In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

MLN 120.2 (2005) 314-334



[Access article in PDF]

Public Gardens and Private Affairs in the Spanish Realist Novel

College of the Holy Cross

"¡Oh, si esto fuera París," cries Eloísa as she hastens to her lover, José María Bueno de Guzmán, central protagonist and narrator of Benito Pérez Galdós's novel Lo prohibido (1884-85). "¡Oh, si esto fuera París, qué buen día de campo pasaríamos juntos, solos, libres! . . ." (LP 197)1 . But this is not Paris, as both she and her lover are so painfully aware, bound to José Maria's sitting room. It is Madrid, a city which evidently offers few proper landscapes for trysts. Although she trails off for a moment, as if picturing herself with José María in some Parisian idyll, Eloísa cannot finally escape the reality that presents itself: "Pero ¿adónde iríamos en Madrid?" The question is apt, not only for Eloísa, but also for a reader of the Spanish realist novel, for it encompasses a whole series of considerations about landscape and visibility in the city where these bourgeois protagonists make their lives.

Eloísa's evocation of Paris when she and José María are alone in Madrid is born of an awareness of transgression. She has come to see José María under the pretense of collecting some money that he has set aside for her to pay any lingering debts from her near financial ruin earlier in the novel, but it is clear when she enters, tiptoeing up behind José María then bathing his forehead in kisses (LP 194), that it is sex, not money alone, that awaits her this afternoon.2 The love scene [End Page 314] does not come as a surprise, since the two have spent much of book one meeting in secret, and have even managed a getaway to Paris.3 What sets the scene in question apart from previous rendezvous is the boldness of the lovers' actions, considering the threat of exposure around them. Eloísa's parents live in the apartment above, and the flower of Madrid's high society parades by on the Paseo de Recoletos below. Although the two have resorted to the slender subterfuge of a financial arrangement to deflect the suspicion of their family, friends, and neighbors, they run the risk of being caught in flagrante delicto.

Eloísa can only imagine a spot where she could be alone with José María and "free" ("juntos, solos, libres") since in Madrid, their "freedom" does not extend beyond his chambers. A peek at the "turba dominguera" outside reveals that Recoletos has been taken over by well-heeled Madrilenians out for a stroll, breathing the fresh air, admiring the sights, and socializing along the tree-lined promenade. The lovers' inability to join them arises from the knowledge that the passers-by, all people with whom they identify, are also all people who can identify them.

Eloísa's cry for escape betrays the influence of a mechanics of recognition, at work on the streets and elsewhere in the city, that binds her to her lover's room, at once inside and out of bounds. "¡Si aquí se pudiera guardar el incógnito!" (LP 197), she exclaims, wishing that she were not so well-known in society. Her vexed appeal reveals that her concern lies not so much in their being seen as in their being recognized as lovers. Recognition, as Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu have argued, is essential to the exercise of certain "modern" modalities of power since it locates subjects within specific networks of power relations.4 Eloísa knows how strictly her actions in [End Page 315] public are regulated by notions of propriety, decency, and decorum, and that her conduct is subject to constant scrutiny. Her outburst leaves little doubt about the power that recognition holds over her in her social environment. Impersonal and relegated to the hypothetical ("¡Si aquí sepudiera . . . !"), her words imply that the ability to disguise her...

pdf

Share