{"id":15144,"date":"2015-02-05T13:33:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T17:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=15144"},"modified":"2015-02-05T13:33:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T17:33:40","slug":"benito-perez-galdos-tristana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/02\/05\/benito-perez-galdos-tristana\/","title":{"rendered":"Benito P\u00e9rez Gald\u00f3s: Tristana<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYRB Classics has done a wonderful service by publishing Tristana<\/em>,\u00a0a short 1892 novel by Benito P\u00e9rez Gald\u00f3s and here translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. I reviewed the only available English translation of the novel prior to the NYRB edition (here<\/a>), Tristana: Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s Film and Gald\u00f3s\u2019 Novel: A Case Study in the Relation Between Literature and Film<\/em> by Colin Partridge (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995) and found it to be a wonderful book full of Galdosian ambiguity and irony. If you haven\u2019t read anything by Gald\u00f3s, Tristana<\/em> provides an interesting (and maybe problematic) introduction to the writer. It\u2019s a book that the author seemed to dismiss before its release while many of his supporters and critics were left disappointed by the author\u2019s unsatisfying (to them) ending.<\/p>\n

\"Tristana\"<\/p>\n

Tristana<\/em> follows the trials and tribulations of the youthful, orphaned Tristana and the two lovers in her life. The first lover is her guardian, Don Lepe, an aging Don Juan who couldn\u2019t resist one last conquest of the young girl. The second lover is Horacio, a painter with a similar background as Tristana. The more time Tristana spends with Horacio, the more she tends to rebel against Don Lepe. She seeks to educate herself and develop her nascent talents, dreaming of a life of independence on her own terms. An illness and infection causes her to lose a leg, dashing many of her hopes for the future.<\/p>\n

Tristana is often at the center of events, but she rarely develops beyond superficial changes. Even though she tries to advance, personally and professionally, she is always at the mercy of circumstances. Gald\u00f3s often uses names to highlight a point or provide irony, and Tristana follows that pattern. Triste<\/em> means gloom or sadness, the station in life she is consigned to after her parents die and she becomes Don Lope\u2019s ward and eventual lover. The name also alludes to the mythical Tristan and the doomed love affair with Isolde, providing a foreshadowing of Tristana\u2019s relationship with Horacio. In one of her letters to Horacio, Tristana summarizes many beliefs she expresses over the course of the novel:<\/p>\n

I find the problem of my life more overwhelming the more I think about it. I want to be somebody in the world, to cultivate an art, to live by my own means. I\u2019m so easily discouraged. Am I really attempting the impossible? I want to have a profession, and yet I\u2019m useless, I know nothing about anything. It\u2019s just awful.<\/span><\/p>\n

My ambition is to not have to depend on anyone, not even on the man I adore. I don\u2019t want to be his mistress — so undignified — or a woman maintained by a few men purely for their amusement, like a hunting dog; nor do I want the man of my dreams to become a husband. I see no happiness in marriage. To put it in my own words, I want to be married to myself and to be my own head of the household. I wouldn\u2019t know how to love out of obligation; I can only promise constancy and endless loyalty in a state of total freedom. I feel like protesting against men, who have appropriated the whole world for themselves and left us women only the narrowest of paths to take, the ones that were too narrow for them to walk along . . .\u201d (ellipsis in original)<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tristana had met Horacio by accident, continuing to meet him in secret. Don Lope knows something is going on, but refuses to stop it, knowing that no possible lover can compare to him. On this point, he\u2019s right, although there\u2019s plenty of irony in it, too. Horacio\u2019s life started similar to Tristana\u2019s situation. He was orphaned and raised by a strict grandfather. But when his grandfather dies, Horacio achieves financial security from the inheritance, allowing him to pursue his love of painting. His bohemian life in a Madrid suburb, though, is only playacting. He\u2019s easily distracted by Tristana. He acts like a rebel but it\u2019s Tristana that\u2019s the real non-conformist. Tristana is nothing like he imagined his future wife would be like. A section of the novel traces letters exchanged by the lovers during a separation, and while they are apart Tristana deifies Horacio in her mind. There\u2019s no way Horacio can live up to Tristana\u2019s elevation of him and he disappoints her time and again, especially during her time of illness and convalescence.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Don Lope (or more formally, Don Juan L\u00f3pez Garrido), the aging Don Juan, steals the novel. He follows his own perverted chivalric code. His code has so many twists and turns he can\u2019t always keep up with what he thinks he should believe, but he devoutly adheres to it just the same. He believes the younger generation vastly inferior to his own, yet he also acknowledges his declining health and virility. Tristana remarks on the dual consciences of Don Lope, who behaves like nobility or someone from the gutter depending on the situation. In a way, Don Lope drives Tristana into Horacio\u2019s arms (and eventually his bed), but he knows she will return to him. He is able to triumph using his wiles and experience. Early on in the novel, the narrator (with a touch of Gald\u00f3s\u2019 irony) puts Don Lope in the dock and judges him:<\/p>\n

If hell did not exist, it would be necessary to create one just for Don Lope, so that he could spend an eternity doing penance for his mockery of morality and thus serve as a perennial lesson for the many who, while without openly declaring themselves to be his supporters, are nonetheless to be found throughout this sinful world of ours.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Each of the three main characters claims to be a rebel in their own way. Don Lope holds himself outside of social institutions until poverty and old age change his ways. Tristana assets what she views as her rights — of education, of vocation, of shunning marriage — until she falls back on an offer of security. Horacio plays the bohemian until he discovers the joys of the landed gentry. Everyone relapses into the existing social power structures, but Tristana is the only one that doesn\u2019t have a real choice in the matter.<\/p>\n

In many of his novels Gald\u00f3s was very critical of late 19th-century Spanish society, pointing out the limited roles available to women. Gald\u00f3s\u2019 former lover, novelist and activist Emilia Pardo Baz\u00e1n, was vocal about her regret that Gald\u00f3s failed to develop and focus on what she saw as the central concern of the novel — Tristana\u2019s (and thus many Spanish women\u2019s) loneliness and isolation due to the limited choices available to her. Baz\u00e1n was especially disappointed in the heroine losing power while a traditional arrangement wins in the end. As Colin Partridge put it in his essay accompanying his translation, Gald\u00f3s could have made Tristana a successful woman, like Theodore Dreiser\u2019s Carrie Meeber, a novel released at about the same time as Tristana<\/em>, but the Madrid of the time didn\u2019t afford the same opportunities as Chicago or New York. Gald\u00f3s remains faithful to real life, avoiding an easy ideological resolution that would ring false.<\/p>\n

As the Spanish critic and author Clar\u00edn (Leopoldo Alas) pointed out, Tristana\u2019s immaturity and lack of development occurs because she is at the mercy of forces much more powerful than she could hope to overcome. She is doomed to non-fulfillment because of the imposed social conventions. In this way Tristana is very much like Alas\u2019 heroine Ana Ozores in La Regenta<\/em>, released just a few years later (and there are several more similarities in La Regenta<\/em> found in Tristana<\/em>, such as rapid aging in older men, seemingly caused by sexual conquests).<\/p>\n

One of the quirks in the novel compared to Gald\u00f3s\u2019 other works (and Colin Partridge also points this out in his commentary), is that Tristana<\/i> happens in Madrid\u2019s sprawling suburb to the north\u2014Chamber\u00ed. Instead of the usual crowded, bustling urban life in other of his novels Gald\u00f3s\u2019 isolates these characters outside of mainstream society. While the three main characters each stand in for something larger, the tie feels much looser than in Gald\u00f3s\u2019 other novels because of this isolation. In this sense I think Gald\u00f3s achieved precisely what Baz\u00e1n wanted to see. This is Tristana\u2019s story, and it reflects exactly the same criticisms Baz\u00e1n had. Does the ending satisfy? No, and that\u2019s precisely the point. The characters don\u2019t live happily ever after despite the ambiguous ending.<\/p>\n

Gald\u00f3s\u2019 message is evasive, not because it is muddled but because his apparent points could be applied to more than his immediate topic. His commentary on the morality of the age shares the wish that people should be free to do as they please, but societal influences\/power make people act counter to their interests. Yet all three characters are lacking something and fall back on societal norms, almost with relief and benefit. Tristana\u2019s lot is the worst\u2014she essentially says she is damaged goods, unfit for anything after Don Lope had his way with her. Yet she can never follow through on any attempt at independence, even with others trying to help her accomplish it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wonderful little novel because Gald\u00f3s avoids an easy answer, not catering to ideological resolutions that would have felt false while still providing plenty of social commentary along the way. Very highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dwight reviews Benito P\u00e9rez Gald\u00f3s’s 1892 novel, Tristana<\/em>, out recently from NYRB Classics in a new translation from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[714],"tags":[579],"coauthors":[586],"class_list":["post-15144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-benito-perez-galdos","tag-spanish"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Tristana.png?fit=750%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3Wg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15148,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15144\/revisions\/15148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15144"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}