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DONA PERECTA
DONA PERECTA B. PEREZ GALDOS Translated from the Spanish
Mary J. Serrano
INTRODUCTION
The very acute and lively Spanish critic who signs himself Clarin and
is known personally as Don Leopoldo Alas says the present Spanish
novel has no yesterday but only a day-before-yesterday. It does not
derive from the romantic novel which immediately preceded that: the
novel large or little as it was with Cervantes Hurtado de Mendoza
Quevedo and the masters of picaresque fiction.
Clarin dates its renascence from the political revolution of 1868
which gave Spanish literature the freedom necessary to the fiction
that studies to reflect modern life actual ideas and current
aspirations; and though its authors were few at first "they have
never been adventurous spirits friends of Utopia revolutionists or
impatient progressists and reformers." He thinks that the most daring
the most advanced of the new Spanish novelists and the best by far
is Don Benito Perez Galdos.
I should myself have made my little exception in favor of Don Armando
Palacio Valdes but Clarin speaks with infinitely more authority and
I am certainly ready to submit when he goes on to say that Galdos is
not a social or literary insurgent; that he has no political or
religious prejudices; that he shuns extremes and is charmed with
prudence; that his novels do not attack the Catholic dogmas--though
they deal so severely with Catholic bigotry--but the customs and ideas
cherished by secular fanaticism to the injury of the Church. Because
this is so evident our critic holds his novels are "found in the
bosom of families in every corner of Spain." Their popularity among
all classes in Catholic and prejudiced Spain and not among free-
thinking students merely bears testimony to the fact that his aim and
motive are understood and appreciated although his stories are
apparently so often anti-Catholic.
I
Dona Perfecta is first of all a story and a great story but it is
certainly also a story that must appear at times potently and even
bitterly anti-Catholic. Yet it would be a pity and an error to read
it with the preoccupation that it was an anti-Catholic tract for
really it is not that. If the persons were changed in name and place
and modified in passion to fit a cooler air it might equally seem an
anti-Presbyterian or anti-Baptist tract; for what it shows in the
light of their own hatefulness and cruelty are perversions of any
religion any creed. It is not however a tract at all; it deals in
artistic largeness with the passion of bigotry as it deals with the
passion of love the passion of ambition the passion of revenge. But
Galdos is Spanish and Catholic and for him the bigotry wears a
Spanish and Catholic face. That is all.
Up to a certain time I believe Galdos wrote romantic or idealistic
novels and one of these I have read and it tired me very much. It
was called "Marianela" and it surprised me the more because I was
already acquainted with his later work which is all realistic. But
one does not turn realist in a single night and although the change
in Galdos was rapid it was not quite a lightning change; perhaps
because it was not merely an outward change but artistically a change
of heart. His acceptance in his quality of realist was much more
instant than his conversion and vastly wider; for we are told by the
critic whom I have been quoting that Galdos's earlier efforts which
he called /Episodios Nacionales/ never had the vogue which his
realistic novels have enjoyed.
These were indeed tendencious if I may Anglicize a very necessary
word from the Spanish /tendencioso/. That is they dealt with very
obvious problems and had very distinct and poignant significations
at least in the case of "Dona Perfecta" "Leon Roch" and "Gloria." In
still later novels Emilia Pardo-Bazan thinks he has comprehended
that "the novel of to-day must take note of the ambient truth and
realize the beautiful with freedom and independence." This valiant
lady in the campaign for realism which she made under the title of
"La Cuestion Palpitante"--one of the best and strongest books on the
subject--counts him first among Spanish realists as Clarin counts him
first among Spanish novelists. "With a certain fundamental humanity"
she says "a certain magisterial simplicity in his creations with the
natural tendency of his clear intelligence toward the truth and with
the frankness of his observation the great novelist was always
disposed to pass over to realism with arms and munitions; but his
aesthetic inclinations were idealistic and only in his latest works
has he adopted the method of the modern novel fathomed more and more
the human heart and broken once for all with the picturesque and with
the typical personages to embrace the earth we tread."
For her as I confess for me "Dona Perfecta" is not realistic enough
--realistic as it is; for realism at its best is not tendencious. It
does not seek to grapple with human problems but is richly content
with portraying human experiences; and I think Senora Pardo-Bazan is
right in regarding "Dona Perfecta" as transitional and of a period
when the author had not yet assimilated in its fullest meaning the
faith he had imbibed.
II
Yet it is a great novel as I said; and perhaps because it is
transitional it will please the greater number who never really arrive
anywhere and who like to find themselves in good company /en route/.
It is so far like life that it is full of significations which pass
beyond the persons and actions involved and envelop the reader as if
he too were a character of the book or rather as if its persons were
men and women of this thinking feeling and breathing world and he
must recognize their experiences as veritable facts. From the first
moment to the last it is like some passage of actual events in which
you cannot withhold your compassion your abhorrence your admiration
any more than if they took place within your personal knowledge. Where
they transcend all facts of your personal knowledge you do not accuse
them of improbability for you feel their potentiality in yourself
and easily account for them in the alien circumstance. I am not saying
that the story has no faults; it has several. There are tags of
romanticism fluttering about it here and there; and at times the
author permits himself certain old-fashioned literary airs and poses
and artifices which you simply wonder at. It is in spite of these
and with all these defects that it is so great and beautiful a book.
III
What seems to be so very admirable in the management of the story is
the author's success in keeping his own counsel. This may seem a very
easy thing; but if the reader will think over the novelists of his
acquaintance he will find that it is at least very uncommon. They
mostly give themselves away almost from the beginning either by their
anxiety to hide what is coming or their vanity in hinting what great
things they have in store for the reader. Galdos does neither the one
nor the other. He makes it his business to tell the story as it grows;
to let the characters unfold themselves in speech and action; to
permit the events to happen unheralded. He does not prophesy their
course he does not forecast the weather even for twenty-four hours;
the atmosphere becomes slowly slowly but with occasional lifts and
reliefs of such a brooding breathlessness of such a deepening
density that you feel the wild passion-storm nearer and nearer at
hand till it bursts at last; and then you are astonished that you had
not foreseen it yourself from the first moment.
Next to this excellent method which I count the supreme
characteristic of the book merely because it represents the whole and
the other facts are in the nature of parts is the masterly conception
of the characters. They are each typical of a certain side of human
nature as most of our personal friends and enemies are; but not
exclusively of this side or that. They are each of mixed motives
mixed qualities; none of them is quite a monster; though those who are
badly mixed do such monstrous things.
Pepe Rey who is such a good fellow--so kind and brave and upright
and generous so fine a mind and so high a soul--is tactless and
imprudent; he even condescends to the thought of intrigue; and though
he rejects his plots at last his nature has once harbored deceit. Don
Inocencio the priest whose control of Dona Perfecta's conscience has
vitiated the very springs of goodness in her is by no means bad
aside from his purposes. He loves his sister and her son tenderly and
wishes to provide for them by the marriage which Pepe's presence
threatens to prevent. The nephew though selfish and little has
moments of almost being a good fellow; the sister though she is
really such a lamb of meekness becomes a cat and scratches Don
Inocencio dreadfully when he weakens in his design against Pepe.
Rosario one of the sweetest and purest images of girlhood that I know
in fiction abandons herself with equal passion to the love she feels
for her cousin Pepe and to the love she feels for her mother Dona
Perfecta. She is ready to fly with him and yet she betrays him to her
mother's pitiless hate.
But it is Dona Perfecta herself who is the transcendent figure the
most powerful creation of the book. In her bigotry and its fellow-
vice hypocrisy have done their perfect work until she comes near to
being a devil and really does some devil's deeds. Yet even she is not
without some extenuating traits. Her bigotry springs from her
conscience and she is truly devoted to her daughter's eternal
welfare; she is of such a native frankness that at a certain point she
tears aside her mask of dissimulation and lets Pepe see all the
ugliness of her perverted soul. She is wonderfully managed. At what
moment does she begin to hate him and to wish to undo her own work in
making a match between him and her daughter? I could defy anyone to
say. All one knows is that at one moment she adores her brother's son
and at another she abhors him and has already subtly entered upon her
efforts to thwart the affection she has invited in him for her
daughter.
Caballuco what shall I say of Caballuco? He seems altogether bad but
the author lets one imagine that this cruel this ruthless brute must
have somewhere about him traits of lovableness of leniency though he
never lets one see them. His gratitude to Dona Perfecta even his
murderous devotion is not altogether bad; and he is certainly worse
than nature made him when wrought upon by her fury and the suggestion
of Don Inocencio. The scene where they work him up to rebellion and
assassination is a compendium of the history of intolerance; as the
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