La Regenta, by Leopoldo Alas (Clarin), is considered a (if not the)
great masterpiece of Spanish Realist and Naturalist fiction,
comparable only to Benito Perez Galdos' Fortunata y Jacinta. Staged
in Oviedo (Vetusta, in the novel), La Regenta's main character is
the beautiful and sensitive Ana Ozores, newlywed to the mature
Victor Quintanar, former regent of the Audiencia. Harassed by the
local seducer, Alvaro Mesia, and by the local cathedral's Dean, don
Fermin de Pas, Ana finally rejects the priest and falls for Alvaro.
Don Victor discovers the treason and, pushed by don Fermin,
challenges Alvaro to a duel, where he is deadly wounded and finally
dies. The novel is exquisite in its careful and detailed depiction
of the provincial background, and the complex interweaving of the
different social classes, an approach covered in depth by the
traditional literary critique in the numerous forewords to the
various editions. The present edition, however, proposes a
different approach. With the help of gender studies and feminist
theory, it concentrates on the main character, Ana Ozores, to
unearth the complexity of her personality, from her supposed
hysteria and her mystical bouts to her thirst for freedom and
agency. The introduction to this critical edition carefully looks
at the semantics underlying Ana Ozores's circumstances and actions,
and decodes them as solid proofs of an early feminism. La Regenta
belongs to the illustrious European cycle of novels centered on
feminine adultery, as Leon Tolstoi's Ana Karenina, Theodor
Fontane's Effi Briest, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Emile
Zola's La conquete de Plassans, (to which it resembles most) and
Eca de Queiroz's O Primo Basilio. However, the second and
innovative objective of this edition is to highlight the clear
connections of La Regenta, not so much with the foreign novels
abovementioned, but with the Spanish novel El Cura. Caso de Incesto
by Eduardo Lopez Bago, a contemporary writer with whom Clarin also
shared the taste for radical naturalism. Both novels share common
ground, and elaborate on the cultural stereotype of (male)
ecclesiastical sin coupled with (female) hysteria. La Regenta,
however, adds complexity and nuance to El cura. Caso de incesto's
more straightforward approach to sexual repression, mental illness
and celibate. Ana Ozores, certainly, is much more than a
"nerviosilla" ("a nervous little thing"), as Perez Galdos chooses
to call her in his famous foreword to La Regenta"s second edition.
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