Nicholas G. Round, «Rosalía Bringas' Children», Anales galdosianos, VI (1971), p. 43.

Chad C. Wright, «Imagery of Light and Darkness in La de Bringas», Anales galdosianos, XIII (1978), p. 5. Also, Peter A. Bly, «The Use of Distance in Galdós 'La de Bringas'», Modern Language Review, 69 (1974), p. 89: «the Palace itself is a microcosm of the greater entity, Madrid». See also, Stephen Gilman, Galdós and the Art of the European Novel: 1867-1887 (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 140.

«Late nineteenth-century Spain may, indeed, be represented not unfairly by a presumptuous, surreptitious, and, worst of all, morally self-righteous whore, but the reader has never sympathised with her». The point to be made, and Gilman makes it elsewhere (p. 146) is that Galdós is moving away from the strait-jacket of the purely allegorical structure used in La desheredada. Thus we find in La de Bringas, Manuel Pez, who mirrors Rosalía Bringas' moral arrogance and hypocrisy and represents a certain sector of Spanish society with as much force as the lady.

See Antonio Ruiz Salvador, «La función del transfondo histórico en La desheredada», Anales galdosianos, I (1966), 53-62.

All quotes from Galdós, novels are taken from the Aguilar Edition, Madrid, 1973.

Montesinos, Galdós, II, 1969, p. 98.

Joaquín Casalduero, Vida y obra de Galdós (Madrid: Gredos, 1974), p. 82.

E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital (New York: Mentor, 1979), pp. 261-2.

Raymond Carr, citing Juan Valera, states that the decade preceding the Revolution of 1868 witnesses the importation of French luxury items and the imposition of a «cosmopolitan», i.e., French style of fashion among the Spanish aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie. According to Carr, the middle class was comprised of families with a maximum income of 5,000 to 8,000 reales. See Carr, España (1808-1939), (Barcelona: Ariel), pp. 279-281.

M. Tuñón de Lara places the salary range for middle-class teachers and employees of commercial establishments at from 7,000 to 10,000 reales in the year 1857, and he specifies that neither day wages nor salaries varied greatly-during the following decade, in spite of an abrupt and substantial rise in basic food prices. See La España del siglo XIX (París: Librería Española, 1971), pp. 152, 183.

For example: «esta pasión mujeril que hace en el mundo más estragos que las revoluciones» (p. 142); «corriendo de tienda en tienda, bajo la acción intoxicante de una embriaguez de trapos» (p. 146); «su pasión de lujo la había llevado, insensiblemente, a un terreno erizado de peligros» (p. 151); «Sin poder resistir la tentación... dejándose llevar de su apasionado afán» (p. 168). This portrait of the woman «out of control» is, in the nineteenth century, as common as the idealized portrait of the Angel in the House. At one end of the spectrum is Dickens' Little Dorrit, at the other, Zola's Nana. Galdós' capacity to assess reality is demonstrated by his ability to imagine a woman who can, like a man, lose control and then again regain it.

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The asexuality of the «ángel del hogar» is consistently emphasized in the many magazine articles that pontificate on the virtue of female abnegation. The formula is one of womanly tenderness devoid of sexual passion. For one example see Antonio Rodó y Casanova, untitled article in El Correo de la Moda, año XXVII, no. 8, 26 febrero 1877, «La mujer, nacida y criada para el hogar, e inseparable compañera del hombre, no debe aspirar a una competencia funesta, ni a vagas idealidades tan faltas de sentido como irrealizables en la vida... si su sumisión es grande como esposa, es más tarde inmensa como madre...» The author goes on to enumerate the many satisfactions to be derived from the wife's submission to her husband and children's needs, among them «el mismo amor honrado que calienta pero no abrasa, que no deslumbra, pero que jamás se apaga...» Ver Alicia G. Andreu, Galdós y la literatura popular, «Temas», Madrid, 1982 [Nota del editor].