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Abstract
Over seventy years ago Casalduero demonstrated that Galdós had based the main characters and basic plot features of Marianela on key ideas from Positivism, but he did not grasp Galdós’ nuanced and ambiguous position as regards progress at a time when the Industrial Revolution was impacting on Spain. A careful analysis shows that mining/geology and ophthalmology, as depicted in the novel, bring with them a complex series of benefits and disadvantages. Under threat are nature, the countryside, agriculture, and a traditional, rural way of life, elements with which Marianela herself is closely associated. Alongside this allegorical drama of the problematical onset of modernity, parts of the novel present a Romantic vision and tone, while other parts a Naturalistic perspective and style. I propose that there are various parallels here: between the attack on nature, the demise of Marianela, and the move away from Romanticism, between the spread of science and industry, the (relative) success of Carlos and Teodoro and the adoption of their methods, and the espousal of Naturalism, and finally, between the dynamics that link each of these together (thus: the implementation of strip-mining involves the destruction of countryside, the adoption of Naturalism involves the abandonment of Romanticism, etc.). The dénouement seems to accept the inevitability of ‘necessary sacrifices’, but not without reluctance and regret.
Notes
1 Joaquín Casalduero, ‘Auguste Comte y Marianela’, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, 20 (1939–40), 10–25; reprinted in Joaquín Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós (1843–1920), 3rd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), 204–21.
2 ‘Marianela es una profesión de fe: Galdós cree en el progreso de la Humanidad, gracias a la ciencia y el trabajo’ (Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós, 220).
3 Sherman H. Eoff, The Novels of Pérez Galdós. The Concept of Life As Dynamic Process (Saint Louis: Washington Univ. Studies, 1954), 133; C. A. Jones, ‘Galdós's Marianela and the Approach to Reality’, Modern Language Review, 56:4 (1961), 515–19.
4 Marie A. Wellington comes closer to the mark in her article ‘Marianela: nuevas dimensiones’, Hispania (USA), 51:1 (1968), 38–48. There she asserts that ‘con justicia se puede decir que Marianela es un tratado dramatizado sobre el sistema filosófico de Comte’ (47), but also argues that ‘[Galdós] emplea una exposición ambigua que despierta dudas respecto al sistema comtiano’ (43). However, her focus is on different features of the novel, and the ambiguity that she finds is located elsewhere.
5 Richard G. Olson, Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2008), 62.
6 W. M. Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century. An Essay in Intellectual History (Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 1963), 21. Commenting on Littré's controversial election to the Académie Française at the end of December 1871, Galdós did not hesitate in characterizing him as ‘el jefe de los positivistas, el propagador de las doctrinas de Augusto Comte’ (see Benito Pérez Galdós, ‘Crónica de la quincena’, La Ilustración de Madrid. Revista de Política, Ciencias, Artes y Literatura, año III, no. 50 [30 enero 1872], 18–19 [p. 19]).
7 Geraldine M. Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’ (London: Grant & Cutler, in association with Tamesis Books, 1988), 14; Estrella Trincado & José-Luis Ramos, ‘John Stuart Mill and Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 33:4 (2011), 507–26 (p. 510).
8 Some examples: Francisco María Tubino, ‘La crisis del pensamiento nacional y el positivismo en el Ateneo’, Revista de España, XLVII (28 diciembre 1875), 417–49; Gumersindo de Azcárate, ‘El positivismo en el Ateneo de Madrid’, Revista Contemporánea, tomo III, vol. III (15 mayo 1876), 350–67; Gumersindo de Azcárate, ‘El positivismo y la civilización’, Revista Contemporánea, tomo IV, vol. II (30 junio 1876), 230–50, and ‘El positivismo y la civilización (conclusión)’, Revista Contemporánea, tomo IV, vol. IV (30 julio 1876), 465–99; Emilio Littré, ‘La filosofía positiva’, La América. Crónica Hispano-Americana, XVIII:23 (13 diciembre 1874), 9–11; Emilio Littré, ‘Los progresos del positivismo’, Revista Contemporánea, año II–III, tomo VII (15 enero 1877), 99–112; José del Perojo, ‘Análisis y ensayos. El positivismo o sistema de las ciencias experimentales, por Pedro Estassen [sic], Barcelona, Jané Hermanos’, Revista Contemporánea, año II–III, tomo XI (15 septiembre 1877), 129–32; and R. Schiattarella, ‘Augusto Comte y Stuart Mill’, Revista Contemporánea, año II–III, tomo XI (15 septiembre 1877), 92–107.These articles are representative of the phenomenon but numerically only the tip of the iceberg; for more references, see Walter T. Pattison, Benito Pérez Galdós and the Creative Process (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1954), 116, n. 8, and William H. Shoemaker, The Novelistic Art of Galdós, 3 vols (Valencia: Albatros Ediciones–Hispanófila, 1980–82), II (1980), 92, n. 3. John Stuart Mill's book in French translation, Auguste Comte et le positivisme, trans. Georges Clemenceau (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1868), was available through a Madrid bookstore associated with the French publisher: Carlos Bailly-Baillière, Plaza del Príncipe Alonso, 16.
9 Pattison, Benito Pérez Galdós, 115–16; Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 18–19; Shoemaker, The Novelistic Art of Galdós, II, 91–92. The Revista Contemporánea essay of May 1876, ‘El positivismo en el Ateneo de Madrid’, is an uncorrected transcript of the address given by Gumersindo de Azcárate (1840–1917) on 6 April; the two-part essay of June–July, ‘El positivismo y la civilización’, corrects and expands on this text.
10 Pedro Estasén y Cortada, El positivismo, o, Sistema de las ciencias esperimentales [sic], Biblioteca de Ciencias y Filosofía (Barcelona: Jané Hermanos/Madrid: Carlos Bailly-Baillière, 1877). The circumstances surrounding the lectures are described by Perojo in his review of the book, ‘Análisis y ensayos. El positivismo o sistema de las ciencias experimentales’.
11 Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. I: Les Préliminaires generaux et la philosophie mathématique (Paris: Bachelier, 1830), 3–4. It should be noted that science implies the scientific method, as well as one of its principal methodologies, observation: Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. IV: La Philosophie sociale et les conclusions générales (Première partie) (Paris: Bachelier, 1839), 294.
12 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, I, 7.
13 Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. V: La Partie historique de la philosophie sociale, et tout ce qui concerne l’état théologique et l’état métaphysique (Paris: Bachelier, 1841), 75, 175.
14 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, V, 411, 629–30. Comte's view of the evolution of ‘characteristic’ professions of the three stages could be represented diagrammatically thus:
15 Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, Vol. VI: Le Complément de la philosophie sociale, et les conclusions générales (Paris: Bachelier, 1842), 146–47.
16 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, VI, 153, 321.
17 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, I, 96, 111–12, 115.
18 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, I, 71–72.
19 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, V, 20.
20 As a former member of the Guardia Civil (a branch of the military) and now a farmer, Francisco Penáguilas also corresponds to the theological stage (see Joaquín Casalduero, ‘Introducción’, in Benito Pérez Galdós, Marianela, ed. & intro. Joaquín Casalduero [Madrid: Cátedra, 1983], 9–43 [pp. 33–34]).
21 It is worth pointing out that Comte considered stage 2 necessary (and inevitable) as a transitional phase between 1 and 3 (Cours de philosophie positive, I, 4, 13); a detailed treatment of the ‘état métaphysique’ is found in Cours de philosophie positive, V, 492–775.
22 All quotations and chapter and page-references are drawn from Casalduero's Cátedra edition.
23 ‘Galdós began writing Marianela on 6 December 1877 and sent the manuscript to the printer on 21 January 1878’ (Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 12).
24 Gabriel Tortella Casares, Banking, Railroads, and Industry in Spain 1829–1874 (New York: Arno Press, 1977); Joseph Harrison, An Economic History of Modern Spain (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1978), 42; Jordi Nadal, ‘The Failure of the Industrial Revolution in Spain, 1830–1914’, in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, ed. C. M. Cipolla, 4 vols (London: Collins/Fontana, 1972–73), IV (2) (1973), 533–626; David Ringrose, Spain, Europe and the ‘Spanish Miracle’ 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1996), 62.
25 The first law dates from 1855; see the exhaustive history by Miguel Muñoz Rubio, Jesús Sanz Fernández & Javier Vidal, Siglo y medio del ferrocarril en España, 1848–1998. Economía, industria y sociedad (Madrid: Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles, 1999).
26 As we saw above, scientists are the new ‘priests’ of the positive age: around the piano, Teodoro and Carlos, joined by the ‘ingeniero segundo’, form ‘una especie de coro de sacerdotes’ (IX, 122).
27 Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 29.
28 Peter A. Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity in Marianela’, Anales Galdosianos, 7 (1972), 49–66 (p. 52).
29 It is tempting to think of Galdós as having an emerging ecological consciousness, though we should be wary of projecting twenty-first-century attitudes back on to him. Still, the term is used by Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity’, 55.
30 Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity’, 54; Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós, 206; Pattison, Benito Pérez Galdós, 132–33.
31 Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity’, 54–55.
32 The Rio Tinto mines, where Carlos worked before, were operated by the Spanish government between 1724 and 1873. So although the action of the novel is set back in the 1860s, the sale by auction of Rio Tinto to a British-German syndicate would have been relatively fresh in Galdós’ mind as he was writing.
33 According to Gabriel Tortella Casares, The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, trans. Valerie Herr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 2000), ‘[t]he best deposits of this metal [zinc] were found in Reocín, near Santander, and they were exploited by the Belgian-owned Real Compañía Asturiana de Minas, which exported the greater part of the ore to be smelted in Belgium’ (108). As documented by Benito Madariaga, Pérez Galdós. Biografía santanderina, pról. Joaquín Casalduero (Santander: Institución Cultural de Cantabria/Instituto de Literatura ‘José M.a de Pereda’, 1979), 125–31, Galdós toured the region inland from Santander during August 1876, accompanied by Pereda and other friends. A stop at Reocín allowed him to take detailed notes of the operation; Reocín is close to Cartes (hence Socartes), Villamojada can be identified with the town of Torrelavega, and the nearby Riocorbo may have inspired Aldeacorba (see Marcelo Cortés, ‘Benito Pérez Galdós y Reocín’, Renglones [n.d.], 1–4, <http://www.ies9valles.com/revista_renglones/pdf/galdosenreocin.pdf> [date of last access 15 February 2012]; Madariaga, Pérez Galdós. Biografía santanderina, 251–59; and Pattison, Benito Pérez Galdós, 133).
34 Still, as a nineteenth-century liberal, Galdós appears to have been generally in favour of foreign investment as a spur to growth and progress (see Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 30, and Jacques Beyrie, Galdós et son mythe, 3 vols [Lille: Atelier Reproduction des Thèses, Univ. de Lille, 1980], II, 288; III, 165, n. 78).
35 Admittedly, astronomy rather than geology is referenced in the second and third instances, but the sense of the correspondence of small and large scale remains: notice how the same word, ‘abreviatura’—‘abreviado’, appears in the first and second quotations.
36 With Teodoro's scalpel as chisel, and the figurative representation of Pablo's acquisition of sight as a second birth (VIII, 116; XX, 204), there are evidently echoes of the Pygmalion/Galatea myth here. Pablo prefers a print of Galatea over one of the crucifixion (XX, 206). Lou Charnon-Deutsch, ‘The Pygmalion Effect in the Fiction of Pérez Galdós’, in A Sesquicentennial Tribute to Galdós 1843–1993, ed. Linda M. Willem (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1993), 173–89, demonstrates that Galdós is no stranger to the myth, but in regard to Marianela she restricts her detailed comments to Pablo's relationship with Marianela and Florentina.
37 Eight years earlier Galdós’ outlook had been more unreservedly optimistic: ‘El gran progreso de la industria ha hecho que una infinidad de productos de arte, objetos bellos y de valor que estaban reservados a las clases altas y poderosas, le son hoy accesibles a todas las clases; […] la facilidad de la producción, el acierto con que se aplica el arte a la industria, ha dado orijen [sic] a las cosas elegantes que están al alcance de todos’ (Benito Pérez Galdós, ‘Observaciones sobre la novela contemporánea en España’, Revista de España, año III, tomo XV, no. 57 [1870], 162–72 [p. 170]).
38 Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity’, 61–62.
39 Cf. José F. Montesinos, Galdós, 3 vols (Madrid: Castalia, 1968), I, 243.
40 María-Paz Yáñez, ‘El dilema discursivo en Marianela’, Anales Galdosianos, 29–30 (1994–1995), 51–61 (pp. 59–60).
41 The first Rougon-Macquart novel, La Fortune des Rougon, is from 1871. The first article about Zola published in Spain appeared in April 1876, according to Walter T. Pattison, El naturalismo español. Historia externa de un movimiento literario (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), 11. Zola's Le Roman expérimental did not come out until well after Marianela, in 1880.
42 Casalduero goes so far as to call Marianela ‘el manifiesto del naturalismo en España, desde un punto de vista ideológico y estético’ (Vida y obra de Galdós, 63). Both Montesinos (Galdós, I, 242) and Beyrie (Galdós et son mythe, II, 287) echo him in more moderate tones, but the notion does not seem to have been taken up in recent criticism.
43 Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), although not strictly a Positivist, was often thought of as associated with the movement (Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century, 98, 128–30). Taine's theory of ‘race, moment, milieu’ was set out in the Histoire de la littérature anglaise (2 vols, 1863–64). Casalduero proposed another work of his, De l'intelligence (1870), as Galdós’ source for Pablo's first experiences of sight: ‘Marianela y De l'intelligence de Taine’, PMLA, 50:3 (1935), 929–31; reprinted in Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós, 201–03.
44 Scanlon (Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 53–54) documents the link with Smiles’ Self-Help (1859), an extract of which was published in a Spanish version in 1876: Samuel Smiles, Los hombres de energía y coraje: notas biográficas tomadas del popular libro titulado ‘Self-Help’ (Madrid: Imprenta de Aurelio J. Alaría, 1876). ‘Struggle for Existence’ is of course the title of Chapter 3 of Darwin's On The Origin of Species (1859), the first Spanish translation of which came out just months before Galdós started work on Marianela: Charles Darwin, El origen de las especies por medio de la selección natural o conservación de las razas en su lucha por la existencia, trans. Enrique Godínez (Madrid: Biblioteca Perojo, 1877). Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was especially important in the introduction of evolutionary theory in Spain, and a number of articles by or about the German scientist appeared in Spanish journals in each and every one of the years 1874–78 (see The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, ed. Thomas F. Glick [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988], 311–12 & n. 14, 321–23). Also, a major polemic concerning Darwinism occurred in the Canary Islands over the years 1876–78 (The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, ed. Glick, 328–33).
45 By January 1877 Zola had completed seven novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the most recent instalment being L'Assommoir, which is known for its focus on poverty and alcoholism, and enjoyed a considerable succès de scandale. I am not suggesting a direct connection, but the coincidence is eloquent. Stephen Gilman, Galdós and the Art of the European Novel: 1867–1887 (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1981), 94–129, makes a strong case for seeing its influence in La desheredada.
46 It is worth noting that Zola's mining novel, Germinal, was not published until 1885.
47 It is possible that these images of petrification may have been inspired, in part, by the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869 that was debunked by 1870. Copycat hoaxes followed in 1876 (Solid Muldoon) and 1877 (Taughannock House). Cf. one of the descriptions of ‘la Terrible’: ‘Parecía la petrificación de una orgía de gigantescos demonios’ (II, 59).
48 ‘Observaciones sobre la novela contemporánea en España’, 170.
49 Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 23; Brian J. Dendle, ‘Shipwreck and Discovery: A Study of Imagery in Marianela’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 74:2 (1973), 326–32 (p. 331).
50 Pattison, Benito Pérez Galdós, 117.
51 Still, as more than one critic has pointed out, by following the directions of the townspeople of Villamojada, in this unfamiliar terrain and in total darkness, Teodoro gets thoroughly lost. Prudently, he decides to wait. Pablo and the moon arrive almost simultaneously, and Teodoro is guided out of the mines by his blind rescuer. The irony of the situation is certainly strong (Bly, ‘Egotism and Charity’, 61, n. 111; Scanlon, Pérez Galdós: ‘Marianela’, 29), but at least Teodoro bides his time until he can safely reach his destination (his brother's house in Socartes).
52 However, even if Marianela had somehow survived the sudden illness, there was still that impossible transition from Comte's stage 1 to stage 3 to contend with, to say nothing of her frail constitution.
53 Montesinos, Galdós, I, 243, 247–48.
54 Interestingly, Eamonn Rodgers, ‘Galdós’ La desheredada and Naturalism’, BHS, XLV:4 (1968), 285–98, finds not only the presence of Naturalism in La desheredada but also a significant critique of Romanticism (in the characters of Isidora and Joaquín Pez), a critique that echoes Galdós’ remarks from ten years earlier: ‘la novela romántica, que ya está mandada recoger […] El lirismo nos corroe’ (‘Observaciones sobre la novela contemporánea en España’, 163).