Galdós was a prolific writer, publishing 31 novels, 46 Episodios Nacionales (National Episodes), 23 plays, and the equivalent of 20 volumes of shorter fiction, journalism and other writings. He remains popular in Spain, and galdosistas (Galdós researchers) considered him Spain's equal to Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. As recently as 1950, few of his works were available translated to English, although he has slowly become popular in the Anglophone world.
While his plays are generally considered to be less successful than his novels, Realidad (1892) is important in the history of realism in the Spanish theatre.
Cada dÃa estoy más convencida de que no es posible una lectura de Galdós sin antes tener en mente El Quijote. Isidora es en La desheredada lo que es Don Quijote en la obra de Cervantes; Galdós es en el siglo XIX lo que fue Cervantes en el XVII.
La obra es tremendamente trágica y tengo que admitir que no supera Fortunata y Jacinta por ser esta última una obra mucho más completa en mi opinión. Sin embargo, la forma de escribir de Galdós siempre es espectacular, tengo frases subrayadas solo por lo bien que suenan.
Pues hasta ahora el mejor Galdós que he leÃdo. Sin embargo sigo buscando una obra que para mà sea sobresaliente. Eso sÃ, cada vez me cuesta más leer libros de bolsillo con letra menuda e interlineado mÃnimo. Menuda morriña me suele producir...
Por último, a pesar de los temas relevantes que se abordan, como la desigualdad social y el sufrimiento de las mujeres, la ejecución de estos conceptos a menudo se siente superficial. En lugar de profundizar en las complejidades de la existencia de Benina y su lucha, la novela a veces se desliza hacia el sentimentalismo, lo que puede desvirtuar el impacto de su mensaje.
En conclusión, La desheredada de Galdós es una obra que, a pesar de su ambición y sus temas relevantes, presenta varios fallos estructurales y narrativos desde mi punto de vista. La falta de profundidad en algunos personajes y la dispersión de la trama limitan la efectividad de la crÃtica social que intenta realizar, convirtiendo la lectura en una experiencia menos impactante de lo que podrÃa ser.
De las mejores novelas de Galdós (y es difÃcil decirlo). La construcción de los personajes —Isidora es la mejor protagonista femenina del autorâ€�, las descripciones, cómo se va desarrollando la trama y cómo van evolucionando los personajes... Por no hablar de la construcción del narrador, que es de mis cosas favoritas de Galdós. Vamos, una novela de diez y más, y de mis favoritas de don Benito. Vivan los hermanos Miquis
Dicha travesÃa solo puede ser censurada o reprobada por una moral burguesa incapaz de comprender que las conquistas de la libertad y de la prosperidad no están exentas de sacrificios, pues no a todos les han sido concedidas las llaves del cielo. Desde el principio de la novela hasta el final, Isidora no duda a la hora de enfrentarse al mundo para cambiar su suerte, bien sea por la vÃa familiar, por la vÃa legal o, una vez se le han vedado tales alternativas, por la del inframundo de la prostitución, territorio al que se adentrará desde la rabia y la certeza de quien ha asumido su condición de clase trabajadora y está dispuesta a sacrificar su cuerpo para trascender su realidad. He ahà que exija:
Read this in Spanish Realist/Naturalist course while abroad. Pretty deep, jam packed with historical allusions and symbolism but classic tale about woman being bad with money, like Madame Bovary. Not sure why this theme is constitutive of the novel that revolutionized the genre in both France and Spain.
Y todo llega a su fin. He estado por Madrid de fin de siglo XIX, deleitándome con palabras y con personajes, verdaderamente impresionantes. Hasta tengo un nuevo "crush literario"
«La confusión de clases es la moneda falsa de la igualdad. [...] Siempre habrá clases. Por más que aseguren que esta igualdad se ha iniciado ya en el lenguaje y en el vestido, es decir, que todas las personas van hablando y vistiendo ya de la misma manera, a mà no me entra eso. La educación general, ¿traerá, al fin, la uniformidad de modales? Patarata. A otro perro con ese hueso. Si en algún momento de inundación social ha podido pasar eso, las cosas volverán a su cauce».
Novel about aspirations to nobility; inferior to "Tristana".
Isidora is virtually orphaned, having lost her mother to illness and her father to an insane asylum. She was raised by her uncle in the La Mancha region of Spain (hinting at a link with Don Quixote?) She visits Madrid and, finding her father on his deathbed, is taken in successively by her aunt and a godfather, Jose Relimpio.
While from a poor background, Isidora believes that she was actually adopted, being born out of wedlock to the daughter of the Marquesa de Aransis. She has what she believes to be documentary evidence of this noble birth and obsessively pursues her birthright, while being courted by Joaquin Pez (a handsome member of the upper class, addicted to gambling), Sanchez Botin (a wealthy but brutal member of parliament), and Juan Bou (a poor, unattractive lithographer).
Like Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Balzac's Old Goriot, a central theme is the chasm between the impoverished common people and the wealthy elite. In each novel, the main protagonist struggles to better him/herself by moving from poverty to wealth. For Julien (The Red and the Black) and Eugene (Old Goriot), the solution is to win the love and patronage of a wealthy woman. Perez Galdos suggests that achieving wealth and status through love is not an option for a woman. Isidora's lovers either cheat her of her own money (Joaquin Pez) or suggest that she become a secret mistress while running a lowly tobacconists (Sanchez Botin). In short, if Isidora wants a recognized position in Spain's noble elite, she needs to pursue her legal claim to her birthright as Marquesa de Aransis.
Isidora is not a particularly likeable protagonist, regarding herself as superior to her working class relatives and friends. She shuns any type of paid work and lives variously on a sizeable bequest from her uncle, the meagre income of her relatives, and gifts from actual or aspiring lovers. She has no common sense about money: she expects to be wealthy in short order when recognized as Marquesa, and spends unwisely on luxuries whenever she has spare cash. For some reason, her godfather, Jose Relimpio, continues to worship her, regardless of her vain foolishness (much like Sancho Panza's loyalty to the crazy Don Quixote).
The Disinherited (1881) precedes Perez Galdos's more famous (and very long) masterwork, Fortunata and Jacinta (1887) and the wonderful (and more succinct) Tristana (1892). While far from being Galdos's debut novel, The Disinherited marked the shift from his long series of historical novels (the first published in 1868) to novels with a contemporary theme, drawing on the example of Zola's realism.
The useful introduction to the Folio Society edition provided by Lester Clark is instructive, including on Galdos's debts to Cervantes's Don Quixote. There are key differences, however. While Quixote's madness is entirely self-induced (from reading too many chivalric romances), Isidora's deluded views are inspired, in the first instance, by her father and uncle and are later supported by her lawyer among others. As a result, Isidora is not as impressively "quixotic" as Galdos's later creation, the eponymous female character in Tristana.
Oddly, the novel initially follows Isidora's progress closely but then cuts away and returns two years later when she has taken a lover and had a son out of wedlock. Similarly, there is another gap in the storyline when she takes a second lover. Presumably, the realistic depiction of Isidora’s life was already shocking for 1880s Spain; adding explicit coverage of her descent into corruption would have been going too far. From a modern perspective, these gaps in the plot line break the flow of the novel, however.
There are also a few bizarre chapters written entirely, for no obvious reason, in theatrical text: JOAQUIN (admiringly): But how pretty you look, or rather how beautiful! A jewel worthy of a king! ... ISIDORA (flirtatiously): You hypocrite. You love me when you need me, when you're in trouble...(etc.)
The novel is often rather slow-going, with long descriptions of locations and characters. Isidora has a wayward younger brother who weaves in and out of the storyline with no obvious purpose. Isidora's relationship with a childhood friend and admirer, Miquis, is also developed at length but then falls into the background in the second half of the novel. One wonders whether Galdos had the story fully mapped out when he started, or whether he improvised as he wrote. The latter would be consistent with what seems to be a more skeptical treatment of Isidora in the second part of the novel.
All in all, The Disinherited is instructive as an example of 1880s Spanish literature, but Tristana is the more enjoyable read.
Quisiera dejar unas apreciaciones e intuiciones antes de la lectura de Germán Gullón.
Es difÃcil convenirlo, pero me arriesgarÃa a afirmar que los postulados que se extraen de los diferentes caracteres que se desarrollan en la novela y el desenlace que se da a cada uno, nos permiten considerar la novela como progresista. DirÃa que Galdós en ella todavÃa no ha dado el paso hacia el socialismo del que a la postre será defensor.