Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas
Session Coordinator: Lisa Surwillo
Dept. of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Penn State University
211 Burrowes Bldg.; University Park, PA 16802
lus11@psu.edu

Questioning the Sexually Neutral Subject: Recovering the Sexualities of Benito Pérez Galdós’s Benina and Doña Juana

Both Benina, the “angelic” protagonist of Benito Pérez Galdós‚s Misericordia (1897) and Doña Juana, possibly Galdós‚s most hateful villain from Casandra (1905,) are both presented as moral counterpoints, with the female character, in these cases, written as symbols for extreme virtues and vices in fin de siecle Spanish society. However, as different as the two women may seem, they have both been traditionally read as sexless creatures. This study seeks to re-read both characters as sexual beings (as they must be if the works are truly to adhere to any form of realist representation) and to explore their performances of non-traditional femininities.

Utilizing theories which focus on gender and sexuality as performance or achievement ( Butler, Fenstermaker andWest), on historical construction of gender traits (historical documentation and History of Medicine studies), and Queer approaches to the non-sexual female subject (Dody, Dyer), this paper seeks to propose the underlying sexual natures that these textual bodies suggest, concluding that they both pose threats to Patriarchal gender hierarchies because neither character perceives performers of hegemonic masculinity as suitable objects of desire.

Timothy McGovern
University of California, Santa Barbara
mcgovern@spanport.ucsb.edu

Los niveles de teatralidad y performance en Miau

This paper studies the various degrees of theatricality in Galdós’ novel Miau, beginning with the much discussed theatrical structure of the novel. Then, through an analysis of the symptoms of hysteria suffered by the characters of Abelarda, Luisito and his dead mother Luisa, I intend to show from where and how these attacks occur, as well as their significance. This work investigates the possible connections between “performance” of these characters’ hysteria and an analogous disease beneath the surface of the Spanish society Galdós describes.

Kelly Sullivan
University of California, Berkeley
kellys@uclink.berkeley.edu

Illogical Pursuits: Galdós and the Order of the Text

The range and sophistication of subjects and seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of linguistic and rhetorical stratagems that distinguish Galdós’s novels create vast mosaics of visual and verbal images, where each image suggests its own history and mystery. At the same time, they gesture to a fundamental logic that connects and orders them, which the shrewd and scrupulous reader may decipher to find the text’s essential meaning and coherence, its underlying truth. It is this pursuit of truth, however, a process so deeply ingrained in social consciousness as to appear natural, that Galdós often calls into question. Overtly or covertly, his novels resist the endeavor to stabilize their imagery, deferring interpretive closure. As the text exposes its enigmas, it simultaneously extends the intricate labyrinth of possible “ways of knowing” and courses of reading. This increasingly elaborate narrative construct is fashioned from the same language whose rhetorical style urges the reader to seek truth. It thus overturns its own discursive design and doubles back on the reader. Galdós’s texts refuse to end the game of interpretation by means of the very processes with which they invite the reader to play it. His unconventional narrative ploys, especially in the post-1898 novels, have been the object of substantial critical discussion; their presence and function in his early work, the focus of my discussion here, have received comparatively little attention. Yet from the outset of his career, even in his first novel, La sombra, Galdós challenges conventions of logic and truth in the novel and the reader, and thus in the language and the society that privilege their pursuit.

Diane F. Urey
Illinois State University
dfurey@ilstu.edu