Interdisciplinary approaches to the novel, once suspect, are now flourishing. In method, my study works from the «inside» out (with emphasis on action, pattern, speech, image, theme, etc.), letting the structure of Doña Perfecta explain and define the socio-religious conflict that leads to a catastrophe; but with as much help from «outside» history as possible. Matters historical and sociological are necessary to an internal analysis of Doña Perfecta because Galdós, as the narrator of the inevitable catastrophe, decided, as part of his rhetorical strategy, to give a recognizable, socio-economic basis to the role of his characters and to what they said or did. The very rural setting of the two-family disaster, because it is pure invention, represents by image, form and model, the provincial problems of contemporary Spain. Such a narrative strategy demands from the critic, no matter what formal method he follows, a genuine textual erudition that is intertwined with history. The bibliography on the relations between the inner coherence of fiction and the society where the fiction appeared is enormous, varied and highly polemic. Lately it includes battlelines drawn between linguists, structuralists (not always accepted as linguists), sociologists and historians. The following works are recommended only because they contain works about or by the most representative participants and because they include the key debates and helpful bibliography: Sociology of Literature & Drama, Ed. Elizabeth and Tom Burns, Penguin (1973); The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Straus, Ed. Richard and Fernande DeGeorge, Doubleday Original (New York, 1972); Georg Lukács: The Man, his Work and his Ideas, Ed. G. H. R. Parkinson, Vintage Book (New York, 1970); Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism), Princeton U. Press (Princeton, N. J., 1972), and Marxism and Form (Princeton, N. J., 1971); New Literary History, IV, 3 (Spring, 1973) is devoted to «Ideology and Literature». For a review of literary approaches and techniques before the advent of sociological and structuralist methods, see Morris Weitz, Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism, U. of Chicago Press (Chicago, 1964); and Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, U. of Chicago Press (1961). Finally, no one has struggled more effectively with the diverse borderlines between fiction and history or novel and society than Kenneth Burke in a series of books and studies since the 1920's. As for interdisciplinary approaches to Galdós see Carlos Blanco-Aguinaga, «Historia, Reflejo Literario y Estructura de la Novela: el Ejemplo de Torquemada», Ideologies and Literature, I, 2 (1977) for available documents and their potential use, Peter Goldman, «Galdós and the Nineteenth Century Novel: the Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach», AG, X (1975), 5-18, especially the bibliography available in the extensive notes. The most consistent and sound interdisciplinary scholarship in Spain is found in the various studies of literature by José Antonio Maravall. (N. del A.)

Rather than a step-by-step commentary on individual critics, I deal with some conceptual issues that emerge from the critical assumptions of Doña Perfecta studies and, then, I examine the validity of these conceptual issues, and, in some cases, try to look for their ideological bent. I am not always convinced that all ways and byways to Doña Perfecta should be liberally accepted as long as they are based on so-called reasonable evidence. It happens that the present study, for example, has little to do with most of Doña Perfecta criticism. I shall therefore suggest various arguments and debates throughout my presentation without finding something with which to nibble and nag at other studies. On the other hand, I always take other views into account, remaining aware of the most important of them. Three long studies, because of disagreement, excesses or omissions, are relevant to this reappraisal: Rodolfo Cardona, «Introduction», in his edition of Doña Perfecta, Anaya (New York, 1974), pp. 15-47, plus various notes to the text; José F. Montesinos, «Doña Perfecta», in his Galdós I, Castalia (Madrid, 1968), pp. 171-192; Richard A. Cardwell, «Galdós's Doña Perfecta: Art or Argument?» Anales Galdosianos, VII (1972), 29-47. (N. del A.)

Here I paraphrase and adapt key arguments about how fiction is to be dealt as fiction by the eminent Shakespeare scholar J. Dover Wilson, especially from his epoch-making What Happens in 'Hamlet' (see a discussion of it in Weitz, Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 106-134). My choice is meant to leave no doubts about the «fictionality» of, what structuralists now call, the «verbal discourse» of Doña Perfecta and thus go on to the heart of the matter: an aesthetic, formalist approach but with a historical footing. I return to these problems at the end of this study. (N. del A.)

The well-organized pattern of movement and counter-movement where the confrontation between Pepe and Perfecta serves as the center of balance is axiomatic in most surveys of Galdós. Cf. Donald L. Shaw, A Literary History of Spain: the Nineteenth Century (London, New York, 1972), pp. 137-138. For a highly technical analysis of the novel's internal structures where everything is seen as revolving, deliberately and methodically, around Doña Perfecta, see Ricardo Gullón, «Doña Perfecta, invención y mito», Técnicas de Galdós, Taurus (Madrid, 1970), pp. 21-56. Predictably, first-rate narrative technique is proof, somehow, that Galdós' novel is more «universal» than «historical» -as if that were an issue for the art or meaning of Doña Perfecta. In the Novels of Pérez Galdós. The Concept of Life as Dynamic Process (St. Louis, 1954), Sherman Eoff considers DP one of the well-constructed novels (p. 7). (N. del A.)

I deal only with Galdós' final version of Doña Perfecta of December 1876 (published by La Guirnalda) and not with the first one which appeared first in serial form in Revista de España (and later in book form, June 1886, Noguera). Cf. C. A. Jones, «Galdós' Second Thoughts en Doña Perfecta», Modern Language Review, LIV, 4 (October 1959), pp. 570-573; Cardona's review of details in this issue; Montesinos, Galdós I, op. cit., pp. 176-178. It is significant that the changes which alter almost completely the direction of the novel were effected only in parts dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophe and, hence, in Cayetano's letters which describe, explain and interpret and even speculate on what happened to Pepe and Perfecta. The narrated events up to the murder remained fundamentally the same in both versions. Thus what did not change in view of the radical changes is just as meaningful. Critics agree that Galdós' textual changes were built en aesthetic and ideological assumptions. The new aftermath, however, because it is less spectacular than the original, does not undercut but rather highlights the ideological directions of the conflict. Cf. James Thorpe, «The Aesthetics of Textual Criticism», PMLA, LXXX, 5 (December 1965), 1-18, for a review of problems involving one textual reading over another. (N. del A.)

See Stephen Gilman, «Novel and Society: Doña Perfecta», in this issue. Cardona (op. cit.), argues eloquently in favor of the novel as tragedy. I do not necessarily disagree with Gilman and Cardona but, for reasons that will be explained later in the study, I do not accept the way in which the problem of «tragedy vs. no tragedy» and Doña Perfecta has been approached. To begin, the deviations from tragedy are tell-tale clues to Galdós' attitude toward liberals and conservatives. (N. del A.)

All citations are taken from the edition of Cardona, op. cit. I indicate chapter and page number. (N. del A.)

Pepe wrote to his father: «Rosario, colocada entre su afecto irresistible y su madre, es hoy uno de los seres más desgraciados que existen sobre la tierra» (XXVIII, 285); «La pobrecita demuestra un valor heroico en medio de sus penas, y me obedecerá ciegamente» (XXVIII, 289). (N. del A.)

Perfecta to her daughter, a little before the murder: «Yo no pienso acostarme en toda la noche... Puede suceder cualquier cosa, y yo vigilo... Si yo no vigilara, ¿qué sería de ti y de mí?...» (XXXI, 296). (N. del A.)

Nowhere does Perfecta admit guilt, error or wrongdoing. She can again blame her misfortune (as earlier with her dissolute husband) on others: to the persistent, selfish libertinage of Pepe and to the weakness in the character of her daughter. There is no reason, within the terms of the narrative, why she should recognize, as do characters in classical tragedies, any flaw or sin. Were she to admit the slightest wrongdoing, then her substantial arguments with Pepe (XIX) and Rosario (XXXI) would make no sense. What she does and how she reacts to the catastrophe correlate perfectly with her defense of parental authority over selfish, romantic love, of a theocratic society over libertinage, and of duty over sentiment. (N. del A.)