Epistolaridad y Realismo: La correspondencia privada y literaria de Juan Valera, Emilia Pardo Bazán y Benito Pérez Galdós by Olga Guadalupe Mella (review)

We do not typically think of nineteenth-century Spain or its authors when we consider the epistolary novel. After all, epistolary literature had largely fallen out of favor by the time Realist authors like Juan Valera and Benito Pérez Galdós came to the fore on Spain's literary stage. But in doing so, we fail to see the impact of "epistolarity" on the literature and intellectual thought of nineteenth-century Spain. Such is the central premise of Olga Guadalupe Mella's study, Epistolaridad y Realismo: La correspondencia privada y literaria de Juan Valera, Emilia Pardo Bazán y Benito Pérez Galdós.

Chapter one provides both a theoretical frame as well as a literary-historical context from which Guadalupe Mella examines several epistolary works. The author acknowledges the general "ausencia literaria" of epistolary writers in nineteenth-century Spain and highlights several reasons for this absence (42–44). In essence, as the goals of literature changed in the second half of the nineteenth century, with authors favoring an outward-looking objective gaze over the subjective turn in Romanticism, epistolary writing came to be seen as "el más artificioso de los modos de novelar," and "un anacronismo cursi" (37, 39). Despite this, the epistolary form held some appeal for the most talented writers in that it expanded their artistic repertoire, although for Guadalupe Mella it represents a unique "estrategia literaria puntual muy bien calculada" (49). For Valera, epistolarity will be the culmination of a personal penchant for letter writing and an evolving literary style, one that represents a daring plunge into subjectivity in the midst of the "pleno fervor de las polémicas sobre el realismo" that had taken hold of the literary landscape in the second half of the century (21). While for Emilia Pardo Bazán the open letter will be a means of persuasion with both personal and public ramifications, for Galdós epistolarity represents a novelistic experiment that seeks to interrogate the Realist enterprise with which we associate his name. Guadalupe Mella concludes that while epistolary texts may have become scarcer in the nineteenth century, the genre does not merely "sobrevive," it flourishes if not in quantity then certainly in quality: "la mejor novela epistolar clásica comienza con Valera y se desarrolla con Galdós" (187).

In chapter two, Guadalupe Mella turns her attention to the first major epistolary work within Spanish Realism, Juan Valera's Pepita Jiménez. Valera was a prolific letter writer, and his personal letters often served as materia prima for his literary works. According to Guadalupe Mella, the success and originality of Pepita Jiménez is largely due to "el caudal profundo de las experiencias de Valera, de su conocimiento del medio y de un fuerte deseo de comunicación" (88). But Pepita Jiménez not only found a receptive audience, it revolutionized the possibilities of the Realist novel by achieving a level of subjectivity and psychological penetration that could only be accomplished with the epistolary form (89). This innovation is why attentive readers will find echoes of Pepita Jiménez in works by other Realist authors, such as Galdós (129).

Sandwiched between two chapters on epistolary novels, chapter three offers a close reading of two essay letters written in 1889 by Emilia Pardo Bazán—"Cartas a Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (en los Campos Elíseos)"—in which she tackles a topic of personal and public interest: the Academia's refusal to admit women. The chapter is simultaneously compelling and irksome. It is compelling because it represents a fascinating snapshot of the intellectual and cultural climate of nineteenth-century Spain; one in which talented writers like Emilia Pardo Bazán are discriminated against on the basis of their sex, obliging the novelist to fight back with her pen...