Benito Pérez Galdós and Leopoldo Alas Clarín: 19th-Century Spanish Novels

Benito Pérez Galdós: Life and Major Novels

Benito Pérez Galdós. He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. From a very young age he lived in Madrid, dedicated to literature, and was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy. He failed in his candidacy for the Nobel Prize because of opposition from Spanish conservatives.

Classification of Galdós's novels

Galdós's novels can be classified into the following groups:

• Early novels: Galdós does not hide his sympathy for liberal Spain: La Fontana de Oro, Doña Perfecta, Gloria, Marianela, La familia de León Roch.
• Contemporary Spanish novel: Fortunata y Jacinta, which portrays the social life of Madrid at the time. It is Galdós's finest depiction of settings and social types, with masterful use of dialogue and acute social observation.

Realistic and naturalistic elements: Galdós incorporates memories, dreams, imagination, insanity and symbols into his realism, blending psychological depth with environmental detail.

Later novels

The interest of Galdós in seeking new avenues of expression is clearly manifested in his later works. From this period are La incógnita, Realidad, Ángel Guerra and Tristana. In all of them he experimented with original narrative procedures.

National events series

There are 46 novels arranged in five series of ten episodes each, except the last one, left unfinished with only six. They reconstruct in novel form the history of the nineteenth century.

Leopoldo Alas "Clarín": Life and Work

Leopoldo Alas (Clarín). Born in Zamora, although most of his life was spent in Oviedo, first as a student and then as a professor of law. He was one of the most learned intellectuals of his time. He wrote only two novels, La Regenta and Su único hijo, along with some short stories and a little more than a hundred shorter tales. The stories are of two kinds: satirical or reflective.

La Regenta: Themes and setting

La Regenta is an exceptional novel that recounts a woman's frustrated adultery. The real protagonist of the novel is the provincial society; Clarín used it to reveal the pettiness of Restoration-era Spain. As a naturalistic novel, the environment has a very important influence on the characters: both the external world and the immediate surroundings shape their actions and psychology.

Two main features of the environment surrounding the characters are:

• Boredom — social stagnation and ennui
• Lust — sexual desire and moral tension

Su único hijo: Plot and moral portrait

Su único hijo (Her Only Son) is about life in a provincial capital: the story centers on a frustrated small marriage whose relations with members of a theatre company situate the action in a harshly judged, strange environment. Clarín's moral portrait of society shows characters marked by selfishness, greed, deceit, hypocrisy and lies; the characters live in abject loneliness.

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