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LIES, IRONY, SATIRE, AND THE PARODY OF IDEOLOGY IN DONA PERFECTA[1]
FROM its contemporary reception in 1876 to the present, much of the most perspicacious commentary Benito Perez Galdos' Dona Perfecta has occasioned revolves around the question of its ideological intent and, in recent decades, the degree to which it participates in the subgenre of a novela de tesis. While most critics agree on the broad strokes of its ideological content, agreement vanishes where the novel's overall intent is concerned, so much so that the discussion can now be viewed as an outright polemic about whether or not Dona Perfecta is, indeed, a thesis novel which ought to be read and taught as such. At the risk of oversimplification, one camp contends that the novel is centered on an ideological conflict between science and religion (and between related persuasions), in which Pepe Rey and the narrator are associated with the former and the Orbajosenses with the latter, and in which the conflict and its resolution are informed by an authorial partiality that deliberately condemns religious fanaticism and hypocrisy. The opposing camp maintains that such a view overlooks the novel's artistic merits and ignores complexities in characterization, not least of which is that of Pepe Rey--who is thought to be much more than an emblem of science, progress, Europeanism, and the like. What tends to make both arguments more fervent than they otherwise might be is the underlying issue of valuation: classifying Dona Perfecta as a roman a these tends to debase it, inasmuch as works of the sort are generally viewed as inartistic, one-dimensional, tendentious, and, at the extreme, propagandistic.[2] Such a classification is also likely to impute immaturity to Galdos at this stage in his writing career, and those who view the novel's primary intent as polemical or didactic--those who, for lack of a better word,
shall call tesistas--are likely to draw conclusions similar to J. E. Varey's: "The novel is, thus, the work of a young artist still unsure of his powers" (79).
Not all tesistas necessarily devalue the novel. Anthony Zahareas, for one, argues that "Thesis and art, like history and fiction, act here as separate but intertwining threads" (35); he nevertheless stresses the historical and ideological aspects of the novel, and...