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Chapter Six Frustrations and Accommodations Female Restraints In previous chapters we have seen various sorts of frustration with material circumstances, which mayor may not be susceptible to relief: Juan Pablo, Nicolas, Izquierdo, Ido, Villaamil, all suffer from this condition. In this chapter we are concerned with characters who feel deeply thwarted at a moral or spiritual level in such a way that the constraints they suffer cannot easily be alleviated. Not surprisingly, this type of chronic dissatisfaction typically affects women, the most constricted part of society.1Frustration encompasses both the eponymous heroines and Mauricia, while Guillermina comes to a special accommodation of her own devising.2 Jacinta's very distinctive problems will be dealt with later in this chapter. Fernandez Sein draws attention to the power struggles affecting the other three women-Guillermina, Mauricia, and Fortunata-based on the chapter oxymoronically entitled "Naturalismo espiritual" (111.6): "estos personajes desarrollan sus propias estrategias para convivir con los detentores del poder y participar con ellos en el ejercicio 0 a contrarrestar a veces intuitivamente, los mecanismos de control empleados para someterlas" ("Discurso" 485-86). Dofia Guillermina and Mauricia exercise opposing and complementary influences on Fortunata, and these influences will be considered in chapter 7; each of them does, however, have an evident perspective of her own, which I shall deal with here, against the background of the restrictive options open to women in nineteenth-century Spain. The Special Case of Mauricia la Dura In A there was no effective coordination between the deranged woman called "Lorenza" in the Adoratrices and Fortunata's friend and Adoraci6n'smother, at first called "Feliciana" and then "Severiana." The religious ceremony centered round her, followed by her death, takes place in her own apartment , not her sister's, and she dies, in Guillermina's and Fortunata's presence , uttering "palabras groseras" (786); the ambiguity of P is lost. Nor is 193 Chapter Six her constant impact on Fortunata felt to the same degree. That Mauricia is an essential link in the chain of the heroine's development is demonstrated by the fact that her role was developed consistently in a substantial discarded passage which I have called C2, as a first draft toward her definitive form from B onward. As finally developed, Mauricia has the greatest degree of independent action of any of the leading characters, who collectively show, as we have seen, substantial individual development. Such independence Montesinos treats as a structural defect: "Es increfble hasta que punto puede llegar la autonomfa de esas figuras" (2: 216); in the case of Mauricia, he finds her presentation excellent, if excessive, and hence pardonable. Other scholars see her operating on a completely autonomous plane. Thus Ricardo Gu1l6n not only allows himself to speculate upon her past life ("Tal vez esta fue feliz en otro tiempo")3 but indulges in the mistaken practice of according her a personality which goes beyond the confines of the novel itself, locating her in a sort of Nietzschean limbo: "Ella vive mas aca 0 mas alIa del bien y del mal" (Galdos, novelista 232). There is a marked tendency, too, to see her in transcendental terms: as an incarnation of the irrational (R. Gu1l6n, Galdos, novelista 233), as Destiny (Petit 225-26), and, above all, as a Satanic figure. The critic who best exemplifies this last approach is Gustavo Correa: EI personaje diab6lico por excelencia en la novela es Mauricia la Dura. Su maldad abarca un radio extenso de vicios y pecados incluyendo la ira, la lujuria y la embriaguez. Es una mala madre que ha abandonado a su hija, a fin de dar rienda suelta a sus apetitos desordenados. Serebela con soez vulgaridad contra las monjas del Convento de las Micaelas, y con salvaje independencia proclama que "no teme ni aDios" cuando se halla impulsada a cometer el sacrilegio de robar la Hostia Consagrada. Sus excesos pasionales bordean el extravfo mental y la locura y con gran facilidad pasa deillanto ala "satanica risa." (Simbolismo 112)4 This uncritical criterion corresponds to the attitude taken toward Mauricia by the conventional society reflected by the narrator, who constantly reiterates this concept. It is very far, as we shall see subsequently, from what the narrative leads the reader to discern about this complex creation. Each of these attitudes, I suggest, misreads Mauricia's importance in one sense or another. Certainly, critics have found Mauricia a difficult case to define in any precise way. Ricardo Gu1l6n, indeed, attributes this difficulty to hesitancy in Gald6s himself (Galdos...

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