Spanish Realism¹

Stephen Miller

Texas A&M University

From Ciriaco Morón Arroyo's important prologue to Spanish Realism, we learn the original motive which gave birth to Jeremy T. Medina's book: to form part of a series of «scholarly monographs on Spanish thought» organized «in terms of specific authors,» «general cultural trends and intellectual relations» (p. xi). When that project failed to materialize, Medina pursued its partial realization by devoting a study to the theory and practice of nineteenth-century Spanish realism in the novel.

In the first of two parts (pp. 7-92) Medina places this movement in its overall European and Spanish context. He mentions various ways of understanding realism, but agrees with George J. Becker and Kay Engler in fixing on «that which exists in some kind of relation between external phenomena and perceiving consciousness» as fundamental to the nineteenth-century literary view (p. 8, n. 4; see also: 9-10, 266, 275, 284, 305, 328, etc.). After reviewing many documents and discussions on literary realism, Medina arrives at a fourteen-part set of defining characteristics or elements of Spanish realism (pp. 95-96; cf. pp. 64-65).

The bulk of Medina's study - pp. 98-342 in Part Two - attempts to show how Alarcón, Valera, Pereda (the first, more romantic generation of Spanish realists), Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo Alas, Palacio Valdés, Blasco Ibáñez (the second, more naturalist generation), Pérez Galdós (the chronological, ideological and literary link between the two generations), and the critics Milá y Fontanals, M. de la Revilla, Menéndez Pelayo reveal the problems and practice inherent in the cultivation of the realistic novel. The fourteen realistic elements mentioned above become, then, checkpoints by which to gauge the realism of these writers.

In order to understand as well as possible Medina's approach and contribution to the understanding of Spanish realism, let us concentrate on his treatment of one novelist. Galdós is a natural choice here for two reasons: his intermediary position, according to Medina (p. 62), between the two generations of realists; and, the fact that Medina devotes twice as many pages (sixty-five) to his discussion of Galdós as to any other single novelist or critic.

Medina's approach to Galdós is virtually the same as with the other novelists he considers. First he presents Galdós' «realism in the very broadest terms» (p. 265) and then in relation to a scaled-down version of the fourteen characteristic elements of realism: «(1) choice of subject matter, (2) authorial   -154-   perspective, (3) characterization, (4) descriptive methods, (5) further aspects of language and style, and (6) a partial assimilation of French naturalism» (p. 265). Furthermore, he considers (7) the realistic «structural designs of Galdós' novels,» i.e., their faithful reflection of the «actual social and psychological movement which one finds in real life» (p. 304).

This overall view of Galdós' realism completed, Medina dedicates sixteen pages to the study of one Galdosian novel - La desheredada. Using the same kind of strategy as in his analyses of El sombrero de tres picos, Pepita Jiménez, Peñas arriba, Los pazos de Ulloa, La Regenta and Cañas y barro, Medina guides his discussion of the realism in practice of La desheredada by the same categories which informed the more theoretical, prior examination of Galdós' realism and literary theory. Hence, the subject matter (1) is Isidora Rufete's «socially derived» «worship for appearances» (p. 275); the novel focuses on a vice of society through its study of an affected member. Galdós' perspective (2) is typified by the «pervasive air of indulgent, yet pointed, Cervantine irony» of the novel (p. 308). Characterization (3), as distinct from that in such works as Doña Perfecta and Gloria, is more life-like; Isidora evolves before our eyes as «Galdós subordinate[s] moralistic militancy to a relative stress on character delineation for its own sake» (p. 321). Description (4) is more important as Galdós makes the settings and objects he touches «often harmonize with the mood or attitudes of the characters at that moment» (p. 317). With respect to language (5) Galdós emphasizes the practice of incorporating to a «great extent the authentic speech and linguistic mannerisms of the Spanish people» (p. 319). Galdós' «partial assimilation of French naturalism» (6) is seen especially in the hereditary aspect of Isidora's defects of character and in the degree to which Mariano's environment determines his actions (pp. 311-12). Finally,La desheredada, by beginning and ending in media res, does not have a tight structure (7), but instead follows the flow of Isidora's life, carefully respecting the chronology of its events (pp. 325-26). Medina agrees with Eoff in judging this Galdós' «first realistic novel» (p. 327). He concludes by asserting La desheredada is «a whole» which adds «in two ways to Galdós' maturing realistic technique: his details now fill in the canvas of external reality and his insights take us deeper into the labyrinth of human psychology» (p. 328).

Some words of evaluation of Spanish Realism may now be order. In the introduction Medina states that his book is a «reference manual» which attempts «to surpass the normal literary platitudes about elements of realistic writing» in order to «arrive at some rigorous statements dealing with ideology and technique» (p. 2). I believe this book, accompanied by an excellent bibliography, is a first-rate reference manual. Yet, in view of our analysis of the study, I am not sure Medina achieves his second goal. As a galdosista, for example, I agree with much of what Medina says about the realistic elements in Galdós. Nevertheless, as Medina himself admits, «all the variations in [Galdós'] novelistic practice» cannot be described in «coherent categories of all the distinctive ways in which he strove to capture 'reality'» (p. 264; see pp. 267-69). Medina's approach not only to Galdós, but, I would assert, to the novel and novelists of Spanish realism is flawed by a failure to move from the exposition of realistic techniques to a more satisfying discussion   -155-   of the common project in name of wich the so-called realists employed, to greater or lesser extent, similar literary techniques. Finally, I do not think that the enumeration of such techniques, or examples of their use, will lead to the ideological synthesis wich would in fact justify the term «Spanish realism». Moreover, before that occurs, a much clearer view of what Galdós, what Pereda, what Alas, etc. were doing as individual writers must be formulated.