121
When Fortunata tells Feijóo of her secret desire to be exactly like Jacinta, Galdós plays implicitly with Hegelian synthesis. At the same time Feijóo, who in part takes the role of «practical reason», senses that she has ascended or is about to ascend to a superior triad that is beyond his comprehension, and in which his advice no longer can be meaningful. The results are physical: «notó, ¡ay!, que el cuerpo le pesaba más; pero mucho más que antes». Further discussion of other such instances will be found in Chapter XI of my Galdós and the Art of the European Novel: 1867-1887 (Princeton, 1981).
122
Structurally complementary to the milk references are those having to do with blood -culminating in the two hemorrhages.
123
See my «The Birth of Fortunata», AG, I (1966), which appears substantially revised in the book cited in n. 3124.
124
The number of references and comparisons to the Virgin is remarkable. Aside from Mauricia's vision, Fortunata herself is repeatedly -and ironically- described in those terms. Juanito describes her eyes as like those of «la Virgen del Carmen que antes estaba en Santo Tomás y ahora en San Ginés» (60) (where, by the way, she remains to day); Ballester tells Maxi she is a virgin; she assumes the posture «de Dolorosa»; etc.
125
It is curious to detect in this dream metamorphosis of the «señorito» an echo from La Regenta where don Alvaro Mesía is also referred to as an «egoísta de yeso» by Don Fermín, his rival (La Regenta, Barcelona, 1967), p. 861.
126
As opposed to Jacinta's timidity on her wedding night, we remember Fortunata's «vámonos», as well as her «estallido de infinitas ansias» upon finding Juanito again in her apartment.
127
Examples are given in Chapter XI of the book cited in n. 121.
128
See The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1957) Chap. II for a singularly lucid discussion.
129
Sherman Eoff, The Modern Spanish Novel (New York, 1961), p. 129, and J. F. Montesinos, Galdós, Vol. II (Madrid, 1969), pp. 226-227.
130
Las páginas de Gobseck que se citan remiten a la edición de Oeuvres Completes de Balzac, La comédie humaine, tomo III (Paris: Club de l'Honnete Homme, 1956). Eugénie Grandet se cita por la edición de Le Livre de Poche (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). Balzac parece equivocarse de siglo en su referencia a Torquemada, si es que de Torquemada se trata: el dominico español vivió en el siglo XV.