Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

4

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2007

First Page

12

Last Page

22

Abstract

Critics continue to be puzzled by the closure of both Fortunata y Jacinta and Tristana. For example, in 1986 Hazel Gold published “Problems of Closure in Fortunata y Jacinta: Of Narrators, Readers, and Their Just Deserts/Desserts.” Then she returned to the subject seven years later, still of the opinion that “the question of closure must have seemed an especially thorny one for the author of Fortunata y Jacinta” (Reframing 51). In 1991, José Manuel del Pino brought forth “El Fracaso de los sistemas de cierre de Fortunata y Jacinta.” Similarly with Tristana, from “Clarín” and Pardo Bazán to the present day, critics have been likewise engaged.1 For example, Berkowitz says that Galdós’s Tristana is “the unfinished opus of his repertory” (314), and Roberto Sánchez opines that “the novel is somehow truncated, unrealized” (125). More recently, Andrés Zamora has summarized such opinions as these when he says, “[L]a novela ha sido traditional y sistemáticamente considerada por un amplio sector de la crítica como defectuosa, coja o manca” (193). Thus one is justified in asking why Galdós concluded Tristana the way he did; and, importantly, what—if anything—does this allow one to extrapolate from the ending of the novel concerning the author’s view of women’s aspirations in late nineteenth-century Spain? In addition, what are we to make of the ending of Fortunata y Jacinta? Why should such a great novel not devote its final paragraphs to one or the other of the title protagonists, rather than focusing upon the unfortunate fate of poor Maxi Rubín?

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