1
Al libro Galdós, estudio que todos hemos esperado ansiosamente por muchos años y cuyo primer volumen acaba de publicar la Editorial Castalia. Por la gentileza de permitirnos adelantar a nuestros lectores esta «Nota», expresamos nuestro agradecimiento al profesor Montesinos y a dicha Editorial.
La Dirección.
2
Cf. Vol. 1, 110 of the four volume edition of Editorial Hernando, Madrid, 1952, which, unfortunately, is the only edition of Fortunata y Jacinta I have on hand at present.
3
It should be clear that we have to deal with three questions: (a) why are we given Juanito's complete lineage when he is a mediocre, useless, human being? (explicit question); (b) why does Fortunata appear before Juanito (and before us) as if from nowhere? (implicit question); (c) why are we given Juanito's..., etc. when Fortunata..., etc.? (implicit question). It would be an insult to the reader to enter into the details of why the only answer offered us (we are given Juanito's..., etc. because Fortunata..., etc.) is tautological.
4
A propos of Juanito's uselessness we are told in a most interesting passage that his father, don Baldomero, «no había podido sustraerse a esa preocupación tan española de que los padres trabajen para que los hijos descansen y gocen. Recreábase aquel buen señor en la ociosidad de su hijo como un artesano se recrea en su obra, y más la admira cuanto más doloridas y fatigadas se le quedan las manos con que la han hecho» (Vol. I, 211).
5
As a matter of fact Galdós puts her business instinct first: «Aquella gran mujer Isabel Cordero de Arnáiz dotada de todas las agudezas y de todas las triquiñuelas económicas del ama de gobierno, fue agraciada además por el Cielo con una fecundidad prodigiosa» (Vol. I, 58).
6
The three instances that come to mind when Fortunata does live North of the Plaza Mayor (when Juanito sets her up near the Red de San Luis; when she is held at «las Micaelas», in the then new barrio of Chamberí; and when she marries Maxi and also lives in Chamberí) are interesting in that they signify deliberate efforts-on her or on somebody else's part-to «better» her status by getting her out of her own neighborhood. (Interestingly enough when she becomes Feijóo's lover he shows once more his realism and his peculiar respect for truth by setting her up in a flat in her own barrio, Calle de Tabernillas, near Puerta de Moros, not far from nuestra Señora de la Paloma. He, of course, lives near her in an old and still aristocratic house, Calle de don Pedro.)
7
Vol. I, 286.
8
See also in this volume Vicente Lloréns' «Galdós y la burguesía». (Editor's note.)
9
Vol. I, Part I, Section IX, 249-273.
10
We must emphasize that although Gilman seems to equate «birth» to «appearance» (perhaps because the latter is the «novelistic» «birth») we do not see Fortunata being born. Instead, and as it should be, we see her appear in front of a señorito of the rising bourgeoisie. What Gilinan calls her «by chance» appearance (in an apparent mistranslation of Fortunata's name which means, ironically, «lucky» or «with luck (chance)») might well reflect -at the level of social meaning- the bourgeois surprise at the existence of the «cuarto estado». A pleasant surprise still in 1886 if the person appearing was a female.