Jorge Isaacs' Mara is perhaps the best known, most frequently read
19th century Spanish American novel, but at the same time, the most
often misunderstood by modern readers and critics alike. The novel
has been labeled by some critics as a real tear-jerker that seeks
to revive, and to share with the reader, the loss of a first love.
The story is recounted by Efran, a first-person narrator, who tells
it in retrospection, reconstructing the events and feelings of the
moment, but in many instances reacting to that past in the
emotional framework of the present. The abundant weeping in the
tale has been marked as the most criticized narrative device used
by Isaacs, causing modern audiences being little able to appreciate
the sentimentality of the tear-filled novel. This persistent
complain indicates the lack of knowledge about the "age of
sensibility" and the idea of masculinity that spread throughout
western European literature and culture during the second part of
the 18th century and the 19th century. The notion of sensibility
was a powerful force in the development of social thinking, art,
and philosophy. It was associated with beliefs of sympathy, virtue,
benevolence, tender feelings, and compassion, thus being considered
the essential link between the human body and the psychological,
intellectual, and ethical faculties of humankind. In this way,
sensibility was a prominent feature of the novel after the second
parte of the 18th century. This notion required a man of
sensibility, whose sensitive personality combined reason and
romantic emotion, and was able to shed tears without losing his
masculinity. This expression of emotion and copious tears run
through the pages of 18th and 19thcentury novels almost without
inhibition. Ideas of sensibility and masculinity that influenced
Isaacs' composition of his novel and are evident in the
representation of all his characters, particularly in Efran.
Locating Isaacs' narrative work within its proper historical
context, shows the deep knowledge of the culture of sensibility the
author possessed, and how he used those rhetorical postulates to
structure his novel. As versed in the field of medicine of his
time, and a great reader of literature, the author's erudition
became part of the organization of the fictional world he created.
In this edition Dr Flor Mara Rodriguez-Arenas foreword explains
these characteristics, and her footnotes help the modern reader
understand an often obscure regional vocabulary.
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