Blood Novels by Julia H. Chang;

Author:Julia H. Chang;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

The Aristocrat

Like the other protagonists studied in this book, Isidora fixates on her matrilineal inheritance: “mi madre … fue hija de una marquesa” (“my mother … was the daughter of a marquesa”; La desheredada 110; Clark 48). In contrast to Doña Luz and La Regenta, however, La desheredada distorts the chastity bind, as Isidora has no real aristocratic bloodlines to speak of. If in the antiquated Vetusta, Ana Ozores was bound by early modern codes of blood purity and honour, Isidora, in a markedly modern Madrid, clings to a fantasy borne by novel reading (110). In La Regenta, Ana Ozores’s reading is thought to prompt her early menstruation, while in La desheredada fiction reading further fuels Isidora’s delusional attachment to blood. When Isidora’s attempts to convince her aunt, La Sanguijuela, of her secret aristocratic origins, she retorts: “Me parece que tú te has hartado de leer esos librotes que llaman novelas” (“It seems to me you’ve been reading too many of those fat books they call novels”; 110; 48). With both La Regenta and La desheredada, we see strong connections between the woman reader and the creation of blood fictions. In the case of the latter, aristocratic birthright appears outmoded in a modernizing world in which bloodlines have lost their lustre and social rank seems increasingly determined by taste and sartorial style.

For the purpose of my argument, I am interested in the fact that Isidora manoeuvres two distinct but coterminous modes of social identification: aristocratic birthright and bourgeois self-fashioning. Jo Labanyi rightfully notes that the narrator fuses Isidora’s sense of birthright with the idea of merit: “With Isidora’s inheritance, Galdós is, of course, specifically dealing with the question of the aristocracy – i.e., the right to wealth and position by birth into a certain class. But it is worth noting that Isidora does not hinge her claim to an inheritance solely on her supposed noble birth; she considers that she merits a position in society, even if she is not entitled to it by rank, because of her innate qualities of beauty and taste: a ‘birthright of merit’ rather than of class” (“The Political Significance of La desheredada”). Colin McKinney, for his part, has examined Isidora’s identity quest through the Bourdieusian concept of distinction, which relies heavily on cultivation of taste. McKinney argues that Isidora navigates a “thin road between distinction and cursilería” (55). The latter leads Isidora into a cycle of poverty and prostitution, while the former, a seemingly anachronistic Cervantine fantasy, takes on the characteristics of a modern neurosis.

In “Family Romance,” first published in 1908, Sigmund Freud writes that the “freeing of the individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development” (156). Throughout this process, the child becomes increasingly aware of his once idealized parents’ flaws, and in response he creates a “fantasy in which both parents are replaced by others of better birth” (157).

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