Domesticity, Eccentricity, and the Problems of Self-Making: The Suffering Protagonists in Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest and Leopoldo Alas's La Regenta

Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest (1895) and Leopoldo Alas's La Regenta (1885) are undisputed masterpieces of nineteenth-century German and Spanish realism. Both novels examine the interface between the public and private spheres, and both offer powerful statements about the state of affairs of their respective countries and about the fate of two women whose lives derail as a consequence of dubious sociopolitical and clerical power games. This comparative study will explore the trials and tribulations of the two female protagonists at the center of Fontane's and Alas's novels. It will examine the literary representations of questionable traditional social orders, precarious bonds between individuals and authorities, and ambiguous values projected by representatives of the political, religious, and secular domains.

Fontane, a formidable critic and trusted chronicler of nineteenth-century Prussian civilization, is considered to be the only German realist comparable to such mainstream figures as Dickens, Flaubert, and Tolstoy. A cosmopolitan storyteller, Fontane transcends parochial confines and emerges as Germany's first social novelist in the European tradition (Rowley; see also Kempf). In particular, his masterpiece Effi Briest has become a critically acclaimed part of a literary triad that includes Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's Madame Bovary (Ciplijauskaité; Miething; Osborne; Stern; Zimmermann). Going beyond the framework of this customary literary "lineage," this article will examine a number of remarkable affinities between Fontane's Effi Briest and Alas's nineteenth-century classic.

Given the prominence of these novels in their respective cultural horizons, the dearth of detailed comparative studies about their subject matter is unexpected. Noteworthy are Susanne Meyer's astute work about Effi and Ana as Literarische Schwestern, Anna Rossell's perceptive account of similarities in the portrayal of the two protagonists' growing malaise, and Biruté Ciplijauskaité's observations about the dissatisfied heroines in Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, La Regenta, and Effi Briest. Meyer attempts to explain the parallels in Fontane's and Alas's novels as the result of a possible "Übereinstimmung wesentlicher persönlichkeitskonstituierender Faktoren im Leben dieser Autoren" (2). Rossell's focus are "los síntomas comunes" ('common symptoms') that constitute an essential "vacío femenino" ('feminine void') in Effi's and Ana's lives (363). Ciplijauskaité treats adultery as the predominant theme in the four realist novels. This article intends to broaden these perspectives. While Meyer discusses the two novels as similar in kind, this examination makes an effort to capture their similarity in substance, striving as it does so to expand the scope of Rossell's and Ciplijauskaité's observations. Thus the principal aim is to juxtapose the experiences of the two heroines and to examine their personal, social, and metaphysical struggles during a time of transition in which the constraints of their gender-specific positions assume an ever greater urgency. While Effi and Ana are intuitively aware of the confining terms of their existence, they are not quite prepared to expressly question them. Grappling with the diametrically opposed forces of aspiration and limitation, they share the common thread of suffering that points to their need to embrace change. Their emerging sense of self nourishes a longing for a more participatory lifestyle, but the prevailing social reality limits their choices. As a result, the incongruity between inner and outer worlds thwarts the protagonists' personal desires and leads to a profound dissatisfaction with the dominating power structures of a late nineteenth-century social order on the verge of crumbling.

Both novels focus on the fate of women. Yet the narratives do not exhaust themselves by merely divulging the heroines' individual sentiments, exclusive characteristics, and private adventures. Instead, each author focusses on the figure of a woman in order to "criticar a la sociedad que la produce" ('criticize the society that produces her'; Ciplijauskaité 8). Thus the many coincidences in Ana's and Effi's circumstances and feelings emerge as diagnostic vehicles that point to common underlying imperfections and inadequacies of the foundations on which the protagonists' lives are grafted. Their stories are not simply accounts of discrete dramas, but symptomatic instances of...