age. Yet, Luis Jimenez Martos explored at the same conference a point which I believe has significant bearing on Valera's theme in Juanita la Larga: Aguanto [don Juan] muy bien el tipo y los propios fracases: no ser poeta, no ser feliz en su matrimonio, no ser rice (la obsesion per el dinero le acempanaria siempre), no ser labrador, aunque peseyera tierras. (29) These observations are pertinent only se long as we remember that the conflict exemplified between dona 83 Ines and Juanita may well have symbolized the internal conflict the author felt most of his life. Francisco Caudet writes in an introduction to a 1982 edition of Juanita la Larga that "los persenajes que dominan el escenario son las 'fuerzas vivas' de Villalegre y de ellas depende la 'alegria' de los demas" (xi). I would argue that the "fuerzas vivas" of the novelistic universe are, in addition, dominated by a male author schooled in rules of patriarchal supremacy. German Gullon, discussing narrative technique used during the nineteenth century, warns about the power of the narrator and the danger of identifying an author with the narrator: El resultado de esta creencia [que la obra era copia exacta de la realidad] es la incorporacion del autor a la novela, la dramatizacion del narrador, irresistiblemente inclinado a comentar lo que sucede, subrayando lo que los persenajes dicen o lo que el mismo cuenta, para destacar una insinuacion, un silencio, una posibilidad. (151) With this in mind, it is impossible to miss the binary oppositions set in motion by the representation of dona Ines. She, like dona Blanca, is a scapegoat on the altar of male domination. DeCoster proposes that dona Blanca was admirable, if somewhat austere and extreme, but that dona Ines is "domineering and hypocritical" (Valera. 136). He reminds us that Ines not only 84 runs everybody's business, deciding what trade young people are to follow, arranging marriages and even naming babies, but that she also exploits Juanita (136) . I remind readers that she, like a good actress, plays out well her designated role in the pages of Juanita la Larga^ and her representation creates the contrast necessary for the male-slanted consciousness. The language used to describe dona Ines fits the author's purpose. When she met her husband, don Alvaro Rold^n, the text states that "ella habia cautivar la voluntad logrado [emphasis mine] del m^s ilustre caballero del pueblo" (OC 1: 533) . The local cacique, don Andres Ruble, who frequents the tertulia of Ines, is shown to be "embobado con el afable trato de ella y cautivo [emphasis mine] de su discrecion, de su hermosura" (OC 1: 533). When don Paco realizes that he is becoming interested in Juanita, he is terrified by the idea of marriage because su hija, la senora dona Ines, le inspiraba un entranable carino, mezclade de terror, y porque ella era tan imperiosa como brava, y sin duda se pondria hecha una furia del Averne si su padre le diese madrastra, sobre todo de tan ruin posicion. (OC 1: 539) Dona Ines's authority ever the local priest seems false and contrived when compared to that of Blanca in El Comendador Mendoza. Caudet considers that "Den 85 Anselmo, cuando desde el pulpito y siguiendo las instruccienes de dona Ines condena a Juanita, nos hace pensar en el den Inecencio de Dona Perfecta" (xii). Galdos used caricature in extreme situations to prove his social point. The narrator of Juanita la Larga suggests that Ines, like dona Perfecta, maintained absolute power over the religious establishment, noting that "era evidentisimo que dona Ines le tenia sujeto a sus capriches y que aplastaria con todo su peso a quien ella quisiese" (OC 1: 539). In order to intensify the social difference between dona Ines and Juanita, Valera tells us that "Dona Ines Lopez de Roldan distaba mucho de ser una lugarena vulgar y adocenada. Era, por el contrario, distinguidisima" (OC 1: 545). She has taken over the administration of her house and land as well, for she "suavemente habia despojado a su marido por no considerarle capaz" (OC 1: 546). Actually, Ines is that kind of "bossy" (and efficient) female that "macho" types love to hate. Her unforgivable sin (according to representation in this narrative) is supplanting her inept husband. The text represents dona Ines most vilely in the church scene when Juanita enters, glowing in the splendor of her new silk dress, the material for which was a generous gift from don Paco: 86 Apenas se daba cuenta la senora de Roldan del arte o de la adivinacion con que una chicuela que se habia criado entre pilleria andrajosa y casi en medio de la calle, como vaca sin cencerro, se habia hecho sujeto capaz de tan repentina elegancia. (OC 1: 558) After padre Anselmo's sermon "contra el feroz empeno que muestran hoy tantas personas por salir de su clase y elevarse sin merito suficiente" (OC 1: 560), the text succeeds in pitting the two women against each other. Juanita vows vengeance. Although dona Ines's character seems well-defined along traditional female roles—wife, mother, good church member—one aspect of the text is ambiguous. When Juanita comes to work in her home, the young woman becomes a confidante to Ines. This fact, in and of itself, is not so strange, given Juanita's determination to ingratiate herself to the older woman. But, there within the privacy of Ines's home, we are told that she stares at Juanita's form with something akin to lust: "la admirable perfeccion de toda aquella sana y virginal estructura" (OC 1: 579). Be it lust or envy, Ines's position is perfect for manipulation. Later, she flatters Juanita saying that a peasant laborer is unworthy of her body, and warns her not to fall into a temptation of the flesh in a moment of weak will. She further poses the rhetorical question, ^Como entregar tanto tesoro a quien seria incapaz de comprenderlo y de saber lo que 87 vale? En mi sentir, seria locura semejante a la de echar ramilletes de flores en vez de paja o cebada en el pesebre del mulo o a la de derramar perlas en la pocilga del marrano en vez de un celemi de bellotas. (OC 1: 579) Shortly thereafter, Ines persuades Juanita that she is suited for the most precious of vocations, urging her to enter a convent so that she may dedicate her body to God. The subtle use of sexual imagery and flattery befitting lovers—not a matronly woman—casts some doubt on Valera's choice of language and metaphors in this scene, but it may well reflect the influence on Juan Valera of the mystics, especially San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa and Fray Luis de Leon who apply erotic images to religious union. Ellis calls Juanita the "most detailed portrait of a woman" (258) painted by Valera, while Arias Abad believes that "todo en ella [era] puramente instintivo" (193) . For her robust characterization, Romero Mendoza interprets Juanita as "una amazona injerta en lugarena [que] no se arredra ni amilana ante sus enemigos" (203) . I believe that she is a foil who symbolizes in language, clothes and demeanor a social position and a class conflict. Roxanne Marcus's study of life represented in Valera's novels warns that Juanita's conflict with the social order of Villalegre is utilized by Valera to register the social and political importance of the cacique and of other members of the new 88 middle and upper class as well as to draw attention to the class mentality that they personify in their denigration and exploitation of lower class types. (458) Juanita's name, itself, is a derogatory one and her description is fraught with masculine imagery: Algo de la sangre belicosa del oficial de Caballeria [her father] se habia infundido en ella, y la crianza libre y hombruna [sic] que habia recibido, habia desarrollado su agilidad y sus brios. Cuando andaba tenia un aire marcial a par que gracioso; corria como un gamo; tiraba piedras con tanto tino que mataba los gorriones, y de un brinco se plantaba sobre el lomo del mulo m^s resabiado o del potro mas cerril. . . . [H]acia trotar y galopar a la bestia, espoleandola con los talones o azotandola con el extreme del ronzal o de la jaquima, cuando la tenia y no iba en pele sin brida ni rienda de ninguna clase. (OC 1: 536) This young woman is a tomboy, which to Victorians was a dangerous thing and sure to bode a bad end. There is even some hint of lesbian tendencies in Valera's choice of words like "aire marcial," and "game." However, like a good working-class woman, Juanita, even at sixteen, was the most able seamstress (a talent befitting a woman) in Villalegre. Raised among the laboring class, she has as a friend, the rascal Antenuelo who, along with don Paco, frequents the tertulia in her heme. She is a woman on a pedestal to the young sen of the blacksmith who, according to Gonzalez Lopez, sees in her both "un idolo y 89 or^culo" (228). Valera describes Juanita's physical body with his classic sense of good taste, but the sexual undertones of his descriptions of this virginal female are clear: En Villalegre se gastaban corses. . . pero la indomita Juanita nunca quiso meterse en semejante apretura ni llevar aquel cilicie que para nada necesitaba ella, y que entendia que hubiera desfigurado su cuerpo. Solo llevaba, entre el ligero vestido de percal y sobre la camisa y enaguas blancas, un justillo o corpino, sin hierros ni ballenas; zona que bastaba a cenir la estrecha y virginal cintura, dejando libre lo demas, que dereche y firme no habia menester de sesten ni apoyo. (OC 1: 545) This description heightens the reader's awareness of the "hechizo" the youthful female body had for an aging "don Juan." Watching this figure trip by on her way to the gathering place by the well, don Pace begins to take possession. First he will suggest that she net frequent the well, then he will "dress her in silks"; later he will propose to her in a letter; and finally, by novel's end, he will possess her. The space allowed Juanita in the narrative begins to constrict when she stops her trips to the well, but even before this time she has been marginalized by her social standing in the community. As indicated by the narrative en the evening of the paseo through the feria, Juanita fits nowhere: El nacimiento ilegitimo de Juanita hacia mayor este aislamiento. Juanita no tenia ya 90 una amiga. Entre los mozos, como habia desdenado a muchos, los pebres no se le acercaban por ofendidos o por timidos, y los ricachos, que si ella hubiera sido f^cil hubieran porfiado por visitarla en casa, temian desconcharse o rebajarse acompan^ndola en publico. (OC 1: 553) On the celebration day the shamed and embarrassed Juanita blushes visibly and suppresses her tears while still in church, which contrasts with the violent later image of Juanita as an angry animal: "Juanita paseaba, yende y velviendo a largos pases en su salita, como leona en su jaula" (OC 1: 561) . Paul Smith argues that women are unable to escape the gendered position allotted them by the system of fashion: the man who exhibits new clothing is relatively invisible; the woman who does so is highly conspicuous, flagrantly significant. (Smith 1989, 92) This would explain why Juanita is condemned in her new silk clothing while don Pace's new jacket goes unnoticed. This incident is just the beginning of Juanita's descent as a human and as a woman. Before the story ends, Juanita becomes a handservant to the woman who caused her so much grief, the target of sexual harassment by the local cacique, and even believes herself to blame when don Paco goes on his cervantine wanderings and stays gone so long that people begin to fear him dead. 91 After her shameful humiliation in church, Juanita withdraws to complete solitude, a position in which many women in Valera's novels find themselves. As if in sympathy, the narrator tells us, "Fue lo mSs duro para ella el tener que vivir, sobre todo al principio, en soledad completa" (OC 1: 573). Everyone shuns her equally for "la humilde posicion de su madre como por su ilegitimo nacimiento y por la mala fama que le habian dado en el lugar, y que entre todos sus habitantes cundia" (OC 1: 573). Even her old friend Antonuelo believes the worst of Juanita, leaving her alone and saddened by his reactions. The overwhelming evidence in the text suggests that Juanita, little by little, succumbs. If there is any doubt of Valera's feelings on the matter and his authorial presence in the text, it can be assuaged by the following passage of proverb used to support Juanita's feelings about don Paco: "Lo que no quieras comer, dejalo cocer; pero apenas hay hembra que cumpla con tal percepto cuando se aplica a cosa de amores" (OC 1: 584). Don Paco disappears into the countryside, wonders about life, and stumbles on a robbery where he can be a hero. Back in the village, everyone worries about don Paco, especially Juanita. However, there is no 92 suggestion that Paco feels remorse for the difficult emotional straits in which he placed Juanita: despite his despair, he never stops eating! Juanita, on the other hand, accepts responsibility for his disappearance, saying "Yo lo atraje, yo lo provoque, yo le trastorne el juicio, y si me falto al respeto, hizo lo que yo merecia" (OC 1: 588). How familiar this kind of reasoning sounds in light of twentieth-century social consciousness. Yet, when this novel was written, social mores concerning the culpability of anyone, especially women, for other people's feelings was just beginning to change. Paul Smith's cogent article on Juanita la Larga points out Juanita's lack of autonomy, noting that "as Juanita gains independence, the repressed father (a soldier who fell in battle) keeps returning in the insistent references to a 'martial' blood and spirit" (Smith 1989, 92). Her father's name is "conspicuous by its absence." The definite article in Juanita's cognomen is what Smith insists is a "fantasy of female autonomy" (92). When don Paco has returned safe and sound, Juanita plans to recover her reputation and self-respect. Ironically, the impromptu skit she plans actually degrades her as a woman. She tells dona Ines that she 93 is not a lamb, but a lion and approaches the older woman "mirandola con ojos felinos, cuya luz roja parecia mezcla de fuego y de sangre" (OC 1: 620); then in a staged meeting with don Andres, by straddling his body and pinning him to the floor, she forces him physically to "repent" and "respect" her. Arias Abad contends that Juanita never lost her spirit, arguing that "fueron los demas los que se amoldaron al suyo" (227). I assert that Juanita, in fact, did lose, at least by contemporary standards. On this point, the text reflects a modern view in which Juan Valera was somewhat ahead of his time. In one of her sleepless nights, Juanita ponders, Su orgullo, en su sentir humillado, le heria el corazon y no la dejaba dormir. ^Conque no podria ella, por si misma y libre, hacerse respetar? £,Seria menester acudir a don Paco para que la defendiera comprometiendose? £,Tendria razon dona Ines en aconsejarle que fuese monja? £,Eran tan viles sus antecedentes que no podria ella ser estimada y acatada sino bajo la proteccion y tutela de un hombre generoso que le tendiese la mano y la sacase del fango en que, al parecer, habia vivido? (OC 1: 617) Juanita is faced with the same old patriarchal option for "respectable" women—marriage or the convent. doesn't manage to find another alternative. She Her dream of autonomy outside of marriage is rare in a feminine representation of the nineteenth century. But 94 Bravo-Villasante, writing today, recognizes that si Juanita se hace heredera de la m^s pura tradicion literaria de caracteres femeninos, al mismo tiempo Valera, como en otras muchas cosas, se adelanta a su epoca para dar el canon femenino. Una vez mas puede decirse que con la invencion de Juanita la Larga, Valera ha creado un tipo de mujer que hoy nos gusta por su modernidad. (Bravo-Villsante 1989, 226) Romero Mendoza calls Juanita a woman "de carne y hueso," claiming that Valera "no ha frustrado ahora la realidad; la ha embellecido" (204), while Jimenez Fraud says that she is "el unico personaje que tiene fuerza ascendente" (207) in the novel because she triumphs against all odds. Finally Smith argues that by the end of the novel most of the male characters have suffered symbolic castration: the haughty Andres is humbled; the lecherous aristocrat don Alvaro reduced to imbecility; the Satanic chemist don Policarpo has had his 'electric' fingernail cut by his new wife. (Smith 1989, 98) While all these opinions may be defensible, none acknowledges Juanita's role as social and feminine foil. Despite Arias's claim that Juanita resists assimilation into the "natural" order on the terms laid out by the established social hierarchy, she does become a part of a natural order ruled by male hegemony. This is the natural order in Valera's novels, for Charnon-Deutsch reminds us that in his writing. 95 women typically marry or fall in love with older men who have seen enough of the world and want to settle down with a high-spirited (but malleable) female companion who might not seem, at first, to be the most suitable choice for a bride. (34) What is apropos to both Juanita la Larga and El Comendador Mendoza is Katherine Green's observation of what happens in courtship novels: one should remember that although these novels generally concluded with obligatory weddings and a foreshadowing of conjugal bliss, their minor characters alone—women won with promises, ruined, and abandoned, wives turned shrews—would have sufficed as a warning about how uncommon the ideal domestic relationship was in real life. (53) In El Comendador Mendoza there are two happy marriages, but both are purchased at the expense of one that had always been unhappy. In Juanita la Larga, Valera leaves no doubt about the unhappiness experienced by both dona Ines and Juanita's own mother Juana, who incidentally never remarried, found another mate, nor bore another child. Conclusion In any work of art the nature of stereotypes (be they male or female) varies according to the demands of composition. In El Comendador Mendoza and Juanita la Larga. there exist telling aspects of "masculine 96 fantasy" and ideology. As was true in Pepita Jimenez, both works end in what amounts to a resolution for the masculine ideal of the status quo. The nagging, obsessed, over-domineering Clara (who incidentally has been that way all her life according to Fadrique's evaluation of her character during his earlier experience with her) is eliminated from the narrative in El Comendador Mendoza. Consequently, her husband and her daughter live more peaceful lives, and she has been justly punished for straying from proper behavior for women. Three "happy" marriages attest to the fact that masculine ideology chooses that state as the perfect one for women. By novel's end in Juanita la Larga, Juanita is on her way to respectability both morally and socially because of her marriage to don Paco. Even Ines with her meddling nature, which is not as vicious as was Clara's, suffers chastisement. At work as well is the masculine fantasy of the aging male's sexual rejuvenation through his relationship with a young woman. Valera's ironic humor surfaces in both works, but does so invariably at the expense of a preposterous female representation in which the woman is ridiculed, degraded, or otherwise distorted to comply with masculine understanding of female stereotypes. Steeped as 97 he was in Spain's patriarchal culture, such representation is understandable, if not always forgivable, in don Juan Valera. CHAPTER IV WOMEN TREATED AS COMMODITY IN PASARSE DE LISTO AND GENIO Y FIGURA The courtship conventions present in Pasarse de listo and Genio v figura. different from those of the novels set in rural Andalucia, require transmutation of the feminine representations when imported to the cosmopolitan setting of these two novels. Even though we are no longer in an idyllic countryside surrounded by luxuriant foliage, making trips on horseback to country homes, the ambience of the courtship rituals prevails in Pasarse de listo and Genio v figura. In both works, however, the female journey from innocent maid to the sacred space of matrimony is mocked as the illusory perfect love relationship sought after by all Valera's main characters, both male and female, is challenged in a different way. Characteristic of Valera's pattern of authorial intrusion, the narrative representation of the female characters is distorted with generalizations about the psychological makeup of all women. Don Juan Valera even answers his contemporary critics who questioned his treatment of female characters. In a blunt authorial aside in Pasarse de listo. he defends, by name, Pepita Jimenez and dona Blanca, among others, 98 99 claiming that their characters are all necessary representations for a work of art. Although they are radically different in many ways, I propose that Pasarse de listo and Genio y figura share common ground in the distortion of the courtship ritual. This contruct restricts female rep- resentation to object in Pasarse de listo and has such dramatic cumulative effect on Rafaela in Genio v figura that she reacts in the only way she sees possible to purify her life: suicide. The suicides in both are another point of comparison (and contrast), perhaps relating the two on "moral grounds," especially because women seem to bear the blame. Separated in publication time by about twenty years, these are the only novelistic examples of Valera's use of urban environment except for the brief time in which Madrid is the setting for Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino. The author titillates the reader's imagination with references to love trysts between an unmarried count and a married woman in Pasarse de listo and edenic orgies in Genio v figura. offering glimpses into female bedrooms which have no pictures of Christ hanging near the bed. Yet these are not the city scenes of a Galdos novel in Pasarse de listo. and Rafaela of Genio y figura in no way resembles Sabel in Pardo Bazan's Los 100 Pazos de Ulloa. Neither stark realism nor exaggerated naturalism pervades the two novels. Valera's indifference concerning critical opinion of his overt references to illicit sex are surprising, however, considering the polemic which developed in regard to the morality or lack of it in Pepita Jimenez (Vidart 336352) . The courtship pattern is further complicated in Pasarse de listo and Genio y figura by the anxiety created in the tacit understanding concerning social boundaries between the rich and the poor. The occupa- tion of don Braulio Gonzalez in Pasarse de listo verges on the fringe of respectable, but the scorned social life his wife and sister-in-law keep in the cursi com- pany of Rosita is known to all Madrid and the reader as well. Despite her questionable beginnings, Rafaela's unavoidable denouement surprises no one who carefully notes the life she has carved out for herself. Finally, we should not miss the fact that the two works, unlike any of Valera's other novels, are titled not with a name, but with proverbs which bear remarkable similarity in meaning when considered in light of the social milieu. Pasarse de listo (to be too clever or too smart for one's own good) constitutes an ironic description of both don Braulio and his wife's misguided antics; Genio v figura. the beginning of the 101 phrase "genio y figura hasta la sepultura" (as you are born so you die), aptly describes the somewhat deterministic trajectory of Rafaela's life. Born illegitimate, she gives birth to an illegitimate daughter, and by most standards, dies no better than she was born. In the study of female representation in Pasarse de listo and Genio y figura which follows, I will show ways in which women in both works are coerced by a patriarchal ideology which treats their sexual selves as a kind of a commodity to be marketed for male consumption. In Pasarse de listo the two main female characters, Beatriz and Ines, leave home and participate in what amounts to a peacock-like parade on the streets and in the parlors of Madrid. There is little character development of these or the other women in the narrative, and the story ends with both women closed safely behind the doors of respectable marriages and with both bearing the blame for the suicide of the main male character, don Braulio. In Genio v figura. Rafaela is unmistakably the focus of a masculine moral code: the text shuffles her from one male liaison to another, and she feels less and less self-control and self-esteem. Even in death, the narrative places power over her in the hands of a man to whom she mails a letter containing the details of her debased state. 102 Pasarse de listo Critical literary histories of the early nineteenth century in Spain remind us that the reading public, comprised mainly of women, was reading "novelas morales" like those by Vicente Martinez Colomer, Antonio Valladores de Sotomayor, and Atanasio Cespedes y Monroy which always presented un tipo ideal de femina: sumisa, casta, sobre todo casta, religiosa y, hasta cierto punto, sentimental . . . en el sentido de sensible . . . en su odio y lucha contra el amorpasion. (Ferreras 20) What could have been more appealing to Valera's audience in 1877-1878, composed mostly of these same women, than a story about two women like themselves going into the streets of Madrid to find excitement for one and a suitable husband for the other. Blanco Aguinaga, Rodriguez Puertolas and Zavala's social history of the literature of Spain, points to Valera's bourgeois leanings as applied to his realistic literary tendencies. La literatura se convierte asi en el ambito ideal en que se resuelven las contradicciones e incoherencias sociales que caracterizan el ultimo tercio del XIX. Debemos tener presente que quien esto escribia era capaz de defender valerosamente el krausismo a la vez que afirmaba su catolicismo. (159) Valera piqued the interest of those readers willing to experience vicariously the adventures and 103 misadventures of Beatriz and her younger sister Ines in a series of installments which began to appear in El Campo in August of 1877 and ended in May of 1878. Notwithstanding this popular audience, Valera's contemporaries as well as twentieth-century critics denounce Pasarse de listo as weak compared to his other novels. DeCoster cites Revilla as saying that it should have been titled "Pasarse de tonto," and he, himself, calls it a mediocre work (DeCoster 1974, 120). Current critical interest in Valera has resulted in more broad-based studies like that of Thurston-Griswold which examines Valera's philosophy as exemplified in his entire production and hence gives more attention to the less popular Pasarse de listo. The notion of women who spent more than their husbands could afford is also found in Galdos (Miau. Misericordia) and is a form of undisguised misogyny. Yet, the biographical nature of this novel is indisputable if one considers Valera's own marital situation (Cartas intimas). Quoting Valera in a letter he wrote to Menendez y Pelayo in 1888, Alonso Calvo tells how the author warns about the perils of married life with a woman who dreams of being part of the "high life" (545). In numerous letters to his wife Dolores, Valera laments his financial situation and his 104 inability to support her in a way befitting her status (DeCoster and Sanchez). Like Dolores, Beatriz in Pasarse de listo. aspires to more than a "vida retirada" with her clerk husband, don Braulio. The text says that "su caracter alegre y su temprana juventud la excitaban al regocijo y la impulsaban a que tratara de distraerse y divertirse" and while she was not "despilfarrada," she, nevertheless "era, si, ambiciosa y amiga del lujo" (OC 1: 481). Female representation in Pasarse de listo is focused mainly on Beatriz and her sister Ines. Although Beatriz occupies more narrative space, Ines's character contributes significantly to my theory of Valera's objectification of women as a commodity. The story opens with a description of Spain's Jardines del Buen Retire, a public park where these of the cursi society (those with little money aspiring to high society) who stay in Madrid for the summer (instead of going somewhere more chic) gathered in a garden area and "giraba en torno del quiosco . . . dande vueltas, . . . como mulas de noria" (OC 1: 458). From an authorial vantage point reinforced at regular intervals throughout the novel, the narrator imposes judgment on the behavior of women in general and of the female characters in this novel in particular. The slur on their choice of dress for the strolls reads: 105 Para ir a pie a los Jardines, y, aunque se vaya en coche, para pasear luego a pie, es feisimo y sucio todo aquel aditamento de enagua blanca y de vestido que va arrastrando, llen^ndose de polvo, levant^ndolo y esparci^ndolo en el aire, y barriendo, por ultimo, cuanta inmundicia encuentra al paso. (OC 1: 458) The "hero" of the novel (Don Braulio is more an antihero than an hero) is the count of Alhedin, a virile ladies' man and perhaps Valera's ideal prototype of manhood: he hunts, rides, is good-looking, gracious, and a master in the art of winning women. Eyeing them from head to toe, he does not even have to see the face of the two sisters who stroll by him to know that "ambas tenian bonito cuerpo y movimientos airosos" (OC 1: 460). Here, in the early pages of this novel, Valera provides evidence that on the psychic level these women will be constructed and formed as objects. Ortega y Gasset, writing as early as 1941, declares what feminist critiques now enjoy noting: "Asi, en el orden erotico, es frecuente que el hombre forje a priori, como Chateaubriand, un fantdme d'amour, una imagen irreal de mujer, a la que dedica su entusiasmo" (14). John Berger's 1972 description of the way men see women also validates my theory: Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into 106 an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (47) Several pages are devoted to the count's inner monologue concerning how, when, and where to approach the women who have caught his eye in the Retire. He analyzes why the women might have been there, searches diligently, and questions discreetly until he finds a public employee who can provide him with all the details of the private lives of the women which he needs in order to pursue his quest. The courtship theme is never far from the center of the action, for while the count is busy planning his method of assault, Beatriz is at work convincing the princess-like blend Ines, who has all the features of a virgin nymph, about the importance of making herself available for viewing I Green's analysis of the female psyche in this game illustrates hew women in a narrative contribute to the masculine ideology: [E]pitemizing the distressed situation, . . . the woman, commodified within an exchange system, clearly invites the sympathy of identifactory readers. Depicting herself as the center of an invasive scopic attention, the heroine fixes her own eyes as though "sitting for (my) [a] picture. (139) Incited to improve her own social standing, Beatriz sees only two ways to accomplish that end: marshalling all her efforts into encouraging the less than ambitious don Braulio to aspiring to the position 107 of "ministro de Hacienda o, por lo menos, de director de Rentas Estancadas" or promoting a prestigious marital connection for Ines whom she saw as "un filon intacto aun, un minero riquisimo de todos los bienes, encumbramientos y prosperidades" (OC 1: 468). Far from being the wicked witch of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Beatriz invites the sonambulistic Ines to look in the mirror and celebrate her beauty, and to learn to excel in the art of flirtation. Marcus turns attention to the part social status plays in this urban narrative saying that the tragic drama is fundamentally linked to the materialistic bias and to the art of flirtation which, in contrast to its relatively natural and innocent exercise by rural heroines, is a premeditated, insidious, and deceitful weapon employed by the urban female. (461) The conservative (patriarchal) ideology inherent in the corruptibility of the city versus the idealized jbeatus ille topos of the country underlies this repre- sentation. The city, without doubt, affords women more chance for escape from masculine control. Martha Ann Garabedian discussed Valera's use of Pepita's hand in Pepita Jimenez, reminding us that the author "ha empleado una parte del cuerpo humane para senalar los impulses sicologicos del espiritu" (33). In Pasarse de listo. Valera zeroes in on another part 108 of the female anatomy, the eyes. Beatriz instructs Ines in the "diversos estilos de mirar," reminding her that there are definite steps in courtship because no one passes instantly from "desamor" to "amor." Love, says Beatriz, develops little by little: Desde la indiferencia, o, mejor dicho, desde el afecto general a todo projimo hasta ese exclusive sentimiento que se llama amor, hay una escala gradual, que se va subiendo punto per punto, y que constituye el periodo del coqueteo. (OC 1: 471) Don Braulio agrees to accompany the two women back to the Retire, and the parade of commodity begins again. Beatriz cautions her sister that everything she says, "debia limitarse a decir con los ojos" (OC 1: 472) . Susanne Kappeler, in defining pornography, argues that it may be either word- or image-based in representations (2) and that it is not just a mirror held up to realistically reflect life (3). In Pasarse de listo the two women, Ines in particular, are net real representations at all. For, as Kappeler pro- poses: "Some roles within the picture [of society] have no representation and voice outside it, no influence on the production of the image; they are objectified, they are pure objects" (23). This image, according to Kappeler, "does not, of course, exist a priori: to look a priori it is made with the help of the cultural self- image, the culture of mankind" [emphasis mine] (60). 109 In addition, Kappeler citing Kant's definition of aesthetic pleasure, speculates that women as objects of aesthetic perception are "soulless until animated by the genius of the perceiver" (46). In this case the perceiver is the count, who by his very presence in the narrative, objectifies and marginalizes both women. A collage of images is projected before the reader in the episode at the Retire: music, motion, and visual stimulation accompanied by varying voices like the whispered "murmullos de entusiasmo y simpatia." On the street for all men to appraise, but certainly with a proper escort, the two women "se pusieron a girar por medio de aquella concurrencia" (OC 1: 483). Soon after spying the count, the group "accidentally" encounters Rosita who turns out to be a long-time acquaintance. Rosita, who has worked her way up the social ladder in Madrid by hook and crook, is perhaps one of Valera's most repugnant female characters. Unlike Blanca in El Comendador Mendoza or Ines in Juanita la Larga. she has no motivation for her cunning antics other than her somewhat unique relationship with the count. The nar- rator explains that Rosita is unlike other women who only know one kind of love: Al conde de San Teodulo le queria de un modo; a su poeta le queria de otro. . . . [A]maba a muchos de sus tertulianos con una amistad parecida a la que un hombre puede sentir por 110 otro hombre . . . completamente ajena a todo sentir amoroso. (OC l: 489) Between them Rosita and the count had no secrets, including the fact that he wanted to add Beatriz and/or Ines to his list of conquests. las cursis" Known as the "Reina de for her falsely acquired social position, the "condesa de San Teodulo" befriends Beatriz and Ines who are oblivious to her ulterior motives. Here again Valera may be indulging in a bit of repressed selfpity, for as Blanco Aguinaga, Rodriguez Puertolas and Zavala remind us, the author "podria ser definido como una rara especie de burgues marginal, como un espectador mas rigurosamente tal que el orteguiano" (160) . The ritual of courtship now moves indoors, away from the street and into the parlor where for months the young women, the poet/singer, the count of Alhedin, and on occasion don Braulio spend long hours in tertulia. In this ritual, the young women continue to be on display as evidenced by the text which describes this activity thus: dona Beatriz e Inesita, desde aquella noche en adelante, siguieron yendo con frecuencia a la tertulia de la condesa de San Teodulo y siendo su mas preciado ornato y atractivo [emphasis mine]. (OC 1: 491) Although the narration reminds us time and time again that the tragic results which eventually occur might have been avoided if don Braulio had been Ill stronger, we are also lulled into an ambivalence concerning his character when contrasted with his wife Beatriz's actions. He emerges as somewhat effeminate: he cries with emotion when Beatriz reminds him of her devotion to him, and he has a "sense" or an intuitive hunch about Rosita's interest in his wife and sisterin-law. Like some of the women in Valera's other works, he carries on an inner dialogue between his reasoning and his emotional self. Yet, we are told that "las emociones desagradables de don Braulio nacian de la desconfianza de si mismo, que le atormentaba" (OC 1: 493). So, as readers, we are willing to label Braulio weak and atypical until he is contrasted with his wife Beatriz. It is then easy to reassess blame for the resulting tragedy when we read about how Beatriz cavorted with the count. Completely oblivious to "el que dir^n," dona Beatriz "tenia encantados a todos los hombres de la tertulia de su amiga" (OC 1: 494), especially Ricardo, the count. All of Madrid was gossiping about their whispered conversations until "la reputacion de dona Beatriz estaba perdida, gravisimo mal, aunque no del todo irremediable" while she, herself "podia imaginar, o imaginaba, sin duda, que nadie sospechaba de ella" (OC 1: 496). The scheming count 112 continues to be described by the text as beyond reproach. He reminds his friend, Rosita, that he never invades the sanctity of marriage by seducing a married woman, and that he has never used trickery or violence with any female. In short, "el condesito, . . . era un excelente chico, ligero, amigo de divertirse, muy tentado de la risa, pero mejor que el pan" (OC 1: 498), an appraisal not surprising to the feminist critique. But since the count had such a reputation for his amorous conquests, lo que no era verosimil, lo que no cabia en la cabeza de nadie era que el dichoso, que el hastiado, que el rico y noble conde de Alhedin, delicia de la corte, suspirase, no por emperatriz, reina o gran duquesa siquiera, sino por una muchacha oscura, pedestre, venida de un lugar y casada con un casi escribiente feo y viejo. (OC 1: 503) The plot thickens when the count's doting mother, a stereotypical dowager, tries not once, but twice to convince Ricardo to marry a woman of prestige and money. Adela, the count's cousin, is her first choice, and later Elisa, an old flame. Like Beatriz and Ines, both women parade before the count, degrading themselves as they vie for his attention. The description of Elisa's petty jealousy incited by the attention Ricardo pays to Beatriz is patriarchal and condescending. In Pasarse de listo this concept of the female ego manifesting its ugliest side plays a minor 113 part in the action. In Juanita la Larga. Valera develops the theme to its fullest in his description of the cruel and humiliating treatment of Juanita by don Pace's daughter, Ines. Elisa, like Juanita, feels slighted and abused by another woman and so, according to the text, "juro guerra a muerte a dona Beatriz." Beatriz's character is distorted by what Valera portrays as her desire for social acceptance. In addi- tion, she is positioned as a decoy in much the same role as that given Lucia in El Comendador Mendoza. She is even blinded to the fact that the count duels with the poet, Arturo, for mocking the platonic relationship between Ricardo and herself. And, so, once again as in other of Valera's novels, the device of an important letter brings about a change in the rhythm. When don Braulio, who, to this point has also remained ignorant of the duel, receives a letter denouncing his wife's behavior as deplorable and indicating that he is "listo" or "se pasa de listo," he falsely claims his spot in literary history along with other cuckolded men. His own sense of inadequacy and lack of self- esteem, combined with a series of misadventures reminiscent of those in El sombrero de tres picos. drives him to a self-inflicted death. This action, at first appearing cowardly, is perhaps the only proactive step don Braulio takes in the entire novel. 114 Valera's representation of Beatriz contributes to the reader's willingness to place more blame for Braulio's downfall on Beatriz (and the other women in the narrative) than on the count's boredom and womanizing which are not really condemned at all. just the opposite is true. Actually, The count instigates the whole misadventure and in his hedonism lures on both women. The improbable denouement of the novel illustrates the celebration of the patriarchal ideology on which the entire plot is constructed. Ines colludes with the ideology in a tacit code of silence which is broken only after don Braulio's suicide. Her charac- ter, like that of Beatriz, is distorted and unbelievable. In the shadow of her sister's gregarious and precocious relationship with the count, Ines had her own agenda or so we are led to believe by what Kappeler calls the a priori assumption of the power of man (60). Always ambivalent in her attitude toward the art of coquetry espoused by her sister, Ines is targeted by the count as the more vulnerable of the two women. The text ridicules all women when it represents both Beatriz and Ines as foolishly unaware of the effect of their behavior. They are both marketed for masculine pleasure; both their voices are silenced. By failing to communicate their true feelings, both women, by default, contribute to the tragedy. 115 Genio y figura The product of an aging and somewhat cynical don Juan Valera, Genio v figura. published in 1897, followed in the wake of the relatively lighthearted social satire, Juanita la Larga. and enjoyed the distinction of being the first of Valera's novels to be published as a completed book without first appearing in installments. Choosing a love theme once again, the now sea- soned author affirms in this novel what he will later declare in an address to the Academy in 1900: Sin duda, para ser buen novelista, asi como para ser poeta y caballero andante, es indispensable condicion la de enamorado, ya de actualidad, ya de recuerdo, ya platonico y continente, ya de otra clase. Ello es que el amor, o digase la union afectuosa de la mujer y del hombre, es el principal y perpetuo asunto de toda narracion deleitable; es fuente que jamas se agota y de donde cada cual saca algo diverse en sabor, colorido y perfume, segun la amplitud y la forma del vaso en que recoge la bebida inspiradora. (OC 3: 1206). Valera's treatment of the love theme in Genio y figura. however, taunted Spanish audiences and critics because of the disparity between Rafaela's actions and an acceptable Catholic moral code. Bermejo Marcos criticizes the book as debased, saying "es la moral hedonista del personaje principal de Genio y figura que se entrega a sus amantes por caridad, por hacerles felices" (70). Gonzalez Lopez, on the other hand, 116 reminds us of Rafaela's tragic end and suggests that Valera may perhaps be making a point of showing his women readers what happens to one of their own who indulges in unacceptable moral behavior (243). He, along with Charnon-Deustch, observes that few of Valera's females who err, escape punishment (CharnonDeutsch 21; Gonzalez Lopez 243). Obviously, that "error" consists in their defiance of patriarchal codes and the phallocentric conventions of "proper" feminine behavior. Several basic novelistic conventions combine in Genio y figura to render a text plagued with an undercurrent of unanswered questions. Unlike the single settings employed in most of Valera's other novels, the setting shifts several times in Genio y figura. even though it remains urban. There is no longer the uncluttered countryside of Andalucia or even the straight lines marking the narrative distance between home, the Retire, and parlor seen in Pasarse de listo. This constant movement contributes to increas- ing the uneasiness and instability inherent in Rafaela's situation, leaving the reader wondering when, or if, she will find a "home," especially since the a priori definition of "home" is so fixed by masculine ideology. The setting changes are further complicated 117 by changes in narrrative voice. Whiston suggests that Valera uses this technique because he "wishes the reader to be held suspended between the documentary truth of the narrative and the imaginative artistry of the narrator" so that we realize that "what is being read is a product of the imagination, whatever documentary material there may be in it" (27) . But, although this is a frame story like that in most of Valera's novels, this time the switches in narrative voice are much more distracting to the plot line. The characters, even those most important to the story, seem ill-defined and vague. Rafaela, the female protagonist, is the biggest enigma. One has the feel- ing that there is much more to the story of Rafaela than don Juan Valera is willing to share. Yet, if we accept the text as the best source of information, we must also accept the fact that Valera represents Rafaela as commodity, and this time with few of the moral restrictions expected by a predominantly Catholic readership. Her will to survive is eclipsed by her willingness to die. When the future portends a time when her physical beauty and her sexual self are no longer able to mask her soul's needs, she chooses to exit a patriarchal society where sexual favors buy companionship but not true love. Although there are other 118 women mentioned in Genio v figura. none are delineated with any degree of detail, and hence, they function much in the manner of a theatrical "walk-on." It is Rafaela who has the stellar role. If Rosita in Pasarse de listo is the most repugnant female character in Valera's novels, I maintain that Rafaela is his most ingratiating one, and Cyrus DeCoster claims that she is one of the most original at her time in Spanish literature (Prologue to Genio v figura 45) . Her representation, while not completely realistic and certainly not an objective one, is significantly more genuine in many ways than that of other of Valera's female characters. Her courage, her social consciousness, her selfless motherly love, her constant effort to reform, and her willingness to put her husband's feelings above her own are all traits for which she justly deserves the nickname, ia Generosa, The performances of Juanita in Juanita la Larga and Ines in Pasarse de listo pale in contrast to Rafaela's ability to rise to the top of the social ladder. Jimenez Fraud reminds us that she comes from "la abyeccion impura a una atmosfera brillante y relativamente limpia: es rica, libre y considerada y atendida en circulos sociales de algun respeto" (209). As we explore Rafaela's character/life, one thing will be absolutely 119 certain. While she is drawn by an irresistible urge to nonconformity which leads to an eventual and almost unavoidable calamity, she is not typically represented. Unlike other female characters in Valera's novels, Rafaela is not awakened by any of her princes—even the one with whom she parented a child. In fact, in Rafaela we see an independent woman who, despite her role as commodity, manages to maintain a sense of self unlike other women in Valera's fiction. Intimacy requires trust, respect, honesty, and sharing, and when she receives none of these from her lovers, she reserves her sense of autonomy. Pedro Sabater, who was married to Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, interpreted the ideal female in 1842 as "una especie de angel descendido del cielo" (116). His description was not intended to apply to women like Rafaela, for he ruled out physical desire as an acceptable characteristic. Yet, other things he said about woman's ability to love are certainly true of Valera's Rafaela, although Green argues that the "angel-woman's subjectivity contains nothing that is not a function of her role as men's nurturer" (57). Bridget Aldaraca's enlightening essay on the same topic offers the following details of female subjectivity as evidenced in midnineteenth-century Spanish magazines: 120 [A]n ideal of womanhood which can be synthesized in the phrase "el angel del hogar" lived and breathed in the pages of the women's and family magazines which abounded in Spain from the 1850s on. In articles written for La Moda Elegante Ilustrada. El Correo de la Moda. La Guirnalda. El Museo de la Familia. and others, the growing public of Spanish middle-class women were instructed in minute detail on how to be and act, what to do and think, and, especially, what they as superior beings might never aspire to. (63) The woman that Spanish readers in 1897 discovered within the pages of Genio y figura was a liberated species. Valera's Rafaela was obviously a welcome breath of fresh air for the end of the century Spanish woman ready to begin finding an identity apart from that of "angel del hogar." Records show that the first edition of Genio y figura appeared in March of 1897 and "a las pocas semanas hubo de hacerse una segunda edicion que superara los 3.000 ejemplares de la primera" (Del Barco 191). If Rafaela is not Spain's familiar "angel," where does the key to her representation lie? Elizabeth Janeway discusses a function of women which serves as a model for what I believe may best describe her representation: What she is offered is the knowledge that by her submission she does what the man cannot do alone: she bestows on him his full status. Her submission makes him a man. She and she alone has the power to create his mature strength, to show him his new, adult, face, to grant rebirth where once she gave birth. His dignity depends on her. (48) 121 Medina points out that "Valera was an advocate of verosimilitud estetica, which merged 'ideal' elements, including the fantastic, the imaginative, the strange or the mysterious" (112). Both observations ring true when applied to Valera's representation of Rafaela. To each new lover, Rafaela sacrifices a little more of her identity as she empowers one after another. At the same time, Valera restricts his descriptions of the affairs to a strict code of "buen gusto." As we sort through the narrative to detect inferences which reveal the truth about Rafaela, the first thing that engages our attention is the fact that she has no voice. She is myth—bigger than life, almost inaccessible. In fact she functions as a priestess of Venus, "initiating" men and performing rituals whereby they are "cured," or admitted to the brotherhood of "real men." Information about her is distanced in time, space, and narration as evidenced in the very first line of the novel: En tres distintas y muy apartadas epocas de mi vida, peregrinando yo por diversos paises de Europa y America, o residiendo en las capitales, he tratado al vizconde de GiovoFormoso, diplom^tico portugues, con quien he tenido amistad afectuosa y constante. (OC 1: 633) It is the viscount who will tell her story and not Rafaela, herself. He has continuity; she does not. 122 Time is distorted twice the first time we read her name, for the viscount says he met Rafaela eight years before when she was twenty. At the time he is telling this story some twenty-five years have passed. Valera's choice of introduction for Rafaela marks his continued use of women as the object of male voyeurism. Upon her entrance to a plaza de toros, the crowd (composed mostly of men) "rompieron en gritos de admiracion y entusiasmo" because they saw this young woman whose silk dress "revelaba todas las airosas curvas de su cuerpo juvenil" (OC 1: 636). In fact, Rafaela causes such a commotion that even the main spectacle is stopped for several minutes because no one is paying attention, so distracted are they by the appearance of "Rafaela la Generosa," The narrator proposes a theme for the book on the first page of the novel, and the author offers a last. disclaimer for the same thesis on the And all the while, the author/narrator is speak- ing about the life and proclivities of his female protagonist, she has no voice. The viscount who opens the story has the privilege of being present both before Rafaela appears as a character and after she has committed suicide. The frame, therefore, allows for complete masculine domination of her thoughts, speech, and actions. 123 It is impossible to miss the picaresque quality of Rafaela's representation. She is yet another one of many of Valera's fictitious orphans, but one whose past had been spent "trat^ndose con majos, contrabandistas, chalanes y otra gente menuda" (OC 1: 638). An "interested" party recognizes her beauty, suggests to her she has talent, and pays her way to Brazil where he places her under the wing of "el senor de Figueredo." Valera gifts Rafaela with intelligence as well as a beautiful body and a talent for singing and dancing. She quickly realizes that the unkempt don Figueredo will do her no good in his "vulgar" state. Bit by bit, she reforms him until he is changed inside and out. He emerges a new man, and the text suggests that Rafaela's abilities to perform this magic come from "prendas naturales nada comunes." Inherent subjectivism, however, is obvious in Valera's description of the reason for Rafaela's abilities: Pero lo que mejor adquirio, no en escuelas ni en academias, ni menos con lecturas asiduas, sino en la conversacion y trato de personas de merito, fue un temprano y pasmoso conocimiento de los hombres, de la vida social y de los asuntos que se llaman vulgarmente positives. (OC 1: 640) Rafaela prevails as Figueredo's friend, confidante, hostess, and finally his wife. But, quite differently from the scheming Beatriz and her unwilling 124 accomplice Ines in Pasarse de listo. she dees not set as her goal the winning ever of Joaquin de Figueredo. Beatriz is guileless, having no intention of making men "buy her favors" in marriage or any ether way. The narrator, utilizing another masculine voice that generalizes about women's wiles and deceits, tells us that Rafaela "no empleo ni ardid, ni astucia, ni embuste, ni retrecheria, ni ningun otro artificio de los que suelen emplear las mujeres para proveerse de un marido y sobre todo de un marido rico" (OC 1: 641). The hallmark of this text, however, is the author's unwillingness to allow a living, breathing Rafaela to come directly to life. Arias Abad invites us to con- sider that "lo que sabemes de Rafaela la Generosa la retrata por fuera nos y nos despierta curiesidad el con- ocimiente cabal de la fetografia" (232) . Rafaela is an inert image. Juana Ontanon suggests that this image is of someone who thinks and feels like a man and, in her opinion, the portrait has autobiographical implications: mas que encarnar una figura femenina parece que Valera expene le que desearia que las mujeres fueran y sus palabras recuerdan las de Antonio, D. Luis, el padre Enrique, mas que las de otras mujeres de sus novelas, sin que el autor deje de adjudicar a Rafaela mil rasgos de feminidad. (xliii) Valera/the narrator interrupts the narrative to "penetrar. . . en los mas apartados rincenes de la casa 125 de Rafaela come en el centre mas recondite de su alma" (OC 1: 644). Even linguistically speaking, the intention is penetration, for that term is used twice more in the same short paragraph. Once this fictional pene- tration has been accomplished, the reader is made privy to the boudoir of the gratuitous Rafaela whose sexu- ality has been transmuted in some sort of fantastic ritual of education for her many male friends. The text reiterates this trait persistently, but in no way mere eloquently than the following: Harto notaran los que lean con atencion este relate que el mas marcade rasgo del caracter de Rafaela era su propension invencible a ser didactica. Y no puede negarse que para educar y perfeccionar a cuantes seres la rodeaban poseia aptitud pasmesa. (OC 1: 646) Even the local priest, a character type that appears in all Valera's novels, seems to have no immunity from Rafaela's "benefice prurito de educar y de corregir." She is able to "cure" padre Garcia, known as "el farmaceutico apodo de pildorillas" by his fellow priests, of certain bad habits, with the result that "en los muchos anos . . . no ha fabricado una sola pildora siquiera" (OC 1: 647). The enigma is hew this cure was accomplished with the implication certainly leaning toward sexual favors. Another candidate for education by Rafaela is "el ilustre Pedro Lobe, ayudante de campo de Juan Manuel 126 Rosas, dictader de la Republica Argentina" (OC 1: 647). This misguided, thirty-five-year eld Argentine was a gauche-type of singular physique, but his "fanatismo antieuropee, y, sobre todo, antiespanel" challenged Rafaela to transform him into "una persona razonable"— "otro hombre." When, after a year, Rafaela has failed to change Pedro Lobe's fanatic political leanings, she is secretly satisfied about the political circumstances which recalled him to Argentina. Following Pedro Lobe comes "el caballero mas elegante que habia pisado el suelo del Brasil," Arturito, sen of the widowed senor Machade, who has squandered his father's money en gaming and women all across Europe. Recently returned from Paris, Arturito finds the women of his homeland, "feas, zafias y mal vestidas." With her "prurito did^ctico" Rafaela sets about to vindicate what she believes is Arturo's uninformed opinion of Brazilian women. Once she has accomplished her mission, she begins to find Arturo "empalagosisimo a causa de su dulzura" and decides that she should repent of her ways. At about the same time that she experiences these "suenos de limpieza y honradez," an Englishman enters the picture. Valera's description of Rafaela's relationship with Juan Maury, the Englishman, distorts her character 127 further. Suddenly, her penchant for educating others which has unquestionably been her major source of selfesteem, is abandoned. Something in Juan Maury makes her feel unworthy and apprehensive. So, "en vez de pensar en educarle para elevarle a su altura, penso en educarse a si misma para subir a la altura en que le veia celecado" (OC 1: 654). The proverbial patriarchal or phallocentric hierarchy invades and subverts a heretofore unique female representation. Rafaela gives Arturito his "walking papers," and like many ether men in Valera's novels, he cries. Then in a melodramatic, romantic scenario, Pedro Lobe returns to Brazil. A wild party precedes a duel, and unfortunately for his father but conveniently for Rafaela, a dead Arturito. The homicide gives Rafaela the perfect excuse for denouncing the intractable Pedro Lobe as a murderer and dismissing him from her life. The role of the viscount during all these happenings is ambivalent. He pops in and out of the narra- tive, like a faithful literary convention, commenting on the action, explaining the characters, and functioning as confidant both to the narrator and to Rafaela. When den Joaquin Figueredo dies, Rafaela mourns him; then she distributes his wealth in a charitable way and returns to Europe, but not without having another 128 affair with one Pepite Deminguez, a young Paraguayan on board ship. This eighteen-year-old babbles loving praises in Guarani, and Rafaela who learns a few words of Guarani muses, "^como no habia yo en page de ensenarle un poco de lo que sabia?" (OC 1: 684). Surprisingly, Valera's sexually symbolic graphic description of this tryst is more graphic than any passages in earlier novels. What was probably especially shocking to the author's Victorian audience is the following description: Cite a don Pepite en el escuro silencio de la noche, y el vino a mi y yo le di el remedio que apetecia. Aquello fue para el una revelacion, antes ni en suenos presentida. El pasmo, el embeleso, la sorpresa inefable y beatifica que todo, todo, todo le causaba, inundaron mi alma de satisfaccion y de orgullo. . . . Se me figuro que le abria con Have de ore las puertas del Eden; que amasaba ye entre mis manes el arbol de la Ciencia y el arbol de la Vida, y sacaba de ambos un flitre poderoso. (OC 1: 685) This description emphasizes Rafaela's initiatory priestess role, and words such as "revelacion," "pasmo," "inefable," and "beatifica" allude irreverently to mystic ecstasy, while the even more unmistakable biblical allusions hint of sacrilege. That appears to have been Rafaela's last affair, for in another romantic touch, Rafaela encounters baron Castel-Bourdac who fortuitously happens to have been in 129 the right place to have been her father, although he is never positively established as her father by the narrative, and he certainly never legitimizes her by claiming her as his daughter publicly. So, he becomes her official escort to the social events in Paris. Smith argues that Rafaela's origin became "a heavy psychological burden" which began to trouble her increasingly after the birth of her own illegitimate daughter (Smith 1968, 808). This critic and others see in Lucia, fathered by Juan Maury, the cause of the eventual demise of the heroine, as they argue that Rafaela begins to compensate for her own past in her dealings with Lucia (Montesinos). Having kept the daughter a secret from all Brazil, she educates her in the best way possible, dreaming that Lucia will enjoy all the advantages that her mother had missed. Instead, Lucia chooses to enter a nunnery when she learns of her illegitimate past and Juan Maury's denial of fatherhood. If we accept this verdict of critics such as Smith and Montesinos, we are once again defining a woman by her reproductive potential, or at best by what Aldaraca calls her "unique social role, that of motherhood" (77). The physical center of Rafaela, however, was net her womb, but her heart, and she indeed claims the last 130 victory. At fifty, she chooses death by suicide over the alternative: aging and the loss of her physical beauty. Although Rafaela's sense of self-worth is undeniably related to her physical attributes, her letter to the count exemplifies a certain triumph. She finally acquires a voice that is uninterrupted and uneclipsed by her physical attraction. Her soul pours out its heretofore repressed longings. The catharsis reveals a genuineness about Rafaela which had been overshadowed by a narrative in which her personal agenda is always subordinated to that of the paramours in her life. In a touching plea for a nurturing, authentic relationship, Rafaela begs for "amor verdadero, fiel, unico y sin mancha que pudiese unir mi ser con el de un hombre." Her question and perhaps that of her creator, den Juan Valera, is "Pero £,d6nde hallar este amigo, este amante, este esposo con quien yo aun atrevidamente sonaba? <i,C6mo podria yo desprenderme de lo pasado para ser digna de ser suya?" (OC 1: 703). Rafaela's death is simply not the ending for a deterministic treatise in which life is deemed unfair because there exists no choice: hers was a choice which, in another context, might have been deemed stoic or existential. Rafaela died as she lived: she took charge of her destiny. 131 Conclusion For centuries women have been charged with the task of keepers of morality. Yet the very ideology which relegates this unpopular job to women also supports, condones, and otherwise champions men who are able to break through the barriers (both psychological and physical). The male sex urge has been called normal; it is even deemed natural for the male of the species to seek out multiple partners, perhaps being initiated into an appreciation of the joys of his manhood at a very early age by an older woman. Yet no woman, and certainly no young girl, who chooses to experiment with her sexuality, in or out of marriage, is condoned, let alone glorified like her masculine counterpart. Because what is "normal" for men demands a partner, there have always been women willing to play the role for reasons which are not the scope of this study, but which nonetheless often mimic the picture masculine ideology paints. The gender bias revealed by the derogatory stereotypic labels given to these women—whore, slut, tart and the like—ironically objectifies them. They are degraded by the very ideol- ogy in which they are commodified. The female representation in Pasarse de listo and Genio Y figura carries woman as commodity to the 132 extreme. The 1878 novel parades her through the streets of Madrid, and in the 1897 one she is trafficked on both sides of the Atlantic. In Pasarse de listo the idea of commodity embodies the guise of a courtship ritual. The women are betrayed, however, by their willingness to become partners with the phallocentric system, doing whatever it takes to be accepted regardless of the extent of their degradation. Genio y figura proves the point that some feminists make about exploitation and abuse (economic, psychological, social, emotional, and sometimes physical) of women and children—especially illegitimate children and the women who bore them. Yet, in this novel, as in others by Valera, the men responsible are never condemned, nor criticized by the author for their lack of responsibility. Their moments of pleasure cost them nothing: the women pay for a lifetime and are seen as immoral. Because it is not the acceptable thing to do (especially in the nineteenth century), Valera does not show society blaming men. Yet Rafaela in Genio y figura is "guilty" of her mother's transgressions as well as her own. The most subversive thing about her, of course, is not what she did, but that she didn't repent! Probably traditional (Catholic) readers of Valera's day saw her as punished—doomed to Hell for 133 all eternity by her suicide—and perhaps that is what her end meant to Valera himself. But what the feminist reader can say is that she finally rejected all patriarchal determination and masculine lures. death was at least her own. Her CHAPTER V MARGINALIZED WOMEN WHO TRIUMPH IN LAS ILUSIONES DEL DOCTOR FAUSTINO AND MORSAMOR Similar themes and treatment in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino, Juan Valera's second novel published in 1875, and Morsamor, his last completed novel, published in 1899, justify studying the female representation in the two works in the same chapter. Both novels deal with the frustrated ambitions of insecure male protagonists. In addition, several pairs of polar opposites create unresolved tension in both works: realistic versus romantic representations of reality; factual perceptions versus internal, imagined perceptions of reality; magical, ethereal relationships versus concrete, tactile ones; and the ever-present Roman Catholic ideology versus other theological stances. Many critics, among them Smith (Smith 1968, 809) and DeCoster (DeCoster 1974, 153 and 159) have called attention to the similarity between Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor. Azana, too, reminds us that the theme of frustrated ambitions appeared as early as Pepita Jimenez in the person of Luis de Vargas. Readers of Las ilusiones del doctor 134 135 Faustino and Morsamor will, according to Azana, see the theme explored "por modo directo y extenso en Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino Morsamor" (221). y, bajo una alegoria en Thurston-Griswold agrees concerning similarity in theme, but argues that the two main characters have different personalities which produce different results: La lucha del doctor Faustino y la de Morsamor son casi identicas, pero el caracter active de este le ayuda a veneer sus ilusiones y gozar del amor divino, mientras que la pasividad de aquel le condena al fracase y a la desesperacion. (106) Francisco Caudet, analyzing the parallels between the two novels, notes an inherent paradox: Morsamor enlaza con Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino en cuanto se insiste en que la ambicion es un valor false. Pero la novela supone tambien—lo que no deja de ser paradejice—la culminacion de unas ambiciones juveniles de escritura epica cristalizadas al fin de este texto, asi come una muestra palmaria de su reiterada opinion de que habia que escribir para distraer y entretener. (v) The overwhelming majority of critical opinion regarding Morsamor supports the contention that this text constitutes Juan Valera's contribution to the literature of fin du siecle malaise. He, along with many Spanish authors, lamented the depressed and depressing state of affairs in a Spain not yet coming to grips with its own illusions. Manuel Lloris commends Valera for what he terms "su preocupacion por Espana," which 136 would anticipate the Generation of 98. Valera's "espanolisme," an aspect of the author's work which Lloris believes has been overlooked, constitutes a "tema que inferma una gran parte de su obra" (265) . Alonso Calvo describes this preoccupation poetically: "A Valera le dolia el aire de su tiempo, inferior al aire ideal que llevaba dentro" (551), and then reminds readers that Valera's mature "vision" may have compensated for his failing eyesight: £,No habra que buscar la explicacion de muchos de sus arrebatos y desenganos, del aparente escepticismo de don Juan Valera, en esta tremenda raiz de la futura ceguera que le iba carcomiendo por dentro, aunque no le atacase la compostura y la sonrisa? (554) The theme of reincarnation and the whole theosophic complex turns both stories into narratives that tantalize the imagination of twentieth-century readers, accustomed as they might be to similar philosophies so prevalent today in what has been called "new age" thought. Deviance from standard Catholic dogma was not well received by Valera's nineteenthcentury audience nor by Unamuno's in the twentieth century. Don Juan was not impervious to popular and critical opinion pertaining to questions of religion and morality even as conservatively enunciated in his first novel, Pepita Jimenez, and stronger reactions were aroused by the time he had finished Las ilusiones 137 del doctor Faustino. Clearly, therefore, his willing- ness to delve into the same subject matter in Morsamor is the result of a life filled with many unanswered philosophical questions. Evidence of Valera's readi- ness to take advantage of the privilege which comes with age may be found in his dedicatory letter to Senor Conde de Casa Valencia: "he soltado el freno a la imaginacion, que no lo tuvo nunca muy firme, y la he echado a volar por esos mundos de Dios" (OC 1: 713) . Like creative endeavors in other disciplines, literary gems are often produced after long lives of failure and frustration. Don Juan Valera's genius at work in Mor- samor is no exception. At seventy-five, the blind and infirm old author probably knows that his creative as well as his physical life is drawing to an end. The feeble old friar in Morsamor who willingly places his life on the line for a second chance at achieving personal satisfaction may be Valera's most authentic literary self-portrait. Although exposing the patriarchal ideology informing Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor may prove somewhat more problematic than was the case with Valera's other novels, a close reading of the works will reveal how once again Juan Valera has, perhaps in spite of himself, demonstrated the truth of feminists' 138 assertions about patriarchal oppression. Both novels, although written nearly twenty-five years apart (Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino in 1875 and Morsamor in 1899) , feature a male protagonist, who uses external reality to validate his internal one, or as Northop Frye argues, to realize "a world in which the inner desire and the outward circumstance coincide" (107). Each male protagonist seeks self-completion in his female companions, who in turn define him in relation to their own needs. The result in each case, although accomplished with a supernatural twist in Morsamor, is a sort of male Bildungsroman or coming of age, achieved only at the expense of, or with the help of, a woman. The female characters in the narratives—both major characters and minor ones—coddle and cajole, tempt and tease, frustrate and relieve frustration for these incomplete male don Juans. Faustino and fray Miguel de Zuheros (Morsamor) begin to understand the significance of reality only after a life of adventures and a series of love interests ranging from the most mundane and self-serving to the most sublime. Both quests involve more action and movement than in most of Valera's other novels, except perhaps Genio y figura. In Las 1 Insiones d^l doctor Faustino. the narration covers the protagonist's entire life; Morsamor relates the "two" 139 lives of friar Miguel. The protagonists' inner monologues which develop the disillusionment theme create a linkage between what often appear to be disparate episodes. Valera has transformed his courtship ritual into a mating ritual, animal-like in both its initiation as well as its conclusion. While most critics have argued that the author returns in these texts to his love theme, I maintain that lust, not love, is a more precise description of the emotions experienced by Faustino and Morsamor. Although the female characters in both books lack the depth of psychological treatment Valera affords Faustino and Morsamor, they are always endowed with the power of "hechizo," a trait readers come to expect of all Valera's female characters, young and old, major and minor. The women contribute to each masculine protagonist by purifying and teaching, so that at the end of each life journey, Faustino and fray Miguel feel more clearly defined and psychologically whole, despite the fact that Faustino commits suicide and fray Miguel/Morsamor dies a wrinkled and decrepit old priest. Janeway tells us that both fortune-tellers and analysts use symbols and images to create constellations of meaning. She explains that these images 140 "serve as nuclei around which feelings can orbit and swirl, and so present an image of the relationship between an individual and the world he sees" (31). In like manner women from Italy, India, China—old women, young women, and even women in harems—people Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor in a myriad of female images. Taken from a variety of cultures and faiths and strewn like so many jewels decorating the narratives of the two works, all these women have one thing in common: their sexually attractive bodies. The women bring order and meaning to Faustino or Morsamor's world in much the same way Rafaela did for the men in Genio y figura. By doing so, each fulfills the male protagonist, as Janeway would argue, by bestowing on him his full status through her submission to him (48) . Yet, I assert that their very submissiveness and passivity also constitute each woman's strength and power in a Samson and Delilah sort of interaction. Dona Ana, Faustino's mother, Constanza, Rosita, and Maria in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and dona Sol, donna Olimpia, Urbasi and Beatriz in Morsamor assume the power of myth. Simone de Beauvoir characterizes this sort of mythmaking as typical of phallocentricism: The myth is one of those snares of false objectivity into which the man who depends on 141 ready-made valuations rushes headlong. Here again we have to do with the substitution of a set idol for actual experience and the free judgment it requires. For an authentic relation with an autonomous existence, the myth of Woman substitutes the fixed contemplation of a mirage. (294) Faustino and Morsamor seek completion in the women characters, but it is perhaps equally valid to argue that both men confuse their ambitious aspirations for fame or success with their unconscious need to separate from their mothers in their search for the ideal partner. Carl Jung argues that projections of the "anima" or image of woman are at the core of most masculine fantasies, informing their choice of female relationship because they change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face. . . . In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable. (Vol 9, Pt 2: 9) Susan Kappeler reminds us of the danger of such male fantasies which she says are disguises that "can mask the fear of something . . . much worse—like being hurt by a woman" (37). Hence, the apparent emotional attraction which Faustino and Morsamor experience for each of the important women in their lives is actually a curtain which veils their potentially negative or destructive phallocentric drives. 142 A further evidence of masculine hegemony, covertly woven into the theme, lies in Valera's treatment of female sexuality. The woman in each text who exhibits a natural or relatively uninhibited sex drive (Maria in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Urbani in Morsamor) does so only in a fantastic setting. Valera's message is clear: only romanticized versions of real women are capable of an aggressive sexual behavior which patriarchal cultures deem a masculine prerogative. Given Valera's creed of "art for art's sake," it is not surprising that his work illustrates Northrop Frye's statement that "Art deals not with the real but with the conceivable" (107). The protagonists per- sonify the yearning male whose insatiable sex drive conjures up a woman willing to give herself to fantastic love-making. Critic Mario Maurin calls attention to the part Valera's mother-figures play in his novels. Asserting the prominence of the Oedipus complex in many European novels during the second half of the nineteenth century, Maurin discusses the labyrinth: El viaje laberintico es una fantasia de regreso a la seguridad del regazo materno; y si el viajero tiene a menudo que enfrentarse con el monstruo que reside en el laberinto, es porque el regreso a la madre va ligado al temor del incesto, al terror de contravenir las prohibiciones muy antiguas y hondamente arraigadas en el psiquismo humane. (38) 143 Maurin's point is well taken especially as regards Morsamor, where the aged friar wanders in and out of terrain, countries, cultures and belief systems, and where even his choice to make the fantastic journey in the first place suggests that during his youth he had made no peace with his sexuality. So while differences between the two novels exist, the same patriarchal assumptions that inform Valera's other novels lie at the core of these two works. Because the actions begun in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino are completed or reframed in Morsamor, the novels might fit together as a whole as acceptably as do Part I and Part II of Don Quixote. Faustino's suicide may well serve as the ceremonial stepping stone to his reincarnation as the protagonist of Morsamor where in a "double" incarnation he will have two opportunities to find meaning behind the illusion of life. As will be noted in the analysis which follows, both novels feature female figures whose needs symbolize some psychological craving experienced by the male protagonist. 144 Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino Almost every study of Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino, whether long or short, points to the novel's theme of frustrated ambition and links the trajectory of Faustino's life with that of Valera. Many see in Faustino's frustrations a microcosm of the greater frustrations and decadence found in Spain during the nineteenth century. The tension in the novel between romanticism and realism indeed mirrors a Spanish society struggling with the social and financial problems which plagued the country toward the end of the century. According to DeCoster, "Valera trato de analizar su generacion y de estudiar las causas de la postracion en que habia caido Espana en el siglo diecinueve" (1970, 19). Ellis outlines Valera's issues in the novel suggesting that the novelist showcases three problems: [He] combines the three defects most apt to afflict the educated middle-class Spaniard: pedantic philosophy, uncombined with energy for the tasks of life, political ambition with failure to distinguish true liberty from tumult and disorder, the mania of noble descent united with complete lack of aptitude for practical affairs. Apart from the charm of certain figures and episodes in it, the book thus has a serious interest as Valera's chief contribution to the criticism of contemporary Spanish conditions. (260) In his introduction to a critical edition of the novel, DeCoster rates Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino as 145 artistically inferior to Valera's other novels, arguing that it suffers from "varies lunares: una accion dislocada, algunas digresiones un tanto premiesas y ciertes episodios melodramaticos" (DeCoster 1970, 31). On the other hand, he credits the novel with a theme that may perhaps be the most interesting "de toda la literatura espanola del siglo diecinueve" (32) . Jos^Carlos Mainer offers many biographical parallels between the fictional Faustino Lopez de Mendoza and the actual Juan Valera de Alcala. He notes analogies with the unhappy married life, the flirtatious dandy atmosphere, what he calls the "secreta vena de violencia," and, above all, the "cronica falta de numerario" (2325) . In this study, however, my intent is to view Faustino's illusions pertaining to the women in his life with a different lens. The vicissitudes of Faustino's life lead repeatedly to hopeless dead ends. He falsely believes (perhaps only at an unconscious level) that one or another of his amorous relations will bestow on him an epiphanic experience and contribute to his feeling of self-worth. suffers from frustration. Here, too, he Accordingly, Charnon-Deutsch argues that "love is one of the illusions that Faustino loses" (36). She also points out phallocentric 146 ideology underlying his characterization and representation as a variant of Don Juan when she asks. Are we really to imagine that such a weakwilled cad as Faustino, filled with narcissistic self-pity and totally bankrupt ideas, would continually and fatally attract the love of all the women who know him? (37) For the purpose of this study, I will evaluate Faustino's relations with four women: his mother, dona Ana; his cousin Constanza; Rosita, the daughter of the local town clerk; and Maria, his "inmortal amiga." Except in relation to dona Ana, a three-stage pattern will quickly emerge revealing how Faustino harbors illusions about each woman, is confronted by a reality which dispels the illusion, and then is affected/completed or otherwise changed by the interaction with the woman. With the exception of his mother, whose death also forces him to face another more prosaic reality, the labyrinth of interaction with the women continues to the last pages of the novel. Faustino's wardrobe features three uniforms kept ready for donning at a moment's notice. According to DeCoster this clothing symbolizes three illusions: His doctoral gown symbolizes the pedantry and lethargy of the academic world . . . faulty education. His lancer's uniform represents the chaotic state of the country in the first half of the nineteenth century with its political instability. . . . [T]he habit of the Riding Club of Ronda is indicative of his aristocratic pretentions. (1974, 106-107) 147 These same three uniforms gain additional symbolic importance for a feminist reading of the novel. I would argue that they also identify the different personas Faustino manifests as he experiments with his masculinity. The Spanish "traje" (the word used in the novel to designate each set of clothing) connotes more than uniform; its alternate translation "suit" or "costume" might more appropriately describe the function his "uniforms" play in this novel. Given the importance dona Ana affords his clothing ("cuidaba mucho de la ropa blanca"), it follows that Valera imbues Faustino's mother with a powerful capacity for determining her son's persona. The suits, gowns, or trappings of society are skillfully tailored, carefully stored, and secretly prized by mother and son alike. Pictures represent Faustino's illusions both about love and about himself as evidenced by the picture he had made sporting his "doctoral" robes. His mother, hoping that a portrait of her son in his academic regalia will be attractive to his wealthy cousin, sends a replica to Constanza. Ana perhaps realizes that false accomplish- ments are required to bolster a weak male ego. Faustino, denying his mother's advice, however, hides the uniforms in the bottom of his trunks when he visits Constanza. The obvious symbolic connection between 148 masculine strength and agility and the lancer's uniform implies another of Faustino's illusions about himself which a costume might hide. The narrative suggests that Faustino is only sexually active when he believes his partner is some sort of supernatural woman, hence his need for a riding uniform to symbolize virility because he is insecure about his masculinity. One must note again Valera's insistence on portraying strongwilled women as poor mothers incapable of rearing a psychologically healthy offspring. The story opens with information about Faustino's ancestors and family home. The crumbling "ilustre casa de los Lopez de Mendoza" complete with dark underground passages to the adjoining Catholic church and neighboring cemetery "a escopeta del lugar" is reminiscent of Poe's house of Usher which symbolized the Usher family: La casa de los Mendozas . . . tiene un aspecto sombrio, con sus piedras, si algo doradas por el sol, mas ennegrecidas aun por las lluvias, el descuido de los amos, el transcurso del tiempo y la inclemencia de las alternadas estaciones. (OC 1: 209) The family, like the house, "habia ido decayendo y no era mas alegre que su habitacion." In addition, the Mendozas had been the only family to oppose the establishment of the church in the town of Villabermeja. including this detail, Valera firmly establishes the conflict between the Catholic church and the By 149 protagonist. Hanging on the walls of the ancient, decaying home are the portraits of two women, one a captive Moor and the other a Peruvian princess or "coya" whose main contribution to the Mendoza clan, according to the text, is the wealth they brought to the family. The narrative that follows will make repeated references to the brooding, haunting effect these women and other Mendoza spirits exert upon the current generation from beyond the grave. As already suggested, perhaps the most crucial female figure in the story, although not identified as one of his loves, is Faustino's mother, whose overbearing personality combines with the specters of the past to affect Faustino in ways that stop just short of suggesting incest. Here again the reader notes Valera's fondness for titillation. He brought his characters to the verge of mortal sin in Pepita Jimenez and Dona Luz. and as with Faustino, stops just at the edge. The Catholic dogma distinguishes three stages or steps of sin: temptation, yielding (i.e., fantasizing about or deciding to commit the sin) and actual commission. Valera's characters are tempted and probably fantasize about committing the sin in question, but do not go beyond somewhere in the second stage, if only because events intervene to make actual commission more difficult. 150 Faustino's gamut of egocentric illusions may indeed have been fostered by his overprotective mother. Jung's psychological theories offer support for my premises about her. In Jung's schema, a mother-complex may manifest itself either in homosexuality or in Don Juanism and sometimes in impotence. There is evidence to suggest that Faustino suffered from the last two. Jung argues that "In Don Juanism, he [the male] unconsciously seeks his mother in every woman he meets" (Vol 9, Pt 1: 85). The child archetype,^° furthermore, acts not from his conscious mind, but rather from a spontaneous, unconscious need. (Vol 9, Pt 1: 153). Faustino's "need" for affirmation of his masculinity informs the text and may well be a motivation which supersedes the popular notion that he is dispelling illusions. Whether or not Valera intended the sig- nificance, the symbolism of Faustino's three uniforms (so carefully tailored and cared for by his mother who also advised him when to wear them) can only be speculated. Evidence, however, lies on the side of the notion that once Faustino packed away the visible signs ^°Jung explains that an archetype is stored in what he calls the "collective unconscious," which is a layer of consciousness deeper than the personal unconscious and is universal. Some theories refer to an archetype as a motif. See The Collected Works of C. G. jm^q 9, Pt 1 for additional explanation of Jung's theory. 151 of his mother's domination, his unconscious (or child) sought out her playful spirit, her strong will, and her nurturing in the form of three women who represent those traits for him: Constanza, Rosita and Maria. Therefore, before it is possible to determine the effect of the three women on Faustino's life, additional details about his mother may contribute to the reader's understanding of the significance of her representation. As far as the townspeople were concerned, dona Ana, Faustino's mother, was reclusive and unsociable. In addition they thought of her as a witch: Las otras senoras del lugar se despicaban propalando que Dona Ana era bruja . . . con brujeria aristocratica, recibiendo en su estrado a diablos y almas en pena de distincion y alto coturno, y entre ellos a varies individuos de la familia, come la mora cautiva, la coya y el comendador, con les cuales tenia sus tertulias. (OC 1: 212) Her young life had been an unhappy one because (like many of Valera's female characters wedded to older men) she married don Francisco de Mendoza, yet felt no love for him. She was, nevertheless, "una esposa modelo" and unfortunately for her son, occupied herself obsessively with "la educacion completa de su unico hijo." The shiftless Faustino went off to stu- dent life at the University of Granada, accompanied by his faithful sidekick Respetilla. His experience there 152 suggests an unmotivated existence. Nonetheless, the narration informs readers that se doctero en el ane de 1840. Volvio a su casa lleno de ilusiones y deseose de ir a Madrid a realizarlas. Per desgracia, su ciencia era vaga y sus ilusiones eran tan vagas como su ciencia. (OC 1: 215) His schooling complete, Faustino discovers quite to his mother's dismay that he has no talent either as a lawyer, a poet, an orator, a journalist, a literary scholar—or anything else. Less obvious is the fact that Faustino's predilection for avoiding work coupled with his mother's willingness to support him both financially and emotionally has crippled him for life. Jung's idea of a mother-complex is fitting, for dona Ana's influence endures far beyond his mother's physical death. It is no wonder that he suffers from bouts with depression. His mother even persuades him to "fall in love" because a profitable marriage will line his pocketbook, whether or not the woman who goes with the dowry is a compatible mate. His long stay at home with no gainful employment and his obvious lack of ambition prompt Rosita and Ramoncita, daughters of the rich town clerk, to gossip and ridicule him. They dub him "el Conde de las Esparragueras de la Atalaya" because of his long walks, in and around the most deserted countryside on the craggy hillsides abundant 153 with wild asparagus. Finally, Faustino, who has never worked a day in his life, "queria irse a buscar aventuras," and so we are introduced to Constanza, this lazy young man's first "love." As Faustino travels toward the neighboring village where he hopes "to fall in love" with his cousin Constanza, the reader is made aware of his illusions about this, his first amorous fling. In something of a phallocentric fantasy, Faustino is termed good looking with a strange ability to attract and enchant women! Constanza personifies Faustino's dream/illusion of financial opportunity. With her riches, he hopes to establish himself in Madrid among the most influential people, with the nobility, and perhaps even to become a foreign ambassador. Then, even as he dreams of gaining "dinero, posicion y nombradia," he snaps back into reality, realizing that he must first find favor in the eyes of Constancita. Valera's description of young Constanza matches that of many other young women in his novels. The author's predilection for describing female body parts continues: "la mano de la primita [que] era pequena y los dedos largos, afilados y aristocr^ticos, y no aporretadillos y plebeyos" (OC l: 228) . Constanza, conforming to a masculine stereotype, is endowed with supernatural powers to enchant and 154 bewitch: "Constanza era un angelito o un diablito; pero angelito o diablito siempre le hechizaba" (OC 1: 229). However, Faustino's illusion must be replaced with reality. Each woman in the story (Constanza, Rosita and Maria) has her own illusions about a female-male relationship. In this instance, Constanza chooses Faustino as her toy—a diversion and an entertainment. She has been as spoiled by her father as he by his mother, and shows very little sincere remorse for her coquettish conduct. She, like every character in what I would call the Constanza episode, has her own agenda. Dona Ana wants to find a suitable, economically profitable daughter for her son; her cousin dona Araceli de Bobadilla is eager to play matchmaker for her two younger cousins; don Alonso, Constanza's father, loves only money better than his capricious young daughter. Faustino's love for Constanza becomes a full-blown case of adolescent infatuation which reminds the reader of Luis de Vargas's infatuation with Pepita Jimenez. Night after night he meets the teasing Constanza at her "reja," vows his love, and returns home after a mere handshake. Later, when Constanza explains to her tia that she doesn't really love Faustino, her emotion is superficial: "se echo a llorar como un nino mimado a 155 quien se le rompe su mas precioso juguete" (OC 1: 260). She agrees to meet Faustino one last time, but at the core, Constanza herself is absolutely self-serving: "Le amaba, y le amaba ardientemente; pero tambien amaba su bienestar, su vanidad de mujer y sus esperanzas de brillar un dia y de deslumbrar en el gran mundo" (OC 1: 261) . Faustino steals the long-sought-after kiss as she rejects his love. This is the first of several times when Constanza will toy with Faustino's affections, using him as her entertainment. Wiser than Faustino, the two men who have written about "las mujeres de Juan Valera" find Constanza's representation repugnant, but believable. Gonzalez Lopez calls Constanza "Inconstancita," and "insincera," (133) but claims at the same time that "no ha exagerado Valera en pintarla como es" (128). "cuando una mujer dice Arias Abad argues that que quiere querer de amor es que ya esta perdidamente enamorada, sino que el pudor y la prudencia le obligan a callar los tiernos gozos de su alma" (58). Constanza, he persists, is a flirt who uses "una jerga intencionada. . . . una supercheria, un espejuelo para incautos" (58) . Faustino's relation to Constanza, therefore, followed a fixed trajectory in three distinct stages: (1) He has illusions of wealth and prestige in which he 156 believes she will make him happy; (2) Confronted with objective reality, he falls madly in love with the image of the perfect woman; (3) He loses autonomy to a persona masking the real woman with a personal agenda different from his own. The flesh and blood Constanza acquires a plaything/a toy. The reader will see this pattern repeated twice in the narrative. Although Faustino's love affair with Maria begins before the episode with Constanza ends, her representation will be analyzed last. The next influential female figure in Faustino's life is Rosita. Boredom compels Faustino to give in to Respetilla's repeated suggestions that the two of them attend the tertulia clerk. at the home of the local town Faustino's illusions about a relationship with Rosita, the clerk's daughter, have little to do with financial gain. He is merely seeking entertainment—or so he consciously believes. Once again Faustino must come to grips with reality. In this case his hormones will betray him to a woman who uses her physical attraction to lure a socially superior (albeit economically debilitated) man. He is immediately attracted to her sensuous body, "perfectamente proporcionada," which expresses una mezcla de malicia, soberbia, imperio, alegria, ternura y deseo de amor, imposible 157 de describir. Ojos negros y ardientes, languidos a veces, a veces actives y fulminees . . . iluminaban aquella movible fisonemia. (OC l: 278) Completely deceived by her accomplished art of flirtation, Faustino ironically describes Rosita: "No habia en ella el mas ligero asomo de coqueteria o de estudio, ni en el vestido ni en el peinado" (OC 1: 280). I remind readers that Rosita's body is what truly attracts Faustino: "Su cuerpo, sin corse ni mirinaque, se dibujaba bajo los pliegues del percal, tan gallardo y airoso como el de Diana cazadora" (OC 1: 281). As was the case with Constanza, Faustino begins to wonder whether or not he is in love, but the reader knows that what he is experiencing is the effect of male hormones—not true love. Her femaleness overpowers his dubious ability to make wise decisions: El Doctor iba al lado de Rosita, como encadenado por el amor y la gratitud. Rosita parecia una reina que mostraba su favorite a los demas vasallos. Parecia la reina de Cilicia, Epiaxa, pasando revista con el joven Ciro a los b^rbaros y a los griegos, o Catalina II presentado a Petemkin a toda su corte. (OC 1: 287) Although the narrative suggests Faustino's autonomy and possibly some maturity (he breaks off relations with Rosita when he realizes his overwhelming attraction to Maria, his "inmortal amiga"), the opposite is more accurate. Rosita, feeling like "un escorpion pisado" 158 vows vengeance. The significance of Rosita's con- frontation with Faustino lies in the latent violence of the scene. Although he has willingly succumbed to the spell of Rosita's sensuality, Faustino reverts to an animalistic power play when he discovers her spying on him. Despite the fact that he had first incited and encouraged her attentions, he wants to "pisotear alii aquella vibora"; and with eyes "encendidos . . . como brasas, el rostro palido, [y] trastornadas las facciones," he demands that Rosita be dragged from the house. Faustino's destiny for unhappiness is fixed. Rosita's control over Faustino will last for the rest of his life. She soon encourages her father to fore- close on dona Ana's highly indebted home, causing Ana to grieve herself to death. Years later in Madrid, "aunque ya jamona" Rosita "era la lionne, la reina, la emperatriz de las cursis" (OC 1: 323). Despite the passage of the years, she still harbors resentment and jealousy and hates Faustino. Seizing her opportunity for revenge, she writes to Maria (now Faustino's wife) disclosing details of her husband's questionable relationship with Constanza, who also lives in Madrid. Faustino is controlled and defined by Rosita's need to possess him. His illusions are shattered once more. Maria's part in the narrative has been highly underestimated by most critics. What all have failed 159 to point out is the powerful symbol of impotency she embodies. Mysteriously slipping in and out of the nar- rative, Maria is more elusive and enigmatic than all his other illusions put together. In fact, in his ability to face her, be in relation with her, and "own" (in the psychological sense) the part of himself which she represents lies the key to the mastering of all his inner demons, to existing apart from his mother. Every word in the mysterious letter (don Juan Valera seemed to communicate his most authentic needs and emotions through letters both in his life and in his fiction) Faustino receives from his anonymous "inmortal amiga" demonstrates symbolically the powerful message of his unconscious struggling to loose his virile masculinity: Te has olvidado de mi. . . . No he querido luchar contra los decretos y designios del cielo. Por eso no me he presentado ante los ojos de tu carne. . . . cTan material y distraido te has vuelto, que no me sientes en lo mas intimo de tu ser cuando te acaricio y me uno a ti en un mistico abrazo? . . . Hace dias que lucho con el deseo de mostrarme materialmente a tus ojos. . . . Eres noble y generoso, y no me privaras de este bien. (OC 1: 248-249) No more significant passage in the entire narration about Faustino's relationship with Maria exists than that which describes the young man's actions after reading this letter: "El Doctor quemo la carta: . . ., ni a su madre, [emphasis mine] a quien todo se lo 160 confiaba, le escribio sobre dicho incidente" (OC 1: 249). The letter and Maria, the woman who sent it, represent a part of Faustino (and perhaps of any man) he cannot share with his mother other than in a socially unacceptable incestuous sense. From this point on, Maria (or what she represents for Faustino) manifests herself/itself in dreams, visions, and male fantasies. He wakes up in a cold sweat, dreams of his own virility, and sees the figure of the woman who awakens his masculinity in pictures and in dark passageways. It is probably no accident, either, that when he meets the flesh and blood woman who sent the letter, she is dressed all in black and has coal black hair. Her seductive female countenance contrasts with his immature childish one. She takes from Faustino a single "bucle de . . . pelo rubio," and his connection with her is sealed. Once back in Villabermeja and in the company of his mother, Faustino must remain in touch with his awakening masculinity, so he moves the ancient portrait of the "coya" who resembles his "inmortal amiga" into his bedroom, but the reader is assured that "[d]e la aparicion de la mujer misteriosa nada habia dicho a su madre" (OC 1: 265). Faustino must deny his mother if he is to assert himself as a sexually active adult male. Faustino receives another 161 letter from his "inmortal amiga." The request it car- ries comes from the flesh and blood Maria, and like her previous correspondence may well have significant meaning concerning his feelings about his emerging masculinity: "No hables de mi con nadie" (OC 1: 275). In Valera's representation of Maria he has returned to the theme which permeates the entire corpus of his fiction: the need for a hu[man] being to consummate her/his sexual desires. The significance of Faustino's consumma- tion of this desire almost eludes the reader. At the same time he argues with his mother about the advisability of a formal arrangement with Rosita, unbeknownst to dona Ana, he continues his secret trysts with Maria, an activity which further establishes his own autonomy. Later, when dona Ana dies, that event too is brought about as a result of his willingness to be involved with Maria—hence symbolically cutting the umbilical cord to his mother that linked them (and bound him). In fact, every other event in the narra- tive connects with this episode, including Faustino's eventual suicide beside Maria's corpse. Because through her, he had accepted his masculinity, when she dies he feels that he, too, loses his life or at least his reason for being. Faustino's relationship with Maria, despite all its melodramatic twists, personifies 162 his stringent subconscious yearning for a perfect love, a perfect mate. While the pattern of their relation- ship follows closely that of his behavior with the other two women, the reader sees more of the archetypal urgings at play. During their first meeting, her name, her background, and even her humanity seems to be in question. Faustino never can be certain whether he is attracted to a real woman or a specter from the past, reincarnated from some picture on the wall. Mainer argues that Faustino "no sabe sino ceder al unico amor sincere que se le brinda y porque le obsesiona y le gratifica aquella leyenda de la coya que el mismo se cuenta" (29). Yet, even in the experience with Maria, Faustino's habit returns. He has illusions of a mysti- cal liaison with an immortal woman willing to give herself to him body and soul in a union that will endure multiple incarnations. In reality, thanks to the information provided by Rosita, Faustino learns that he has fallen in love—not with an angel—but with the daughter of the most illustrious bandit around, Joselito el Seco. And, as was the case in Faustino's other amorous adventures, Maria has her own agenda. They engage in passionate, secret, and forbidden lovemaking, and then after the scene with Rosita, Maria disappears "forever," but not before she has become 163 pregnant. in a romantic twist, Maria reappears years later in Madrid just in time to nurse Faustino back to health after his near fatal duel with Constanza's husband, to introduce him to his daughter (conceived under his mother's roof), and to marry this, her lifelong love. When she learns that Faustino is unfaithful, she pines away and suffers a melodramatic death in his arms. Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino is less the story of a fictitious doctor's attempt to dispel illusions than it is the story of the Jungian "anima" figure in this male protagonist. The anima or female energy, according to Jung, is part of every male subconscious. A psychologically healthy male must acknowledge the anima together with the animus (male energy). Four women define Faustino according to their own needs, all of which are represented as slightly pathological. His mother, always unhappy in her own sexual relationships with Faustino's father, transfers her emotional (and perhaps sexual) energy to her son. Constanza, whose relationship to her father has perhaps denied her the ability to develop a healthy female sexuality, honors her father's wishes by choosing to see Faustino as a toy rather than a potential mate. Even when she marries the count of Guadalbarbo, she is 164 simply exchanging one father figure for another. Rosita's social inferiority complex encourages Faustino's own weak ego; hence they psychologically complement each other as their two insecure egos cling together for a little while. Rosita's marriage to don Claudio Martinez, "consecuente hombre politico, y diputado a Cortes" purchases her self-esteem, the feat a marriage with Faustino could never have accomplished. Maria suffers from the same fate as so many of Valera's characters, especially women: she accepts a moral responsibility for her father's lifestyle. Reared without a mother by a roaming bandit, always hiding herself and protecting her father, she remains faithful to Faustino for a lifetime because of a kindness he showed the daughter of a rogue as a child. Faustino is the embodiment of an underdeveloped male ego searching for self-worth. Seldom able to stray very far from his mother's apron strings, he looks unsuccessfully for a female who can be an effective substitute. This weak- willed man does not die from disillusionment; he takes his life because he has backbone to do nothing else, and he is too old to search for a woman as selfsacrificing as was Maria, his "inmortal amiga." 165 Morsamor Morsamor, Juan Valera's swan song, is the novel he began in 1896 and finally completed in 1899. Carilla considers it the work in which Valera "echa a volar impetu y refrena desenganos" (185). The novel is obviously the product of a mature, widely-read author whose "datos y conocimientos, vinculados a sucesos historicos, persenajes, geegrafia y arqueelogia, pertenecen a un fondo de referencias mucho mas al alcance de la mano" (187). Replete with adventure and action, magic and wisdom, the novel maximizes Valera's intended effect by drawing on sources ranging from Goethe's Faust to Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (Carilla 183). Gullon refutes earlier critics who hail Morsamor as a spiritual autobiography or a reflection of Persiles.^^ claiming that it more nearly resembles a type of "cuento fant^stico que los alemanes llaman marchen y que se caracteriza por su simbolismo m^s que por su psicologismo" (155). Montesinos labels Morsamor "un cuento largo . . . de extraordinaria contextura" (181), Sherman Eoff sees in it the influence of ^^ See Jean Krynen, L'esthetisme de Juan Valera. Salamanca: Acta Salmanticensia, 194 6 and Eduardo Gomez de Banquero (Andrenio), "Cronica literaria. La ultima novela de D. J. V. ^Nuevo Persiles? El ocultismo en Morsamor y en otros libros del Sr. Valera." La Espana Moderna. XI (septiembre 1889): 146-155. 166 Voltaire (198), and Juan Baustista Avalle-Arce declares that the novel "es como un gozne entre la novela historica realista y la modernista" (31). For a brief time fray Miguel, the novel's protagonist, has an opportunity to return and to relive the experiences of his youth—this time in what appears to be a triumphant way. Morsamor, an aging man, turns to religion as a refuge and comfort from "la desilusion, la esperanza perdida." Thanks to a magic potion and the supernatural powers of his long-time friend and mentor. Father Ambrosio de Utrera, fray Miguel de Zuheros is able to reexperience the days of his youth, this time more productively. Contrasting Morsamor with Calderon's La vida es sueno. Gullon argues "El sueno, para Morsamor, es vida, mientras para Segismundo la vida es sueno" (156)^^. Morsamor is accompanied on his venture into "life before death" by Tiburcio, Ambrosio's "mas apasionado discipulo y su mas constante sat^lite." Father Ambrosio sends him along to serve as "criado, paje, escudero y secretario," as well as to lift fray Miguel's spirits with his humor. He also serves as a wise counselor, but above all, to communicate information between the two "worlds." ^2 DeCoster (Valera. 1974) and Jean Krynen have previously made this same observation. 167 Mario Maurin offers evidence to suggest that Morsamor experiences a father fixation, (42-44), and many have seen in Tiburcio a reincarnation of Cervantes's Sancho Panza. Jung's discussion of father figures in dreams offers what I consider more appropriate insight and understanding of Morsamor's relationship to this aging priest: In dreams, it is always the father-figure from whom the decisive convictions, prohibitions, and wise counsels emanate. . . . The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other person possessing authority. (Vol 9, Pt 1: 214-215) Although this is the patriarchal authority figure, it is interesting that both Faustino and Morsamor are immature in Jungian terms. Gonzalez Lopez, whose lengthy study on "las mujeres de don Juan Valera" won him the Premio "Juan Valera" in 1933, sees the female characters in Morsamor as inconsequential and of little interest: "son tipos episodicos que presentan sus rostros en el relate, interesan un momento y desaparecen sin dejar huella" (255). This evaluation exhibits a patriarchal bias and is one which I believe is refutable. Aligning himself with the mystical forces of magic, fray Miguel will opt time and time again to turn to satisfaction and fulfillment in the arms of a woman. Despite all 168 appearance to the contrary, Valera reinforces the power of the female. Four women, treated marginally by the narrative (father Ambrosio, Tiburcio, and fray Miguel occupy privileged positions in the center of the narrative) , affect Morsamor. Although he was referring spe- cifically only to the women in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino. Montesinos makes an observation that I consider applicable to the women in both Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor: "Nuevamente son las mujeres las que deciden aqui de los destines de los hombres" (147). If fray Miguel is to die in peace, he must first "return" to the womb, be "born" again, and claim psychologically his "dark/shadow" side. The obviously circular and cyclical structure of the narrative forms a symbolic womb for fray Miguel's rebirth. Unfortunately, he never truly asserts nor claims selfhood because the three women with whom he relates define him in the same way Faustino was sculpted by the women in his life. Although he enters his adventures with a patriarchal "spirit guide" (Tiburcio) who is imbued with all manner of supernatural gifts, Faustino's relationship with dona Sol de Quifiones, donna Olimpia de Belfiore, and Urbasi is subverted by a sense of inadequacy he has carried since an experience during his youth with another woman known to the reader 169 only as Beatriz. This specter "que dormia desde hace siglos en los abismos de [su] mi memoria" (OC 1: 782) torments him and causes him grief. Although the reader is not made privy to facts about Morsamor's parents, it might easily be assumed from what he says about Beatriz that he had once felt rejected by his mother: "[C]onoci a Beatriz: a la unica mujer que de veras me ha amado" (OC 1: 782). In Valera's novels, the illegitimacy theme is missing only from Pasarse de listo. In addi- tion to the protagonist, Morsamor includes two women (Beatriz and Urbasi) who lack named parent figures. Valera assigns the mysterious Beatriz no last name; from a tribe of gypsies, she has been reared "sin patria y sin hogar." Miguel learns from an old gypsy at the door of a cathedral that by abandoning Beatriz, he has caused her death, hence his assumption (like a mother naming a child) of "el extrano apodo o sobrenombre de Morsamor." Information about Beatriz is related solely through Morsamor's memories. Her representa- tion, like that of many other Valera females, is marginalized by a male narrator accepted automatically as such by a phallocentric reader. Using Jung as a theoretical base once again, I see Morsamor's journey as absolutely mythical. Jung 170 reminds us of the legend^^ in which rebirth takes the form of a "'night sea journey' (Frobenius) often in the company of a woman" going from West to East (5: 210). Morsamor's name, DeCoster explains, comes from the Latin for death and amor, love. mors, the Spanish and Latin for Jung, on the other hand, discusses the etymology of the Indo-European root jner, jnor, and ;nar from which also comes a Greek word meaning fate (and Spanish sea, relevant to mythic origins). As linguistic scholars can quickly see, the connection between these words and the struggles of the protagonist Morsamor are unequivocal even if perhaps accidental on Valera's part. While the obvious concern in this study is the female representation, the structure of this story is tied to a journey motif, and clarity demands that the analysis of each significant female be linked with Morsamor 's travels. After imbibing the magic elixir, Mor- samor and Tiburcio appear entering Lisbon, Portugal "en sendos y magnificos caballos, ricamente enjaezados . . . bizarramente vestidos de gala" (OC 1: 738). Here will begin Morsamor's experiences with women. The beautiful and youthful dona Sol de Quinones, "intima amiga y favorita de la Reina" immediately attracts his ^^ See Leo Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des qnnnengottes. Vol I (no more published). Berlin, 1904. 171 attention. He soon feels impatient to be introduced to the court, so that he can be nearer this lovely young woman. In a surprising turn of fate, Morsamor is, indeed, introduced to the court where despite the advice of Tiburcio, "siguio pretendiendo y rindiendo culto a dona Sol de Quinones." Readers promptly see the parallel representation between dona Sol and Faustino's cousin Constanza as well as Valera's not so subtle attack on women in general and as his own creation: [D]ona Sol era muy inclinada a coquetear o a flirtear y . . . con Morsamor habia coqueteado o flirteado mucho. El anhelo de ser servidas y adoradas es tan podersoso en las mujeres, aun en las m§s recatadas y honestas, que las mueve a atropellar muchos respectos y a ponerse en ocasion de graves dificultades y compromises. (OC 1: 750) Dona Sol's power ever men is obvious when her flirtatious ways attract net only Morsamor, but also Pedro Cavallo, and the two men become rivals for her affection. Equally obvious is Morsamor's inability te cope either emotionally or physically with masculine rivalry for a woman. Although in this reincarnated state he (and all critics seem to agree) disdains his attraction to women, choosing instead during this lifetime to seek what he believes is a higher calling (battles and physical conquests), that quest is a false 172 one. Morsamor's masculinity cannot be discovered in "male war games," but rather must be acquired through development of his sexuality. Dona Sol's ability te be herself, commanding /demanding masculine attention reflects her self-esteem and free acceptance of her female sexuality. Much similarity between Morsamor's and Faustino's reaction to disdain is evident as Morsamor, like Faustino, soon exchanges rage for "desengano." He even begins to regret colluding with father Ambrosio for this second chance at life. Although Morsamor, unlike Faustino, is motivated by a will to succeed which is coupled with a willingness to work, the trajectory of their experiences with love is persistently alike. The pattern, too, remains the same: the protagonist has certain illusions about the female; through contact with reality those illusions are transformed into burning desire; the woman then uses him for her own purposes, and the protagonist is forced to come to grips with his previous illusions. Morsamor's next love is donna Olimpia de Belfiore of Italy whose beauty and majesty made guessing her age impossible. "La fuerza magnetica" of her eyes exercised a powerful "hechizo" for Miguel de Zuheros. Tiburcio sees her attraction to his fellow traveler and, like a faithful patriarchal guide, hastens to warn 173 Morsamor: "es la mas desvergonzada de las aventureras." Arias Abad labels donna Olimpia "amor adulterado por la ambicion inseguro, desleal, traidor," (269) and his point is well taken. As Morsamor begins his sea voyage, accompanied by the "wise old man," Tiburcio, "donna Olimpia y Teletusa [her "lady in waiting"] estaban hartas de Portugal y habian resuelto acompanar a Morsamor y a Tiburcio al extreme Oriente" (OC 1: 7 57). For a time Morsamor enjoys the company of the stunning Italian in a lighthearted adventurous spirit. Quite predictably, however, when faced with her "invencible hechizo" he becomes hopelessly infatuated: "[e]ntonces presumia que ella era su bien, que la amaba y que no podia vivir sin ella" (OC 1: 764). Unlike Rosita in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino, who felt betrayed by Faustino's affections for Maria, Olimpia realizes that Morsamor's quest is best pursued without her. Whereas Faustino spurns and insults Rosita by pursuing his trysts with his "amiga inmortal," Morsamor is himself abandoned in Melinda by Olimpia. Donna Olimpia, a flirt and a tease, demonstrates her sexuality in a way quite unacceptable to traditional patriarchal standards. Olimpia and her companion, Teletusa choosing mythological and legendary epithets (Bradamante: woman warrior in the Chason de Roland; 174 Pentesilea, queen of the Amazons in the Trojan legends)14^ "se hallaban en el mar como nacidas: como si fuesen nereidas y no mujeres" (oc 1: 758). Once again the reader notes Valera's propensity for implying (by his fictional representation of the female) that real women have no sexual desire. Yet there is no doubt that the sea voyage was for Morsamor a chance to further explore his sexuality. In a typical Valera motif, Tiburcio receives a letter from Teletusa explaining why her lady has chosen to remain in port: Morsamor tiene vergiienza de llevarla en su compania. . . . [E]s considerada por el como un estorbo y como un escandalo. No queremos estorbar ni escandalizar y por eso nos quedamos en Melinda. (OC 1: 771) Donna Olimpia reenters the narrative some one hundred pages later when Morsamor rescues her from a pirate ship. The significance of her representation in the work, however, is enhanced during her dying moments. When the ship tilts and tumbles in a life-threatening hurricane, all aboard must struggle to keep from drowning. As both are submerged in water (another transpar- ent symbol of the womb), donna Olimpia clings to the struggling Morsamor. She chooses to express her gratitude to him by bestowing him with an archetypal ^4 These allusions are explained in Note 82 of Avalle-Arce's edition of Morsamor. 175 kiss whose intensity leaves him weak and powerless. Her death will precipitate his own departure from this second lifetime: "Volvio la vejez a apoderarse de su cuerpo y empezo a sentirse casi decrepito" (OC 1: 827). Announcing his return to old age "Morsamor perdio el conocimiento y el sentido," and the chapter ends. Neglected by the author's phallocentric focus is the significant part donna Olimpia played in imparting a sense of manhood, virility, and self-worth to the old friar—in forcing him from the womb. Mario Maurin finds her a combination of the mother and the prostitute archetype, saying that she is "la figura femenina, que cual fantasma ha regresado de otros tiempos . . . aliada simbolica del demonic y del mar" (44) . By traveling aboard ship with her from Portugal to Melinda, Morsamor had gained enough strength to pursue his search for self. Her death at the end of the novel also signals the end of his strength. Sherman Eoff argues that in the episode featuring Urbasi, the mystical Indian woman whom Morsamor saves from Abdul ben Hixen's harem, Valera was "thinking of the theme of reminiscence." Urvasi [sic], he recalls, "appears as the name of the heroine in the Indian 176 version of the Psyche-Eros myth" (203).^^ Valera's description of Urbasi outshines the descriptions of all other women in the text. Little wonder that Morsamor "sintio en el alma una jamas sentida y amorosa admiracion y un irresistible impulse que hacia aquella mujer le llevaba" (OC 1: 787). Urbasi claims that Morsamor has saved her life, and while that might literally be true, she is the one who offers him an opportunity to claim his masculine sense of power and virility. His physical actions on her behalf meta- phorically empower him with strength; her submission te him awakens the latent sexual energy that even the playful Olimpia could net stir. Although DeCoster maintains that Urbasi stands for one quality—ideal love—(DeCoster 1974, 156), it appears certain that the concept of ideal love in this case must include sexual attraction in addition te any other more platonic connotation. Of course, Valera, bowing te the stereotypi- cal phallocentric ideology by playing down Morsamor's obvious sexual attraction te Urbasi, describes his attraction te Urbasi as if she cast some magic spell. He is "hechizado y orgulloso de su dulce carga" (OC 1: 788) . Morsamor indulges in fantasies of love for "la ^5 See Note 34 of the Eoff article for his sources. 177 bella Urbasi habia cautivado su alma" (OC 1: 789). This male fantasy is further indulged when Morsamor is told "Per ti se siente Urbasi capaz de les mayores sacrificios. Por seguirte lo abandenaria todo" (OC 1: 791) . In another inversion of the Faustino experience, (Maria seemed to be an reincarnation of a picture on the wall) Urbasi claims that she had loved Miguel de Zuheros in another life. After a night of passionate love, Morsamor, toe, realizes that Urbasi is reminiscent of Beatriz, the only woman who had reciprocated his affections as a youth. Smith comments en this fig- ure's purpose in the text: Beatricia, who lacks a surname, and whose diminutive designation helps signal her profession, has prayed for such a metamorphosis; she is born again and in such a state of purity that she is venerated almost as a deity. Non-Christian reincarnation, then, effectively removes the dark past between Morsamor and Beatricia. It does what the struggle for purification based en a traditionally Christian pattern has been unable to do. (Smith 1968, 809) As was noted earlier in the discussion of Beatriz, this woman's representation closely resembles that of a supplanted mother figure—someone who loved unconditionally, but who nevertheless must be abandoned for a mature sexual, adult love. Whatever effect the women in his life have en this protagonist is maximized by his blurred sense of 178 reality. As is evident from Morsamor's inner dialogue, each woman defines him even if he does net recognize that fact: Beatriz es la unica mujer que me ha amado. No era, como dona Sol, ninguna ilustre y ergullosa dama, ni siquiera, come donna Olimpia, celebre daifa de alto precio, era una humilde muchacha. (OC 1: 782) When the old friar awakens, it matters little whether the hieroglyphic images impressed upon his psyche by the women he has known in his deep sleep are real or fancy. They have served te usher him from life into death. Conclusion Although Valera's representation of women in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor limits them to a marginalized position, both texts reveal the importance of four females to the lives of the male protagonists. Whereas Faustino appeared weak and indecisive, Morsamor seems to have become aggressive and forceful. Yet, without doubt Faustino's self-image is molded and reformed with each new experience; Morsamor must seek fulfillment of his anima shadow in each woman he meets. Logical reasoning points to the fact that Juan Valera, whose novels are considered precursors of the 179 modern pyschelegical novel, might use at the unconscious, if net at the conscious level a psychological approach to character development and plot motivation. Despite the fact that both Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor have male protagonists, the female (both the persona and the person) transcends significantly the masculine constraints (of the author and of the two male protagonists). Female representation in each novel varies only slightly. Dona Sol, donna Olimpia, and Urbasi are merely new names for Constanza, Rosita, and Maria. Constanza and dona Sol represent prestige and the adolescent need to strut and preen before a female. One has te wonder whether the novel's obvious theme of disillusionment masks a mere profound one concerning masculine sexuality. Considering the supposed intent of the novels (portrayal of a man confronting his illusions) , there is irony in such representations. Constanza as well as Sol are both self-sufficient women, confident in their own ability to attract men as demonstrated by everything that is said about them in the narration. Rosita and Olimpia also share common characteristics in relation to their respective protagonists. Both represent a budding sexual energy that first finds 180 resolution in a female whom the male protagonist feels is socially inferior. The women are for Faustino and Morsamor sexual "playmates," to be discarded in favor of a more intense, mature relationship. Rosita and Olimpia, secure in their sexuality—their egos in tact—have no real need for masculine affirmation except for the pure pleasure it brings them. The only difference in their representation lies in Olimpia's dramatic death and her earlier sensitivity to Morsamor's physical and cleverly veiled psychological needs. Urbasi has more in common with Maria than "reincarnation." Both Faustino and Morsamor are afforded an opportunity to rescue these illusory women. They also embody the ultimate in masculine fantasy, for both women submit themselves body and soul to their companion. In addition, they both claim to have idolized their man for years—even lifetimes. As if all of these things were not enough, both women die in the arms of the man they loved. While Maria and Urbasi seem hardly as powerfully represented as the other women in the narrative, a phallocentric reading might overlook their innate power. By their very passivity Maria and Urbasi have elected their roles, their destiny. They are not seduced; they submit by choice. 181 The urge to dispel illusions and justify frustrated ambitions experienced by Faustino and Morsamor is a smoke screen for a more profound longing--one which is satisfied only in relationships with one woman after another. Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino and Morsamor may well be partly about Spain's approaching malaise, but the novels are also about the male need to separate in a psychologically healthy way from the woman who gave him birth. According to Jung, when this does not happen, the male ego, like that of Faustino and Morsamor, seeks completion and confirmation in every female relationship. CHAPTER VI CONCLUSIONS Literature of nineteenth-century Spain, like literature of any country, was influenced by the national and international political climate. By the time don Juan Valera had published his first novel in 1874, romanticism and costumbrismo, exemplified in works like El senor de Bembibre by Enrique Gil y Carrasco and the voluminous production of Fernan Caballero, had for the most part, come and gone. The great Spanish realist, Perez Galdos had only just begun his long and prestigious literary career. At fifty, Valera, who had already established himself as a writer, was respected as a careful stylist with a moderate approach to critical evaluation of the writings of his peers. His philosophy, highly influenced by his reading of Krause and others, anticipated to some extent Unamuno's concepts of man, but he embraced so many divergent systems of thought that he admittedly suffered from "panfilismo." A diplomat, with an aristocratic background, he knew several languages and was so widely read that it is perhaps because of this diverse background that Valera's writing has such an eclectic style—a style which defies labeling according to any of the popular literary trends of the nineteenth century. 182 183 At about the same time that Valera was establishing himself as a public literary figure, the feminist movement which preceded and highly influenced the emergence of a unique trend in literary theory was also taking shape. Feminist literary theory has evolved and thrived as a valid tool for re-examining the literary canon. Closely associated with the parallel social movement, feminist critiques look at contemporary, as well as previously studied classics, with a fresh critical approach. Asking new and different his- torical, cultural, and psychological questions, the feminist critic searches for features of a work, previously overlooked or discounted as unimportant by a phallocentric bias. Juan Valera's extensive literary production (drama, critical and political treatise, poetry, and novels) is widely explicated by his contemporaries and today's critics, but no recent scholarship has produced an in-depth feminist critique of his eight completed novels, despite the fact that much has been written about "las mujeres de Juan Valera." Critics have writ- ten about the many female characters which people Valera's novels describing their physical features, their personalities, and their weaknesses. This study, however, offers a fresh look at Valera's female 184 represention from the vantage point of feminist criticism as well as other relevant contemporary theory. In it women are analyzed as types, mytholo- gical archetypes, as marginalized in space and discourse, and as representatives of an age. Attention is paid as well to the "courtship" theme which runs through all eight works. Binary opposites and the way they effected a hierarchal ordering favoring patriarchial ideology are also noted. Somewhat surprisingly, the novels can naturally be grouped in pairs according to a dominant female representation easily detectable in each one. Valera pro- duced five novels between 1874 and 1879, and then waited almost two decades before publishing his last three between 1895 and 1899. Works that are similar in female representation are usually separated by several years. Pepita Jimenez (1874) and Dona Luz (1879) are often considered similar because the likeness between the two female protagonists, Pepita and Luz, is so extraordinary, especially the "sensational" aspect of a woman loving a priest. The women are both placed in the uncomfortable nineteenth-century position of "needing" a man because of their widowed (Pepita) or orphaned (Luz) state. The two coincide in their 185 conservative, discreet taste in clothes, their simple good taste, and unadorned, natural, wholesome beauty; they give themselves to religious devotion, have numerous suitors (all of whom they reject), and they live a "vida retirada" except for the company of a select group composed mostly of older men. Pepita, like Luz, is "fenced in" by a construct in which she has little space, for although her name serves as the title of the work, young Luis de Vargas has the privileged narrative space. Critics and fic- tional characters alike blame Pepita for "capturing" him, forcing him to love her, and effectively disrupting his vocation. Her hedonistic lifestyle casts her in the ancient role of seductress, but she becomes reconciled with the patriarchal establishment when she "gets her man," and they live "happily ever after." Dona Luz presents the story of an intellectual, mature woman whose illegitimacy and orphan state force her to believe she has no choices. That is exactly true for this nineteenth-century female who is criticized for wanting more from tertulia than a woman "should" expect. conversation Because she fits in nowhere, Luz withdraws further and further into a selfimposed isolation from normal relationships. When Luz discovers that she has been fooled by the man who 186 marries her for an inheritance he knows about, but keeps secret from her, she makes a daring choice for a woman of her day. She chooses to remain estranged from her husband, and raise their child, whom she incidentally names for the priest with whom she shares true love if only on a spiritual level. Her illegitimacy, unlike Luis's in Pepita Jimenez. makes her feel ashamed and unworthy, but her courageous spirit is that of a type of fictional woman ahead of her time. El Comendador Mendoza (1877) and Juanita la Larga (1895) are light-hearted, highly entertaining novels in which the courtship theme continues uncomplicated by love outside of "acceptable" realms. A woman in each work is portrayed as an egotistical, self-serving shrew determined to prevent (for her own selfish reasons) a marriage. In El Comendador Mendoza dona Blanca, obsessed by a fanatical sense of guilt for having borne the child of don Fadrique and hidden the fact from her husband, attempts atonement for that transgression by insisting on her daughter's marriage to her husband's decrepit legal heir. Derogatory descriptions of dona Blanca are contrasted with the glowing attributes of don Fadrique. He is portrayed as thoughtful and loving, she as "un erizo." She has no place in the narrative but Other—other than good, i.e., evil, 187 conniving, and fanatically religious. Even her motherly love is condemned as distorted and vicious. Blanca's daughter Clara is a stereotypical representation, treated with a touch of romanticism; Lucia, Blanca's good friend, figures as a perfect nineteenthcentury "angel": everything about her is laced with "typical" feminine characteristics (nosy, talkative, but conveniently self-sacrificing). Very nearly the same plot and female representation is evident in Juanita la Larga. The issue this time is not a case of "justifiable" (by phallocentric reasoning) guilt for a case of infidelity. Rather, Juanita's plight revolves around a more prosaic matter: love between people from different social stations (and ages). When Juanita decides that she loves don Paco, the aging civil servant, she learns almost immediately of the disapproval of his daughter, dona Ines. The relationship between Juanita and don Paco is pushed to the edge of the narration as the conflict between dona Ines and Juanita assumes increased importance. What is significant for a feminist critique is the fact that the narrative degrades and debunks Ines for operating exactly as a patriarchal society might expect. Both works end in what amounts to a resolution for the masculine ideal of the status quo. In El Comendador 188 Mendozap the nagging dona Blanca is properly punished (she dies) for straying from acceptable behavior for a married woman, and three "happy" marriages end the story. The delightful image for an aging man of mar- riage with a virginal young woman satisfies the masculine fantasy in Juanita la Larga when Juanita gains both moral and social respectability by her marriage to don Paco. The cosmopolitan settings of Pasarse de listo (1878) and Genio y figura (1897) offer a unique look at Valera's inversion of the courtship ritual. Here Valera treats female sexuality as a kind of commodity to be marketed for male consumption. Beatriz and her sister Ines in Pasarse de listo parade through Madrid's Retire eager te attract a husband for Ines and to provide excitement for Beatriz. The two women are forced to accept blame for the suicide of don Braulio who unjustly suspects his wife Beatriz of having an affair with the count of Alhedin. Rafaela, la generosa, of Genio v figura. has numerous characteristics of a modern "liberated" woman. Valera represents her as commodity with few of the moral restrictions his predominantly Catholic readership might have expected. She surrenders her body in sexual activity with men en both sides of the Atlantic, but her soul is always her 189 own. Because women have often been expected to be the "keepers of morality" by a patriarchal society in which only men have "permission" te be promiscuous, Rafaela's representation is tainted by phallocentric restrictions. Valera has cleverly masked his commodification of women in the guise of the courtship ritual in Pasarse de listo. and has condoned economic, psychological, social, and emotional exploitation of women like Rafaela. Because of the generally accepted "double standard" (especially in the nineteenth century), Valera's narrator does not show society blaming men for "irresponsible" sexual behavior, but women pay a lifetime for their transgressions. Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino (1875) was Valera's second novel and Morsamor (1899) his last, but their themes are similar. Faustino and Morsamor who suffer pangs of incompleteness and unrealized ambitions, form the center of narratives which, unlike those of the other novels analyzed in this study, have very little to do with courtship per se. Surprisingly, the female representation in both works is nearly exact. Both men display a psychological longing for separation from a mother figure and acceptance of their sexuality. Faustino's mother, dona Ana, propels the 190 plot of that novel. In his attempt at separation, Faustino begins with an adolescent attraction for his cousin Constanza who uses him as a toy. Rosita's lib- eral, unashamed sexuality attracts him next. Finally, Maria, a man's ideal fantasy—a woman who offers herself body and soul—makes him feel enough like a man to indulge his sexual appetite. Morsamor's relationship with women is closely parallel. Although no mother figure dominates the nar- ration, Morsamor is haunted by the specter of Beatriz whom he claims is the only woman who had ever truly loved him. He seeks self-identity during an archetypal sea voyage taken when he is transformed from an old friar into a young adventurer. The women with whom he seeks fulfillment include dona Sol, a tease and a flirt like Beatriz; donna Olimpia, a sensuous Italian beauty who bestows sexual favors unashamedly; and Urbasi, an Indian "goddess" who begs him to possess her. Like Maria in Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino. Urbasi is mystical and nearly illusory, claiming to have shared a previous incarnation with Morsamor. Faustino and Morsamor share masculine illusions about the women; the women, however, command much power. While don Juan Valera is not a nineteenth-century misogynist, this analysis leaves no doubt about his 191 complicity with the patriarchal ideology of his country and his age. His objectification of women within a phallocentric society is conspicuous in all eight novels. This conclusion is significant in light of previous critics' views of Valera as skilled in the presentation of women and as privileging women characters. What Valera paints are not real women so much as patriarchal models of feminine types, often exploited, frequently presented without sympathy. The female shrews and angels are very flat characterizations—but probably very well accepted ones for the time. The women portrayed as immoral are punished; those with a relatively uninhibited sex drive are cloaked in mystery. Today's readers, more sensitized by a public demand for greater equality in all areas between the sexes, expect a female representation (even from a male author) to be less gender-biased, but during Valera's lifetime, male and female-headers alike accepted the masculine hegemony, and critics were no exception. WORKS CITED Abbott, Alice K. 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contains in chronological order a summary of Valera's nine novels, each followed by a commentary and brief analysis. Chapter III reviews and synthesizes the observations made in the commentaries. B...
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