Fortunata and Jacinta: two stories of married women
By: translated by Lester Clark.
Series: The Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1973
Place of publication: Harmondsworth
Language: eng; spa
Number of pages: 1069
Subjects: Married women -- Spain -- Fiction; Spain -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Description: Capturing a ninteenth-century Spanish world of political tumult and personal obsession, Benito Pérez Galdós's Fortunata and Jacinta tells of two women who love the same man unfailingly - one as his mistress, the other as his wife. Agnes Moncy Gullón presents the detailed realism, the diversity of character and scene that have placed Fortunata and Jacinta alongside the voluminous works of Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac. Galdós's Madrid, recast from his youthful wanderings through the city's slums and cafés, includes the egg sellers and faded bullfighters surrounding Fortunata as well as the quieter, sequestered milieu of Jacinta's upbringing. Through Juanito, the lover of both women, the writer reveals Spain as a variegated fabric of delicate traditions and established vices, of shaky politics and rich intrigue. In this vast and colorful world, resonant of Dickens's London and Balzac's France, Galdós presents his characters with a depth, ambiguity, and humor born of the multiplicity of his scene.
Notes: Translation of Fortunata y Jacinta.