Rhodes College, Tennessee

The role of women in Miguel Delibes's early novels, those published prior to 1966, is one of subordination within a male-dominated society. Delibes's first novel, La sombra del ciprés es alargada, shows the hero's mother to be deceased, while the mother of his best friend has abandoned her son in favor of a lover, and the wife of his schoolmaster scarcely dares to speak. Aurelia, the mother in Aún es de día, is an adulteress, alcoholic and moral derelict. When, in El camino, Daniel's mother timidly complains because her husband, the cheesemaker, maintains a voracious owl which he intends to use for bait in hunting, the cheesemaker takes pride in proving her complaint unwarranted. The owl fulfills its role and the vindicated husband returns from a hunting trip with a large bird of prey, which produces a revenue of five hundred pesetas. A clear sense of male domination is expressed when the hunter says: «Desde el día de mi boda, siempre me ha gustado quedar encima de mi mujer»⁵². In Mi idolatrado hijo Sisí the two principal female characters are Adela, the submissive but unloved wife, and Paulina, the concubine. Adela's efforts to impose a modicum of salutary discipline on her only son are rendered ineffective by her husband's fatuous indulgence.

A suggestion of change may be found in the Diarios, especially in the second part, Diario de un emigrante. Even here, however, Anita, who is first Lorenzo's novia and later his wife, is known only through the remarks which Lorenzo chooses to record in his diary. Controversy results from Lorenzo's habit of devoting Sundays to hunting during open season, but Anita's bold objections serve more to irritate Lorenzo than to change his habit. Lorenzo recalls favorably his mother's passive character and concludes with dismay that women have changed: «Antes, uno decía blanco y ellas cerraban los ojos y decían blanco, sin mirar ni tampoco el color... Ahora uno dice blanco y ellas vocean que negro...»⁵³. Although Anita fails to keep Lorenzo at home on Sundays, she wins other victories, as when she asserts her independence by practicing her skills as hairdresser in spite of Lorenzo's objections that she is neglecting their infant son. It should not be lost on the reader that Anita's enterprise is substantially more lucrative than is Lorenzo's shoe-shining business, a fact which Lorenzo records without reflection.

Janet Díaz has observed that women play unimportant and secondary roles in Delibes's early novels, and has identified Desi of La hoja roja as an exception (140). Desi is a dull-witted, illiterate servant with an almost complete submission to her employer, don Eloy, and matrimony as her highest goal. What little autonomy she manages to express is manifest in her efforts to speak for herself, albeit modestly, in her efforts to learn to read and write, and in a vigorous defense of her chastity against the brutal assault of her loutish novio, El Picaza.

The first woman to emerge as a principal, self-asserting character in a Delibes novel is, ironically, Carmen of Cinco horas con Mario, published in 1966. Although Janet Díaz has pointed out that Carmen's sex may be of secondary importance, and that Delibes intended her to be a stereotype of vain, materialistic, hypocritical, intolerant, and anti-intellectual qualities of middle-class Spain⁵⁴, it is evident that Carmen thinks of herself, first and last, as a woman, wife and mother (142). Her desultory stream of consciousness reveals that   —39→   she has been comfortable with the traditional values learned from her mother: that a proper woman should be physically attractive to men, socially gracious, politically de derechas, and religiously reactionary. But Carmen's character is a network of contradictions. Obsessed with decency and propriety and horrified by the memory of her sister's seduction by an Italian soldier during the civil war, Carmen harbors the belief that Galli, the seducer, truly found her more attractive than her sister! «Y el caso es que yo hubiera jurado que a Galli le gustaba yo...»⁵⁵.

Proud of her prominent breasts, which she displays with tight-fitting sweaters, and secretly flattered by the piropos which she has regularly received on the streets, Carmen nonetheless feels toward her sexuality an ambivalence which she neither understands nor consciously acknowledges, but which she tries to resolve through self-deceit. She tells herself, and her dead husband, that she is bored by the street remarks and pays them no heed, while she proceeds to give herself the lie by recalling the same comment «... qué buena estás, qué buena estás, cada día estás más buena...» (61) repeatedly. Moreover, she adds with pride that: «... una mujer nota a la legua cuando le hace tilín a un hombre...» (214).

Much of Carmen's confusion results from her feeling that her sexual relations with her late husband were less than satisfactory for both of them. She accuses him of having turned his back to her on their wedding night, but H. L. Boudreau has perceptively pointed out that her recollection of the wedding night was «... falsified as a result of her psychological need to make Mario responsible for the Paco episode» (14). Her suspicion that Mario had an affair with his widowed sister-in-law is only an other unsuccessful effort to discharge her guilty conscience. That Mario was never generous enough in his displays of affection toward her, she now claims by saying: «... pero gustando como gusto, me sabe mal tu indiferencia, para que te enteres» (218). Mario's failure to pay due homage to Carmen's voluptuous body and the possibility that he may have glanced at other women are used by the widow in a futile attempt to exonerate herself.

Carmen's uneven and irrational reflections reveal a woman deeply disappointed by her marriage to a leftist professor and journalist who wrote books which she does not understand and people do not buy, who sympathized with the ecumenical direction given to the Roman Catholic Church by Pope John XXIII, and who strove to reduce social and economic injustice in the world, while sacrificing his own financial advancement. There is a deep vein of insecurity and remorse in Carmen, which she endeavors unsuccessfully to assuage in several ways, including reproaching her dead husband for not having provided her with certain material advantages, especially that status symbol of the 1960s in Spain, an automobile. Even a portera has a Seiscientos! Carmen was mortified to see Mario ride off to school on a bicycle while she had to use public transportation, and her embarrassment was increased when Paco, a childhood friend who had achieved financial success, offered her a ride in his red Tiburón, while expressing disbelief in learning that Carmen did not own a car. Paco's mature self-confidence, driving skill and display of affluence so impressed Carmen that she allowed herself to be taken for a vertiginous ride into the country, far removed from her consciously acknowledged destination. Exactly what happened when Paco stopped the car in a secluded place is left somewhat to the reader's interpretation, but it is clear from her thoughts that the «bereaved» widow feels guilt for having compromised herself sexually. Although she wants to believe that the blame is Mario's, the distress with which she concludes the monologue and the vehemence with which she proclaims her innocence, repeating «te lo juro» eleven times during the last two pages of text, suggest that Carmen has difficulty even in convincing herself. As H. L. Boudreau has argued cogently, the entire monologue is rooted in Carmen's adultery (13)⁵⁶.

Not all of Delibes's more recent female characters are as guilt-ridden as Carmen. Phyllis Zatlin Boring believes that Delibes wrote an apology for his previous unfavorable treatment of Spanish mothers in the creation of Merche, the mother of six in El príncipe destronado, published in 1973 (85). El príncipe destronado is a short novel ostensibly about Quico, the three-year old son of an affluent urban family. «Dethroned» by the birth of a younger sister, Quico has a number of minor problems of adjustment, including bed-wetting. Notwithstanding the normal mishaps and pranks associated with childhood, Quico and   —40→   his five siblings are much happier than are their parents, whose only conversation in the novel involves a plate-throwing scene at dinner and mutual insults de sobremesa. Merche makes a valiant, if futile, effort to defend herself against the unfair verbal assaults of her husband, and receives comfort from her sister-in-law, who sympathetically says that she could not have tolerated living with her brother, Merche's husband, even two days. That Merche's marriage has gone sour and that her husband has a mistress are implicitly acknowledged when Merche says to her sister-in-law: «Lo nuestro hace años que ha terminado... Pero están éstos y hay que fingir. Mi vida es una comedia»⁵⁷.

Unfortunately, Merche does not cope well intellectually or emotionally with the challenges which she faces. She contradicts Quico in his presence, even when they both know that he is telling the truth; she leaves him confused by scolding him for having said leche and subsequently failing to satisfy his perplexity when the maid asks her whether she would like milk with her coffee; and she panics when Quico plays a childish prank by telling her that he has swallowed a needle. Moreover, she is quick to criticize the servants as unreliable following domestic mishaps and is reluctant to assume personal responsibility when things go wrong.

Merche's most serious effort to confront her husband with autonomy occurs when she and Pablo criticize each other under the guise of offering advice to Quico. Merche employs a Biblical admonition, warning Quico against seeing the straw in the other person's eye without seeing the beam in his own, while Pablo says that women belong in the kitchen and admonishes his three-year old son against marrying a woman who aspires to think for herself, adding that a woman who tries to think for herself should be hanged! Not to be outdone, Merche tells Quico that wild beasts should not be allowed to five on pavement. Quico's «moral instruction» ends on the point of violence when his father instructs him to tell his mother «... que se vaya a freír puñetas», (76) and leaves the room with a slam of the door. That Merche takes her «revenge» is suggested during her telephone conversation with the family doctor, who calls ostensibly to inquire about Quico's well-being. Her giddy, surreptitious remarks clearly indicate an adulterous relationship for which Merche appears to feel no compunction.

The most remarkable, although overdrawn, female character yet created by Delibes is found in an unlikely place, Las guerras de nuestros antepasados (1975), a novel which reveals the author's continued interest in exploring a variety of narrative possibilities. The format is the transcription of a series of conversations between a physician with psychiatric interests and a young prisoner, incarcerated for murder, who is dying of tuberculosis. The prisoner, Pacífico, is the product of a family in which the men, for at least three generations, have featured themselves as ferocious combatants in war, and those forebears assume that Pacífico should continue their proud, bellicose tradition. But Pacífico is inclined to be what his name suggests. His life is rather opaque and uneventful until he meets Candi, who returns to the village for a summer after having studied in the provincial capital. The young men of the village soon learn that Candi is a non-conformist, that she wears nothing under her blouse, that she is very assertive, and that she has a boca caliente. That Pacífico is seduced by Candi and has sexual relations repeatedly with her for some three months is less interesting than are her social and moral views, to which she gives free expression. Pacífico, an unlettered peasant, acknowledges in his interviews that he was not always able to understand her conversation, but he did grasp her advocacy of overthrowing the existing patriarchal society, of hanging everyone over forty years of age, of establishing a community of free love, and of eliminating «repugnant» bourgeois prejudices regarding human elimination. Naturally, Candi strongly resents the traditional subservience of women and decries the concept of mujer-objeto. To complete the picture, she smokes wild grass and considers the option of having an abortion when she discovers that she is pregnant.

There is, however, another side of Candi. She paints her nails blue, which Pacífico considers to be a form of treating herself as an object, and she displays an avid greed when her lover finds a small gold nugget in a stream. Moreover, she rather abandons her schemes to change the world, or even liberate Pacífico, after she has become pregnant and Pacífico has killed her brother. She then turns eager to marry Pacífico and is violently indignant when he, apprehensive about becoming a   —41→   cuckold, is reluctant to marry her.

José Ortega has aptly pointed out that this change in the pregnant Candi is understandable within a society organized under the principle of repression. Ortega adds: «Irónicamente este personaje "progre", que tiene, según ella, la obligación de liberar a Pacífico, emite una serie de juicios en los que se deja ver la intención crítica del autor sobre la sociedad» (13).

Delibes is obviously conscious of the problems created by a second-hand testimony of the type given by Pacífico to the physician in describing Candi. Here, as in the Diarios, the reader knows the woman only indirectly through the testimony of a man. In Las guerras de nuestros antepasados, however, Delibes has shown Pacífico to be candid, forthright and unwilling to misrepresent the events of his life, even when doing so might benefit him with a shorter jail term. Bizarre though she may appear to the reader, Candi is described by a man who endeavors to tell the truth without vanity or self-interest.

Whereas Candi challenges traditional sexual roles and tabus with a blind, fanatical zeal, Laly of El disputado voto del señor Cayo (1978) is a mature, realistic, and self-confident feminist who joins fully into the political activity associated with the first election held in Spain following the death of Franco. Separated from a politically-active husband, mother of two children, university graduate in exact sciences, and candidate for oposiciones, Laly moves with poise and freedom in a political arena formerly closed to women. So competent is she that the party has selected Laly to be a candidate for a seat in the chamber of deputies, a nomination which she has accepted with reluctance. But Laly's success is far from signalling a victory for feminist causes. The men around her pay little more than lip service to women's issues like la equiparación de la mujer, while craving her lithesome body and making no secret of their thoughts. Víctor, a fellow candidate, claims to support her advocacy of women's rights, but tells her how pretty she is when she gets angry, adding: «¿Quieres decirme qué será del mundo el día que alcancéis vuestros derechos si las mujeres habéis dejado de atraernos?»⁵⁸ Laly's remonstrance that equality of the sexes and sexual love are compatible evokes no acknowledgement from Víctor. Laly, then, can harbor no illusions. She knows that legislative action, if it ever comes, will not suffice to change the status of women; the entire outlook of patriarchal society must be changed.

It is significant that Laly, following Víctor's suggestion, refrains from asserting her feminist views while she and her two male associates visit an isolated village in search of votes. Nor is it Laly, but Víctor, who is deeply moved by the self-sufficiency of Cayo Fernández, and who serves as Delibes's spokesman in lamenting the growing urbanization of Spain. However, Laly asserts herself again on the return trip to the provincial capital, being the only one of the three who is sober enough to drive the car and taking responsibility for putting Víctor to bed while carefully avoiding scandalous exposure.

Laly is Delibes's first female character who possesses a healthy autonomy, a freedom from neurosis concerning sexual love, and a successful past in practical affairs with a promising future not necessarily related to matrimony. Bearing no visible scars from her previous marriage, she is high-spirited enough to defend herself vehemently against the silly barbs from a thoughtless male like Rafa, and self-possessed enough to deal with crisis without succumbing to panic. Finally, she recognizes that the «new» Spain, exemplified by leftist politicians like Víctor, hears her feminist grievances with feigned sympathy, while the «old» Spain of Cayo Fernández is not even prepared to listen.

Delibes's creation of Candi and Laly suggests a recognition on his part that Spain's patriarchal society is being challenged by bold and energetic young women. These «new» women differ markedly from those in Delibes's early novels, where women are relegated to ancillary and subordinate roles, even though many of them exhibit moral and intellectual qualities superior to those of the men around them. In Mi idolatrado hijo Sisí, which is significantly not Nuestro idolatrado hijo Sisí, Adela Rubes's efforts to discipline her son are unfortunately negated by her husband's stupidity. The elder Guindilla sister of El camino readily abandons her moral-religious fanaticism when sexual love finally comes into her life, thus suggesting that even a strong-willed woman is subject to male dominance.

Following the subtle change indicated in the second Diario, where Anita achieves a modest financial independence, women begin   —42→   to emerge as central, self-assertive, albeit initially frustrated, figures. The manifest unhappiness in marriage and adultery of both Carmen and Merche point to a budding sexual revolution, although both women are too bound to traditional Spanish values to become independent feminists seeking self-realization or a channel for the expression of latent energies. To be sure, Merche is the more autonomous of the two and, as Phyllis Zatlin Boring has pointed out, evokes more sympathy by resisting her husband's stupid claims that war is manly (86), but she struggles for self-respect with limited resources. Having effectively lost her husband to another woman, she lacks the poise and self-possession to cope with the challenge of rearing six children. Notwithstanding her good intentions, she does not enjoy her role as mother, and her only vindication becomes an illicit love affair.

Overdrawn and implausible though she is, Candi of Las guerras de nuestros antepasados is the first of Delibes's women who attempts to break with Spanish patriarchal tradition. But Candi is role-playing; her capricious disposition, greed and eagerness to marry Pacífico once she has become pregnant, cast serious doubt on the authenticity of her revolutionary pronouncements.

It is Laly of El disputado voto del señor Cayo who has created for herself a profile quite independent of that which Spanish society would impose upon her. Described as «... altiva y segura de sí misma», (19) she works zealously for a liberal political cause, speaks with frankness about social issues, and grasps clearly the dynamics of the world around her. Most important of all, she has achieved a success which owes little to her substantial sexual charms, but to her energy and competence. With Laly, women emerge fully in the novels of Miguel Delibes.

Boring, Phyllis Z. «Delibes's Two Views of the Spanish Mother». Hispanófila 63 (mayo, 1976): 85-6.

Boudreau, H. L. «Cinco horas con Mario and the Dynamics of Irony». Anales de la Novela de Posguerra 2 (1977): 23-4.

Delibes, Miguel. Aún es de día. Barcelona: Destino, 1982.

——. Cinco horas con Mario. Barcelona: Destino, 1976.

——. Diario de un emigrante. Barcelona: Destino, 1978.

——. El camino. Barcelona: Destino, 1983.

——. El disputado voto del señor Cayo. Barcelona: Destino, 1978.

——. El príncipe destronado. Barcelona: Destino, 1973.

——. La hoja roja. Barcelona: Destino, 1981.

——. La sombra del ciprés es alargada. Barcelona: Destino, 1979.

——. Las guerras de nuestros antepasados. Barcelona: Destino, 1983.

——. Mi idolatrado hijo Sisí. Barcelona, Destino, 1976.

De Los Ríos, César Alonso. Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes. Madrid: Novelas y Cuentos, 1971.

Díaz, Janet. Miguel Delibes. New York: Twayne, 1971.

Ortega, José. «Dialéctica y violencia en tres novelas de Delibes». The American Hispanist 1.9 (1976): 10-14.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 71, Number 1, March 1988