44 pages • 1 hour read
Benito Perez GaldosMarianela
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1878A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Colonial Imagination and the New World
Pablo’s journey from a blind boy to a man with sight functions as metaphor for how the colonial exploration of the New World has transformed the Old World. As a representative figure of the Old World, Pablo’s ‘blind’ views were previously no better than that of the native of the New World. The native is Nela, whose wild imagination and worship of nature are contentious with New World science and rational thinking. As a blind boy, Pablo is enamored with Nela’s views, which despite being sentimental and void of scientific reasoning, are still convincing to the boy because of Nela’s enthusiasm. However, the novel insists that this blindness is not sustainable.
To transform the European from a blind boy to a seeing man, a colonial explorer’s knowledge is necessary to make that intervention. Teodoro’s arrival in Socrates is compared repeatedly to that of colonial explorers Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés. Teodoro brings to Socrates stories of his successes in Madrid and the Americas. He represents the power of scientific knowledge and discovery, the ability which colonial explorers use to learn about the New World. His presence in Socrates sets in motion a series of events between Pablo and Nela.
Pablo’s sight signals Nela’s doom. The novel suggests that this is a necessary chain of events to ensure that the Old World progresses forward much in the way that Pablo must marry Florentina and learn about the world through the lens of scientific rationality. Pablo can no longer empathize with Nela’s views as she represents the uninformed native perspective. The connection between this personal development with the larger colonial implications is emphasized through Pablo’s discussion with Florentina about Columbus and the New World. Pablo recalls what his father told him about Columbus’ entry into the New World. He says of Columbus, “That navigator opened the eyes of the Old World, so that they saw another and more beautiful one” (177). He also proclaims initially to Florentina, “You are my America” (177), imbuing her with all the imagined wonders of the New World. Pablo does not realize that his fantasies of the New World are idealized notions of an unknown land. When he encounters Nela for the first time, he sees the true New World native, a frail and pale stranger he thought he once loved. He can only respond with shock. Nela must die in order for Pablo to love his new America in the form of the beautiful Florentina.
The Subjectivity of Beauty
In the novel, Pablo and Nela’s relationship begins to fall apart with news that Pablo may possibly gain his sight. The news fosters his growing obsession with beauty, a concept for which he has no original basis as he cannot see the world and appraise it in such terms. Before receiving his sight, he believes Nela to be the most beautiful person, exclaiming to her, “You are as lovely as the angels round the throne of the God” (66). While Nela is unprepared to consider her beauty or lack thereof, she is forced to reflect on her own physical appearance and self-worth through Pablo’s enthusiasm for the subject of beauty. As Pablo’s enthusiasm for beauty and his expressed affection for Nela becomes more insistent, Nela feels the pressure weigh on her. She thinks at once “If only I were dressed as other girls are!” (66) and “How hideous I am!” (67), realizing that adornments cannot alter her impression of herself. In the time before Pablo receives his sight, he believes in an objective sense of determining beauty in the world, which is measured by his affections for Nela. However, Nela does not know how to express the different notions of beauty that exist in the world without revealing to Pablo that she is less than beautiful and thereby risk losing his affections.
When Pablo receives his sight, he becomes possessed with an even more urgent desire to fill his life with beauty. As the first person he sees is his cousin, Florentina, he begins to regard her as the standard for all beauty in the world and becomes disgusted by other women who are less beautiful than her. Pablo’s idea of beauty shifts from the goodness he perceives in Nela and the physical beauty of Florentina. Nela suspects this comparison and avoids Pablo after his surgery, knowing that he will reject her. When Teodoro questions Nela about this avoidance of Pablo, she mourns herself in third person: “Because she is so ugly.—He may have cared for María Canela when his eyes were shut; but now that they are open and he can see the Señorita, he can never, never care for a poor little dwarf” (164). Her fears and anxieties expose Pablo’s contrasting ideas of beauty before and after his sight.
Power, Greed, and Charity
There are several views on charity in the novel that are represented across different characters, each of whom expresses power and greed (or lack thereof) in various ways. Of the poor laborers, there is the Centeno family, whose heads of household, Señor Centeno and Señora Señana, represent a hypocritical view of charitable giving. While the family has taken Nela under their care, they neglect her constantly, relegating her to sleep in whatever available corner of their house she can find. They also count their money every night before bed, a process that seems to show their concern with material wealth over spiritual enlightenment. The novel critiques the Centeno family for perpetuating “the greed of the peasant” (34) who cannot see beyond his impoverished circumstances to aspire to greater truths. While the crime of avarice is associated with the wealthy, the novel uses the Centeno family to show that the poor are not exempt from greed and will use false charity to mask it.
In the case of Sofía, the wealthy wife of Teodoro’s brother, Cárlos, charity is used to mask her feelings of indifference towards the poor. This is evident through her cruel treatment of Nela. While walking through the mines, Sofía’s dog runs ahead and is caught in briars. Sofía orders Nela to fetch the dog at the expense of the young orphan’s safety. When Nela is injured as a result, Teodoro intervenes and criticizes Sofía for her hypocrisy. He says to Sofía, “It is strange to see how inexorably you condemn what, after all, is your own work!” (90). The criticism suggests that wealthy people like Sofía create the conditions in which the poor continue to suffer in their ignorance. When Sofía expresses annoyance towards Nela’s ignorant state, she unknowingly betrays her complicity in perpetuating Nela’s poverty. Teodoro argues that despite all the charitable balls and social events that Sofía puts together to prove her giving spirit, she is not truly charitable until she invests in the education and individual bettering of the poor in front of her.
