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ArribaAbajo «La eterna mascarada hispanomatritense»: Clothing and Society in Tormento

Chad C. Wright


La ropa es el 75 por 100 del ser humano.


(Arístides Babel, in Galdós' Ángel Guerra.)                


No sería difícil encontrar relación entre la huella de un zapato y el espíritu de un pueblo. Hoy, todo tiene relación con todo.


(Galdós, La Nación.)                


Except for T. Folley's article regarding the sartorial characterization of Torquemada, very little has been written of Benito Pérez Galdós' frequent and effective use of the imagery of clothing in his works40. Perhaps the most complex and ironic use of this motif in Galdós is to be found in his 1884 novel Tormento, which describes the superficial society of Madrid during the critical years 1867-1868. Indeed, clothing is so vital to the novel that it is one of the primary skeins of images from which the entire work is woven. No other novel by Galdós focuses so intensely on both specific articles of clothing which are related to individual characters, as well as on the symbolic action of putting on or taking off clothing. In the following pages we will discuss Galdós' use of apparel and appearance, of covering and uncovering, as integral parts of his characterization of the major personages of the novel. We will show also that the imagery of clothing is one more way in which Galdós develops his ever-present theme of a society -his own Spanish society- gone awry.

The theme of clothing, or the uniform (uni-form) of society, is so important in Tormento that at least on one level the title itself refers to fashion, or the dictates of «la Señora Sociedad», that imaginary but fearsome force which ultimately rules everything and everyone in Madrid, creating an inflexible «tiranía de la ropa»41. Costume in Tormento underscores the great importance of social boundaries in Galdós' world, as well as the tight spatial limitations within which his literary characters function42. Each of the major characters within the novel is concerned with the uniform which society requires him or her to wear in order to belong to the inner circle43. These literary personages participate, through their masks or social disguises, in what Galdós calls «la eterna mascarada hispanomatritense» (p. 63).

Tormento is concerned with social hopes and self-creation. Each of the characters tries to attain a solid place in society; that process requires a literary self-shaping or self-molding to fit the requirements of acceptability. A new façade can mean a new social identity. The results of this process of self-molding are often ironic, as in the case of Rosalía Bringas. She is completely obsessed with social status and therefore with clothing. She knows   —26→   the price of everything and everyone in contemporary Madrid. Her two gods are «el Cielo, o mansión de los elegidos, y lo que en el mundo conocemos con el lacónico sustantivo de Palacio» (p. 16). Rosalía is also fascinated by genealogy, at least the heraldic aspects of it: the glory of the right family connections. She even wears, as if it were some tangible article of jewelry or a medal of honor, the appellation «de la Barca» which she has invented and appended to her own surname, Pipaón. Rosalía's family history is replete with references to clothing. Her mother was a lady of the Queen's wardrobe (p. 15), and one of Rosalía's dearest possessions is a painting of her grandfather, a Palace bodyguard, who is resplendent in and obviously proud of his colorful uniform. Early in the novel, Francisco and Rosalía arrange the paintings in their new apartment so that this portrait is the focus of attention and so that the rich red of Christ's cloak in another painting complements the colors of Rosalía's ancestor's uniform (p. 18). The irony and its moral connotations are obvious: both Christ and Rosalía's grandfather are reductios, nothing more than their apparel. They are mete artifacts, or accessories to the picture of herself that Rosalía wishes to present before the world. The narrator summarizes her great need to belong to the highest rank of society and her inner drive to be important when he says simply, «Rosalía trataba de ser vista...» (p. 83).

Rosalía's desires and ambitions are symbolized in the clothing that she admires, buys, borrows, steals, and ultimately wears at the promenade or theatre. The reader is informed that «el arreglo de su vestido... le agotaba todo su tiempo disponible» (p. 87). Rosalía is so clothes-obsessed that when Amparo, advised that Rosalía knows of her past life with Polo, faints and spills a cup of tea, Rosalía thinks first of her clothing and not of Amparo's condition: «-¿Ataquitos de nervios? -dijo ésta-. Mira cómo me has puesto la bata» (p. 104). She even refers to the fainting itself in terms of fashion: «Ya no se usan síncopes. Es de mal gusto» (p. 104).

The most intimate and telling article of clothing in Rosalía's wardrobe is her corset. The narrator stresses her Rubenesque figure («Se había oído comparar tantas veces con los tipos de Rubens...» [p. 161]) and carefully establishes a sartorial link between Rosalía and the disreputable Refugio Sánchez Emperador, whom the former eventually resembles morally, both through her voluptuous figure and her use of the corset44. Although an hourglass feminine form was in vogue during Galdós' time, Rosalía's abundant charms tend naturally toward shapelessness. She is like a formless mass of human clay which requires the stays of the corset to contain it, to give it shape and identity. She literally has to force her body into appropriate form:

Rosalía, compuesta y emperifollada, no parecía la misma que tan al desgaire veíamos diariamente consagrada al trajín doméstico, a veces cubierta de una inválida bata, hecha jirones, a veces calzada con botas viejas de Bringas, casi siempre sin corsé, y el pelo como si la hubiera peinado el gato de la casa. Mas en noches de teatro se transformaba con un poco de agua, no mucha, con el contenido de los botecillos de su tocador y con las galas y adornos que sabía poner artísticamente sobre su agraciada persona. Tenía en tales casos más blanco el cutis, los ojos con cierta languidez, y lucía su bonito cuello carnoso. Fuertemente oprimida dentro de un buen corsé, su cuerpo, ordinariamente fláccido y de formas caídas se transfiguraba también, adquiriendo una tiesura de figurín que era su tormento por unas cuantas horas, pero tormento delicioso.


(p. 29)                


  —27→  

After such «noches de teatro» Rosalía becomes once again the shapeless woman described at home as being in «tal facha..., que se la hubiera tomado por una patrona de huéspedes de las más humildes» (p. 63). Without the rigid stays of her corset, Rosalía is «simplemente La de Bringas, una persona conocidísima entre vulgar y distinguida...» (pp. 29-30).

Rosalía ordinarily wears her corset only when she is in public, where she demonstrates «el culto de su persona, el orgullo de ponerse bien y ser vista y admirada» (p. 4). However, as it appears to her more and more evident that Agustín will not be marrying Amparo, she begins to wear the corset at home to allure the wealthy indiano. The narrator notes: «Observó a ratos Amparo lo guapa y bien puesta que estaba Rosalía dentro de casa. Este fenómeno iba en aumento cada día, y en aquél, el peinado, la bata, el ajuste del cuerpo y todo lo demás revelaban un esmero rayando en la presunción...» (p. 105).

Clothed or unclothed, Rosalía is not reluctant to use her abundant physical charms to attract Agustín. She demonstrates her willingness to be seduced by Caballero in a memorable scene in which she commiserates with him about Amparo's apparent deceit and offers him solace and tenderness in the form of «bien pensadas expresiones». She removes her shawl to display herself to better advantage. She offers to take care of him in his hour of need, saying, «Échate en el sofá y abrígate con la manta de viaje. Yo te cuidaré...» (p. 113). Agustín, however, does not succumb to her enticements: «Cómo enseñaba [ella] sus blancos dientes, cómo contorneaba su cuello, cómo se erguía para dar a su bien fajada cintura esbeltez momentánea, eran detalles que tú y yo, lector amigo, habríamos reparado, mas no Caballero, por la situación en que su espíritu se hallaba» (p. 112).

Rosalía is characterized in Tormento through other specific items of clothing besides the confining corset, such as the long-awaited peach-colored ball gown which the Queen gives her to attend a Palace function. Rosalía's gown -the skirt of which she is constantly having remade- must be related to the currant-colored dress which characterizes her in La de Bringas45. Rosalía's wardrobe is apparently replenished regularly by the Queen. The narrator writes of «su vestido, cuya falda procedía de las inagotables mercedes de la Reina...» (p. 87)46. Rosalía is clearly intended to be a symbol of the Queen, even in her clothing, and of her tendency toward Rubenesque formlessness.

Francisco Bringas, Rosalía's husband (fifteen years her senior), is also characterized by the clothing he wears and particularly by the clothing he acquires. Although he, too, has his «jewelry», Galdós describes him principally through his shabby wardrobe, emphasized to contrast with the showy clothing Rosalía wears. The reader sees Bringas «envuelto en su bata del año 40, la cual ni de balde se habría podido vender en el Rastro»; and throughout Tormento don Francisco speaks of «el gabán, que tanta falta me hace...» (p. 66). He longs for a new overcoat to replace the dingy, tattered one he is ashamed to wear in public after six years of use; the overcoat represents masculine social standing and worth47. The gabán, which can transform Bringas into a new man just as Rosalía's corset molds her into a new woman, is also associated with pressure and constraint. «Nuestra situación hoy, hija de mi alma» reports Bringas, «es apretadilla. Si me encargo el gabán, que tanta falta me   —28→   hace; si vamos al baile de Palacio, tendremos que imponernos privaciones crueles...» (p. 73). Purchasing his new overcoat is as much a tormento to don Francisco financially as squeezing herself into her corset is for his wife physically. Finally, obligated to attend the ball, Francisco manages to secure an overcoat with great difficulty.

To don Francisco the overcoat is not so much prized for its utility as it is for its social symbolism. Later the narrator permits the reader to enter Bringas' mind and see his almost childish fondness for the overcoat: «De la caldeada fantasía de don Francisco no se apartaba la imagen de su gabán nuevecito, con aquel paño claro y limpio que parecía la purísima epidermis velluda de un albaricoque, con aquel forro de seda que era un encanto» (p. 118). Although he is but a dabbler in inconsequential things such as collections of useless articles or the grotesque hair picture in La de Bringas, he also knows the value of a social façade. Galdós stresses his physical resemblance to the dynamic and powerful French political leader of the time, Thiers, but emphasizes that Bringas lacks «lo que distingue al hombre superior, que sabe hacer la historia y escribirla, del hombre común que ha nacido para componer una cerradura y clavar una alfombra» (p. 17). Nonetheless, appearance is all, and Francisco looks forward to wearing his overcoat to the theatre of society, the Palace, where he can be seen in the right light and among the right people.

Later in the novel, after he proudly wears the new coat to the Palace ball, it is promptly stolen from the cloakroom, presumably by another guest equally fond of social posturing. The narrator comments on this happening with mock surprise (documented with triple exclamation marks), adding: «Este siniestro, horripilante caso, no era nuevo en las fiestas palatinas, ni había baile en que no desaparecieran tres o cuatro capas o gabanes. El desalmado que sustrajo aquella rica prenda dejó en su lugar un pingajo astroso y mugriento que no se podía mirar» (p. 118). The theft of the overcoat sets the stage for one of the most ironic scenes of the entire novel -a kind of contrapuntal exchange between Bringas and Agustín. «Un país donde tales cosas pasan», exclaims Bringas, «donde se cometen tales desmanes junto a las gradas del Trono, era un país perdido». He continues, «Ya no puede quedar duda... la revolución viene; viene la revolución». As he fulminates with this sort of rhetoric, Agustín, by now disillusioned with the corruption of Madrid's society, utters after each of Bringas' wild outcries, «Me alegro», or «Que venga» (p. 118). Representatives of two ideologies here stand face to face discussing the imminent collapse of Madrilenian society, one aghast at the threat to the status quo, the other eager for the revolution; and the impetus for this political-philosophical exchange has been the theft of Bringas' overcoat, a perfect symbol for the bureaucratic society of the time. Agustín tells Bringas ironically: «Mira, Francisco... no te apures por tan poca cosa. Te regalo cuatro gabanes. Encárgatelos, y di a tu sastre que me mande la cuenta. Mejor será que se los encargues al sastre mío» (p. 119). Thus Agustín and his own tailor supply don Francisco with the correct and acceptable apparel for the society which Agustín rejects. Both Bringas and Rosalía are delighted with Agustín's promise of four gabanes. In a society based on conspicuous consumption, what more could they ask for than not just one but four   —29→   models of the single most conspicuous article of mid-century Madrilenian male finery? They do not sense the bitter indictment which Agustín makes of them and the society they represent when he offers them the overcoats. And yet, in spite of Caballero's generosity, at the conclusion of the novel Rosalía shows up at his house (now «el puerto de arrebatacapas» after her constant plunderings) and demands even more of Agustín's clothing from the latter's employee, Felipe Centeno: «A ver..., las camisas de tu amo, mequetrefe, ¿dónde las has puesto?» (p. 121).

In Tormento the narrator always portrays the complex priest don Pedro Polo, Amparo's seducer, in terms of clothing -in his case, the vestments of the Church. The priestly robes of the unhappy Polo signify entrapment and an unnatural disguise of his real self. He feels choked and smothered by the strictures of his clerical uniform. At one point in the novel he asks Amparo: «¿A ti no te molesta esta Sociedad, no te ahoga esta atmósfera, no se te cae el cielo encima, no tienes ganas de respirar libremente?» (p. 55). He finds his priestly robes «una falsificación de su ser» and longs to rid himself of «todo lo que en sí hallara de artificial y postizo» (p. 51).

Traditionally the priest-figure defines himself as a non-sexual being in society through the particular clothing that he wears; but the priest Polo is clearly an obsessively sexual man whose priesthood is an encumbrance, one more mask of society which he must remove: «estaba forrado su cuerpo con aquella horrible funda negra, más odiosa para él que la hopa del ajusticiado» (p. 57). After going to El Castañar to recuperate his strength, spiritually and physically, Polo effects a literal transformation in his outward appearance. He writes Amparo concerning this change: «Llevo un pañuelo liado a la cabeza, gorra de pelo y un chaquetón de paño pardo que me ha prestado el leñador» (p. 79). He now calls himself «un salvaje» and claims to be «expulsado de la vida y confinado a un rústico limbo...» (p. 79). When Amparo is summoned to Polo's stifling apartment in Madrid later, she is startled to see the great physical changes in the priest: «De repente apareció él. Estaba tan transformado que casi no le conocía al primer golpe de vista, pues se había dejado la barba, que era espesa, fuerte y rizada, y la vida del campo había sido eficaz y rápido agente de salud en aquella ruda naturaleza. [...] Antes que hombre disfrazado era un hombre que había soltado el disfraz, apareciendo en su propio y adecuado aspecto» (p. 90).

Polo, who has been characterized in the novel through masks and disguises as well as priestly robes, now removes the outward trappings of society to disclose his real self48. His beard is an important aspect of his new appearance. It is the first thing that Amparo notices, and his sister Marcelina, the religious fanatic, is greatly displeased with the facial hair: «Pero di, caribe, ¿todavía no te has quitado esas barbazas de Simeón Cirineo? -dijo la hermana al hermano-. ¿No te da vergüenza que la gente te vea en esa facha?» (p. 97).

Agustín Caballero, the indiano who loves Amparo, is in some ways the opposite pole of Polo, as the latter's name suggests: as Caballero comes from primitive Nature to the society of Madrid, Polo abandons society for Nature. Both, however, are ultimately misfits in formal civilization. Caballero has initially come to Madrid to find a stable, civilized society where he can live an orderly, idealized life with all the accessories of civilization that his hard-earned   —30→   money can buy. He is approximately forty-five years of age and has been away from European civilization for thirty of those years. As he says, «Pasé lo mejor de mi vida trabajando como se trabaja en América, en un mundo que se forma» (p. 34). He expects to find in Madrid not «un mundo que se forma», but an urbane world already framed and sustained by the best of human values. As is nearly always the case in Galdós' «país de los viceversas», Madrid is the opposite of what Caballero expected it to be.

«Yo desconozco las mentiras sociales», says Agustín (p. 30); but in this society, he has to learn to pretend, to talk in a superficial manner, and to dress ostentatiously in the uniform of acceptability. As Rosalía Bringas tells him, he must learn to wear his necktie properly if he wishes to be accepted. He has tied it carelessly and the knot is slipping toward the back of his neck. The clear implication is that he must learn to wear the proper apparel (in the proper manner, in the proper places, in the company of the proper people) or be condemned and hanged by a censorious society. Obviously the notion of the prescribed necktie is alien to a man who has worked out of doors in the Americas for most of his life and claims that «he vivido quince años sin ver un espejo, o lo que es lo mismo, sin verme la fisonomía y sin saber cómo soy» (p. 23)49. The narrator says that «aquel hombre, que había prestado a la civilización de América servicios muy positivos, si no brillantes, era tosco y desmañado, y parecía muy fuera de lugar en una capital burocrática donde hay personas que han hecho brillantes carreras por saber hacerse el lazo de la corbata» (p. 24). In Galdós' Madrid, as in Balzac's Paris, the properly tied cravat, in the latest style and color, of course, becomes a sine qua non of society, a badge of respectability50.

Agustín is at first eager to mold himself to meet the requirements of what he believes to be the superior society of Madrid. He initially embraces the Church, the government, the family, the petty social regulations of society; concurrently he accumulates a large house, lavish belongings, and other signs of acceptability. When Agustín discovers the inherent falsity of Madrilenian society, however, that discovery is accompanied by the parallel action of «uncovering». Just as Polo finds his religious vestments constricting and imprisoning and therefore removes them, so Caballero eventually finds the constraints of society comparable to ill-fitting, binding clothing. He declares bitterly about the society of Madrid: «me reviento dentro de vosotros como dentro de un vestido estrecho...» To show the deadening effects of society, he compares himself to «el cavador que se pone guantes, y desde que se los pone pierde el tacto, y es como si no tuviera manos...». And finally he exclaims: «Zapato de la Sociedad, me aprietas y te quito de mis pies» (p. 118)51. Once Agustín has rid himself of the galling trappings of so-called civilization -«este yo falsificado y postizo que quiso amoldarse a la cultura viciosa de por acá...» (pp. 119-20); he and Amparo escape together, unmarried and flouting tradition, to France.

Caballero the idealist, inexperienced in real love, finds his ideal woman in Amparo Sánchez Emperador, who appears at first to be untouched by the stains of corrupt society. Amparo, an example of the helpless orphan girls who appealed so to Galdós and who populated much of nineteenth-century literature, is the pivotal character in Tormento. She is closely associated with   —31→   clothing throughout the novel, although she herself dresses poorly52. The narrator is particularly fond of characterizing her through her sewing. When Agustín fantasizes the marriage proposal that he will make to her, he imagines that she will be sewing demurely (p. 33). Amparo makes her living as a seamstress, and in the novel her sewing is her objective correlative. Roland Barthes helps explain the significance of sewing as a symbol; he claims that it means «always: mend, make, repair...»53. In Tormento the frequent references to Amparo's sewing make the reader think of her attempts to restore honor to her life (or mend her past) so that she can become the woman whom Caballero idealizes.

The narrator positions scenes of sewing, or scenes related to sewing, at crucial moments in the novel. In fact, Amparo has a scene involving sewing with nearly every major character in the work. When Caballero does propose marriage to Amparo, the moment is much as he has fantasized it -except that his intended fiancée has just returned from a visit to Polo and is sitting alone in the dark sewing nervously. When Caballero offers marriage to her, her needle snaps in her fingers (pp. 63-64). The notion of sewing as mending the past is seen as well in the relationship between Amparo and Polo, Amparo and her sister Refugio, and also between Amparo and Rosalía Bringas. In her last interview with Polo, he locks her into his apartment, orders her to close the shutters, and thus makes her a prisoner of his house; to complete this picture of sexual subjugation, he says: «Y no me vendría mal que cogieras ahora una agujita y me cosieras este chaleco...» (p. 96).

In her relationship with her sister Refugio, sewing is also an important motif. The two argue over the merits of remaining poor and pure seamstresses versus becoming an artist's model and eventually a prostitute or mistress (as is the case with Refugio)54. In this scene the narrator establishes Amparo's desire to better her life and «repair» her lost honor, even if she must remain penniless and sew her fingers to the bone. The relationship between sewing and lost honor is seen in a later interview between Rosalía Bringas and Amparo, who has continued as a seamstress in the Bringas' home even after her engagement to Agustín. Rosalía feigns reluctance to ask Agustín's fiancée to sew for her: «Siéntate... me coserás estas mangas... ¡Ah!, no ¡qué atrevimiento! Perdona» (p. 77). When Rosalía learns of Amparo's past indiscretions with Polo, however, she manifests that knowledge by ordering the young woman to help alter the skirt of her ball-gown, thus forcing Amparo into the subordinate role that she has occupied previously in the household: «Hoy tengo costura larga. Estoy decidida a reformar la falda del vestido de baile... Veo que estás como asustada... Sosiégate, mujer; no correrá la sangre al río» (p. 103)55.

Amparo is associated as well with two other sartorial props of some importance in the novel: a handkerchief and a pair of gloves. In Tormento Amparo's handkerchief, white and fresh, suggests her attempt to make a new life for herself. Ironically, most of the references concerning the handkerchief take place in Polo's dirty and unkempt rooms. After being summoned there by Polo's supposed illness, Amparo carries her white handkerchief with her almost as if it were a protecting amulet56. At Polo's door she cannot bear to touch the filthy rope cord to announce her arrival, so she sheathes the   —32→   string with the handkerchief (p. 48). Celedonia, Polo's housekeeper, answers the door -with a black handkerchief, contrasting with Amparo's white one, tied around her head, as if indicating the total contamination of the household. Later Amparo ties her handkerchief around her own hair to protect herself from the dust as she sweeps the rooms and generally tries to bring order out of chaos (p. 52). When Amparo is reduced to tears by Polo and covers her eyes with her handkerchief, the priest imagines her as a saintly effigy in a church: «inmóvil y en pie, como una de esas bonitas imágenes que, vestidas de terciopelo, barnizada la cera y con un pañuelo en la mano, representan con su llanto eterno la salvación por el arrepentimiento» (p. 48). Later in the novel, when Rosalía sees Amparo for the first time after learning of her past affair with Polo, she orders the bride-to-be to rinse out two handkerchiefs for her, thus announcing, through the action itself, that she knows of the stains on Amparo's reputation and the impossibility of her marriage to Caballero. The narrator notes: «Tiempo hacía que a la Emperadora no se le mandaban tales cosas» (p. 103). The final reference to the handkerchief in the novel appears in Amparo's suicide attempt. When Agustín discovers her unconscious in his house, she is dressed for death, complete with a white handkerchief covering her face. In traditional thought, the handkerchief -probably because of its relation to both tears of sorrow and happiness- is associated with marriage and also with death. In some European folklore, the «tear handkerchief» is linen blessed by the priest and given the bride to dry her tears at her wedding; the same handkerchief is laid over her face after she has died and is in her coffin57.

Amparo's gloves assume dramatic importance when, during her last visit to Polo's apartment, she leaves one of them behind. Following the time-honored popular device of the «lost article that incriminates», Galdós has the glove discovered by none other than Polo's fanatical sister Marcelina, who is trying to prove that the amorous relationship between Polo and Amparo has begun anew:

Al llegar aquí, Marcelina que fijamente miraba al suelo, inclinóse, y sin hacer aspavientos de sorpresa, recogió un objeto arrojado y como perdido sobre la estera. Era un guante. Tomándolo por un dedo, lo mostró a su hermano, y dijo con frialdad inquisitorial:

-¿De quién es este guante?


(p. 99)                


Polo invents a lie to account for the glove, since he does not wish his sister to know that Amparo is at that moment trembling in the wardrobe in his bedroom, Amparo's gloves are part of an elaborate disguise she has worn to Polo's house, hoping not to be identified or compromised in the visit. In addition to the gloves, she has donned a heavy veil. Enroute she wishes that it were Carnival time so that she could also wear a mask over her face and thus be totally covered. In a sense, the gloves are masks for her hands, just as the veil or careta is a mask for the face. In the previous scene, Polo has trapped Amparo physically in his rooms, hoping to convince her to renew their sexual relationship. He has carried her about the apartment roughly and has grasped her hand in such a way that she has been unable to free herself. During this scuffling the glove is apparently lost, leaving Amparo's hand vulnerable and naked58. Marcelina's finding the glove is sufficient to   —33→   confirm her suspicions about the two. Amparo fears that past wrongdoings, which she feels as tangibly as if they were a «mancha horrenda» upon her physical person (p. 85), will now be disclosed to Caballero -and she is right. Marcelina makes public those indiscretions to Rosalía Bringas, among others, who wastes no time in apprising Agustín.

When Amparo realizes that her past relationship with Polo represents an indelible stain on her life for which society will not forgive her and that Caballero will not marry her now, she goes through her own scene of «discovering» and «uncovering». She dresses in a new black silk dress (apparently intended originally as her wedding dress) and prepares to commit suicide in the home of Caballero, among the lavish furnishings which he has purchased in anticipation of their marriage59. This death scene -which turns out to be a farcical death scene when the reader learns that the poison Amparo is taking is not poison at all, unknown to her- is replete with imagery of rebirth as well as death. The black dress represents both a wedding dress and a death-shroud. The bed upon which she lies and the bedroom in which she takes the «poison» make the reader think of the funeral bier and the tomb as well as the nuptial bed and bridal chamber. This scene represents Amparo's death before society; she attempts to kill her social self and goes through a type of resurrection to a new, freer life. The reader should not be surprised to learn that she thinks of the act of dying in terms of a removal of clothing, as if she were undressing for a kind of cleansing ritual -the washing away of her old self: «Dentro de cinco minutos estaría en el reino de las sombras eternas, con nueva vida, desligada del grillete de sus penas, con todo el deshonor a la espalda, arrojado en el mundo que abandonaba como se arroja un vestido al entrar en el lecho» (p. 111).

The new Amparo who has abandoned the strictures of formal society realizes now in deed what she has told Polo in chapter sixteen of the novel: «Ya no me llamo Tormento, ya recobro mi nombre...» (p. 57). She, like Agustín and Pedro Polo, is now true to herself instead of to the hypocritical society -and the Church, which has made her «temblar con escalofríos, como si le pusieran un cilicio de hierro» (p. 56). The desengaño of these three characters is now complete as their societal disrobing is complete. Agustín -of whom the narrator said earlier that he was «hombre más perteneciente a la Naturaleza que a la Sociedad, en la cual se hallaba como cosa prestada» (p. 115)- declares: «Se acabó el artificio» (p. 122), and realizes that everything about Madrid «fue... mentira... mentira, mentira, mentira» (p. 122); Amparo has realized earlier that «el estilo es la mentira» (p. 44), as has Polo, who gladly leaves behind him «la ciudadela de la mentira» (p. 80).

Yet the final irony in this novel filled with ironies concerns Rosalía Bringas, who is to be the central figure in Galdós' sequel to Tormento, La de Bringas. Although the title Tormento derives on one level from Polo's affectionate nickname for Amparo, on another level the title refers to the torment caused to Agustín, Polo, and Amparo by the tight boundaries of society. The only person who speaks of those societal pressures as being positive (tormento delicioso) is Rosalía Bringas. In La de Bringas the love for clothing and finery becomes less than delicious; it is a galling torment which eventually causes her downfall.

  —34→  

In the last chapters of Tormento, a most important and symbolic ritual concerning the exchange of clothing and roles (Amparo/Tormento now becomes Rosalía/Tormento) is enacted between the two women. Rosalía has indicated throughout the work that she wishes she could have Agustín (and his money) for her own. She vicariously takes part in Agustín's wedding plans by attempting to be Amparo's mentor in the ways of society and the subtleties of dress. Rosalía charges clothing to Caballero's accounts at various fashionable shops, ostensibly for Amparo's trousseau, but as she and Amparo and the reader all know, she plans to wear them herself at a later date. Perhaps the most blatant usurpation of Amparo's role as expressed in sartorial symbols is Rosalía's wearing of the ring Agustín has given Amparo, with its connotations of engagement or marriage. Knowing that Amparo is now in disfavor, Rosalía brazenly picks and chooses from among the many items Agustín has purchased for his ex-fiancée -including the ring: «¿Qué miras? -preguntó la de Bringas-. ¿Te has fijado en esta sortija que Agustín compró para ti?... No creas que soy de las que se apropian lo ajeno. El primo me dijo ayer que podía tomarla para mí...» (p. 105). Rosalía, hoping to take possession of the rest of the treasures acquired for Amparo, sees in her imagination «montones de rasos, terciopelos, sedas, encajes, pieles, joyas sin fin, colores y gracias mil, los sombreros más elegantes, las últimas novedades parisienses, todo muy bien lucido en teatro, paseos, tertulias» (p. 119). The novel concludes with Rosalía's appropriation of that trousseau, which Caballero and Amparo bequeath to her as they leave «la Señora Sociedad» behind them. Galdós makes it clear at the conclusion of Tormento that it is the possession of these new-found riches which pushes Rosalía into being the adulterous, deceitful woman she will become in La de Bringas. «There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them», writes Virginia Woolf, who adds that «[they] mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking»60. Rosalía's slavish adoration of clothing and appearance demonstrates well Woolf's thesis. Caballero and Amparo indirectly provide Rosalía with the resources she needs to present a well-to-do (but false) façade before society -a mask she cannot sustain without the financial help of Pez and the other lovers she acquires in La de Bringas.

Galdós' Tormento ends with both a quitarse and a ponerse. The three outsiders in the novel, Amparo, Agustín, and Polo, strip themselves in a literal sense of the trappings of society. All have to abandon Madrid and Spain in order to be happy. Francisco and Rosalía Bringas are left to become more and more lost in the social labyrinth of Madrid, literally following the thread of «la Señora Sociedad» to their downfall. With his emphasis on superficial apparel, the narrator has created a jarring portrait of mid-nineteenth-century Hispanic society. The Spanish capital is a kind of Vanity Fair whose values are perversely awry. In Tormento, with its unifying imagery of clothing and uncovering/discovering, the narrator gives the reader one more chapter in Galdós' depiction of «el mundo al revés». In his novelistic world, everything seems to develop in reverse; one is tainted by contact with so-called civilization instead of being bettered by it; the very priest who should protect virtue and exemplify it seduces the heroine; the wife who   —35→   boasts of her virtue in the novel begins a downward moral spiralling which results in adultery and prostitution in La de Bringas. Everything is upside down and in decadence. From the imagery of Rosalía's rebellious flesh straining persistently against the constraints of her corset to the dismantling of Caballero's carefully furnished house (and the concomitant destruction of his ideals), everything in Tormento is coming apart at the seams. Galdós' world is truly «un mundo de dislocación, de anomalías»61. And that is Galdós' own private tormento.

University of Wisconsin



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