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MIRRORS, MASKS AND APPEARANCES: ANTI-MATERIALISTIC

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Norma Richardson

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MIRRORS, MASKS AND APPEARANCES: ANTI-MATERIALISTIC THEATER
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY FROM MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA

TO THE ALTA COMEDIA

 

By

Norma Richardson

AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance and Classical Languages

2001

Professor George P. Mansour

ABSTRACT
MIRRORS, MASKS AND APPEARANCES: ANTI-MATERIALISTIC THEATER
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY FROM MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA TO THE
ALTA COMEDIA
By
Norma H. Richardson
The ideology of Materialism occupied a dominant position in the
composition of plays of the ﬁrst half of nineteenth-century Spain. These include
plays that are generally considered anti-materialistic and which proposed to
restore order in Spain‘s changing society through the re—institution of patriarchal
values. Although some noted playwrights of this period are known principally for
their tragic dramas and have come to serve as a benchmark for Romanticism,
they developed other forms of drama that involve principles regularly considered
contrary to the dramaturgy of Romanticism. These works, however, have not
been fully explicated, expecially for their unique role in the development of the
alta comedia.
The present study demonstrates that contrary to established views, the

alta comedia had its inception in plays by Francisco Martinez de la Rosa and

 

Angel Saavedraumajor authors of the so-caIled Romantic era—rather than in
works that emulated exclusively the dramatic formulae of Leandro Fernandez de
Moratin. Furthermore, it establishes that dramatists‘ technical use of female
characters is fundamental to the formulation of these plays and, in turn, the _a_lg

comedia. speciﬁcally as a medium of exchange within the materialistic world.

Exemplary of this technique is the identiﬁcation of the female subject with the
culture of materialism, and the personiﬁcation of spiritual and moral vaIues
through a male character who centers and controls the discourse. Through this

and other recourses the study shows that the concept of the angel del hogar,

 

regularly associated with cultural expression of the latter decades of the century,

can be traced from its inception in materialistic dramas to the alta comedia, a

 

development frequently overlooked. The presence in these plays of the angel
del hogar, an important part of bourgeois ideology, is highly signiﬁcant, for it
helps to conﬁrm the power of institutionalized theater to form the beliefs of the
society that it reﬂects.

The representation of the female ﬁgure is the trajectory of nineteenth-

century drama from the early anti—materialistic plays to the alta comedia is central

 

to an understanding of the theater's role in reforming the beliefs of the society
that it reﬂects. The values of the external world, which threaten the disintegration
of the social framework, are dramatized through female characters, and in
contrast patriarchy is presented as the means of maintaining moral values in
public and private spheres. Consequently the cultural model for the female in a
patriarchal society is presented to the audience as an idealized ﬁgure conﬁned to
the space of the home, an image that fulﬁlls the didactic purpose of anti-
materialistic drama to sustain the power structure of the elite in a changing

society.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the valuable guidance and constructive criticism
during all phases of this study given by my adviser and chairperson of my
dissertation committee, Dr. George P. Mansour. I also wish to express my
appreciation for the insightful contributions of the other members of the

committee, Dr. Robert L. Fiore and Dr. Nancy F. Marino.

My sincere thanks are extended to Patricia K. Cotter for the preparation of

the manuscript in accordance with the requirements of The Graduate School of

Michigan State University.

The encouragement and support of my husband, Howard Richardson, is

gratefully recognized.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Chapter 1 _______________________________________________________________________________ 6
Material Interests and the Romantic Response

Chapter 2 _____________________ - _______________________________________________ 35
The Patriarchal Framework of Anti-materialistic Drama

Chapter 3.... 69
The Female Subject as a Contradictory Element in La niﬁa en casa y la madre
en la mascara and Tanto vales cuanto tienes

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4 _ _ __ ..... _ ________ 101
The idealization of the Female Subject in L0 positive and Consuelo

Conclusion _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 134
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 139

INTRODUCTION

Materialism, a philosophy which values possessions above personal
worth, occupied a dominant position in the composition of early nineteenth-
century Spanish plays, plays that are generally considered anti-materialistic and
which proposed to restore order in Spanish society by reJnstituting patriarchal
values. Some playwrights of the period are known exclusively for their tragic
dramas and have come to serve as a benchmark for Romanticism; however, they
developed other forms of drama that involve principles regularly considered
contrary to the dramaturgy of Romanticism, but which have not been fully
explicated. Scholars have long identiﬁed the inﬂuence of Moratinian comedy

from the beginning of the century in the development of the alta comedia, a

 

nineteenth-century genre that utilized the theater as a school for establishing or
modifying moral and social values. They have consistently avoided, however,
considering other plays prior to 1845 as signiﬁcant to the emergence of this
genre. A careful study of the plays from the pre-1845 period patently reveals a
different perspective on the issue. The present study, then, has a two-fold
purpose. It intends to show that contrary to established views, the alta comedia
had its inception in plays by major authors of the so-called Romantic era, rather
than in works that emulated the dramatic formulae of Moratin. Furthermore, it will
demonstrate that fundamental to the formulation of these plays -- and, in turn, the
alta comedia - is the dramatists’s technical use of female characters. To this
end it will elucidate crucial dramaturgical issues relevant to the male dramatist
vis-a-vis the female subjects, speciﬁcally as a medium of exchange within the
materialistic world.

The plays to be studied are La niﬁa en casa y la madre en la mascara by

Francisco Martinez de la Rosa, Tanto vales cuanto tienes by Angel Saavedra,

the Duke of Rivas, Lo positivo by Manuel Tamayo y Baus, and Consuelo by
Adelardo Lepez de Ayala. Issues central to the discussion of each of these
plays concern the diverse forms of expression which were used to reﬂect the
materialistic values of the audience and those which projected the Opposing
Romantic ideology of the dramatists. These include the use of symbolism to
identify the female subject with the external world and the culture of materialism,
and the personiﬁcation of the inner spiritual and moral values of the dramatist
through a male character who centers and controls the discourse. Concurrently,

it will be shown that the angel del hogar theme supported these perspectives,

 

and the sustained development of the theme will be traced from its inception in

the materialistic dramas to its culmination in the alta comedia. The image of the

 

domestic angel is found in widespread use in diverse cultural expressions of the
late nineteenth century. Its presence in pre-1845 theatrical works and in the altg
comedia, however, has previously been overlooked. The angel del hogar
subsequently became an important part of bourgeois ideology, and its presence
in these plays is highly signiﬁcant, for it helps to conﬁrm the power of
institutionalized theater to form the beliefs of the society that it reﬂects.

The social readjustments that began in the earty nineteenth century
affected members of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The former had taken
for granted their privileged status and found members of the middle class
competing with them on the basis of newly acquired wealth. The works that
constitute the literary corpus of study examine the issue of social stability with the
context of the change by using the institution of marriage as a metaphor for
society. In the plays, a marriage, and by extension society, is jeopardized by the
question of money, as the suitor, a man of integrity and personal worth, is
rejected for lack of materialistic resources. In the plays of Martinez de la Rosa

and the Duke of Rivas, the mother causes the conﬂict that is resolved by a male

authority ﬁgure who castigates the mother and reinstates the marriage. Tamayo
y Baus and Ldpez de Ayala shift the distorted values to the father ﬁgure,
explaining that the materialistic posture is due to the lack of an aristocratic
education or to the desire to improve one's social status. The delineation of male
and female subjects in plays in which materialism is an underlying factor
substantiates the premise that materialism was also used as yet another basis
for establishing the moral distinctions of men and women. The trajectory that will
be developed in the present study demonstrates that earlier writers maintained
the segregation by aligning the mother ﬁgure with materialism and subsequent
writers contained the threat to social order and male domination, removing the
ﬁgure of the wife from the inﬂuence of the outside world and conﬁning her to the
space of the home.

Chapter One elucidates the conditions that led to the dominance of
materialism in the culture of nineteenth-century Spanish society and posits the
development of Romanticism as an opposing ideology. This chapter also
elaborates the contradictory viewpoints that existed concerning the presence of
materialism in the culture of nineteenth-century Spanish society, viewpoints that
range from the ideas of Juan Valera, a contemporary author and critic who
maintained that his century was spiritualistic rather than materialistic, to the
opposing views of Susan Kirkpatrick and other current critics and historians. A
full range of critics from Alberto Lista and Leopoldo Alas through E. A. Peers and
Donald Shaw to David Gies and Derek Flitter and Philip Silver and others provide
important, differing perspectives that lead to the thesis of this study, that the
romantic dramas of Martinez de la Rosa and the Duke of Rivas helped to
formulate their reactions against the social revolution engendered by the rise of

the bourgeoisie. The study draws heavily on the brilliant insights of Susan

Kirkpatrick's work Las RomﬁéLnticas, in which she articulates theories concerning

the emerging capitalist market society of the late eighteenth century as a cultural
revolution that causes the “dismantling of values and discourses of the ancien
regime” (3) and whose legacy is deeply experienced by nineteenth-century
society.

Chapter Two situates Martinez de la Rosa and the Duke of Rivas in their
political careers and relates their public lives and their literary production. The
basis for discussion is the observations which Susan Kirkpatrick made
concerning Mariano José de Larra and which also apply especially well to
Martinez de la Rosa and the Duke of Rivas: “el dilema de Larra resulta ejemplar
de esta generacién: se identiﬂca con Ios ideales de progreso, de dinamismo
social, de libertades individuales...al tiempo que se siente constemado por las
presiones humanas, el materialismo, el cinismo y las abiertas, desgarradoras
divisiones de la nueva sociedad” (Kirkpatrick, l_._a_rga, 175).

This chapter also details the measures taken by Hapsburg and Bourbon
monarchs to separate the economic from the political and social spheres as
factors leading to the fragmentation of Spanish society and contributing to the
angst expressed by male writers over their loss of identity in an increasingly
materialistic world. It also establishes that Martinez and Rivas encoded their
view of Spanish social reality in anti-materialistic drama through the depiction of
a family that has lost its moral center.

Chapter Three provides a detailed analysis of La nifia en casa yﬁmradre

en la mascara and Tanto vales cuanto tienes, showing that the theme of social

 

order is elucidated by the carefully delineated ﬁgure of the raisonneur, a ﬁgure
that symbolically reﬂects the consternation of the playwrights at the ideology of
materialism and the divisiveness of the new society. The secondary theme of the
mother as materialist is investigated in Moratin's El si de las niﬁas. Martinez

states in the preface to La nina en casa y la made en I; mascara that he

developed the ﬁgure of dofia Leoncia from the model which Moratin presented in
his earlier work. The analysis also studies the male and female subjects and
demonstrates how the males represent positive qualities needed by leaders of a
uniﬁed society, as well as the techniques used to present female subjects as a
contradictory element in a male-dominated society.

Chapter Four focuses on L0 positivo and Consuelo, dramas staged in the
latter part of the nineteenth-century in which the theme of materialism is
dominant. These plays are studied to determine the viewpoints of Tamayo y
Baus and Lopez de Ayala, dramatists who reﬂect society at a period in which the
inﬂuence of the bourgeoisie had reached its height, and further to relate them to

the evolution of the alta comedia as newly elaborated in this dissertation. Finally,

 

Chapter Four concludes with a study of the techniques used by Tamayo and
Lepez to achieve a synthesis of the opposing values of materialism and the
patriarchal social system through the idealization of the female subject.

The outcome of this study provides evidence that Romanticism was more
than a negative response to social reality by demonstrating that Romanticism
turned to patriarchal values as a means of reunifying a society alienated by the
doctrine of materialism. Moreover, it will be shown that the anti-materialistic
dramas, in common with the alta comedia, sustained the power structure of the
elite by transmitting its cultural values to their audiences. As state theater, these
dramas imposed the values of an aristocratic system on the bourgeois system

which threatened to displace it.

CHAPTER ONE
MATERIAL INTERESTS AND THE ROMANTIC RESPONSE
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is
established with a View to some good; for mankind always act in
order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities
aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the
highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a
greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
- Aristotle. Politics. Book First, I.

The present study is based on the theory and practice of new historicism,
which holds the view that a literary text is produced in a historical context and
interacts with the political, social, and economic conditions of its formation.‘
Accordingly, this study maintains that anti-materialistic drama mirrored societal
changes of the nineteenth century and actively promoted an opposing ideology.
Literary historians have regularly associated anti-materialistic drama with alta
comedia, the genre that emerged in the second half of the century; however,
there is ample evidence to demonstrate that this type of drama was written and
staged during the ﬁrst half of the century as well and speciﬁcally by dramatists
often identiﬁed with Romanticism. These anti-materialistic comedies have
generally been little studied by literary critics, who have focused on tragic drama
as the central expression of Romanticism. This study argues that anti-
materialistic drama played a vital role in shaping cultural norms, and it develops
the thesis that materialism, a philosophy which values possessions above human

worth, provided the stimulus for certain plays which proposed the restoration of

order to society through a return to patriarchal values, an evolution concurrent

with the shift in nineteenth-century society that gave a prominent role to
bourgeois classes.

The present chapter has two objectives: to elucidate the conditions which
led to the presence of materialism in the culture of nineteenth-century Spanish
society and to establish that the ideology of Romanticism was not conﬁned to the
tragic dramas of 1834-1844 which followed the return of the political exiles from
France and England upon the death of Ferdinand Vll, but was expressed earlier
in the anti-materialistic dramas written during the years of the French occupation
of 1808-1814 and the restoration of the rule of Ferdinand Vll from 1814 to 1833.
To accomplish these ends, it is necessary to consider the differing perspectives
on the nature of Romanticism as developed by nineteenth-century and twentieth-
century critics. Critical commentary from Johann Bohl von Faber, Alberto Lista
and Juan Valera through E.A. Peers and Donald Shaw to David Gies, Susan
Kirkpatrick, Derek Flitter, Philip Silver and others will be reviewed in order to
provide perspectives that substantiate the thesis that the anti-materialistic
dramas of Martinez de la Rosa and the Duke of Rivas helped to formulate the
reactions of later playwrights in the alta comedia against the social revolution
engendered by the rise of the bourgeoisie.

An examination of the theme of materialism in nineteenth-century Spanish
drama within the context of historical changes that led to the predominance of
material values as the political and social norm necessitates an investigation into
the philosophies related to the capitalist economic system and an elucidation of

their implications for the Spanish patriarchal system. An inquiry of this nature will

reveal how Spanish drama served as a mirror of society in which its bourgeois
theatergoers could see reﬂected the materialistic values and consequences. The
speciﬁc ideologies of monarchism, constitutional monarchy, and liberalism are
discussed as well, since the struggle for dominance among these belief systems
and their relation to materialism constitutes the socio-political discourse of the
nineteenth century and, in turn, can be seen as well in the literary discourse.

The political and economic needs of society over the centuries tended to
center about land issues - ownership, use, productivity. For example, in the
Middle Ages, these needs seemed to be addressed by feudalism, a system that
espoused the principle that land was owned by the niling classes and was
worked by vassals in return for protection. In this agricultural society, land
constituted wealth and was owned by hereditary lords. Under the system of the
mayorazgo, the aristocracy preserved its landholdings by passing estates to a
single heir.2 The institution of the Church participated in the privileges of the
ruling class, and her material wealth was also represented by land. Within this
structure, the monarchs established the framework for social order, since they
held absolute power, based on authority derived from God under the doctrine of
divine right. The social contract between a ruler and the governed was based,
then, on mutual commitment to his authority. This form of government,
established as the nucleus of the Spanish nation by the monarchs of Castile and
Aragon in the ﬁfteenth century, continued to be maintained throughout the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a Habsburg dynasty. The Bourbon rulers

Philip V and Charles Ill laid the foundation in the eighteenth century for change

within the social structure. Preliminary steps to reorganize the administration of
government affairs were proposed under Philip V (1700-1746) and implemented
later in the reign of Charles Ill (1759-88), changes that produced a direct impact
on the organization of Spain's society.

During the reign of Philip V, government administration functioned under a
system of councils headed by the grandes, the highest-ranking members of the
nobility. An inefﬁcient system, the councils were subsequently replaced by
departments headed by ministers and staffed by lower ranking nobility. While
this new system was to prove inefﬁcient as well, it nonetheless created a shift in
the power of the aristocracy. The highest level of the nobility retained the honors
attached to privileged status, while the lower ranks became civil servants in the
bureaucracy. As a result, the ruling power of the aristocracy was weakened and
the position of the monarchy was strengthened. By restricting their
administrative powers and employing their services, Philip V thus dealt a major
blow to the feudalistic hierarchy.

The policies of Charles lll continued to support the concept that a uniform,
centralized system of government would facilitate the administration of economic
and educational reforms. While these reforms were meant to beneﬁt the
interests of society as a whole, they merely reinforced the power of the monarchy
without bringing about radical or revolutionary changes. Rather, the effect of
these reforms was to transform the system from within, beginning with the
aristocracy. Due to the reorganization of government administration into a

bureaucracy, by the end of the eighteenth century the aristocracy had lost much

of its political inﬂuence, power that passed to civil servants and enhanced their
position.

As a result, nineteenth-century society was confronted with uncertainties
that arose from changes to a long-established social order. K.R. Perry, in his

study of The Bourgeois Century, sums up the dilemma by stating that “the year

 

1780 was the threshold of a whole new social, economic and political world, but it
was also as deeply embedded in a world as local and diverse as the medieval
age it so frequently resembled" (3). Consequently, “the aristocracy was not
prepared to be the agent of an absolutist monarchy and either endeavored to
preserve its privilege purely on the basis of birth and not social usefulness or
would only serve the Monarch if he in turn secured those very privileges which he
needed to destroy. The clash between the needs of a reforming monarchy and
aristocratic privilege is the most important theme of the 1780s" (7).

Charles lll dealt a second blow to the power of the aristocracy through
proposed land reform. Land represented a commodity whose increased
productivity would yield increased wealth and value. The landholding
aristocracy, however, appeared uninterested in agricultural improvements.
Rather than increasing productivity, landlords seemed content to rely on rents for
their income. Management of their estates was handled by hired overseers who
had no vested interest in the economic progress either of the landlord or of the
nation. Economic Societies were formed for the purpose of educating the

aristocracy in methods that would increase the productivity of the land; however,

these efforts were met with little interest on the part of the aristocracy in general.

10

is“

Adverse to changing traditional practices, the aristocracy thus came to be
deemed as unproductive members of society, who resisted vehemently efforts at
land reform. The concept of land as a “freely transferable commodity" was
described by David Ringrose in Spain, Europe and the “Spanish miracle”,1700-
_1_9__(_l_Q as a “major shock" to society...since it redeﬁned the assumption that
“property, political authority, social hierarchy and social responsibility were bound
together" (163). Such redeﬁnition of the relationship between society and its
material base threatened the legitimacy of standing practice and subverted the
established order of aristocratic privilege through the imposition of private control
as the norm.

The full signiﬁcance of the consequences of land reform was made clear
by Gaspar de Jovellanos in the lnforme de Ley Agan’a (1795). Jovellanos, an
intellectual and civil servant under Charles Ill (1759-1788) and Chartes IV (1788-
1808), in keeping with the spirit of the times and the modiﬁcations Chartes III was .
implementing proposed the plan for land reform, a plan that would be
implemented subsequently by Juan Mendizabal in the laws of disentailment
enacted in 1836. By advocating the sale of Church estates and the abolition of
the mayorazgo, Jovellanos promoted the idea of a free market in land, citing
private ownership as the “ﬁrst instrument of prosperity“ (Carr 67). Concomitantly,
Jovellanos supported the doctrine of laissez-faire, which opposes government
regulation or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free

enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws.

11

The principles of laissez—faire and a free market system constitute the
basic tenets of economic liberalisma, a theory in direct conﬂict with feudalism, the
political, economic, and social order that had formed the basis of Spanish society
until the rule of the Habsburg dynasty, which began in 1517 under Chartes V, the
Austrian grandson of Isabel and Ferdinand. Prior to the steps taken by
succeeding Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs to overthrow the feudalistic system
and replace it with absolute monarchism, the land-holding aristocracy had set the
norms for society. Under the system of the “casa noble”, the nobility represented
the head of a family, who acted for the common good of the larger society
(Chacén Jiménez 37). Absolute monarchism, on the other hand, vested political
and economic power in a single ruler, for whom the maintenance of a solvent
royal treasury was of primary importance. Hence, trade and economic
development held sway over moral principles, implicit in the feudal system as the .
basis of social order. However, during the reign of Charles Ill (1759-1788),
measures to stimulate economic progress were intensiﬁed through reform
policies that converted the concept of land as a patrimony of the nobility and the
church to that of a commodity to be exploited for proﬁt. Concomitantly,
govemment-sponsored efforts to re-form the traditional structure of Spanish
society included the founding of economic or patriotic societies, whose purpose
was to foster the rise of an educated, enlightened bourgeoisie that would
promote economic progress in agriculture and industry. The efforts of
intellectuals to develop a bourgeois culture accompanied the enlightenment

program of Chartes III (1759-1788). For example, Jose Cadalso, in his prose

12

work, Cartas Marrggcas (published posthumously in 1789), criticized the ﬂaws of
the Spanish nation that had emerged from the patriarchal principles of the ancien

regime. Gaspar Melchor Jovellanos (1744-1810), in his Plan general de

 

instruccién publica expressed serious concern about the cultural and moral

 

education of Spanish society and proposed a way to improve it.

In spite of the efforts of Charles III, absolute monarchism was still ﬁrmly
entrenched in Spain at the end of the eighteenth century. The French Revolution
of 1789 made evident the political power of the bourgeois classes and caused
the monarchy under Charles IV (1788-1808) to retreat from enlightened reform
and attempts to Europeanize Spain. Ideas of popular sovereignty, fostered by
British, French and Spanish writers themselves, circulated among Spanish
intellectuals. Jean Jacques Rousseau, in Le contrat social (1762), proposed the
theory of social contract, an agreement between the governed and the

government deﬁning and limiting the rights and responsibilities of each, and

 

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations (1776), laid down the foundations of free-
market economic theory. Charles N, who succeeded his father in 1788, further
weakened the legitimacy of absolute monarchism by withdrawing from his
responsibilities as ruler and delegating authority to Manuel de Godoy, an
inexperienced favorite. The conﬂuence of theories and events fueled support for
the political liberalism, which was realized, at least on paper, in 1812 in the
Constitution of Cédiz.

Through their actions, Charles IV and Ferdinand Vll had undermined

the concept of moral authority as the basis of absolute monarchy. Charles

13

abandoned the program of reforms that had been instituted by his predecessor
and invested absolute power in the administration of government affairs in
Manuel de Godoy. Ferdinand’s fear that Godoy would exclude him from the
throne caused him to plot against his father by seeking help from the French to
preserve his own claim to the throne. Napoleon Bonaparte seized the
opportunity for his own advantage and forced the abdication of both monarchs.
The invasion of Spain by French forces in 1808 resulted in the liberal opposition's
drafting the Constitution of Cédiz (1812), legislation for a constitutional form of
government that would regulate the power of the monarchy, establishing the
bourgeoisie as the controlling political and social force in Spanish society, thus
curbing despotism and restoring the voice of the Cortes. A document that
embodied principles of liberalism, the 1812 Constitution declared the sovereignty
of the nation over the sovereignty of the monarch and solidiﬁed the position of
the bourgeoisie as the ruling class.4 The constitution established a new political,
social and economic order in Spain by guaranteeing the rights of liberty, equality
and property to the common citizen, and it signaled the beginning of the process
of modernization in Spain by creating the legal framework of a bourgeois society
(Carr 98). The economic corollary of political liberalism was capitalism. The
combination of the two allowed for the creation of a society whose common
denominator was wealth.

Thus, at the outset of the nineteenth century, Spanish society faced a
crisis that affected political, economic and social spheres. In the political sphere,

Charles IV and Ferdinand VII were in exile while Joseph Napoleon (1808-1814)

14

ruled the country. Both the social and economic spheres were to become
predicated on wealth gained through commerce rather than status achieved by
hereditary rank and property. Consequently, groups with conﬂicting interests and
political doctrines vied for the power to determine government policies. Among
the intellectuals, drama became a socio-political tool to mold the values of the
new social structure, serving as a direct link with the bourgeoisie. Dramatists
and journalists as well viewed the dissolution of the established cultural order as
indicative of a state of disorder, and they provided a framework to unify society,
arguing for the restoration of the values of an Aristotelian society. However, the
unresolved political conﬂict continued to divide Spanish society throughout the
nineteenth century.

With the groundwork for a constitutional monarchy prepared, the
reinstatement of Ferdinand VII in 1814 became a divisive rather than a unifying
element. Upon his return to power, Ferdinand rejected the constitution and
enforced absolute rule until 1820, when a liberal revolution took place. The
trienio liberal, a three-year interval of a return to constitutional government, was
ended by French support for Ferdinand, allowing for liberalism to be ﬁrmly
suppressed during the remaining ten years of the monarch’s despotic rule, a
decade which owing to his efforts to eliminate vestiges of Enlightment thought
and the principles on which the 1812 Constitution was framed came to be known
as the década ominosa.

The death of Ferdinand in 1833 resulted in signiﬁcant changes in the

political, economic, and cultural spheres. In the political sphere, the power

15

struggle between conservatives and liberals intensiﬁed as Isabel (1833-1868),
having inherited the throne from her father, was forced to seek liberal support
against the Carlists who supported the pretensions of her uncle. The bourgeoisie
began to consolidate its position against the aristocracy, the Church, and the
proletariat, as well, using economic measures to do so. For example, between
1831 and 1836 the Economic Society of Madrid campaigned to abolish the
grgmjgs, trade guilds, and the sale of Church property in Madrid was initiated.
The Madrid Stock Market established by royal decree of Joseph Bonaparte,
became the repository of investment, speculation and growth of new money,
especially in the 18405 and 18505 and reached its spiraling apogee in the 18605
thus substantially contributing to the shift in power in Spanish society
(Bahamonde Magro 269).

In the cultural sphere, attendant upon the return of the political exiles from
France and England, 1834 has been recognized by some literary critics as the
year which ushered in a revolution in the Spanish theater, marked by the
performance of La coniuracion de Venecia by Martinez de la Rosa, Macias by
Larra, and followed in 1835 by the staging of Don Alvaro o la fue_r£a del sino by
the Duke of Rivas (Gies 12). These plays followed the death of Ferdinand VII
and reﬂected critically the repression and tyranny of the absolutist monarchy of
the década ominosa (1823-1833).

The events of the 18305 have caused some historians to date the
“bourgeois revolution” from this period. Nevertheless, as this review of the

reforms instituted by the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs has shown, the

16

impetus for signiﬁcant socio-political and economic changes had already begun
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Further, during the reign of Joseph
Napoleon (1808-1814), measures were taken to accelerate the process of
economic reform, speciﬁcally through the establishment of the Boise of Madrid,
and thus, urging Spain to take another step toward becoming a market society.5

As the preceding summary has shown, the system of monarchism and
aristocratic rule which had prevailed in Spain for centuries was challenged by
nineteenth century political and economic liberalism. A crucial void quickly
became apparent. Bourgeois ideology is based on the material interests of the
individual; however, the middle class was ill prepared to serve as the ruling class
of a collective society. Thus, the acculturation of the bourgeoisie in the traditional
values of the aristocracy became a fundamental issue for the preservation of the
established social order.

Liberal aristocrats joined with the bourgeoisie to form a dominant bloc
which served to protect the interests of both groups against the Carlists and the
proletariat. The former wanted to restore the centrality of power to the monarch
and the lower classes wanted to overthrow the social order by vesting power in
the people. To present a united front against the radical liberalism of the
proletariat and the reactionary policies of the Carlists, aristocrats and bourgeoisie
espoused conservative liberalism. In this alliance, the bourgeoisie sought to
attain the privileged status of the aristocracy by substituting newly created wealth

for inherited nobility. The uneasy relationship between the bourgeoisie and the

17

aristocracy resulted in what Terry Eagleton, in his study in Marxist literary theory,
referred to as a “contradictory unity" (102).

The bourgeoisie lacked the cultural heritage of the aristocracy, which was
a prerequisite for the alliance of both groups as a ruling class. Bourgeois
ideology, founded on material interests, set the individual apart from society. The
acquisition of personal wealth as the highest good displaced a value system
based on the needs of the group. Hence, providing the bourgeoisie with a
cultural model based on moral values was essential in the formation of a group
that would provide the leadership for a society based on the common good.
Eagleton, analyzing the relationship between ideology and literary form, cites the
literary text as the means by which cultural values were imparted to the
bourgeois classes (107). In the case of nineteenth-century Spain, the principal
"literary text" that was to serve that end was found in the cultural expression of
Romanticism, and principally of its drama.

The role of Romanticism in the regeneration of the middle class has been
the subject of controversy among nineteenth and twentieth-century literary critics,
who continue to investigate the problems presented by its seemingly
contradictory nature. A review of studies on this genre and period reveals that
two main approaches predominate. In the ﬁrst, Romanticism is viewed as an
artistic and intellectual movement of brief duration, imported by political exiles
who returned from France and England upon the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833.
Other critics who share the same point of view trace the antecedents of

Romanticism to the Middle Ages.

18

Under the insightful scholarship of Donald Shaw, Spanish Romanticism
came to be considered as more than a literary manifestation.6 In its philosophical
implications, Romanticism is a reaction to the crises and changes in the climate
of ideas which came to a climax at the end of the eighteenth century, as
previously accepted moral and spiritual values were undermined by the
Enlightenment philosophies of rationalism and positivism. It is within this
understanding of Romanticism and its ideological context that one can argue that
anti-materialistic drama became a ”literary text" that would inform and help to
establish the moral premises for the bourgeoisie.

As noted earlier, the erosion of moral values was a gradual process which
had begun to accelerate under the reign of Charles Ill (1759-1788), when
Enlightenment policies designed to modify the economic sphere were initiated.
Enlightenment philosophy stressed that happiness lay in the development of
material interests. Increased emphasis on industry and commerce during the
reign of Charles IV (1788-1808) fostered a climate of self-interest. A belief in the
right to luxury prevailed among the newly rich. In direct opposition to the
Aristotelian ideal of wise household management, wealth became then a means
of acquiring possessions for outward show, and wealth, rather than nobility,
became a compelling reason for marriage, one of the scenarios frequently
depicted in satiric writings, graphic arts, and anti-materialistic drama.

In her study of the effects of materialism on the institution of marriage in
late eighteenth-century Spain, Carmen Martin Gaite noted that women of the

upper bourgeoisie viewed marriage to a wealthy partner as a route to personal

19

freedom, both economic and social. Bourgeois wives who believed that
possessions and self-gratiﬁcation constituted the greatest good viewed their
primary role as that of consumer, not wife and mother. As Martin Gaite further
explains, the new philosophical currents of the eighteenth century emphasized
worldly pleasures and women began to indulge their desires for luxury. Martin
Gaite cited the observations of Nipho, an author of the time, to note that the
majority of women had begun to view economy with abhorrence, and at the mere
mention of the word “se resienten como ofendidas, suponiendo que se quiere
reducirlas a ocupaciones indignas de su estado y clase...Son tantas cuantas
miran con tedio no 56lo la observancia pero hasta el nombre de la economia”
(29). Known as petrimetras, bourgeois wives were eager to spend on personal
adornment and above all to acquire an admirer: “Petrimetra era pues, sinénimo
de gastadora, de elegante, y sobre todo, de mujer que tenia por objetivo
principal conseguir un caballero dispuesto a Incensarla y al cual ofrendar todas
aquellas horas gastadas ante el tocador, es decir, llegar a tener cortejo” (74).
The custom of the ggrtejg, in which married women of means acquired admirers,
was another outcome of materialism which further eroded the family unit. The
eighteenth-century social critic, Jose Cadalso (1741-1782) satirized this custom
in thica del corteio, and Goya in several of the Cagrichos.

The anti-materialistic drama of the early nineteenth century was also an
analogue of this social reality. The loss of moral values to material concerns was
represented in the ﬁgure of the bourgeois wife, and social regeneration was

proposed through a return to the leadership of the patriarchal head of the

20

household. This aspect of Romanticism as criticism of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment has been the subject of debate among nineteenth and twentieth-
century critics alike.

The polemic over the nature of Spanish Romanticism ﬁrst began in the
second decade of the nineteenth century when Johann Bohl von Faber
popularized the ideas of German literary historians who characterized the
medieval and Golden Age literature of Spain as “romantic". Bohl maintained that
Romanticism represented a force for spiritual values and the rationalist doctrines
of the Enlightenment represented a threat to social stability. A controversy arose
between Bohl, who linked Romanticism with Christianity and political
conservatism, and José Joaquin de Mora, who insisted on the liberalism of
Spanish Romanticism.

More recent critics, Ricardo Navas-Ruiz among them, also viewed
Romanticism as synonymous with liberalism (21) while Derek Flitter, in contrast,
contended that such a perception continues to misdirect contemporary
assessment of Spanish Romanticism and stressed the importance of Bohl’s
ideas in the continuation of the concept of Romantic literature as an agent of
social regeneration (186). Bdhl subscribed to the idea of literature as a moral
guide and a means of combating the doctrines of the Enlightenment (Flitter 130).
Among other nineteenth-century critics who also viewed the Enlightenment of the
“siglo positivo" as a destructive philosophy, Enrique Gil argued for the
reestablishment of traditional values to offset the material interests which the

Enlightenment had allowed to predominate (Flitter 117). In an article published in

21

1838, Gil afﬁrmed that drama represented “the most complete literary expression
of the present age, the literary genre destined to exercise the greatest inﬂuence
in contemporary society” (Flitter 144). In his assessment of Spanish critics of this
period, Flitter found that among a large number, “all considered the society of this
period to be dominated by “money-grabbing self-interest" (148).

Alberto Lista (1775-1848) was a signiﬁcant inﬂuence in forming opinion on
the nature of Romanticism. In an incisive essay on Romantic reaction to the
bourgeois revolution—“origen esta de todos los males”—-José Escobar noted
that Alberto Lista coincided with Heinrich Heine “en seﬁalar la fe en el dinero
como caracteristica degradante de la sociedad post-revolucionaria" (326). As
the head of a private academy and mentor to Romantic writers and moderado
leaders, Lista exercised his inﬂuence to connect the political and social spheres
of society, serving as a “link between authoritarian liberalism and historical
Romanticism” (Silver 14).

In his reinterpretation of Romanticism in Spain, Philip Silver also called
attention to the efforts of Lista to “convert the society of the ancien regime into an
adequate liberal framework for the development of capitalism" (15). Having
altered his former belief in absolutism, Lista promoted moderate liberalism,
favoring a government that was neither absolutist nor democratic. In an article
entitled “Lo que hoy se llama el romanticismo”, published in 1841 during the so-
called height of the Romantic movement, Lista helped set the climate of opinion
regarding the nature of Romantic drama. For Lista, Romanticism represented

moral values, and in his theories on drama, Lista expressed the belief that drama

22 I

served an important didactic function, arguing that theater should produce a
moral effect on the spectators. For these reasons he objected to the
presentation of “el hombre ﬁsioléjico...entregado a sus pasiones, sin freno
alguno de razdn, de justicia, de relijién" (41).

Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837) was equally dismayed by the
materialism which characterized the new society, and responded to the
ideological climate in articles which expressed his opposition to the values of
bourgeois society. Susan Kirkpatrick, in a study of this nineteenth-century
romantic writer and critic, explained that Larra identiﬁed with the ideals of
progress and individual liberty, but at the same time he was profoundly affected
by the materialism and the divisiveness of the new society: “Se siente
constemado por las presiones humanas, el materialismo, el cinismo y las
abiertas, desgarradoras divisiones de la nueva sociedad” (175).

The dichotomy between moral values and the materialistic spirit of the age
continued as a theme in literary production throughout the nineteenth century,
although not all literary critics condemned contemporary society as materialistic.
In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, some critics reconciled
materialism with moral virtue. Juan Valera (1824-1905) rejected the idea that the
nineteenth century was an age of materialism by defending the predominance of
spiritual values, arguing that spiritual values prevailed through a process of
synthesis with moral values. In an article entitled “Del dinero con relacidn alas
costumbres y a la inteligencia de los hombres”, ﬁrst published in El Prggreso in

1865, Valera defended wealth as a sign of virtue, prudence, and intelligence

23 r

(581-82). In an effort to reconcile materialism with spiritual values, Valera
asserted that “En nuestra época, tratan las gentes de rehabilitar Ia materia...la
materia al ﬁn es obra de Dios” (580). By equating wealth with virtue, Valera
afﬁrmed the nobility of the bourgeoisie and related the material wodd to the
spiritual world as part of the God-given order.7

The ideological content of Romanticism was the basic issue for those
critics who viewed literature as a product of social experience. In its broadest
terms, an ideology reﬂects social needs and aspirations and constitutes the
beliefs forming the basis of a political or social system. In the anti-materialistic
drama, the Romantic playwright criticized bourgeois ideology and applied moral
values to the resolution of the conﬂict between the two ideologies.

ln Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries, a study of English literature and
its background, Marilyn Butler asserted the primacy of the ideological function of
literature: “The arts do not exist faithfully to reproduce political realities or real-
life political arguments, they have everything to do with what has to be called
ideology” (15). The political and social circumstances that prevailed in England
during the period that Butler described paralleled somewhat the situation that
prevailed in Spain at the same time. The period from the 17805 to the 18305
was a continuation of aristocratic government. However, as Butler noted, the
rapid economic expansion of the second half of the century and the pressures
that partly caused it and partly accompanied it, were beginning to change the

English social structure from within (179).

24

Reaction to the bourgeois revolution, perceived as a threat to ordered
society, was represented in the ideology expressed in the Reﬂections (1790) of
Edmund Burke, British politician and writer. As Butler explained, “The Burkean
positives are family affections and loyalties, hearth and home; hence, by
extension, the greater family made by the nation, a king at its head; and
continuity with the past" (180). In Spain, the theme of hearth and home
predominated in such representative works by Martinez and Rivas as La niﬁa en
casa y la madre en la mascara (1821) and Tanto vales cuanto tienes (1834), and
culminated in the theme of the angel del hogar in the alta comedia of the 18605
and 705.

The message of the Spanish Romantics to the bourgeoisie in their anti-
materialistic dramas was that the pursuit of wealth, untempered by moral values,
threatened to destroy the fabric of society as a whole. These plays held up a
mirror to the audience and reﬂected contemporary society’s loss of spiritual
values by accentuating the attitudes and actions of the female characters.

As noted earlier, of the two generally accepted traditions of literary
criticism regarding the nature of Romanticism, the ﬁrst is concerned with artistic
principles and the second regards Romanticism as a historical phenomenon
associated with political and social circumstances. Situated in the ﬁrst of these
traditions, E.A. Peers compiled A History of the Romantic Movement in Spain
(1935) in which he deﬁned literary Romanticism as both a revival and a revolt.

Revival constituted a renewed interest in Medieval and Golden Age literatures

 

and the concept of revolt applied to the rejection of the restraints of

25 j

Neoclassicism. Peers stated that the Romantic movement failed because “too
many widely different conceptions were current in Spain as to what Romanticism
was and what the Romantics, in Spain and elsewhere, were aiming at”. Second,
Peers maintained that the movement “lacked the solidarity generally resulting
from a clear ideal and a deﬁnite programme” (ll,27). Critics who saw evidence of
a Romantic ideology that was sustained throughout the nineteenth century
contested his views.

Morse Peckham challenged the theory of Romanticism as a literary
phenomenon. Peers had assessed Spanish Romanticism as a purely literary
manifestation of “temperament“. According to Peers, “we can never for long lose
sight of the fact that Spanish literature, like Spanish temperament, is, for all its
apparent concern with real life (italics mine) ‘romantic through and through’”
(Il,376). Peckham however, identiﬁed Romanticism as both an aesthetic and an .
ethical response to cultural alienation and social isolation, conditions inherent to
bourgeois ideology. D.L. Shaw, in a subsequent article, “Towards the
Understanding of Spanish Romanticism”, also called attention to the need to
revise critical attitudes toward Spanish Romanticism (190). Citing Peckham‘s
assertion that an understanding of Romanticism must include an examination of
extra-literary conditions, Shaw built a case for Romanticism as an intellectual
movement which responded to a change in the climate of ideas at the close of
the eighteenth century. As Shaw made clear, socio-political changes marked the
beginning of a new order and raised feelings of unease and uncertainty regarding

the future. He affirmed that Romanticism grew out of the metaphysical crisis

26 f-

incurred by the apparent collapse of previously established values. He saw the
pessimistic response of the romantic dramas of the 18305, exempliﬁed in p_o_n
Alyarg and El trovador, reﬂected in existentialism, a philosophy that emphasizes
the isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent world.
Subsequently, in “the Anti-Romantic Reaction in Spain”, Shaw noted that an anti-
romantic reaction to the despairing vision of life depicted in these plays had
already developed in the late 18305 and 405 (609).

John Dowling, a twentieth-century scholar, supported the views of Shaw
by maintaining that the trajectory in the development of the nineteenth-century
Spanish theater passed from Moratin to Galdés by way of Gorostiza, Breton de
las Herreros, Vertura de la Vega and the exponents of the alta comedia. Dowling
reasoned that La coniuracién de Venecia, Macias and Don Alvaro represented a
departure from the mainstream (218). He asserted that the decline of the so-
called Romantic “high” drama began in 1844 with the performance of Don Juan
163939, surpassed in popularity in number of performances by “el anti-don Juan
de Ventura de la Vega, El hombre de mundo” (215).

Literary critics who reexamined earlier theories in the context of the
bourgeois cultural revolution added new insights toward an understanding of the
ideological aspects of the Romantic movement and elucidated the role of the
nineteenth-century theater in the acculturation of the bourgeoisie. The present
study bases much of its rationale on Susan Kirkpatrick who, in Las Romanticas,
elucidated theories concerning the effects of the cultural revolution engendered

by the emerging capitalist market society of the late eighteenth century. She

27

cited the separation of family and production into public and private spheres as
one of the most important changes (3). The effects of the “social atomization”
which she described are identiﬁed in the anti-materialistic dramas of the
nineteenth century.

In Criticism and Ideology, Terry Eagleton maintained that the function of

 

literary form was the expression of ideology. He argued that the literary text is
the means by which cultural values were imparted to the bourgeois classes and
supported his position with the ideas expressed by the English critic Matthew
Arnold (1822-1888) in Culture and Anarchy (56). Arnold characterized the

 

bourgeoisie as “bereft of that pervasive spiritual dominance which has ratiﬁed
aristocratic rule” and cautioned “unless it can rapidly achieve such cultural
supremacy, installing itself as a truly national class at the ‘intellectual centre' of
society, it will fail in its historical mission of politically incorporating the class it
exploits“ (105). Arnold argued that the role of the bourgeoisie as a leader of
society required it to adopt the values of the aristocracy in order to “mould or
assimilate the masses below them whose sympathies are at the present moment
actually wider and more liberal than theirs...in this their irrepressible
development, their natural educators and initiators are those immediately above
them, the middle classes. If these classes cannot win their sympathy or give
them direction, society is in danger of falling into anarchy“ (106). Eagleton
concluded from the arguments of Matthew Arnold that the bourgeoisie “must

appropriate the civilised aesthetic heritage of a failing aristocracy in order to

28

equip itself with an ideology (Culture) capable of penetrating the masses” and
maintained that the literary text is the means for accomplishing this end (106).
In his comprehensive study of the theater in nineteenth-century Spain,
David Gies proposed that drama is both a reﬂection and an agent of social and
cultural shifts (2). This theory underlies the present thesis that anti-materialistic
drama served a didactic function in the formation of social norms and helped to

formulate the reactions of later playwrights in the alta comedia against the

 

bourgeois doctrine of materialism. Gies introduced The Theatre in Nineteenth-
Century Spain with a statement by Hayden White that ‘every representation of
the past has speciﬁable ideological implications’ and afﬁrmed that this thesis
“rings particularly true for nineteenth-century Spanish theatre” (1). In the Opinion
of Gies, “T he nineteenth century in Spain was a time which witnessed the most
dramatic transformation of social, literary and political realities ever seen in that
country. . .(and) the theatre, as the most immediate of literary forms, reﬂected the
rapid...changes taking place in society. It became a battleground on which were
waged a series of skirmishes...for the control of the public's mind. Theatre is
both a reﬂection and an agent of social/cultural shifts in the nineteenth century”
(2).

In his essay on “Romanticismo y revolucién" (contained in the collection of

 

essays on El romanticismo edited by David Gies) José Escobar explained that
we can conceive of Romanticism as an ideological resistance to the bourgeois
cultural revolution (322). This perspective substantiates the argument of the

present study that the resistance of Romantic ideology to bourgeois ideology

29

manifested itself in anti-materialistic drama, as does Ricardo Navas-Ruiz's El
romanticismo espaflol: historia y critica, which maintains that “el drama
romantico es, en su esencia, eminentemente social, preocupado por conﬂictos
contemporaneos” (83).

Romanticism, in the view of Fredric Jameson, represents an “ideological
resistance to the value system of a new capitalist market society” (95-96).
Beginning with the reign of Ferdinand Vll (1814-33) and continuing throughout
the nineteenth century, anti-materialistic plays addressed the impact of economic
liberalism on the formation of the Spanish state. Martinez de la Rosa and the
Duke of Rivas played signiﬁcant roles through their participation in both political
and social spheres. As playwrights, they were reformers who used drama to
convey a didactic message, presenting a model for a uniﬁed society in which
moral authority would take priority over material values. As political moderates,
they opposed the policies of economic liberalism, personiﬁed in Mendizabel, the
prime minister who “boasted that he was neither an aristocrat nor a politician but
simply a businessman” (Carr 170).

The political implications of drama and the power of drama to support or
subvert was demonstrated by Stephen Greenblatt in “The Forms of Power and
The Power of Forms in the Renaissance” through the example of a
Shakespearean play based on the killing of Richard II, commissioned for
performance by the Essex faction at the time of their uprising against Queen
Elizabeth (3-6). Whereas the queen supported theatrical productions as a

harmless public diversion, the presentation of this play was clearly intended as a

30

k.

threat by her enemies. Greenblatt argued convincingly that artistic production is
a form of social production, and serves as a link in a complex network of
institutions that constitute the culture of a society. The argument of the present
study, in accord with Greenblatt, maintains that through the medium of anti-
materialistic drama, literary Romanticism inﬂuenced and was inﬂuenced by socio-
political conditions. Playwrights mirrored society’s self-interest, which they
contrasted with the picture of a morally regenerated society. The mirror that
reﬂected the materialistic values of the audience was represented by the ﬁgure of
a female subject, while a male ﬁgure, which represented the values of the
playwright, presented a picture of a regenerated society to the audience. Since
materialism caused the alienation of the individual from the concept of common
social good, anti-materialistic drama offered a solution for the restoration of
society as an organic whole.

The relationship between literary romanticism and the state, through the
institutionalization of literature and state control of the theater, offered a means
for the dissemination of cultural values that would incorporate the bourgeoisie
into the body politic. Terry Eagleton argued that the state is the “social locus of
Culture—of that totality of impulses which is the organic form of a civilization”.
Bourgeois liberalism threatened to dismantle the established society, which
conceived of culture as an “inward condition of the mind and spirit“, whereas the
culture of materialism was based on the outward show of wealth (107).

The perception of Romanticism’s role in the regeneration of society was

evident in the ideas presented by Jacinto de Salas y Quiroga in an article

31

published in 1837. The latter envisioned Romanticism as “el gerrnen de las
virtudes sociales...el lazo que debe unir a todos los seres” (Flitter 136). It is
signiﬁcant to note that this article on the positive nature of Romanticism

appeared three years after Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino was staged. These

 

dramas, which represented the protagonist as a solitary individual alienated from
social order, were considered by some critics to be the fullest expression of
Romanticism, yet evidence presented on the Romantic response to the unrest
generated by the rise of the bourgeoisie.

The function of literature as a vehicle in the formation of social norms was
investigated extensively by Wlad Godzich and Nicholas Spadaccini in The Crisis
of Institutionalized Literature in Spain, in which they interpreted the acculturation
of the middle classes as part of the process of the institutionalization of the
cultural sphere by the Spanish state. “When the ideas of Romanticism enter into
Spain, they do not take part in the project of constructing the Nation, they do not
engage in the search of intervening independently. Rather they encounter a
state structure that recruits and mobilizes them in its service and frames them
within an institution they did not help construct” (18). David Gies argued
effectively again5t this point in the introduction to El romanticismo, explaining that
“en toda Europa la literatura producida durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX
cumplio funciones que trascendieron las puras preocupaciones estéticas. La
literatura se transforrno en caballo de batalla para una serie de pequefias
guerras entre el orden establecido y el cambio radical. No intento sugerir con

esto que los autores romanticos fueran propagandistas politicos ni que usaran

32

su talento Iiterario para avanzar causas politicas. Pero sus obras Ilevaron
consigo importantes mensajes ideolégicos que no pasaron desapercibidos por
sus lectores” (14).

The argument that the anti-materialistic dramas of Martinez and Rivas
functioned primarily as agents of social and cultural change forms the basis of
the discussion which follows in Chapter Two. The trajectory of the political and
social beliefs of these dramatists is traced from their earliest works and the
argument is given further support from the evidence provided by the political

activities of these playwrights.

33

NOTES

 

1 For a detailed commentary and explication of new historicism, see The New
Historicism, edited by Harold Veeser, and Stephen Greenblatt's introduction in
Genre, vol. 15 (1982). In his study on The Forms of Power and The Power of
Forms in the Renaissance, Stephen Greenblatt challenges the distinction
between ”literary foreground” and "political background“, linking drama to the
“complex network of institutions, practices and beliefs that constitute the culture
as a whole" (6). ln Romanticism in National Context, Susan Kirkpatrick maintains
that Romanticism is part of a "much larger historical process that set up the
structures of market capitalism, the modern nation-state, and the forms of
thought and daily life that made them viable" (260).

 

 

2 The mayorazgo was the central institution of the aristocracy, preserving the
family name, social prestige and income. Eighteenth-century reformers objected
to the mayorazgo on the grounds that it was an impediment to progress,
"hindering a free market and wider diffusion of ownership" (Carr 39-40).

3 For further readings on economic liberalism, consult Robert Heilbronner, _T_h§
Nature and Log: of Capitalism, Marshall Berman, All That Is sold Melts into Air,
and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.

 

4 For additional readings on the Constitution of 1812, consult Part I: "Ruptura y
continuidad en la deﬁnicion del estado liberal (1808-1843)" in Bahamonde‘s
Historia de Espafia: Siglo XIX.

5 For further readings on the economic measures undertaken by the bourgeoisie,
see the studies by David Ringrose, Spain, Europe and the "Spanish Miracle,"
1700-1900, and Madrid and the Spanish Econorry. Also Bahamonde Magro and
Toro Mérida, Bumsia, especulacion ycuestién social en el Madrid del siglo
XIX.

 

5 Donald Shaw afﬁrms that romanticism has its roots in the crisis at the end of the
eighteenth century, which derived from the ”apparent collapse of previously
established absolute values" (191 ).

7 In Lo gositivo, an alta comedia staged in 1862, three years before the
publication of Valera’s article, Tamayo y Baus had maintained that the use of
material wealth for charitable works was the mark of a virtuous man and would
be rewarded: “Ese banquero, que se llama Dios no abona jamas todas las
ganancias sino en la otra vida; pero a veces suele conceder en esta alguna
recompensa por adelantado” (lll,7).

34

CHAPTER TWO

THE PATRIARCHAL FRAMEWORK OF ANTI-MATERIALISTIC DRAMA
Asi, la econdmica es una doctrina de la "casa grande“ no sélo de su
actividad econémica, englobando Etica y Polltica como realidades
integradas no escindidas, [. . .] la casa noble, de acuerdo a la doctrina
aristotélica-tomista es un organismo vivo, Corpus Organicum, disponiendo
segun Ia tradicién griega, que pasa a la romana, de areté, virtus, que la
Iegitima para gobemarla y administrarla, procurando su acrecentamiento y
plentitud, rigiéndose por la econémica.

-F. Chaodn Jimenez. FamiliaLgrupos socialesy miner en Espaﬁa

(15).

By the end of the eighteenth century, the concept of society as a body
whose parts work together for the good of the whole was surpassed by
capitalism, an economic system in which private wealth supersedes the
integration of society as the highest good and which results in the replacement of
the established value system of social relationships based on nobility by a
system that determined personal worth by the outward show of wealth. Within a
span of forty years following the beginning of the reign of Charles III in 1759, the
number of modiﬁcations and innovations reﬂecting an ideology of materialism
accelerated and contributed to the transformation of Spanish culture and society.
As the bourgeois classes acquired more wealth and, in turn, the power and
inﬂuence formerly held by the aristocracy, they became the new leaders of a
society in which materialistic values were to predominate. The bourgeois,
through the consumption of print media and theatrical productions, became the

target of writers and dramatists, who in their role as moral leaders, reacted to the

dissolution of the established cultural order and produced literary works that

35

“t:

condemned the ideology of materialism.‘ An examination of some representative
works clearly indicates that Martinez de la Rosa and Rivas used anti-materialistic
drama for the didactic purpose of criticizing the material values of the bourgeois
classes and providing instruction for their regeneration through the restoration of
a patriarchal social system.

The purpose of the present chapter is twofold: to show that measures
taken by monarchs of the Hapsburg and Bourbon houses to curtail the privileges
of the aristocracy contributed to the establishment of a society based on a market
economy and to demonstrate that La nifla en casa y la madre en la mascara and
Tanto vales cuanto tienes, anti-materialistic dramas composed by Martinez de la
Rosa and the Duke of Rivas in 1812 and 1827 respectively, form part of a
common body of works which depict the playwrights‘ opposition to the
dismantling of the social structure represented by the casa noble. To provide a
context for the thesis that anti-materialistic drama constituted an argument for the
restoration of political and social unity under a patriarchy, this chapter outlines in
a panoramic manner the evolution of the Spanish state from its origins as an
Aristotelian society to its dismantling by the Hapsburg and Bourbon dynasties.
Curtailment of aristocratic privileges, suppression of representative government,
and the separation of economic from social and political spheres by the
Hapsburg and Bourbon monarchs are identiﬁed as the principal factors which
helped bring about the fragmentation of Spanish society. Circumstances linked
with the rise of the bourgeoisie account only in part, however, for the changes

that were taking place within the socio-political structure in Spain at the outset of

36

the nineteenth century.2

French rule in Spain from 1808 to 1814 under Joseph Napoleon and the
subsequent restoration of the Bourbon monarchy under Ferdinand Vll constituted
conﬂicting elements which added to the anxiety for order and hierarchy conveyed
by male writers of the nineteenth century. La nifla en casay la madre en la

mascara (1812) and Tanto vales cuanto tienes (1827) share a common theme of

 

protest with the journalistic articles, poetry and historical dramas composed by
Martinez and Rivas during the War of Independence (1808-14) and the reign of
Ferdinand VII (1814-33). Throughout this period the literary output of these
authors reﬂected their endeavors to re-establish the sovereignty of the Spanish
state within the framework of a patriarchy. Yet the French occupation of Spain
and the subsequent return of Ferdinand to the Bourbon throne perpetuated
political systems based on absolute monarchism in spite of the efforts to move
the country to a less absolutist society.

The model which had provided the foundation for a uniﬁed Spanish
society can be traced to the concept of the state presented in Aristotelian
philosophy. In his treatise on Eglit_ic__s_, Aristotle had reasoned that the state is
derived from the family as the basic social unit. The role of the father, analogous
to that of a king, was to uphold the moral values and social ethics of the family
and to oversee the economic welfare of wife, children and servants. In the Greek
sense of the word, oekonumia pertained to the wise management of household
resources, administered for the beneﬁt of the group by the head of the

household. The responsibilities of the latter encompassed political, social and

37 AI

economic spheres. Thus, the patriarchal system fulﬁlled the Aristotelian social
ideal in which the household represented a society that functioned for the beneﬁt
of all of its members.3

In turn, the Aristotelian concept of society formed the basis of Roman law,
which was extended to the regions of Western Europe conquered by the Roman
Empire. In Roman society, the fundamental gersona juridica was the family,
whose head assumed the obligation and the right to represent the family.
Consequently, the rights of the male citizen to political representation were
inseparable from his role as head of the family.

The feudalistic system which was generally characteristic of Europe until
the ﬁfteenth century was based on the principles of the Greco-Roman social
contract. The landholding aristocracy, responsible for the protection of the
vassals under its rule, fulﬁlled the role of the head of the family. With the
incorporation of their ﬁefdoms into kingdoms, the feudal lords became subject to
the authority of a sovereign ruler. However, the concept of an interdependent
society continued to be maintained. Members of the high nobility and clergy
served as advisors to the king in a body know as the Conseio real.4 Further,
royal power was not absolute. The ruler was sworn to uphold the existing
privileges of both the aristocracy and the merchants and artisans. The latter
resided in municipalities, or political units consisting of cities and towns which
were incorporated for self-govemment. The inhabitants of these towns and cities
were engaged in commerce and trade and thus maintained economic as well as

political independence.

38

The medieval municipalities were one of the most important components
of, for example, Castilian and Leonese society. Representatives of the
municipalities constituted the Curia plena, an advisory body to the king called into
session to advise on economic matters. The municipalities, responsible for the
economic administration of the towns and recognized as the central power in
local government, were later to play a cmcial role in the issues which faced the
_C_oLt§§, the national parliament, which assembled in Cadiz in 1810 in response to
the French invasion of Spain. The Qpﬂgs established itself as the central
governing authority in order to forestall the potential absolutism of Ferdinand VII
and recognized the municipalities as local governing bodies, thus extending the
medieval system into modern times.

The consolidation of the kingdoms of Castile-Leon and Aragon in 1469
united two royal families and created a powerful household which was to form the
nucleus of the emerging Spanish state. The nile of Isabel and Ferdinand
extended from 1479 until 1515, when their grandson, Charles I (1517-55)
inherited the throne and subsequently the title of Holy Roman Emperor.5

By 1520, Spain faced a political crisis that developed out of the abuses
perpetrated by Charles V. Nobles and commoners staged uprisings against the
king, who effectively suppressed their rebellion. The reign of the Hapsburg
dynasty continued until the close of the seventeenth century, when Charles II
(1665-1700), having no heir, named the grandson of Louis XIV of France as his
successor.

Philip V (1700-46), the ﬁrst of the Bourbon kings of Spain, ruled as an

39

absolute monarch, suppressing the royal council and establishing a bureaucratic

administrative system in its stead. The titled nobility of the Consejo real was

 

displaced as advisers in policy-making decisions and replaced by an untitled
nobility in order to achieve diffusion of authority under the control of the monarch.
Philip V suppressed the Consejo de Ciento, the governing council of Barcelona,
as well. Subsequently, later Bourbon rulers throughout the eighteenth century
continued the process begun by the ﬁrst of the sixteenth-century Hapsburg rulers
to diminish the power of the aristocracy in the political sphere, extending their
efforts to the economic and social spheres as well.

The social and economic powers of the aristocracy resided in their roles
as landholders in an agrarian society. Through land reform policies instituted by
Charles II (1759-88), the power of the aristocracy in these spheres was
challenged. The movement for land distribution began in the 17605, under the
pressure of agrarian reformers incensed over the eviction of tenant farmers by
the landlords of the latifundia. The Count of Aranda, appointed by the king as his
reform minister in 1766, proposed that land should be distributed to surplus labor.
This solution was resisted by the landowners, which stood to proﬁt from the sale
of land and favored the solution proposed by Gaspar de Jovellanos, an
intellectual enlisted by Charles III in his campaign for reform. In his _l_r_rfp_rr_r_1§ of
1795, a document which became the model for land reform in Spain, Jovellanos
argued that corporate property and entail were sins against the 'natural tendency
toward perfection' and individual interest was the 'ﬁrst instrument of prosperity“

(Carr 67). The concept of land as commodity rather than patrimony opened the

40

way for the doctrine of materialism to determine the power stnicture of the
political and social systems.

As a consequence, the Church and the aristocracy would no longer
maintain their position at the head of the social hierarchy. The latter had
controlled the land through the system of entail, which limited the inheritance of
property to their heirs, while the Church had held perpetual ownership of real
estate in mortmain, preventing property from being sold or transferred. Laws and
decrees enacted in the nineteenth century abolished entail and put church lands
on the free market, effectively leveling the hierarchical social structure and
creating a society dominated by the ideology of materialism (Carr 172).

As a result of Enlightenment policies, a new concept of economics
emerged in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in direct opposition to the
Aristotelian concept in which economics was part of an ordered patriarchal social
system. In a patriarchy, the father as the head of the family governed the
household and was responsible for the wise management of money and other
resources for the beneﬁt of all the individuals under his care. As the family lost
its importance as a center of economic production, the father lost the authority
which he had held as the head of a productive household. In his study of
patriarchy, Alan Johnson observes that "in some ways, the position of the father
lost so much of its traditional authority under industrial capitalism that, technically
speaking, the gender system was no longer patriarchal but androcratic, based on
male rather than father dominance" (42).

The effects of the economic changes initiated by Charles III were

41

compounded by the actions of the succeeding Bourbon monarchs, Charles IV
(1788—1808) and Ferdinand Vll (1814-33). In 1808 Ferdinand had forced the
abdication of his father, Charles IV, from the throne. The efforts of Ferdinand to
remove his father from power placed the Spanish State in further jeopardy as he
sought French support on his behalf. The subsequent French occupation of
Spain from 1808 to 1814 split Spanish society into opposing sides, supporters of
the deposed monarch and proponents of a constitutional monarchy. Both
Martinez de la Rosa and the duke of Rivas took an immediate and active role in
the resistance against the invasion of Spain by French forces: Martinez through
the publication of patriotic articles against Napoleon, and Rivas, who as a
member of the Royal Guards fought against French troops and was severely
wounded in battle. As young patriots committed to opposing foreign presence on
Spanish soil, Martinez and Rivas strove to restore the Spanish nation as a body
politic through the creation of a constitutional government based on the
traditional m. The assembly of the Cortes of Cadiz in 1810 and the drafting
of the Constitution in 1812 were an immediate response to the disorder which
Martinez and Rivas represented in their literary works as a lack of Ferdinand‘s
moral leadership. Their plays became one of the instruments for political and
social reform.

La nifla en casa y la madre erg mascara, written by Martinez in 1812
during the French occupation two years before the return of the Spanish
monarch, implicated Ferdinand for his failure to maintain the integrity of the

Spanish state, which was represented in the drama as a family with an absent

42

father. Having sought the support of the French against his own father,
Ferdinand had been lured to France, where Napoleon forced both father and son
to abdicate in favor of his brother Joseph. With the invasion of Spain by French
forces, popular resistance was immediate. The populace was quickly and
brutally repressed, and Joseph Napoleon was installed as king of Spain on May
10, 1808. Ferdinand however, concerned with the protection of his own interests
over those of the Spanish nation, urged cooperation with the French. His
instructions to the council that he left in Madrid to govern during his absence
were to cultivate French friendship at all costs, delaying the efforts of the
provisional government to oust the French forces (Carr 83).

The exile of Ferdinand as the head of the Spanish State and the French
occupation from 1808-1812 form the political background for La nifia en casa yla
mascara. In this play, Martinez depicts the disorder that results from the lack of
moral leadership on the part of Ferdinand through the actions of dofia Leoncia, a
ﬁgure symbolic of worldly concerns. Representing a mother who neglects the
needs of her family and servants, dofla Leoncia devotes her attention instead to
her outward appearance and the social events of Madrid court society. Without
moral direction, all of the female characters reject their roles within the framework
of the family in pursuit of material interests. lnés, the daughter of clone Leoncia,
plots to elope in order to lead the same irresponsible life as her mother, aided by
Juana, a servant who betrays the honor of Ines for ﬁnancial gain.

The ideology of materialism is criticized through the voices of don Pedro

and don Luis, ﬁgures who represent the moral values of the playwright and

43

express the malaise concerning materialism that pervades artistic productions
throughout the nineteenth century. Don Luis explains that doﬁa Leoncia is a
victim of the "contagio general de las costumbres; por no sufrir los sarcasmos de
la turba corrompida de insolentes cortesanos, sigue del lujo y la moda Ios
extravagantes pasos, sin que la edad la corrija ni la enmiende el desengafio
(l,1)“.

Under the guidance of don Pedro, her brother, dofia Leoncia is persuaded
to remain at home and to put the welfare of her family above self-interest. Don
Pedro fulﬁlls his function as moral leader by arranging the marriage of his niece
to don Luis, the suitor who represents the values which assure the continuity of
the social structure based on the patriarchal model of the family.

Criticism of the ideology of materialism was continued by Rivas in lamp
vales cuanto tienes, a play written in 1827 during the period known as the
década ominosa (1823-33), when Ferdinand Vll exercised tyrannical power and
exiled liberal leaders, Rivas among them. The monarch, faced with bankruptcy
throughout his rule, promoted material progress as a substitute for political
liberalism. Strict censorship of newspapers and literary productions prevailed,
and the play was not staged until 1834, following the death of Ferdinand.

In Tanto vales cuanto tienes, Rivas attacks the materialistic spirit of the
time. The title of the play sums up a value system based solely on the ﬁnancial
worth of the individual. Rivas identiﬁes the wortd of materialism with the principal
female character, dofia Ruﬁna, a ﬁgure whose ambition and self-interest has

divided the members of her family into opposing camps. Allied with her is her

brother, don Alberto, who defers to her for the sake of her money schemes, and
a cousin, don Miguel, who also depends on dofia Ruﬁna. She has paid for his
military rank and captain‘s uniforms, while he refrains from actual service. Their
source of income is the funds which a second brother, don Blas, an ingjagg, has
earned from many years of work in Peru.

The action of the play hinges upon the imminent return of don Blas, who
has promised to bestow the remainder of his fortune on the family. Dofla Ruﬁna,
concerned only with the appearance of wealth, and having squandered the funds
previously sent by don Blas, is reduced to borrowing the funds she needs from
don Simeon, a usurer. However, her welcome of don Blas turns to rejection
when she learns that his fortune has been lost at sea. Don Blas assures her that
they can continue to live well, if modestly, on the funds he had sent for
investment in land, not knowing that the money had actually been wasted in
frivolous expenditures. Don Blas, assumed to be penniless, is now scorned as
worthless and expelled from his sister‘s house.

The rejection of don Blas by his family is not supported by his niece, '
Paquita, whose compassion and generosity is met with fury on her mother's part.
Only when an insurance company restores his lost fortune is don Blas welcomed
once more by dofia Ruﬁna. Don Blas seeks to restore order to the family,
refusing to pay the usurer’s exorbitant fees, sending don Miguel back to active
duty, and offering moral guidance to don Alberto and dofia Ruﬁna. The latter two
refuse to accept a moral value system, with the result that don Blas removes

Paquita and the servants from dofia Ruﬁna's household in order to place them

45

 

under his protection. Don Blas serves as a model of patriarchal virtue, he uses
his fortune for the good of his family and supports the marriage of his niece to a
suitor who demonstrates moral integrity.

The pervasiveness of the social disorder which Rivas depicted in laptg

vales cuanto tienes was afﬁrmed by the essayist and theater critic Mariano Jose

 

de Larra (1809-1837). Larra, characterized as an ”agudo espirtu critico...de la
realidad nacional de momento (Garcia Lapez, 443)”, expressed his
preoccupation with the ills of society in his articulos de costumbres and in his
criticism of theatrical productions. Deeply concerned over the materialistic spirit
that pervaded Spanish society, Larra introduced his critique of this drama with a
discourse condemning contemporary social values. He characterized the
nineteenth century as a "siglo harto matematico y positivo (645)“ and he
criticized society for abandoning spiritual values for a ”becerro de oro", the
golden calf of materialism (646). Larra's evaluation of the play‘s shortcomings
focused on its failure to present this message forcefully enough, concluding that
”eso es lo que no esta dicho, ni esta hecho; no eso lo que no atrevimos a
esperar de Tanto vales cuanto tienes;...(646)“.

Nonetheless, an examination of M and Tanto vales together with the
other works which Martinez and Rivas wrote during the period from 1808 to 1827
reveals a more comprehensive view of the issues which confronted Spanish
society at the start of the nineteenth century.6 Mile and Tanto vales treat
materialism within a socio-economic framework, concentrating on the

responsibility of the male, as head of the family unit, to maintain moral values in

46

the face of changing economic conditions.

The other works of these writers within the same period deal with
materialism in its socio-political aspects, with a focus on the monarch as the
head of state, the extended family. In these works, the political theory of
absolutism was attacked and rejected through the portrayal of the absolute
monarch as an individual who puts his own interests before those of society,
without regard for justice, law, or morality. The ﬁrst of these monarchs was the
subject of articles and poems based on the political reality of 1808, when
Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain, suppressed the populace, and had his
brother Joseph crowned ruler. The second was Ferdinand Vll, who upon his
return to the throne in 1814, rejected the rights outlined in the Constitution of
1812, maintained a reign of terror from 1823-33 during which he exiled liberals
who opposed him and prohibited publications which criticized his rule. The
patriotic articles by Martinez de la Rosa denounce Napoleon. In 1808 Martinez
had undertaken a mission to Gibraltar to obtain arms for the Spanish rebellion
against the French invasion. In the same year he published articles in m.
a Granadine newspaper, condemning the emperor for his actions (Mayberry 3).
Popular resistance to the French invasion was immediate, taking the form of
IBM. local organizations which sprang up spontaneously in provinces
throughout the country. As neighboring ju_n_ta§ began to join forces, the idea of a
central coordinating body arose, which resulted in the establishment of a Junta
Central in the fall of 1808. Constituted as the Junta Supreme Central

Gubemativa del Reino, it exercised sovereign authority over the government and

47

directed the war against France (Bahamonde 51). During the following year
Martinez wrote a heroic poem, Zaragoza, in response to a literary contest
sponsored by the Junta Central, in which he commemorated the resistance of
Zaragoza to the French siege of that city.

In 1810 Martinez de la Rosa left cadiz, joining other Spanish exiles in
London, among whom was Blanco White, editor of the literary journal El Espafiol
(Maybeny 4). In this journal Martinez published the essay Ea revolucion actual
de Esgaﬁa in which he outlined his beliefs in a free press, a constitutional
monarchy, and his opposition to foreign interference in Spain.

Following his return to Spain in 1811, Martinez openly gave his support to
the Junta Central and joined Angel Saavedra (the future duke of Rivas) at the
center of the rebellion in Cadiz. When the liberals divided into two factions,
Martinez adopted a moderate stance in keeping with the inﬂuence of English
ideas, and Rivas, more radical position of the liberals inﬂuenced by the French
Constitution of 1791.

In 1812, the year in which the Cortes issued the Constitution of Cadiz, Lg
gue puede un empleo and La viuda de Padilla, two political plays by Martinez,
were written and performed in Gadiz. Each of these plays conveys a message
for reform. In ngpe puede un emﬂao, Martinez builds a defense of liberalism
as the means of reforming society and protecting free speech, portraying the
enemies of liberalism as self-interested hypocrites. In the preface to this play,
Martinez states that his purpose is to expose "cierta clase de hip6critas politicos,

que so color de religidn se oponen entre nosotros a las benéficas

48

reformas...deseando contribuir de todos modos a que el publico conozca a los
enemigos de nuestra libertad“ (5).

In this play the ﬁgure of don Melitdn, a cleric, represents the enemies of
liberalism. He convinces don Fabian to break off the wedding between Carlota,
his daughter, and her suitor Teodoro because of the letters liberal ideas
concerning freedom of the press. According to don Melitén, “esa libertad de
imprenta es casa de herejes" (I, 8). In the discourse between don Meliton and
don Luis, Teodoro's father, don Luis representing the voice of the playwright,
counters the arguments of don Melitén. When don Meliton argues that the
liberals represent disorder, don Luis replies that through the Constitution,
sanctioned by the Cortes, "el pueblo ha empezado a conocer sus verdaderos
intereses, y a respetar las leyes que lo vana librar en adelante del latigo de sus
opresores" (l,8).

Don Luis restores the marriage between his son and Carlota through a
ruse designed to unmask don Melitén‘s hypocrisy. The latter receives a letter,
revealed to have been sent by don Luis, in which he is offered a position in the
Supreme Court to defend a free press. Don Melitdn immediately changes sides,
stating, "yo hago lo que me acomoda" (ll,9). Don Luis delivers the thesis of the
play in a speech directed to don Fabian: “Ahora empezara usted a conocer a
muchos de Ios que tratan de extraviar al pueblo, inquietando a las gentes
sencillas, y pintandoles como nocivas al Estado y contrarias a la Religidn las
mas saludables reforrnas, solo porque 5e oponen a su propio interés“ (ll, 10).

The second of these plays, Lgiuda ge Padilla, also focuses on the

49 I

ideology of liberalism, drawing a parallel between the struggle of the nineteenth-
century Cortes to achieve a constitutional monarchy and the revolt which began
in May 1520 with popular uprisings in northern Castile against royal ofﬁcials
appointed by Chartes V to rule in his stead during his long absences as Emperor
of the Holy Roman Empire (Elliott 148). Comunes, communities organized to
promote local interest, turned to distinguished local families for leadership, as
was the case in Toledo, where Juan de Padilla and Pedro Laso de la Vega were
elected to replace the royal administration.7 Efforts to unify the communes were
largely unsuccessful until Adrian of Utrecht and the regency council sent royalist
forces to attack and burn Medina del Campo, the most important ﬁnancial and
commercial center in the country. A Junta composed of representatives of the
communes of cities from both the north and south was formed, and Juan de
Padilla was sent to enlist the support of Queen Juana. However, the queen
refused to sign any documents, and from this point on, the movement shifted
from a national uprising against a foreign regime into a social movement against
the nobles and the rich headed by the Gerrnanla of Valencia.

The actions of the Gennania, an armed brotherhood of artisans, caused
the Castilian nobility to withdraw its support of the comuneros. On April 10, 1521
the Junta announced war against the grandees as enemies of the realm (Elliott
154). Two days later the royalist army met and defeated the Comunero army
outside Tom, and Juan de Padillas and Juan Bravo were captured and executed
the following day. The last of the Castilian cities to yield was Toledo, due to the

efforts of Maria Pacheco to make a last stand of resistance. All rebellions were

50

crushed by July 1522 and Charles V returned to Spain as absolute monarch,
bringing with him 4,000 German soldiers as reinforcements (Elliott 151-56).

Martinez was elected to the Cortes in 1813, where he continued to
promote the ideals of a constitutional monarchy, presenting a bill stating that
anyone who tried to alter the constitution would be condemned to death as a
traitor. Upon the return of Ferdinand to power in 1814, Martinez was arrested
and sentenced to imprisonment for eight years. He was freed after a period of
six years by the representative government that had been established following
the liberal uprisings that had forced the king to swear to uphold the constitution.
The political philosophy of Martinez was based on a medieval principle in
existence prior to the uniﬁcation of the kingdoms of Castille and Aragon by Isabel
and Ferdinand. The principle was for the monarchs of the Iberian kingdoms to
swear to uphold the rights of their subjects. Adherence to this belief resulted in
his imprisonment under Ferdinand Vll.

During the years of Martinez‘ imprisonment from 1814 to 1820, Ferdinand
abolished reforms, reinstated censorship of the press, and reduced the treasury
to near bankruptcy. A military uprising in 1820 resulted in the victory of the
moderate liberals, who during the liberal triennium that followed, directed their
efforts to the revision of the Constitution of 1812 in the hopes of bringing about a
balance of power between the monarch and the Cortes.

Upon his release from prison in 1820, Martinez resumed his position in the
Cortes. In the following year, Laniﬁa en casa Mdre en la mm -

written in 1812 - was ﬁnally staged. Characterized as a Moratinian comedy, the

51

socio-political message of this play, however, has unfortunately received little
commentary because literary critics focused attention principally on the
comparison of its style to that of earlier neoclassical drama.

The dramas of the Duke of Rivas (1791-1865) composed and performed
between 1822 and 1834 complete the work begun by Martinez in the period from
1812 to 1821. These works provide insights into the perspective of Romantic
writers on the political factors that led to the predominance of materialism in
nineteenth-century Spanish society.

The political career of Rivas, like that of Martinez, began with his
resistance to the French invasion of Spain. Born into a titled aristocratic family,
Rivas entered the Royal Guards in 1806 and fought against the invading French
forces until he was wounded in battle in 1809. After his recovery, he served on
the general staff of the army of Cadiz. Rivas openly supported the Constitution
of 1812, which was summarily abolished by Ferdinand upon his return to power
in 1814. Between 1814 and 1818, during the period in which Ferdinand
reimposed absolutism, Rivas continued his military services, publishing several
volumes of poetry and composing a series of tragedies. The ﬁrst, M, written
in 1814, was neither performed nor published, because of political censorship. A

second play, Qofia Blanca (1815), was never published. The three tragedies

 

remaining from this period are Aliatar (1816), El dugge de Aggitania (1817), and
Malek-Adhel (1818), and they share a common theme: the protagonists covet
absolute power and, as a result, are defeated. Aliatar, set during the Christian

Reconquest of Spain, deals with the love of a Moorish Chieftain for Elvira, a

52

Christian captive. Refusing to free her to the Castilian forces headed by her
brother, who have come to rescue her, Aliatar kills Elvira and than himself. El
Qggye de Aguitania concerns the actions of Eudén, who usurps the title of duke
through the assassination of his brother and the unjust imprisonment of his
nephew. His efforts to force his niece to marry him are thwarted by the return of
the nephew, who resumes his rightful role as duke of Aquitania. Eudén kills
himself and the play ends with the moralizing statement "el justo Cielo siempre a
los tiranos ﬁn tan horrendo, inexorable, guarda (V, escena ultima)". The third

play, Malek-Adhel, takes place during the Crusades and concerns the love of

 

Malek-Adhel, a Moslem ruler, for Matilde, a Christian princess who is his captive.
Matilde's brother, Richard, king of England, who has planned to marry her to his
ally, the king of Jerusalem, thwarts their marriage. The latter, Lusiflan, kills
Malek-Adhel, and Matilde retires to a cloister. As in the case of Martinez, literary
scholars have focused their assessment of these plays on issues relevant to
Neoclassic form and Romantic sensibility (Lovett 40). However, the plays are
richer than that. Although action does center on the doomed love of the
protagonists, clearly an antecedent of themes of high romanticism, ﬁfteen to
twenty years later, all three plays dramatize and examine critically the dynamics
and consequences of political power.

Unrest over the absolutist power of Ferdinand Vll came to a head in the
political events of 1820, when an army revolt forced Ferdinand to swear
allegiance to the Constitution of 1812. During the ensuing period known as the

Constitutional Triennium, (1820-23), the government of the revolution, headed by

53

the Madrid Junta, worked to keep Ferdinand faithful to the Constitution of 1812
while simultaneously seeking to establish a moderate form of liberalism
acceptable to the king and the radical liberals. Rivas supported the
revolutionaries and in 1821 was elected deputy to the Cortes, joining Martinez,
who had returned to the Cortes following his release from prison the year before.
Rivas served as secretary of the Cortes, siding with the more radical elements
and expressing his opposition to the absolutist practices Of Ferdinand in Ea_r1g;_a_,
a drama written and staged in 1822.

In this political play, Ferdinand is symbolically attacked through the
dramatization of the despotism of Philip ll, whose Castilian forces defeated the
Aragonese city of Zaragoza in 1591, ignoring their "justas quejas" that he respect
their fps-lg which were derived from their municipal charters. The protagonist,
Lanuza, a chief justice of Aragon, grounds his resistance to the king on the law.
When conspirators within the city, composed of prelates and corrupt magistrates,
capture one of the Opposition leaders and imprison him through the forces of the
inquisition, Lanuza seeks the release of the prisoner in order for him to be tried
according to the law. Lanuza‘s efforts to rally the townspeople to resist the attack
of the royalist forces are defeated through the treachery of his adviser, Lara,
secretly an agent of king Philip, who tells the people that Lanuza has already
sold them out. Lanuza is captured and subsequently beheaded without a trial,
iterating a ﬁnal lesson that there is no justice under absolutism. The concluding
speech of the ﬁnal scene summarizing the moralizing principle of the play is

delivered by Vargas, the general in charge of Philip‘s army. "...Del que a servir a

54

la opresiOn 5e presta, éste es el galardOn, éste es el premio: ver la heroica
virtud en el cadalso, y a la inocencla hundida en el despecho (V, escena altima)".
The-play, "performed to thunderous applause in Madrid and the provinces"
(Lovett 17), did not, however, indicate that the nineteenth-century liberals were to
maintain control of the government. On the contrary, French forces intervened,
sending an army into Spain in 1823 to back Ferdinand. Rivas voted with the
Cortes to suspend Ferdinand when the latter refused to move his court despite
the imminent threat of French invasion. The victory of the French and the
restoration of Ferdinand to power resulted in the exile of Rivas in 1823. After a
brief stay in London, Rivas arrived at the island of Malta, which became his
refuge in 1825 until 1830.

During the year following his arrival at Malta, Rivas composed E_lo_rin_d_§

(1826), a narrative poem based on the legend of La Cava. Like his eartier

dramas set in the medieval period, the didactic element in Florinda draws

 

attention to the abuses of monarchical power. M deals with the defeat of
Rodrigo, last of the Visigothic kings, by Arab invaders from the north of Africa in
711. In this legend, Rodrigo placed self-interest above responsibility for the
welfare Of his subjects. His seduction Of Florinda revealed his disregard for
social order and led to the loss of his kingdom when Count Julian, the father of
Florinda, exacted vengeance and called upon the Arabs forces to invade Spain.
In Arias Gonzalo (1827), a drama based on the eleventh-century siege of
Zamora, Rivas again attacked the abuses of monarchical self-interest and

despotism. In this account of Castilian domination of the Christian kingdoms of

55

-.’.

northern Spain, the city of Zamora, under the rule of the infanta, dofia Urraca, is
attacked by the forces of her brother Sancho, king of Castile. Arias Gonzalo, her
adviser, presents the didactic message of the playwright, introducing the theme
of the monarch's self-interest in the opening scene: "...pues sordo a las razones
y la justicia vuestra, el rey don Sancho sOlo de la ambiciOn el grito escucha,
olvidando, feroz, que es vuestro hermano. Ni paz ni tregua admite. Guerra y
muerte, y sangre y esterminio esta anhelando“ (I, 1). Sancho‘s tyrannical
ambitions are further recounted by Pedro Arias: "...que fue a Galicia a levantar
cadalsos, que fue a LeOn para poblar mazmorras y que aqui vino a encadenar
esclavos“ (I, 4). The successful defense and freedom of the city of Zamora is
achieved at the cost of the lives of Arias Gonzalo's sons, who accept the
challenge of a Castilian knight after Sancho is murdered by a Zamoran. The
premise which Rivas presents as the outcome of the action is that the price of
liberty comes high, yet is paid by its defenders: "Libre esta Zamora, mas, iay!
Cuanto le cuesta a Arias Gonzalo!" (V, 10).

As evidenced in these plays, the actions of the earlier monarchs, Rodrigo

in Florinda, Sancho in Arias Gonzalo and Philip II in Lanuza, are based on

 

 

absolute power and disregard for the well being of their subjects. The plays were
performed during the period of the década ominosa, in which Ferdinand
continued to repress opposition to his absolutist rule. Rivas's criticism of
Ferdinand VII was implicit, and it remained for the audiences to draw the parallel
between the nineteenth-century monarch and the monarchs Of the historical

plays.8

56

In 1828, still in exile, Rivas composed Tanto vales cuanto tienes, a
contemporary drama, which like his earlier historical dramas, implicates
Ferdinand as a threat to political and social unity, engendered by his self-interest.
In this play, the problems of society are presented through the depiction of a
family that lacks a patriarchal head to instill the values of an Aristotelian society.
Rivas provides a representation Of the materialistic values that dominate social
reality in the ﬁgure of doﬁa Ruﬁna, a mother who alienates and divides her
family. The basic premise of this play is that Spain's wealth resides in the wise
investment of its resources, in keeping with the needs of society as a whole. The
ﬁgure of don Blas, a brother who has earned a fortune through a lifetime of work
overseas, provides the moral guidance missing in the family. He has sent funds
to dofia Ruﬁna to be invested in land, so that the income would provide for the
needs of the family. Dona Ruﬁna, however, disregards his instructions to provide
for the security of the family and spends the funds that the brother has provided
on an outward show of wealth. Both ﬁnancially and morally bankrupt, she has
become indebted to a moneylender, and has rejected her daughter's suitor
because he lacks the social status that her ambitions require. Don Blas
intervenes to save dofia Ruﬁna from the unscrupulous usurer and to restore the
marriage of his niece. Since dofia Ruﬁna refuses to accept the values of don
Blas, the latter provides shelter and support for the young couple, exemplifying
the role of the household head in providing for the welfare of the family unit.

As in the case of La niﬁa en casa y la madre en la mascara, literary critics

have generally viewed Tanto vales cuanto tienes as a comedy Of manners rather

57

than as a work which underscores the playwright‘s philosophy of social contract.
However, as the didactic element of these anti-materialistic dramas indicates,
they formed part of the sociO—political program of Martinez and Rivas during the
crucial period of the War of Independence and subsequently, the return of
Ferdinand VII.

The events leading up to the invasion of Spain by France, precipitated by
the plotting of Ferdinand to ensure the monarchy for himself, are mirrored in the
dramas of Martinez and Rivas through examples which show the destructive
nature of his actions. In M, the actions of king Rodrigo result in the
invasion of Spain by a foreign nation. The protagonist of Malek-Adhel puts
peace between Moslem and Christian nations at risk through his pursuit of
power. The title of El dugyp de Agritaine is usurped by his brother, a situation
which divides society until the rightful heir returns. A_lia_ta_r, governor of Aljama,
challenges the social code of the Castilians and is defeated. Philip Il unjustly
attacks the citizens of AragOn and M their defender, is killed. Rivas drives
home the message through the dying Lanuza who declaims that "El cadalso is
infame solamente para el que ante Ia ley se encuentra reo; pero cuando
venganza de tiranos el mundo Ie contempla, es monumento de gloria, es un altar
honroso y santo" (V, 6).

As shown in the analogy between Ferdinand VII and the protagonists
portrayed in these dramas of historic incident, the political and moral messages
which Martinez and Rivas convey underscore the primary responsibility of a

monarch to rule in the interests of his subjects, and in his patriarchal role, to

58

protect them and defend them from foreign invasion. Furthermore, the abuses of
his position are to be restrained through self-control and the use of moral
judgment, and ﬁnally, the rights of his subjects to representative government are
to be respected - all principles of an enlightened head of state functioning within
the model of a constitutional monarchy.

In direct contrast to the didactic message of these dramas, the political
reality of Ferdinand's rule revealed the opposite to prevail. Ferdinand allowed
French forces to invade Spain in 1808 and again in 1823, when he relied on the
backing of the Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis against the Cortes of Seville,
which had deposed the king and set up a regency (Carr 140). The refusal of
Ferdinand to allow a constitutional government led to the exile of his liberal
opponents in 1823, whose return was secured only following the monarch's
death in 1833. Throughout his reign Ferdinand‘s society was polarized by the
conﬂicting positions of the monarch and the liberals; he sought absolute power,
and they favored government by law and protection from arbitrary authority.

In this manner, Martinez and Rivas used drama as a symbolic vehicle to
promote patriarchy as the basis for the re-establishment of a uniﬁed society,
attacking both the monarch and the bourgeois classes for their failure to maintain
the values inherent in an Aristotelian model society. Ferdinand was represented
in the political dramas through the negative portrayal Of a monarch who fostered
divisiveness, and in the anti-materialistic dramas as an absent father. The lack
of a patriarchal ﬁgure, whose moral values would maintain the integrity Of the

group over the self-interest Of the individual, caused the disintegration Of the

59

family. The bourgeois audiences saw themselves mirrored in the ﬁgure of a
female protagonist, whose greed resulted in the near destruction of the social
structure Of the family.

Through anti-materialistic plays, Martinez and Rivas expressed their
concern over the moral responsibility of the monarch to promote the stability of
the family unit. In Aristotelian philosophy, the state is composed of a community
of households in which each household head, governing by experience and
intellect, acts for the greatest good. The nineteenth-century bourgeois families
depicted in Eajjﬁ and Tanto vales lack the leadership of a household head
similar to the nation deprived of wise government based on integrated moral,
political, and economic decisions. The playwrights postulate the results of these
circumstances as the future breakdown of society, encoded in the decision by the
female family heads to nullify the marriage contracts of their daughters for
materialistic reasons. Thus the central issue of these plays is the stability of the
family, which is restored through the intervention of a male ﬁgure representative
of the moral values Of the dramatists.

The anti-materialistic plays reﬂected the social reality of the rise of
bourgeois power during the reign of Ferdinand Vll. However, Martinez and Rivas
made equally important in these plays their belief that the future stability of the
state depended on the restoration of a patriarchy. In their view, the stability of
society depended on representative government by male heads of households in
the interests of the community, as opposed to the bourgeois doctrine in which the

individual‘s economic and social goals take precedence over the interests of the

60

state.

In sum, by the early nineteenth century the political, social, and economic
authority previously vested in household heads under the feudal system through
centuries of rule had been signiﬁcantly eroded. The dismantling of the
landholding system, a process begun during the eighteenth century ﬁnally
severed the connection between the economic and social spheres that had been
maintained by patriarchal authority. When Ferdinand VII resumed control of the
Bourbon throne after the French occupation of 1808-1814, his policy of absolutist
rule further undermined the concept of patriarchal authority. He denied the
political authority Of household heads through his refusal to accept a constitution
or to recognize the rights of the Cortes to convene. A5 a result of ﬁscal problems
incurred by the costs of war and the loss of trade with the American colonies,
Ferdinand inherited a bankrupt royal treasury (Carr 122). The need for revenue
led to the crown's exploitation of the domestic economy for its own purposes, a
direct contradiction to the Aristotelian concept of economics as the wise
management of resources for the common good. In effect, the absolute
monarchism of Ferdinand abrogated the notion of society as a community of
mutual interests and replaced it with the doctrine of materialism, in which the
individual was no longer part of a social system based on the common good.

The worth of an individual, fonneriy based on qualities of characters exempliﬁed
in the hombre de bien, was now gauged by the extent Of his wealth, a
fundamental change in economic outlook that disrupted the established patterns

of life at all levels of society.

61

Nineteenth-century Spanish society existed in a state of tension between
the desire for the material beneﬁts generated by economic liberalism, and the
desire to maintain the traditional value system. In the social criticism expressed
through anti-materialistic drama, Martinez and Rivas presented materialism and
patriarchy as Opposing structures of alienation and uniﬁcation, arguing that
patriarchal hierarchy served as a unifying structure for Spanish society by
restoring male authority over the material world. The political process and the
didactic use of drama were the principal means of achieving this purpose.

The anti-materialistic dramas of Martinez and Rivas presented their upper
class audiences with an exaggerated picture of the social disorder that could
result from the rejection of moral values for material values through a contrastive
didactic technique that pits moral and material values against each other and
which are represented in the Opposition of male and female characters. In each
of the plays, the female protagonists, whose focus on the material world has
caused them to become alienated from their families, exemplify the dramatic
absence of moral values. In the moral lesson of La nifia en casa y la madre en la
mascara, the daughter decides to follow the example set by her mother, narrowly
escaping seduction by her mother's c_o_r_t§jg. Order is restored to the family
through the intervention of don Pedro, a ﬁgure who serves as the moral voice of
the playwright. In Tanto vales cuanto tienes, an example of the destnictive
power of materialism is presented in the ﬁgure of dofia Ruﬁna, who has driven
her daughter out Of her home because the daughter does not share her material

values. Don Blas, a male ﬁgure who represents the patriarchal values of the

62

dramatist and uniﬁes the characters that sustain the moral values of the family,
achieves the resolution of the problem. Through this technique, the dramatists
establish that materialism was indeed the prevailing concern of the upper-class
bourgeois theater audience through the constant theme of anti-materialism and a
stagecraft that allows the spectators to view themselves through the action on
stage.

As they observed the stage, what the audience saw was a reﬂection Of

their own houses. The setting for La nifia is the drawing room in dofia Leoncia's

 

house in Madrid, described in the stage directions as ”decentemente adomada“.
In Tanto vales, the setting is the drawing room of dofia Ruﬁna‘s house in Seville.
The drawing room furnishings, where guests are entertained, are a matter of
grave concern to dofia Ruﬁna. She is motivated by the desire to impress her
guests with a show of wealth through the purchase of chairs, cabinets, and
silvenrvare, which leads her into debt to a moneylender. Don Blas, who
represents a wise and frugal patriarchal administrator, treats the topic Of usury as
a moral issue at length.

The distinctions between social class and moral class are illustrated in
each of the anti-materialistic dramas through the protagonists' outlook on
marriage. In La nifia en casa m madre en la mascara, don Pedro explains that
his brother-in-law, a merchant engrossed with amassing a fortune abroad, has
arranged the marriage Of his daughter as if it were a business negotiation:
”ajustarian la boda como azucar y cacao; veinte pones, veinte pongO, son

cuarenta, y llevo cuatro" (I, 1).

63

In Tanto vales cuanto tienes, upon receiving the news that her brother has
left her his fortune, dofia Ruﬁna breaks off her daughter's engagement. She
explains that don Juan had been an adequate suitor to help them out of ﬁnancial
straits, but now that they no longer needed his assistance, she could expect to
arrange a marriage with someone of higher social status. Dona Ruﬂna reminds
her daughter that she herself had been married to a marquis. Though they were
married for only a month, it was sufﬁcient to earn her the title of "mi seflora la
marquesa". The daughter reminds her mother that they come from humble
origins: ”Pero isi mi abuelo era un miserable barquerol“, to which doﬁa Ruﬁna
quickly replies ”Bachillera, calla" (I,5).

The ﬁgure of the mother in these plays is central to the argument that
without the prevailing inﬂuence of moral values represented in the patriarch, the
family is subject to the destructive inﬂuence of material values. The dominance
of material over ethical values is presented in the context of a family that has lost
its moral leadership. Martinez and Rivas each use the ﬁgure of the mother as
the medium of exchange for a society ruled by material values. Dofia Leoncia,
the protagonist of La nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara, rejects
responsibility for the welfare of her daughter and servants in the pursuit of
personal gratiﬁcation and the outward appearance of youth and wealth. The
servants are left without moral guidance and they conspire to gain personal
advantage at the risk of the daughter's loss of honor. Her daughter is neglected
while she pursues the entertainment of the masked balls. She scoms her

daughter‘s suitor because he is unwilling to use ﬂattery and deceit. She

5.”.

encourages the attentions of a young man who ﬂatters her for the purpose of
obtaining money from her and at the same time, courts her daughter. Dofla
Ruﬁna, the protagonist of Tanto vales cuanto tienes, values wealth and social
position above her family. She resorts to the services Of a usurer in order to
purchase the furnishings that provide the appearance of wealth. When she is led
to believe that her brother has lost his fortune, she savagely denounces him.
Paquita, unlike her mother, has compassion for her uncle. Paquita‘s
determination to stand by Don Blas causes Dofia Ruﬁna to reject both daughter
and brother and she severs the family ties rather than give up material values.

Thus, Martinez and Rivas, proponents Of political and social stability,
utilized drama to provide a model for cultural unity based on a return to
patriarchal rule. Anti-materialistic drama fulﬁlled a didactic purpose by uniting the
upper bourgeois classes with the aristocracy through the theory of male privilege.
To preserve traditional gender and class hierarchy, anti-materialistic drama
established that male dominance was derived from moral superiority. To this
end, the female subject was objectiﬁed as a representation of materialism, in
direct opposition to the intellectual and spiritual characteristics represented by
the male subject.

The relationship of earIy nineteenth-century anti-materialistic drama to the
alta comedia Of the second half of the century has been overtooked by literary
historians who have classiﬁed the plays written by Martinez and Rivas prior to
1833 as historical dramas. However, the historical is not the essence Of these

plays nor their purpose. wine en casay la magre en la mascara and Tanto

65 /

vales cuanto tienes were composed at the same time as Arias Gonzalo and IQ
viuda de Padilla; they cleariy express, however, their authors' concern for the

ideology of materialism and its effects on contemporary Spanish society.

66

“c.

NOTES

 

1 More detailed information on these points is provided by Wlad Godzich and
Nicholas Spadaccini in the introductory chapter of The Crisis of Institutionalized
Qterature in Spgin, which cites the theater and written literature as the cultural
vehicles of an enlightened intellectual minority that promoted the State‘s
interests. The role of the periodical press in molding bourgeois culture is
examined by Susan Kirkpatrick in Las Romanticas.

2 Elam, Europe and the "Spanish miracle," 1700-1900 by David Ringrose
provides a historical perspective for the distribution of political and economic
power in Spanish society.

3 The philosophical premise of Aristotle's Politics is that " the best life, both for
individuals and states, is the life of virtue, when virtue has external goods enough
for the performance of good actions“ (244).

 

‘ J.H. Elliott, discussing the assertion of royal authority in Castile, cites the most
important reform of the Cortes of Toledo Of 1480 as the refashioning of the Old
royal council (88).

5 His connection to the house of the Hapsburgs as grandson of Maximilian of
Austria gave him the title of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. His arrival in
Spain in 1516 with a Flemish court was met with opposition by the Cortes of
Castile and Aragon, which ﬂared into open rebellion when the king imposed
subsidies to pay the expenses of his coronation as emperor of Germany. As
Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, his kingdom extended throughout Western
Europe. During the long periods of his absence from Spain, his Flemish court
spent the funds of the Spanish treasury lavishly.

6 The other works written by Martinez between 1808 and 1827 include a heroic
poem, Zaragoza (1809), a political article, La revoluciOn actual de Espafia
(1810), a political drama, LO que puede un empleo (1812), and a historical
drama, La viuda de Padilla (1812). Between 1816 and 1818 the duke of Rivas
composed three dramas: Alitar, El duque de Amitania and Malek-Adhel. The
drama Lanuza was performd in 1822. Florinda, a narrative poem, was
composed in 1826, followed by Arias Gonzalo, a historical drama, in the following
yeah

7 Liviuda de Padilla was ﬁrst performed in cadiz on July 5, 1812, at the height
of the efforts of the Cortes of cadiz to effect political reforms against the return of
Ferdinand Vll. In the political essay which accompanied the publication of the
play, Martinez defends the rights of the Castilians against the tyranny of Chartes
V. In their biography of Martinez de la Rosa, Robert and Nancy Mayberry note
that ”Obviously Martinez de la Rosa felt that the circumstances Of Spain's

67

 

contemporary rebellion were similar to the uprisings in the time of Charles V“
(40).

8 Gabriel Lovett observes that Lanuza "was an eloquent piece of political
propaganda which extolled liberty and condemned despotism; it was performed
to thunderous applause in Madrid and in the provinces" (17).

68

CHAPTER THREE
THE FEMALE SUBJECT AS A CONTRADICTORY ELEMENT IN LA NINA EN
CASA Y LA MADRE EN LA MASCARA AND TANTO VALES CUANTO TIENES

The Western Enlightenment may be grasped as part of a properly
bourgeois revolution, in which the values and the discourses, the
habits and the daily space, of the ancien regime were
systematically dismantled so that in their place could be set the
new conceptualities, habits and life forms, and value systems of a
capitalist market society. - Fredric Jameson

Jose Escobar notes in Evocaciones del romanticismo hispanico, quoting
this passage from Fredric Jameson‘s The Political Unconscious (96), that a new
“civilizaciOn burguesa” brought about an ideological transformation in Spain
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bourgeois ideology no longer
viewed society as an integrated unit governed by a monarch and an aristocratic
class. The moral and spiritual values that had held together a patriarchal society
were displaced by the ideology of materialism, which in turn imposed a new set
of values on the social system.

The value system of the capitalist market society was based on the
production of goods for proﬁt by private individuals who viewed government as
existing solely to preserve their rights of property. The Enlightenment concept of
a society based on the good of the group was displaced by the concept of
individuals who ”consult(ed) only their own states of contentment" (Heilbronner
120). The ensuing power struggle between the bourgeois classes and the

aristocrats resulted from an ideological clash that threatened the stability of the

aristocrats. They were faced with both the need to adapt to a capitalist economic

69

system and a political ideology of idealism and the need to maintain their position
by instilling the cultural values of the old order.1

Both the state theater and the journalistic press served as a means of
forming the values and goals of its largely bourgeois audience. The function of
the theater to promote the social unity of the elite with the bourgeois classes was
carried out through the representation of conﬂicting ideologies in which material
values threatened the breakdown of society and the reestablishment of
previously held moral values would lead to its reintegration. Anti-materialistic
drama relates in the nineteenth century to the social, political, and economic
changes brought about by the bourgeois classes that began to solidify after
1780. Beginning in the early nineteenth century with Leandro Fernandez de
Moratin, Francisco Martinez de la Rosa, and the Duke of Rivas, playwrights both
formed and critically reﬂected the values of the bourgeois classes and
contributed directly to the evolution of the bourgeois drama which culminated in
the alta comedia of the latter half of the century.

The present chapter establishes that through anti-materialistic drama,
Moratin, Martinez, and Rivas criticized the socio-economic reality of nineteenth-
century Spain with a view toward implementing the Enlightenment principle of
effecting change for the common good. Their efforts will be shown through a
detailed analysis of the techniques used in three anti-materialistic plays to
condemn bourgeois values as divisive and to promote patriarchal values as the
means of regenerating society. These plays are El si de las niﬁas (1806), _l._a

niﬁa en casa y la madre en la mascara (1812) and Tanto vales cuanto tienes

7O

(1827). Crucial to their dramaturgy is the use they make of the raisonneur -- one
who reasons or argues, an enlightened character who espouses morally sound
principles through whom the dramatists argue against the deceptive, destructive
values of materialism. Furthermore, the chapter will show the dramatist’s use of
female subjects to dramatize the divisiveness of materialism and of male
subjects to represent positive qualities needed by leaders of a uniﬁed society, a
gender division that points as well to the reestablishment of patriarchal social
order.

The theme of materialism in major works of nineteenth-century Spanish

drama ﬁrst appears in Moratin's El si de las nir‘ias, represented in the ﬁgure of

 

dofia Irene, who arranges the marriage of her sixteen-year-old daughter
Francisca to don Diego, a sixty-year-old gentleman of means, because of the
economic security he can offer to both her and her daughter. A widow with
limited ﬁnancial means of support, she negotiates a marriage agreement with the
assistance of relatives who verify the daughter’s proper upbringing. Francisca is
the object of exchange that doﬁa Irene offers to don Diego, and which he accepts
on the basis of the information that he has received from doﬁa Irene. However,
his value system is in direct opposition to hers. Dofla Irene plans to marry her
daughter to a well-to-do, but considerably older gentleman, ignoring the issue of
her daughters consent because she is motivated by concern for her own material
security. Don Diego, on the other hand, agrees to the marriage because
Francisca represents to him an idealized world in which material concerns are

not an issue. He has told his servant "Ella es pobre...eso si...Pero yo no he

71

buscado dinero, que dineros tengo; he buscado modestia, recogimiento, virtud"
(I ,1 ). Francisca, likewise, rejects the materialistic as the basis for marriage.
Before don Carlos learns that she is to marry his uncle don Diego, he proposes
to Francisca and tells her that his uncle is a rich man and his money will add to
their happiness. Francisca replies: "(LY qué vale para mi toda la riqueza del
mundo?...Querer y ser querida...Ni apetezco mas ni conozco mayor fortuna"
(ll,7).

Don Diego wants to marry Francisca for the virtues she represents, her
qualities uncorrupted by materialism. He takes for granted that she is aware of
their vast difference in age and that she has made a free choice. When he
informs his servant of his decision, the latter assumes that don Diego has
selected Francisca to be the wife of his nephew, don Carlos. After don Diego
rectiﬁes the error, SimOn poses the problem: “Si esta usted bien seguro de que
ella le quiere, si no la asusta Ia diferencia de la edad, si la elecciOn es Iibre..."
(l,1). But don Diego's argument holds little conviction for the skeptical SimOn, for
it is not founded on direct experience. Rather, it is based solely on information
provided by her mother, the nuns who provided her with a convent education,
and her servant, information that results from ﬂawed perception. Don Diego,
anxious to be reassured that he is not being deceived, asks SimOn: "(,PUBS no
ha de serlo? ¢Y qué sacarian en engafiarme...z,Qué dices?" (l,1). His servant‘s
response is a noncommittal "Yo, nada senor” (I,1). Realizing that he has not
convinced SimOn, he admits to his own doubts, for he has not heard from

Francisca herself that she has willingly agreed to the marriage. At every

72

opportunity that arises for him to speak with her, dofia Irene prevents her
daughter from answering for herself.

Don Diego, the victim of deceit and dissembling, fails to see the self-
interest which motivates dofia lrene‘s actions because it is not in his nature to
deceive others. Moratin reveals the masks that Francisca has been taught to
wear in order to repress her true feelings behind the appearance of
acquiescence. She and don Carlos hide the fact that he had visited her at the
convent and that they are in love. Don Carlos has hidden his real name from
Francisca, calling himself don Félix. As shall be shown later, the concept and
form of masquerade as a criticism of social values are developed further by
Martinez in La nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara and by Rivas in mtg
vales cuanto tienes.

Once don Diego becomes aware that Francisca and his own nephew are
in love, his moral integrity causes him to relinquish his hope Of marrying
Francisca. He averts a tragic outcome by overriding the interests of the mother,
as well as his own, and reuniting the young couple. In his speech in the
concluding scene of the play, he looks to the future: ”Vosotros seréis la delicia
de mi corazOn; y el primer fruto de vuestro amor...si, hijos, aquél. . .no hay
remedio, aquél es para ml" (lll,13). The integration of the family unit is achieved,
and under the tutelage of don Diego, the child will receive an enlightened
education that requires the removal of the masks of deception and acquiescence,

thus assuring the continuity of the moral values that Moratin seeks to instill.

Moratin dramatizes materialism in the ﬁgure of the manipulative mother,

73

portraying her as a pretentious, vulgar woman who puts on a false show Of
gentility. He criticizes the vulgar bourgeois mentality that she exempliﬁes. Dor‘ia
Irene expresses her status in numerical terms: widowed three times and mother
of twenty-two children, all deceased except for Francisca. This status serves as
the mask that conceals her self-centeredness. In the scene in which don Diego
tries to confront her with the fact that Francisca is in love with someone else, she
skillfully avoids the issue by focusing attention exclusively on herself: "No sabe
usted Io asustada que estoy...Ni Ios baﬁos, ni caldos de culebra, ni Ia conserva
de tamarindos, nada me ha servido; de manera que...” (lll,11). Don Diego
attempts to get dofia Irene to stop playing the superﬁcial role that she has
established for herself. When he succeeds in making her understand that
Francisca wants to marry someone else, she focuses on herself again, bursting
into tears and accusing him of taking advantage of a defenseless widow. Dona
Irene, more concerned with protecting her own interests than with her daughter's
well-being, tells don Diego that she is being treated "como un estropajo, como
una puerca cenicienta” (lll,11). When Francisca conﬁrms that don Diego's
information is true, doﬁa Irene has to be restrained from attacking her daughter:
”he de matarla" (lll,11).

The thesis of El si de las nifias is that social order depends on the willful,
informed consent of the individual. The young woman whose consent is in
question is controlled by the authority of her mother. Francisca agrees to marry
don Diego out of obedience, and as a result, she stands to compromise her own

happiness, that of don Carlos, the man she loves, and that of don Diego as well.

74

Don Diego characterizes Francisca's "yes" as a "si perjuro", forced on her at the
whim of a manipulative parent. Don Diego, in contrast, represents the
enlightened man. When he asks Francisca if she is willing to marry him, she
replies "...en todo lo que me mande la Obedeceré” (ll,5). He responds that he
respects her wishes, not the orders of a parent, and that should she have
decided to marry someone else, she should tell him. "Yo soy ingenuo; mi
corazOn y mi lengua no se contradicen jamas. Esto mismo le pido a usted,
Paquita: sinceridad” (ll,5). But Francisca, obedient to her upbringing, remains
silent. Don Diego is Moratin's raisonneur. He gives voice to the playwright's
criticism of an education which instructs women in "el arte de callar y mentir"
(lll,8). He tells Francisca: "Esto es lo que se llama criar bien a una nir‘ia:
enser’iarla a que desmienta y oculte las pasiones mas inocentes con una pérﬁda
disimulaciOn...tOdo se las permite, menos la sinceridad” (lll,8). He concludes
that such a system prOduces slaves who are taught to hide their real feelings in
silence behind the mask of appearance and acquiescence.

Don Diego explains to Francisca his rationale for marriage, which is based
not on passion, but on a lasting sense of friendship and companionship: "YO sé
que ni mi ﬁgura ni mi edad son para enamorar pérdidamente a nadie: pero
tampoco he creido imposible que una muchacha de juicio y bien criada llegase a
quererme con aquel amor tranquilo y constants que tanto se parece a la amistad
y es el unico que puede hacer Ios matrimonios felices" (ll,5).

The image of a modest and retiring wife who waits on her husband and

provides a refuge for him from the outside world later becomes a crucial part of

75

 

 

 

bourgeois ideology. This is the image that subsequently evolves into the concept

of the angel del hgqar during the second part Of the nineteenth century.

 

Moratin's concept of woman's role in society, as expressed through don Diego,
is, however, somewhat self-contradictory. Don Diego has chosen Francisca to
be his wife because of her child-like dependence and her unworldliness. His
attitude is benevolent and paternalistic, yet he recognizes her right to self-
determination. When he discovers that she is in love with Carlos, he turns to his
nephew and tells him “Abraza a tu mujer". His own interests are subordinated to
reasoned judgment: "Por una casualidad he sabido a tiempo el error en que
estaba...;ay de aquellos que lo saben demasiado tarde!” (lll,13). Through don
Diego, Moratin presents a male subject faced with the problem of adapting to a
rapidly changing social structure at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Much like a Romantic hero, he ﬁnds himself isolated from the rest of society
because his values conﬂict with theirs. Confronted by the materialistic ideology
of the bourgeois classes, he decides to marry a young woman who has been
kept in seclusion from their inﬂuence. He believes that he can maintain the
values of the old social order by insulating himself from these disturbing changes,
creating a haven in which he is the patriarch and his wife is the complementary
ﬁgure, resembling what is reﬂected repeatedly in the narrative literature of
nineteenth-century Spain.2

Moratin addresses the changing role of women in early nineteenth-century
society in don Diego's speech to Francisca condemning the abuse of authority

and urging freedom of choice. Notwithstanding, this liberal attitude is hedged by

76 /

conservative restrictions. He tells her that even though he is in favor of liberating
women through a more reasonable educational system, he would not select a
wife among young women who had even a "decent“ degree of freedom: "no he
idO a buscar ninguna hija de familia de éstas que viven en una decente
libertad...Decente; que yo no culpo lo que no se opone al ejercicio de la virtud”
(ll,5). He argues that in Madrid social restrictions are too lax: “Pero, (,CUéI seria
entre todas ellas la que no estuviese ya prevenida en favor de otro amante mas
apetecible que yo? iY en Madrid! Figurese usted, en un Madridl...LlenO de esta
ideas me parecio que tal vez hallaria en usted todo cuanto yo deseaba“ (ll,5).
Don Diego projects the prevailing view of male hierarchy in which females are
Objectiﬁed through the ﬁlter Of male subjectivity. Susan Kirkpatrick speaks clearly

on this point in Las romanticas, a study of women writers and subjectivity in

 

Spain for the period 1835-1850. She addresses the problem of women‘s status
in Spanish society. She observes that "the contradictions in the liberal
conception of woman as at once man‘s companion and his Object began to
resolve during the 1840‘s into the cultural image that would deﬁne the feminine
ideal for the rest of the century--the angel of the hearth" (65).3

At the start of the nineteenth century, Moratin's resolution in El 51 de las
n_iﬂa_§ offers an idealistic program for the future, in which the hombre de bien, in
the Enlightenment sense of the concept, will govern a uniﬁed society. In
Moratin‘s vision, romantic love is posited as the basis for maintaining a uniﬁed
society through legalized marriage, which in turn is established for the creation of

a family, premises subsequently reinforced in anti-materialistic plays. As the

77

inﬂuence of materialism intensiﬁes in the ﬁrst third of the century, Martinez and
Rivas address the problem through the example of female subjects who

represent its damaging effects on society. Dona Leoncia in La niﬁa en casa y la

 

madre en la mascara and dofia Ruﬁna in Tanto vales cuanto tienes exemplify

 

bourgeois consumerism and the desire to be recognized as members of the
upper social classes. The socially destructive nature of their actions is
represented in their neglect of their daughters and the fragmentation of the
family.

In La nifla en casa y la madre en la mascara, the second drama selected

 

for study, Martinez relates dofia Leoncia to the materialism of bourgeois society
through the theme of the masquerade ball.4 A popular form of entertainment
among the upper classes Of Madrid, the masquerade ball symbolized the new
"civilizaciOn burguesa“. By imitating the social conventions of the nobility, the
wealthy bourgeois classes sought to indicate that they had achieved the status of
nobility. In Historia de Espaﬁa: SignglX, Angel Bahamonde sums up the
bourgeois attitude toward the aristocracy thus: "nos somongLu_al cLue vos y todos
iuntos valemos como vos” (466).

When this play was ﬁrst performed at Madrid‘s Principe Theater on
December 6, 1821, masked balls had been popular in the capital for years.
Moreover, masked balls were among the few diversions permitted by the
authorities during the pre-Lenten season when the theaters closed. As David
Gies notes in Theatre and Politics in Nineteenth-CenturLSpain, masked balls

were featured in newspaper articles and were reviewed with the same high

78

degree of interest devoted to reviews of theatrical performances. Masked balls
were also used as a setting for short stories, and were Often featured in
costumbrista articles on customs and manners of the times (125). He further
observes that in the early 1820‘s the masked ball was considered a “danger to
morals and an incentive to vice" (125). As an example of the participants' lack of
concern for the welfare of others, he cites the following account of a masked ball
held at the Principe Theatre on February 3, 1821. On this occasion, the
ﬂoorboards collapsed and hundreds of masked dancers fell to the foundation
below. "There were broken arms and heads, there were ripped costumes and
wounded prides, and ﬁnally a few deaths; there was everything. But wait! When
the conductor declared the disaster over the orchestra began to play a minuet,
the peOple returned to their dancing as though nothing had happened” (231).
Between 1822 and 1832 masked balls were banned in the capital, but “the public
went wild for them because they were prohibited“, and balls continued to be held
privately. Even members of the king‘s family attended without his knowledge
(Gies 125). In 1820 Ferdinand Vll had been forced to swear allegiance to the
Constitution, and for the decade immediately following, Ferdinand prohibited
masked balls out of fear that they were meeting places for political conspirators.
Following his death, when the production of masked balls was again permitted
openly, they continued to be tremendously popular, despite the high price of the
tickets for admission (Gies 128).

In an article entitled El mundo todo es mascaras, Mariano José de Larra

(1809-1837), criticizes Madrid society, using the theme of the masked ball to

79

5“»

censure the materialistic values of the rising middle classes. He reproves the
participants for the deceit and hypocrisy hidden behind their masks, which
represent the false outward appearance that hide the self-interest Of the wearer.
As Susan Kirkpatrick explains, Larra takes on “the function of ideologist for the
bourgeois Spain in formation” (Ideology of Costumbrismo, 35). But unlike Larra,
whose work is pervaded with pessimism, Martinez offers a solution to the lack of
a “middle ground of common values and attitudes between the advanced elite
and the ignorant masses” (Kirkpatrick, 35) in a return to the patriarchal values Of
Aristotelian society.

Martinez uses the popularity Of the masked ball in nineteenth-century
social reality to underscore the premise of La nifia en casa y la madre en la
mascara that self-interest is a destructive inﬂuence on the well being of society.
The upper bourgeoisie, intent on achieving social recognition and equal status
with the nobility, directed their efforts toward an outward show of wealth as an
indication of their worth. Imposing mansions were a sign that the owner was a
property holder of substantial means. Drawing rooms and ballrooms served as
meeting places between the bourgeoisie and the nobility. As a result Of such
social contacts, individuals of the upper bourgeois classes were able to form
business alliances with the nobility, purchase titles of nobility, and arrange
marriages between the two classes. The materialistic strategies of the
bourgeoisie enabled them to attain the privileged status of the nobility, in direct
opposition to nobility conferred by birth (Bahamonde 465-67).

Martinez used anti-materialistic drama as a means of persuading the

80

audience that the Aristotelian concept of moral character, or ethos, should serve

as the governing principle of society. In La niﬁa en casa y la madre en la

 

mascara, his arguments are conveyed by don Pedro and don Luis, the principal
male ﬁgures of the play. They provide a voice that contradicts the philosophy of
materialism and Offers a constructive phiIOSOphy in its place. Martinez introduces
the ﬁgure of don Pedro in the role of a raisonneur, "one who reasons or argues",
to advise dofia Leoncia of the negative impact of her behavior on her daughter.
Don Luis, a parallel ﬁgure, instructs the daughter in the values imparted by an
enlightened education and marriage. As observers and critics of social customs,
don Pedro and don Luis set the moralizing tone of the play and comment on the
false values promoted by the materialism of bourgeois society.

Martinez also draws attention to the conﬂicting polarities between the
bourgeois ideology of materialism and the patriarchal values of aristocratic
society through the discourse between don Pedro and dofia Leoncia. Don
Pedro's observations concerning the masquerade ball and doﬁa Leoncia‘s
refusal to heed his warnings contrast the altruism of the male ﬁgure with the self-
interest of the female. Don Pedro, concerned that doﬁa Leoncia plans to attend
a masked ball while her daughter remains at home in the care of a servant,
points out satirically that the masquerade ball is a marvelous object lesson in
morality: "la mascara es un portento para escuela de moral” (I,2). Dofia

Leoncia's reply reveals that she is well aware that masked balls afford the
opportunity to thwart conventional social behavior: "Pues por lo mismo no quiero

Ilevarla donde hay desorden” (I,2). Her self-interest is evident in her dismissal of

81

don Pedro as a "predicador cuaresmal“. She justiﬁes her behavior on the
grounds that don Pedro is spoiling her entertainment with gloomy moralizations
associated with the Lenten season. Don Pedro in turn acknowledges his role as
moralizer by conceding that his advice to doﬁa Leoncia has fallen on deaf ears:
“fuera sermOn en desierto” (I,2).

Further attempts on the part of don Pedro to dissuade dofia Leoncia from
attending the ball include a satiric description of the old women he has observed
dancing at masked balls, a discourse that is intended to function as a mirror: “Alli
es el vertas mover el pesado cuerpo, al veloz paso de ataque; alli el correr sin
aliento, descargando medio siglo sobre el pobre compaﬁero". However, Doria
Leoncia fails to see herself in the mirror that don Pedro holds up and impatiently
shrugs him Off as an “hablador necio“ (I,2).

Don Pedro returns to his concern that Ines is to be left in the care of a
servant while her mother attends the ball observing sarcastically to dofia Leoncia
that the servant is more reliable than a harem guard: "No la iguala el cancerbero
para guardar un serrallo” (I,2). His point is immediately proven when Juana, the
servant, returns with Inés and announces that they had been accosted in the
street by an unsavory character. Again, dofia Leoncia responds with indifference
in a way similar to her response to Pedro’s earlier admonitions. Instead of
expressing concern for the daughters safety, she turns her attention to the color
of the ribbons that the younger women have purchased for her.

Don Pedro‘s warnings to dofia Leoncia regarding the outcome of her

neglect of her daughter are realized during dofia Leoncia's attendance at the ball,

82

when lnés, left at home with the servant, prepares to elope with don Teodoro,
representative of a provincial bourgeois who has come to Madrid to increase his
fortunes through the patronage of women from well-to-do families. Deceiving
both mother and daughter, don Teodoro links them with the dangerous false
values of society. He ﬂatters dofia Leoncia in order to receive money from her to
pay his gambling debts. His false ﬂattery of lnés results in her rejection of don
Luis as her intended husband and her decision to elope with don Teodoro. The
timely appearance of don Pedro and don Luis averts further the deception. The
raisonneur and authority ﬁgure of the play, Don Pedro, forgives rather than
punish lnés and don Teodoro, restores her honor by exacting silence from don
Teodoro and orders him to leave Madrid. Don Luis then reclaims lnés and their
projected marriage signals the reintegration Of the family and, thus, the restitution
Of social order.

Martinez exempliﬁes the custom of the corteio in La nifia en casa y la
madre en la mascara to contrast further the moral distinctions between
materialism and patriarchy. The gthejg, a custom practiced among upper
bourgeois women of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is the
subject of U505 amorosos del dieciocho en Espafia, an extensive study by
Carmen Martin Gaite. She explains that the courtship of both married and single
women had become the fashion among the upper classes during the mid-
eighteenth century, and she analyzes this change in Spanish customs as an
outcome Of the role of women in an emerging consumer society. Women

became increasing consumers of luxury items (38-39) and participants in such

83

public diversions as the theater and dances (45-48).

Martinez introduces the ﬁgure of don Teodoro as a symbol of the $115219,
in support of his argument that materialism was the predominant value system
among women of nineteenth-century bourgeois society. The raisonneur Don
Pedro, gives a moralizing speech that satirizes the deceptive values of women
who encourage the _c_c_)[t_e_jg: La urbanidad y el respeto con las damas son ya
propios de sefioritos gallegos o mayorazgos de aldea: Ios jOvenes de talento y
educaciOn cortesana han de ser libres, resueltos con casadas y solteras; y sOlO
se exige de ellos que doren con algrlrn chiste sus insolentes conceptos (1,3).

Martinez‘s moral lesson about the ggrtejg is extended to the ﬁgure of the
servant, Juana, who reﬂects the values mirrored by dofia Leoncia. The servant
adopts the hypocrisy Of the mother, who pursues a social life with her escort
while she keeps her daughter at home. Juana complains that society has
established an unfair law in favor Of mothers, sanctioned simply because it is the
fashion: ”Ia ley del embudo: en ellos todo esta bueno: bailan, juegan, 5e
divierten, Ilevan al lado el cortejo, dejan en casa al marido. . .Y el pueblo, el
bendito pueblo, LQUé dice?...Nada; que es moda" (ll,1). Juana‘s observations
about the moral values of societal practices echo a speech delivered by don Luis
in the opening scene of the play, in which he observes that dofia Leoncia is a
victim of the "contagio general de las costumbres” (L1), and explains that dofia
Leoncia has rejected moral values for acceptance by court society.

The custom Of the _cgrt_ejg, with its false values concerning marriage, is

offset by the moral values presented in the ﬁgure of don Luis. In the ideological

84

struggle between don Teodoro and don Luis, the latter counters don Teodoro‘s
alienated view of marriage with the concept Of marriage as a unifying factor. Don
Luis explains that don Teodoro has used the philosophy of materialism to
convince lnés that marriage is a means Of enjoying more freedom. As a result,
lnés has interpreted don Luis‘s metaphor of the "yugo templado del amor y de las
leyes” (L1) as a euphemism for a wife‘s slavery and a husband's tyranny, and
consequently rejects hims for don Teodoro. Thus, lnés‘s choice constitutes a
rejection of aristocratic patriarchal values in favor of bourgeois liberalism.
Martinez relates the false values represented by the female ﬁgures of Ea
nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara to the education of women by Spanish
society. The playwright maintains that society teaches women to be deceptive
and to disguise their sentiments. He explains through don Luis that women are
taught since childhood to hide their true nature behind a mask. Don Luis tells
lnés that women are rarely candid: “aPues acaso, desde Ios aflos mas tiemos, a
que ensefian a las nifias? A ocultar dentro del pecho Ios gustos mas inocentes,
a disfrazar sus deseos, a desmentir con sus voces...” (Il,2). When lnés replies
that she is envious of male privilege, Luis states unequivocally “Asi lo creo; ni
ﬁngen ni disimulan...” (ll,2), making a clear-cut distinction between the deceptive
facade of the female characters and the positive values represented by the male.
The symbol of the mirror supports Martinez‘s argument that the education
of women is shallow and superﬁcial, focused more on outward appearance than
moral strength. As don Pedro and don Luis discuss lnés‘s future, don Luis

speculates that Inés‘s character will save her from the dangers that she is likely

85

to encounter under the care Of a servant. But don Pedro argues that since her
only models are a scatterbrained mother and an insolent servant, lnés will imitate
their example. “Si sOIo tiene a la vista el espejo de una madre casquivana y
distraida; y para aumentar el daﬁo esta al lado todo el dia de una moza
desenvuelta, (,QUé espera usted en su vida?" (lll,6). Don Pedro adds that lnés,
being a woman, will learn the art of deception: "Aun es la pobre novicia en el
arte de ﬁngir; mas con todo, si se aplica, es mujer y aprendera” (lll,6).

As the arguments expressed by don Pedro and don Luis demonstrate, the
female ﬁgures of La nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara represent a
contradictory element in an ordered patriarchal society. Dofia Leoncia's refusal
to recognize the destructive consequences of her actions and lnés‘s replication Of
her mother's behavior provoke the dramatic conﬂict with the unifying element
represented by don Pedro and don Luis. The ﬁnal confrontation between the two
opposing forces takes place as dofia Leoncia returns from the ball "vestida
Iujosamente de turca, con una mascarilla en la mano" (lll,21) to ﬁnd don Teodoro
with Ines. Dona Leoncia is ready to create a permanent break within the family
by disowning her daughter, but don Pedro takes control of the situation and
restores order.

As a patriarchal ﬁgure, don Pedro provides the moral leadership needed
to restore the unity of the family. His ﬁrst steps in achieving this goal are to
silence dofia Leoncia and to evict don Teodoro. Don Pedro then gives his
attention to lnés and don Luis, whom he addresses as his children: "(Ah, hijos

mios! YO no pierdo la esperanza de daros quiza este nombre“ (lll,22). He

86

 

completes the process of restoring order by reuniting the couple, whose
projected marriage is based on the values of a patriarchal society.

As a result of don Pedro‘s counsel, doﬁa Leoncia withdraws from the
social world and returns to the domestic environment. She gives up her mask to
don Pedro with the words “Mi casa, mis hijos, y nada mas” (lll,22). To ensure
that the social order which has been established will not be harmed by dofia
Leoncia in the future, don Pedro keeps the mask as a cautionary device. He tells
her that if she should slip into her old ways, the mask will serve as a reminder of
her formerweakness: "Pues ahora voy a encerrarla; y en viendo torcerse el
carro, sin hablarte una palabra, la la ensefio...y ya me entiendes” (lll,22). Don
Pedro‘s exclamation “jy ojala todas las madres tuvieran otra en su casa!” (lll,22)
brings the play to a close and afﬁrms the playwright‘s program of social order.

In Tanto vales cuanto tienes (1827), Angel de Saavedra, later the Duke of

 

Rivas, likewise uses male and female subjects to represent material and
humanistic values. Rivas presents the ﬁgure of dofia Ruﬁna as a mother who
values wealth over love for family and outward appearance over respect for
human dignity. The male protagonist, don Blas, governs by moral principles,
using his wealth in the interest Of others. In contrast, dofia Ruﬁna uses wealth
entirely for selﬁsh ends. The tension between excessive regard for worldly
possessions and concern for the welfare of others is sustained throughout the
play in the conﬂict between the male and female protagonists. The ﬁgure of
doﬁa Ruﬂna represents the materialistic outlook that wealth indicates personal

worth, while the ﬁgure of don Blas illustrates the humanitarian use Of money.

87

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Don Blas represents a wealthy merchant, who prior to the action of the play, had
sent money to his sister in order to provide her with a secure future. Instead of
investing in land, according to don Blas‘s intentions, dofia Ruﬁna had
squandered the funds with the aid of their brother Alberto.

Through the ﬁgure of doﬁa Ruﬁna, Rivas censures the conspicuous
consumption associated with the philosophy of materialism which accompanied
the rise of the bourgeoisie. The pretentiousness of upper bourgeois classes is
represented by dofia Ruﬁna‘s expenditure of her brother's funds. On the ﬁrst
occasion that don Blas sends funds to his family, the money is spent on
entertainment and other displays of wealth: "La primera vez mando seis mil y
tantos doblones, que en pretender y en funciones mi hermano Alberto gastO”
(l,11). Dofla Ruﬁna employed the next sum of money for her marriage to a
marquis: "EnviO poco después diez mil pesos, que el demonic se llevo en mi
matrimonio con mi difunto marques" (l,11). The ﬁnal sum was spent on the
settlement Of a lawsuit and gambling debts.

Don Blas‘s imminent return to Spain and the news of his intention to make
doﬁa Ruﬁna his heir provides the impetus for the conﬂict between the two
Protagonists. Dona Ruﬁna reacts with consternation rather than happiness when
she receives the news of her brother‘s impending arrival. Her dismay is caused
in Part by a lack of funds with which to create an impression of wealth and social
standing. Her statement reﬂects a bourgeois outlook that equates wealth and
nobility and superior social position. Don Miguel, her cousin, suggests to dofia

Ruﬁna that don Blas might be moved by compassion at their reduced

88

circumstances. Doria Ruﬁna's reply conﬁrms her materialistic views: "Con
pobreza cosa alguna sacar lograremos de él. Nuestros titulos y honores le
mueven tan solamente, y el encontrar a su gente en la clase de ser'iores" (l,11).
Don Blas's actions represent the wise management of resources, a
fundamental principle of patriarchal society. The ﬁgure of don Blas, like that of

don Pedro in La niﬁa en casay la madre en la mascara, represents the

 

Aristotelian concept that society is based on the good of the family rather than
the interests of the individual. In direct contrast, dofia Ruﬁna has selﬁshly
wasted money intended for the support of others. Further, she has misled don
Blas into believing that she has used the funds as he had intended. She had
written to him describing the purchase of olive groves, pastures, farms,
winepresses, and orchards. In her conversation with don Miguel, dofia Ruﬁna
explains that her deliberate deceptiveness was intended to allay don Blas‘s
suspicions and to encOurage him to send more money.

The materialism represented by the ﬁgure of dofia Ruﬁna is ampliﬁed in
the ﬁgure of don SimeOn, the usurer to whom she turns to borrow immediate
funds in preparation for don Blas‘s arrival. The practice of lending money at an
exorbitant rate of interest is condemned by Rivas through the caricature he
presents in the ﬁgure of don Simeén and in the farcical scene which ensues.5 As
he makes his ﬁrst appearance, don Simeén is described in the stage directions
as a "vejete rid IculO, vestido de negro con peluquin" (L16). With great ceremony,
don Alberto Offers don SimeOn a chair which promptly breaks and sends him

falling backwards to the ﬂoor.

89

 

3.

hi

In the ensuing battle of wits between doﬁa Ruﬁna and the moneylender,
she attempts to deceive him by explaining that she is a landlord whose tenant
farmers are in arrears with their payments, hoping to obtain a loan without further
collateral. But don Simeon attempts to obtain a pearl necklace sent by don Blas
to his niece Paquita, as security for the loan. Doria Ruﬁna's refusal to pawn the
necklace to don Simedn is motivated by her desire to avoid the risk of losing her
brother's fortune by offending him. The pearl necklace constitutes both
ideological and dramatic values. ldeologically, it symbolizes the conﬂicting
attitudes of materialism and humanism. Whereas doﬁa Ruﬁna and don Simedn
see the necklace in terms of its material worth, don Blas has given the necklace
to Paquita as a sign of his affection. When don Blas has apparently lost his
fortune, Paquita returns it out of love for her uncle. In the scene in which Paquita
tells her uncle that it would make her happy to return the necklace, don Blas
weeps openly and tells her that generous acts are their own reward. The
generosity represented by don Blas is contrasted with the satirical ﬁgure of don
Simeén. Rivas depicts the excessive love of money in the exaggerated demands
of the moneylender, who writes a contract that subjects doﬁa Ruﬁna to a loan at
one hundred percent interest. In addition, she is required to pledge all her
household goods. Her cousin, don Alberto, must pledge two thirds of his monthly
salary until the debt is paid. Pocketing the receipt, don Simedn prepares to leave
without giving doﬁa Ruﬁna the money in return, claiming absentmindedness for
his oversight. As don Simeén counts out the money, he attempts to deceive

them once more by shortchanging them.

90

Rivas, like Martinez, incorporates deceptive appearances and the
theatrical aspect of materialism in the female protagonist. Doﬁa Ruﬁna's efforts
are directed at creating a setting that gives don Blas the impression of wealth
and social standing. Two servants are hired as footmen, dressed in "libreas
ridiculas", and rehearsed in how to address and serve guests of importance.
Messengers deliver linen, crystal, and silver plates and tablesettings.
Anticipating the fortune that don Blas will leave to her, doﬁa Ruﬁna tells the
servant Ana that they will soon reside in Madrid. There she plans an even more
lavish display of wealth, entertaining royalty at banquets served on golden plates:
"Platos de oro he de tener con que a duques, a seﬁores, principes y
embajadores dar en Madrid a de comer" (ll,5).

The character doﬁa Ruﬁna dramatizes the bourgeois attitude that wealth
represents social position and exaggerated self-importance, while the character
don Blas represents Rivas's views that personal worth is based on character
rather than outward appearance. Don Blas's reaction to the spectacle which
doﬁa Ruﬁna has staged for his beneﬁt is the opposite of her intentions. He ﬁnds
the pretense ridiculous and explains that ostentation plays no part in his way of
life. Doﬁa Ruﬁna masks her s'com of don Blas with false ﬂattery: "...tu eres el
rey de esta casa, Todos somos tus esclavos...todos a servirte con mil amores
estamos” (".21). She reveals her real feelings toward don Blas to don Alberto
and don Miguel, telling them that don Blas is stupid, and concludes "En verdad,
vergtienza es llamarle nuestro pariente" (".24). Don Alberto, on the other hand,

has recognized don Blas's integrity: "Encuentras cierta franqueza que no se usa

9]

por aca; un hombre a quien se le da poco de fausto y grandeza...Filosofia en mi
hermano no encuentro ni necedad; si una extremada bondad y un corazdn puro
y sano" (”.22). Nevertheless, don Alberto has a cynical view of his brother's
goodness. When doﬁa Ruﬁna and don Miguel note scornfully that don Blas
travels alone on a rented horse without a servant, don Alberto replies that the
less that don Blas spends on himself, the more money there will be for them.
Don Alberto, like don Miguel and doﬁa Ruﬁna, is motivated by greed, and the
three conspire to secure don Blas's fortune. Doria Ruﬁna urges that they act
quickly "y los tesoros pillarle” (”.24). Once this is accomplished, doﬁa Ruﬁna
plans to dispose of don Blas by dispatching him to a remote village.

The turning point in the dramatic action occurs immediately after don
Blas's relatives conclude their plans to obtain his fortune. They receive the news
that don Blas was robbed by pirates in a surprise attack at sea. Don Blas, "con
mucha calma" conﬁrms his loss, which he lists as twenty boxes ﬁlled with money,
a great quantity of bars of gold and silver, 3 complete table service, various
products from abroad, and his own baggage. As doﬁa Ruﬁna listens to don Blas
list the inventory of his lost wealth, her initial shock quickly turns to rage. She
expresses concern only for the loss of material wealth, rather than relief at her
brother's well being and safety. Further, she blames don Blas for the loss:
"iGran majaderol...(;Se habré visto necio tal? aConque asi, enorme animal,
perdiste nuestro dinero?” (”.30). The selﬁshness of doﬁa Ruﬁna is reflected by
don Simeén, who promptly appears to reclaim the money that he loaned to doﬁa

Ruﬁna.

92

 

Rivas introduces the ﬁgure of another creditor, a cabinetmaker, in contrast
with the ﬁgure of don Simedn. The former arrives to claim payment for the
furniture that he has provided for doﬁa Ruﬁna, but has a change of heart after
meeting don Blas and cancels the debt. His good faith is rewarded by Don Blas,
who promises the cabinetmaker that he will repay the debt.

The materialism of don Blas's family is summed up by their actions when
they verify that don Blas is penniless. Dona Ruﬁna abandons her pretense and
orders him to leave her house. Don Alberto follows the lead of his sister by
rejecting don Blas, who recognizes that his brother‘s previous demonstration of
affection, like that of doﬁa Ruﬁna, was directed toward his wealth and not toward
himself. Don Miguel, who had planned to marry doﬁa Ruﬁna and share her
inheritance, now postpones the wedding.

The second act is brought to a close with a brief scene in which Ana, a
servant, recites a parody of the Lord's Prayer. Mocking doﬁa Ruﬁna's religion of
materialism, Ana acknowledges God's role in bestowing blessings and
misfortunes, but concludes that in the world's ups and downs, only self-interest
reigns. "Tu eres el rey. Ven Blasito; nosotros te mimaremos...El Seﬁor sea
bendito, que da Ios males y bienes; mas del mundo en los vaivenes, como reina
el interés, sélo hay una norma, y es: tanto vales cuanto tienes” (“.33).

In the opening scene of the third act, Pascual, also a servant, reveals to
Ana that doﬁa Ruﬁna had sent him to deliver a message to don Juan, inviting him
to resume his courtship of Paquita. Pascual understands very well that since don

Blas has lost his fortune, don Juan is now favored: ”como el diablo la fortuna del

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indiano se llevo, busca al que antes desprecié” (lll,1).

Dona Ruﬁna’s motives are materialistic, not only in regard to her brother,
but with respect to her daughter and her daughter's suitor as well. In the ﬁrst act
of the play, upon receiving the news that she would inherit don Blas's fortune,
doﬁa Ruﬁna rejects don Juan as Paquita's suitor in order to arrange a "boda mas
alta” for her daughter. Dona Ruﬁna scornfully refers to don Juan, a merchant, as
an “horterilla”, a mere shop assistant, and refuses to listen to her daughters
request to marry him. Ironically, doﬁa Ruﬁna complains that her daughter has a
vulgar soul and would never learn to be a lady as long as she scorned “Ios titulos
y honores por ese mercachiﬂe. . .” (l,8).

The ﬁgure of don Blas, like that of don Pedro in La nifia en casa y la
madre en la mascara, depicts the premise that an integrated society is founded
on humanistic values. The fortune that don Blas proposes to give to his family
represents a test of their concern for the welfare of others. Don Blas has heard,
upon his arrival in Spain after years spent abroad in Peru, that his family lives by
the maxim of "Tanto vales cuanto tienes". Therefore, in order to form his own
opinion, he arrives in the guise of a poor man. He soon discovers that he is
judged by his outward appearance and that the affection he expected to receive
from his brother and sister is replaced by selﬁsh regard for their personal interest.

The conﬂict between material and humanistic values is resolved by the
ﬁgure of don Blas. Like don Pedro in La niﬁa en casa y la madre en la mascara,
he gives expression to the playwright's desired moral values. Each of the male

protagonists undertakes the leadership of a family that has been fragmented by

94

materialistic values dramatized in the female protagonist. Don Blas, a patriarchal
ﬁgure, promotes the welfare of all members of the household, including family
and servants. In his wise management of resources, don Blas fulﬁlls the concept
of economics that underlies Aristotelian society.

The lesson taught by don Blas is that money should be managed with
good judgment and common sense in order to meet the needs of the family, the
symbolic micro-society. He explains to doﬁa Ruﬁna that wise investments of the
funds that he had sent during his years abroad would provide for a comfortable
future: "en verdad, no viviremos con la grandeza y la pompa, que mis perdidos
tesoros premetlan, mas gqué importa, si con los que conservamos, con decoro y
sin tramoyas, y sin apuros podemos gozar de la 'vita bona'?" (ll|,9). Don Blas
reminds dor'ta Ruﬁna that she had informed him of the purchase of productive
farms. Finally, he notes that the family needs to economize and offers his help:
"Pues a mi, que estas cosas entiendo, el manejo dadme...” (lll,9).

Dona Ruﬁna's response reﬂects the materialistic attitude condemned by
Rivas in Tanto vales cuanto tienes. She heaps insults on don Blas, ﬁrst for
having asked for an account of the funds and second, for having offered to
manage their affairs. When she orders him to leave her house, Don Blas asks
what he is to live on, having lost his fortune. Doﬁa Ruﬁna replies that he can beg
or become a monk. Don Blas, on the other hand, is motivated by the values of
virtue and goodness. He had left his fortune to his relatives out of affection and
the belief that they also were motivated by love: "juzgando que mis parientes

eran lo que mi cariﬁo apetecia que fuesen” (lll,29).

95

The ﬁgure of Paquita, doﬁa Ruﬁna's daughter, reﬂects the moral values
represented by don Blas, in opposition to the values represented by the ﬁgure of
her mother. Ashamed at her mother’s behavior, Paquita expresses her affection
and respect for her uncle: "Yo no puedo manifestar bastante lo que me aﬂige de
mi madre el genio, ni la terrible pena que alla en el alma siento al ver cdmo se
porta con usted, que parece ser tan bueno (lll,13). Don Blas tells her that
materialism corrupts, "burlandose de amor y parentesco" (lll,13). Paquita afﬁrms
that riches are a means of helping others. Consequently, she returns the
necklace that he had given her, so that he could live for a while without ﬁnancial
need. Don Blas accepts, drawing the moral that virtue brings its own reward:
"no te arrepentiras de lo que has hecho” (lll,13).

Don Juan arrives in response to doﬁa Ruﬁna's message and ﬁnds that he
is encouraged to resume his courtship of Paquita. He explains that he is
bankrupt and no longer has the means to support a wife. Having rejected don
Juan once on the grounds that he lacked social status, dofia Ruﬁna rejects him a
second time for lack of money. She tells him that a poor man has no
qualiﬁcations as a suitor: "Tiene usted razdn, don Juan. Si su fortuna perdio,
como honrado se porto, que hombre pobre no es galan” (lll,18). Don Juan
explains that his father had lost all of his money by investing in a company that
insured don Blas's funds and that the latter would receive full restitution. Doﬁa
Ruﬁna is overjoyed that don Blas's fortune is apparently once more within her
grasp. Shortly aftenlvards, as don Juan asks don Blas for leniency toward his

father in the repayment of the debt, dofia Ruﬁna intervenes. Her avarice prevails

96

over compassion for don Juan and his father and she demands immediate
payment of the full amount owed to her brother. "El dinerito al momento...Pagar
es cosa precisa, y doblon sobre dobldn” (lll,22). In contrast, don Blas's
compassion for the father of don Juan overrides desire for the immediate return
of his wealth. He tells don Juan "buscaremos el modo de que en paz se arregle
todo” (lll,22).

Doha Ruﬁna, once more feigning affection for don Blas, attempts to
embrace him, but he restrains her. At this point don Blas fulﬁlls his role as a
patriarchal ﬁgure, bringing about the resolution of the plot by rewarding virtue and
punishing self-interest. He explains that he intended to leave his worldly goods
to his relatives, believing that their titles and honors were indicative of their high
moral character. Instead, he ﬁnds that they live by the principle of "tanto vales
cuanto tienes". He recognizes that instead of exemplifying honor and noble
virtues, the behavior of doﬁa Ruﬁna, don Alberto, and don Miguel has been
destructive and malicious.

Tearing up his will, don Blas declares: "No reparto yo mis bienes con
ociosos mentecatos que virtud ninguna tienen...mis tesoros se quedan para ser
con mi cariﬁo premio de quien los merece” (lll,29). Stating that his wealth will be
shared with those who merit it, don Blas reward his loyal niece and her suitor.

He returns the necklace to Paquita and then restores her marriage contract with
don Juan, taking the latter by the arm and announcing "Y tu esposo sera éste"
(lll,29).

Don Blas turns next to don Simedn, who has returned to claim payment

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g)

 

for his loan to doﬁa Ruﬁna. Tearing up the receipt that don Simeon presents for
double the amount of money that had been loaned, he offers the usurer payment
for the original amount of the loan. When don Simeon protests, don Blas asks
him if he prefers to go to jail. Don Simedn accepts and hastily departs.

When Paquita asks don Blas to be generous to her mother, he stands
ﬁrm, conceding that only if doﬁa Ruﬁna mends her ways will he reconsider his
decision. "Si en un aﬁo enmienda su orgullo extrano, se ablandera mi rigor"
(lll,30). Dona Ruﬁna continues to scorn both don Blas and her daughter, while
don Miguel attempts to beneﬁt from don Blas's goodwill, telling him that "no me
he metido en nada” (lll,30). Don Blas, having written to the capitan general to
have don Miguel recalled to his regiment, replies by giving him a letter ordering
his return. Don Blas accompanies this gesture with the ironic remark "Sabiendo
yo tu valor, en Cédiz se la he pedido, pues sin su tropa aburrido esta un militar
de honor” (lll,30). The enraged don Miguel has to be restrained from attacking
don Blas. At the same time, doﬁa Ruﬁna orders don Blas, Paquita, and don
Juan out of her house: "Blas, Paca, don Juan. itunantes! marchad de esta
casa, antes que de ella os arroje yo...Lucifer me esta llevando. Marchad,
plebeya canalla” (lll,30). Dona Ruﬁna, totally controlled by materialism,
represented as a diabolical inﬂuence turns her back on her family. In the ﬁnal
scene Paquita and don Juan, as well as the servants, Ana and Pascual, leave
under the protection of don Blas, who looks with pity on his sister and invokes
God's pardon on her.

In sum, this chapter began by examining El si de las niﬁas, in which

98

Moratin initiated the polemic between the opposing doctrines of materialism and
patriarchy, a debate that would continue throughout the century. The analysis of
La nifia en casay la madre en la mascara and Tanto vales cuanto tienes shows
that Martinez and Rivas expanded the role of the manipulating mother
established by Moratin, creating an exaggerated portrayal of this ﬁgure to attack
the vanity and greed associated with the bourgeois mentality. The dramatic
personage of the raisonneur, central to the didactic approach used by all three
dramatists to expound the theme of social order, is considerably elaborated.
Finally, the chapter demonstrates that in the three plays, female subjects
dramatize the divisiveness of materialism and male subjects represent positive

qualities needed by leaders of a uniﬁed society.

99

NOTES

 

1 In addition to Heilbronner‘s inquiry into The Nature and Logic of Capitalism,
other works for suggested reading on the rise of modern bourgeois society
include: All That ls Solid Melts into Air by Marshall Berman, Modern Ideologies
by Max Mark, The Bougeois Century by K.R. Perry, Culture and Society 1780-
1_9§Q by Raymond Williams and Liberal Europe: The Age of Bourgeois Realism
1848-1875 by W.E. Mosse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 La Perfecta Casada, a sixteenth-century treatise by Luis de Lean continued to
be read throughout the nineteenth century and perpetuated the male ideal of the
angel del hogar in narrative literature. In El angel del hogar: The Cult of
Domesticity in Nineteenth—Centm Spain, Bridget Aldaraca documents the angel
del hogar as a literary stereotype maintained by the novelists of the period.

 

 

 

3In reference to the plays of the 1840's, David Gies identiﬁes Moratin's ideas as
paving the way for the alta comedia citing Breton's El p_elo de la dehesa (1840)
and its sequel, Don Frutos en Belchite (1845) as examples. In the ﬁrst play, a
marriage is arranged by their parents between don Frutos, a well-off farmer and
the noble but impoverished Elisa. Elisa refuses to marry don Frutos because of
his rustic manners, while he is equally uncomfortable with the false ways of
Madrid. "It becomes clear to Elisa that he is a kind man and ﬁnally,...she
realizes that innate goodness is more valuable than appearances. But don
Frutos ﬂees, and the play ends with Elisa's marriage to her original suitor Miguel”
(154). In Don Frutos en Belchite, the protagonist now represents the respectable
bourgeoisie. Elisa is widowed "and Bretén steps fonivard toward the so-called
alta comedia in ﬁnally joining the two individuals (and classes) in

matrimony. . .Love does triumph in the end, but it is a mild, comfortable,
reasonable, conjugal love which will become increasingly the focus of high ,
comedy” (156). Moratin patently anticipates this point of view in the ﬁgure of don
Diego.

 

 

‘ Mariano José de Larra used the example of the masked ball to criticize
nineteenth-century madrid society in the costumbrista article ”El mundo todo es
mascaras; todo el afio es carnaval". The painter Francisco José de Goya
satirized falseness and hypocrisy in his Caprichos.

 

5 Benjamin Nelson traces The Idea of Usum from Deuteronomic law, which
prohibited usury among brothers but permitted it among strangers, to modern
capitalism, in which all are "brothers" in being equally "others". See also
www.AlastairMclntosh.com for a review of the history of usury and its relevance
to modern economic practices.

100

CHAPTER FOUR
THE IDEALIZATION OF THE FEMALE SUBJECT
IN LO POSITIVO AND CONSUELO

In the Middle Ages most people believed that when a building was
to be erected, it was necessary to kill some living creature and lay
the cornerstone on its blood; in this way the building would stand
ﬁrm and indestructible... Today mankind is more sensible. We no
longer believe in the magic power of blood, either the blood of an
aristocrat or a god, and the great masses believe only in money.

-Heinrich Heine

Following the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, Spain had evolved into a
parliamentary state from an absolute monarchy, and the upper bourgeoisie had
emerged as Spain's ruling class. "Aristocrats, landowners, merchants,
industrialists, important military ofﬁcers, former and present Ministers of State,
well-known parliamentary politicians, all formed a part of the new Spanish
'bourgeoisie'. This class exercised political hegemony in the sense that no other
class was allowed signiﬁcant political participation after 1844" (Marichal 205).

During the década moderada (1844-54) of the reign of Isabel ll (1833-68),
the bourgeoisie solidiﬁed its political dominance. Economic expansion and free
trade policies were initiated during the succeeding bienio progresista (1854-56),
leading to a railway boom, expanded road building and naval construction, and
growth in the textile and mining industries. The ﬁnancing of these new ventures
was achieved through the inﬂux of foreign capital, speculation, and easy credit.
A new social hierarchy of investors, bankers, and speculators was created, and

ﬁnancial standing became the mark or aristocracy. Money, as the nineteenth-

lOl

century German social essayist Heinrich Heine observed, was endowed with the
power and authority formerly vested in the church and aristocracy (246).

The purpose of this chapter is to establish that Manuel Tamayo y Baus
(1829-1898) and Adelardo Lapez de Ayala (1828-1879) reconciled the
humanistic values expressed in earlier anti-materialistic works exempliﬁed by
Moratin, Martinez and Rivas with the bourgeois ideology that dominated later
nineteenth-century Spanish society. Two plays constitute the corpus for study:
Lo Positivo, composed and staged by Tamayo y Baus in 1862, and Consuelo,
written by Lapez de Ayala in 1867 and ﬁrst performed in 1878. In addition, the
chapter will show that the shift in the dominant social and economic forces in
nineteenth-century Spain is manifest in the dramas, in diverse dramatic
techniques, and in the use of male and female characters that is different from
the plays discussed up to this point. The plays considered here are part of the

new genre, the alta comedia, whose purpose, like that of the earlier anti-

 

materialistic drama, was to provide moral instruction. An analysis of the didactic
techniques used by Tamayo and Lapez de Ayala will show clearly that they are
choreographed to depict materialism as socially destructive and moral values as
integrative, and that they substantiate the thesis that self-interested materialism
leads to isolation and alienation of the individual from society. Key to this
process is the analogical use of marriage within these plays as a way of
representing in a microcosmic setting the destructive force of materialism on
society.

The criticism of materialism that underlies the alta comedia reﬂected the

102

socio-economic conditions prevalent in Spain at mid-century. Between 1852 and
1862 Spain's foreign trade had doubled and economic advance had become a
key issue in politics and government, as well as the yardstick by which society
measures its progress (Carr, 264). The subject of economic progress became a
topic for debate in newspapers, periodicals, novels, and stage productions. By

1862, the year in which Lo positivo was written, las clases acomodadas had

 

reached the peak of their power. At the same time, the gap widened between
the prosperous upper middle classes and the lower middle classes, which

constituted the broad spectrum of la clase media. While the former continued to

 

increase their wealth, the latter suffered from food shortages and unemployment
(278).1

In the opening scene of L0 positivo, Tamayo reﬂects the social
circumstances of his time through the ﬁgure of Rafael, who represents a young
aristocrat with a modest income. The latter laments the impending marriage of
his cousin to a millionaire: "Sigue las maximas de su padre, entusiasta adorador
del becerro de oro. Maldito dinero, que asi prostituye y envenena los mas
hidalgos corazones" (l,1). In this speech Rafael uses the Biblical symbol of the
golden calf to characterize the bourgeois spirit of the nineteenth century,
depicting money as a force that prostitutes and poisons the most noble hearts.
Through the ﬁgure of Rafael, Tamayo expresses the dislocation that resulted
from the rapid and bewildering changes taking place in nineteenth-century
Spanish society. Following the French Revolution of 1789, the political and

social system of feudalism, a system founded on Aristotelian principles, was

103

challenged by the rise of capitalism. In the emerging capitalist society of the
nineteenth century, the accumulation of private wealth predominated, resulting in
the emergence of the stereotype of the individual with little concern for the moral
and economic needs of others.

Manuel Tamayo y Baus was a traditionalist opposed to the liberal
government that was moving Spain farther away from the social order of the
ancien régime in the direction of social revolution. His credo was "man, above
man, God" (Flynn, 13). Staged on October 25, 1862 at the Lope de Vega
Theater in Madrid, Lo positivo is an adaptation of Le Duc Job, a work by Leon
Laya, ﬁrst presented in Paris on November 4, 1859. Lo positivo is the ﬁrst in a
series of moral plays which Tamayo wrote between 1862 and 1870 (Flynn, 24).
In the prologue Tamayo remarks on the changes he made to the original play,
calling attention to “la signiﬁcacién del pensamiento moral que entrana el asunto
aparece tal vez mas concreta, mas clara y viva en la obra espafiola que la
francesa."

The role of the Marqués is emblematic, deﬁned by his title of nobility,
whereas the other characters are identiﬁed by name. He resolves the problems
of the plot, which stem from the attitudes and actions of investment bankers, the
father ﬁgures of the play, using the rationale of morality as the guiding principle
for future society as represented by the ﬁgures of don Pablo's children.

The aristocratic ﬁgure of the Marques, the raisonneur for Tamayo, voices
his criticism of Spanish society: "...en el siglo en que vivimos todo el mundo ha

dado en creer que la felicidad es cosa que se compra con el dinero" (l,3), a

104

development which lacks the moral values instilled in the aristocrats. The
Marques explains to his nephew "Nosotros, Rafael, tuvimos un noble modelo a
quien imitar en el duque, tu padre y mi hermano. El nos transmitio las ideas y
sentimientos de otras epocas que hoy se llaman barbaras” (l,3). Explaining that
don Pablo has earned his "pingiie patrimonio" through hard work, the latter has
no alternative but to worship the idol to which he has sacriﬁced his whole life... "y
como buen negociante, lleva siempre metido en la cabeza el libro de caja" (l,3).
Tamayo criticizes the materialism that don Pablo represents by pointing out the
effect that his beliefs have had on his daughter. Rafael contrasts her outward
appearance of spirituality with the lack of humanity represented by a heart that
sees everything in terms of money: "Vea usted a Cecilia, y por su aspecto le
parecera un angel; estudie su corazon y le hallara seco, metalizado, muerto"
(L3). His mood of despair at the knowledge that Cecilia has become as
materialistic as her father is lightened by the Marques, who reassures him that
were Cecilia to fall in love with a man like Rafael she would demonstrate the
"sentimientos nobles y puros" that lie buried in her heart.

The Marques argues with don Pablo that Cecilia should be allowed to
marry her cousin Rafael, despite his limited ﬁnancial means. Don Pablo, on the
other hand, argues that love is foolishness and marriage is "ni mas ni menos una
especulacidn" (1,5). In the resolution of the conﬂict, the Marques restores the
marriage between Rafael and Cecilia and succeeds in convincing don Pablo that
love is more important than money. Don Pedro becomes a changed man

through the lessons of his aristocratic brother-in-law, acknowledging to the

105

Marques "Tu tenias razdn y yo estaba en la babia” (lll,5). Don Pablo, who
formerly believed that "lo positivo" was money, is now aghast that parents would
sacriﬁce a daughter for self-interest. He has developed a moral sense that
enables him to condemn the attitude he formerly shared with his colleagues:
"(Que padres, Dios mio qué padres! iSacriﬁcar a una hija por el vil interésl" (lll,l),
and thus welcomes the marriages of his children for love rather than money.
The ﬁgures of Rafael and Cecilia personify the opposing values debated by the
Marques and don Pablo. Rafael returns to Madrid after ﬁghting for his country to
ﬁnd that Cecilia is engaged to marry a banker whom she does not love. Cecilia
has been completely inﬂuenced by her father's attitude that ﬁnancial gain is the
sole measure of worth. Don Pablo rejects Rafael as a husband for his daughter
not only for his lack of wealth, but also for the moral values which Rafael
represents.

Tamayo makes a further distinction between the values of the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie through the concept of charity. Under feudalism, the lord,
as head of an extended household, was responsible for the needs of those
under his protection. In Lo positivo, the Marques, his brother, and his nephew
Rafael represent the generosity of the aristocracy. Don Pablo, a wealthy banker,
personiﬁes the bourgeoisie and values money above all. He labels Rafael's
father as reckless for his charitable works. The Marques, in L0 msitivo, argues
that what don Pablo calls ”juicio” is not a substitute for a noble and generous

hean.

Rafael defends his father and explains that following his father's example,

106

he has given away two thirds of his capital to help his friend Eduardo. The latter
had been disinherited by his father for marrying an impoverished woman. The
illness of Eduardo's wife had caused him to incur enormous debts, which Rafael
subsequently paid. After listening to Rafael's explanation, don Pablo exclaims
"iJesus, qué locura! (Dar dinero a un hombre que no tenia nada!" (L4). A
debate follows in which don Pablo argues that Rafael acted badly, while the
Marques counters that he acted well, and has earned the esteem of an ho_m_bLe_
Mam. The Marques applauds Rafael's sense of moral obligation while don
Pablo calls it madness, protesting that they are not living in the times of don
Quijote. The Marques replies ironically that he is right: "estamos en los de
Sancho Panza" (L4).

Tamayo introduces the history of Eduardo‘s marriage as a moral example
of the effects of the money fever that prevailed at mid-century.2 Eduardo's
father, "conocido en todo Madrid por su inmenso caudal y mas aun por su
increible avaricia" (L4), had refused to acknowledge his son's marriage
agreement because the woman he loved had been orphaned and lost her
inheritance. Nevertheless, Eduardo kept his word and married Enriqueta, while
the father, "el inicuo avaro”, refused to offer ﬁnancial assistance. His wife's
subsequent incurable illness cost Eduardo large sums of money and Rafael,
upon discovering that Eduardo had obtained loans from "usureros sin
conciencia”, repaid his friend‘s debts. In describing Eduardo's father as ”inicuo"
and the usurers as "sin conciencia", Tamayo characterizes the excessive desire

for wealth as gross immorality. ln Rivas's earlier anti-materialistic drama, Tanto

107

i‘
\

   

vales cuanto tienes, the ﬁgure of don Simedn, the usurer is presented as an
object of ridicule and defeated by the intervention of Don Blas.

In the resolution of the conﬂict between materialism and humanism in _L_g
m, Rafael learns that his fortune has been restored through an inheritance
he has received upon the death of his friend Eduardo. The Marques explains
that Rafael has successfully carried out a "gran negocio" by investing in
charitable deeds rather than in mining and railroad stocks to promote his own
interest. "Ese banquero, que se llama Dios, no abona jamas todas las
ganancias sino en la otra vida; pero 3 veces suele conceder en esta alguna
recompensa por adelantado" (lll,7).

Having renounced wealth, Rafael and Cecilia become unwilling recipients
of the fortune bequeathed to Rafael. However, the Marques reassures them that
wealth can be a force for good when used for the beneﬁt of others: ”A veces la
caridad y la gratitud suelen dar resultados muy positivos" (lll,8). As a result of
his advice, Rafael and Cecilia agree to spend their fortune as he directs. A
portion is to be used to raise their family, another portion for prayers for the soul
of their friend, and the rest in donations to the poor. The Marques delivers the
closing line of the play, which constitutes Tamayo's beatitude for reconciling
bourgeois and aristocratic ideologies: "(Felices los que tienen dinero y le dan
por el amor de Dios!“ (lll,8).

Tamayo presents a parallel to the materialistic inﬂuences affecting Rafael
and Cecilia in the ﬁgures of Felipe, her brother, and Matilde, the woman he plans

to marry. Felipe is rejected by Matilde's father because his fortune consists

108

solely of "la miseria de un millén" (LB). Felipe in turn, falls under the inﬂuence of
"personas prudentes y muy entendidas en letras. . .de cambio“ (L3).
Consequently Felipe comes to view marriage as a business proposition and
negotiates a favorable deal for himself: "Ya no pudo considerar el matrimonio
sino una especulacién, y tuvo la suerte de encontrar una novia a pedir de boca;
esto es, una novia con cuatro millones de dote: la hija de ese banquero de los
Estados Unidos que...vino a establecerse a Madrid" (L3). Felipe makes an
agreement with Wisley, a foreign banker, to marry his daughter Juana in
exchange for a dowry four times his own ﬁnancial worth.

The ﬁgure of Wisley, a foreign banker, represents the economic changes
that were taking place in Spain in the 1850's and 60's. As Angel Bajamonde
explains in Historia de Espafia: Siglo XIX, two signiﬁcant pieces of legislation
were passed in 1856: a law regarding infusion of new capital, chieﬂy foreign, and '
the reorganization of internal ﬁnancial resources. "Estas podrian desarrollar un
amplio abanico de actividades desde Ios préstamos al Gobiemo hasta las
operaciones clasicas de la banca comercial y las de promocion industrial" (361 ).
Companies "de marcado caracter especulativo" were formed. Between 1857
and 1862 the three most powerful companies negotiated more than 700 million

reales in debt. On the lower levels "se emplazaba toda una cohorte de

 

pequeﬁos prestamistas y usureros" (364).
During the bienio progresista, 1854-56, the Spanish economy had opened
up to foreign investments. Tamayo reﬂects this aspect of the economy in the

ﬁgure of Wisley, described as an "Anglo-American banker.” Tamayo portrays

109

 

 

 

Wisley as a destructive element in Spanish society, in part because of his
foreignness, "ese banquero de los Estados Unidos que hara como dos aﬁos vino
a establecerse 3 Madrid" (L3), and partly because his motivation is personal gain
at the expense of others. He intends to use don Pablo's credit to back his own
ﬁnancial schemes. Suspecting that Wisley is unscrupulous, and the Marques
airs his suspicions to Rafael regarding Felipe's marriage to Juana Wisley: "La
semana proxima quieren casarse; pero a mi se me ha metido entre ceja y ceja
que el banquero angloamericano es un solemne bribén, y side aqui a entonces
le descubro alguna maca..."(l,3). On another occasion he alludes to Wisley as
"ese seﬁor angloamericano que de la noche 3 la maﬁana se nos aparecio en
Madrid como pajaro de mal agiJero" (lL1).

The American banker's shady business dealings are ﬁnally conﬁrmed in a
newspaper article that don Pablo reads. "Este periodico, que la habla tornado
con Wisley por una cuestién de ferrocarriles, asegura hoy, con muchos visos de
verdad, que afios atras hizo bancarrota fraudulenta en los Estados Unidos, y
que portal razén emigro de aquel pals" (ll,5). Tamayo's reference to a "cuestidn
de ferrocarriles" concerns the fact that the railroad system in Spain was
underdeveloped in comparison to other European countries. Railroad
construction was a component of the "paquete legislativo“ of the bit-2mg
progresista, and special concessions were made for the ﬁnancing of these
projects.3 The American banker, therefore, represents the fraudulent business
elements who betrayed the trust placed in them. Don Pablo wonders aloud that

since these scandals go unchecked "gEn que piensa el Gobiemo?" and he

110

 

credits the newspapers for bringing them to light: "Pero si este periddico no
hubiera corrido..." (ll,5).

Tamayo censures don Pablo's inﬂuence on his son and daughter in
several ways. First, he evokes again the image of a heart that has become
mercenary (L4). Next, the stage directions indicate that Cecilia makes a gesture
of counting money as she tells Rafael that he "lacks a certain quality" that would
attract a ﬁancée (l,5). Rafael protests that his income is adequate, but Cecilia
replies "Y ahora las muchachas estamos en lo positivo, como dice papa" (l,5).
Rafael then asks Cecilia to describe what her suitor is like, and she is unable to
cite his qualities of character responding simply "tiene dinero, y esto es lo
positivo" (|,5). Her thoughts are ﬁxed on competing with ”las mas encopetadas
sefioras de la aristocracia” (L5), and she plans to give dinners and dances and
to live like a princess. Finally, Rafael tries to disillusion her, asking her if she
chooses to give up "Ios santos goces de la familia" for "las vanas pompas de la
sociedad” (l,5).

Cecilia's role in L0 positivo parallels that of lnés in La nifia en casa y la
madre en la mascara. Cecilia has adopted her father's outlook just as lnés had
followed her mother's example by basing her actions on materialistic values.
The Marques tells don Pablo that a marriage based on wealth alone is nothing
more than a sales agreement: "Dar una hija en matrimonio por la sola razon de
que el hombre a quien se le da tiene dinero, mas que casarla parece venderla"
(ll,1). Don Pablo's rejoinder that Cecilia herself is quite willing to marry a

"bolsista" fuels the Marqués' contention that the fault lies with don Pablo, who

111

has arranged the marriages of his children with the aid of the god of commerce
rather than the god of love: "Y he aqui el fruto de la educatién que estas dando
a tus hijos. Felipe quiere casarse con una mujer que tiene cuatro millones de
dote, y Cecilia con un bolsista afortunado, de resultas de ser para entrambos
axioma inconcluso que el dinero es la unica felicidad que existe en la tierra, y
que un enlace grato a Mercurio no necesita para nada la aprobacion de Cupido"
(ll,1). The Marques characterizes Muﬁoz, the banker whom Cecilia is to marry,
as "un hombre sin conciencia, frio y egoista, capaz de vender a Dios como
Judas" (ll,1), the Biblical reference and the one concerning the thirty pieces of
silver used regularly to emphasize the role of money as the medium of exchange
or betrayal. Later Muﬁoz rejects Cecilia for Juana, the daughter of the
unscrupulous Wisley, "para pescar un dote de cuatro millones” (lll,5).

When Cecilia is unable to cite any qualities of character that Muﬁoz
possesses, the Marques makes the point that Mufloz seeks to make an
impression by his outward appearance: "iechandola siempre de ostentoso y
magniﬁco” (ll,3). He calls attention to a picture of Muﬁoz, in which the light
symbolically focuses on his jewelry: "Se ha hecho iluminar en el retrato las
sortijas, la cadena del reloj, los botones del chaleco, el aiﬁler de corbata y los
gemelos de las mangas de la camisa" (ll,3). The Marques concludes that
Muﬁoz has no qualities of character to recommend him, only his outward
appearance of wealth. The picture of Muﬁoz that the Marques describes is in
effect a social mirror that the playwright holds up to the audience.

Rafael learns the lesson that money does not represent happiness when

112

he decides to trade his moral scruples for the power of money: “en dejandose

de escrﬂplos... en echandose el alma atras... o soy poderoso 0 me quedo sin

un maravedi" (ll,6). Anxious to acquire a fortune so that he can marry Cecilia, he
decides to play the stock market: "...maﬁana recogeré todo mi dinero.
Especularé con él. Jugaré a la Bolsa. iAy del infeliz que caiga en mis manos!"
(ll,6). On the following day Rafael learns that he has lost the entire sum. The
Marques tells him that there is a better ”negocio" than speculating in a risky
business venture on the chance of proﬁt: "emplear tu dinero en acciones mucho
mejores que las de minas y ferrocarriles, y ponerlas en manos de un banquero
que paga réditos incalculables” (II L7). The banker to whom the Marques alludes
is God, who rewards Rafael's good deeds through a legacy from his friend
Eduardo. The Marques celebrates this as a victory over "el excelentismo don
Dinero, que es el mayor fatuo del mundo, cree que sin "el no se puede hacerse
nada“ (lll,7).

Tamayo uses the ﬁgure of Cecilia as an example of the effect of the
ideology on the younger generation. The fourth scene of the second act consists
of a monologue in which Cecilia debates her choice between Rafael and Muftoz,
who represent the opposing ideologies of humanism and materialism. Cecilia,
uneasy about her impending marriage to Munoz, contemplates her future. In the
previous scene the Marques had told her that "un marido como Rafael no se
encuentra todos los dias" (ll,3). He had cautioned her that ”con el dinero se
puede fundar una casa espléndida, pero no una familia dichosa; que con el oro

de su marido comprara una mujer galas para su cuerpo, no satisfacciones para

113

su alma; que las riquezas no siempre tienen por compaﬁera a la alegria" (ll,3).
In a dramatically signiﬁcant scene, Cecilia picks up a mirror and studies
her reﬂection, a posture that provides the women in the audience a point of
identiﬁcation with Cecilia. As she considers whether or not to many Rafael, the
histories of two former classmates immediately come to her mind. Through their
example, Cecilia convinces herself that money is everything: ”Bien presente
tengo la distinta suerte que han corrido mis dos compaﬁeras de colegio, Luisa y
Elena. La una se caso por amor un pobre, y vive oscurecida, padeciendo
molestias y privaciones. La otro dio con un archimillonario, y no hay placer de
que no disfrute, y esta siempre la delicia de Madrid” (ll,4). By marrying Munoz
she can upstage Elena: "No, pues si yo me caso con Muﬁoz, he de hacer ver a
la presumida de Elena que no es ella sola quien puede lucir en el mundo...Una
casa magniﬁca, trajes riquismos, coches, caballos, banquetes, bailes..." (ll,4).
While speaking, Cecilia recognizes that her uncle and Rafael are watching
her. Their gaze alarms her. Trying to regain her composure, she sits down with
pen and paper to prove that she and Rafael do not have enough money between
them to support the lifestyle to which she aspires. Tamayo uses her detailed
account of income and expenses symbolically to confront upper class Madrid
society with its lavish lifestyle and with the inﬂated cost of living in Madrid:
"Gastos. La casa... gCuanto pondremos de casa? (Que, si es un horror el
precio que hoy tienen las casa en Madrid! Ya se ve: como llegan al cielo, estan
por las nubes” (ll,4). He ridicules such other requisites of maintaining a display

of wealth, as elaborate meals, the entertainment of guests, and the upkeep of

114

 

two coaches, both "berlina" and "carretela". He lampoons the latest fashions for
women, nothing that they are designed to use an excess of material in order to
display the owner's wealth. Cecilia exclaims "para vestirme necesitaré...iUn
dinerall iSi ahora, con las malditas colas, hace falta para cada traje una pieza
de telal" (ll,4).

Accordingly, the social norm is to see and to be seen. Musical
performances, especially opera, are the current fashion. As Cecilia candidly
explains, "El canto es lo que priva entre la gente comme il faut, y para ser
persona decente hay que concurrir a la Opera, 0 en Ultimo extremo, a la
zarzuela, donde, si se habla un poco, también se canta otro poco, y vayase una
cosa por otra” (ll,4). Tamayo continues to deride the alta burguesia through the
straightforward observations of Cecilia: "De comedias, librenos Dios: porque,
ya se ve, como en las comedias todo se vuelve a hablar...aunque la verdad es
que al teatro Real nos lleva Ia moda mas que la aﬁcidn a la musica. Oir la Opera
es alli lo de menos: lo que alli importa es que nos vean en un palco pagado a
peso de oro saludando a fulanito y menganito, con la falda del traje rebosando
por encima del antepecho, luciendo blondas, ﬁores y diamantes, y, sobre todo,
imuy escotadas, muy escotadas!” (ll,4). The requisite summer vacations and
trips abroad add to the expenses, and even with economies, ("fuera la berlina"),
the account does not balance in Rafael's favor. Later, the critical conclusion is
iterated. The Marques ﬁnds the paper on which Cecilia has made these
calculations, shows them to Rafael, exclaiming "iEsto es el amor de una hija del

siglo XIX!” (ll,6).

115

Tamayo uses a newspaper article about the success of Elena's society
ball as a critical device to point out the important role of the press in promoting

the alta bquuesia as a social class. She is described in exaggerated terms:

 

"Hoy solo diremos que la sehora de Alvarez, elegante y resplandeciente de
belleza como una diosa, hizo los honores de la casa con aquella gracia y
exquisita ﬁnura que la colocan en la cuspide de la sociedad de buen tono" (Il,8).
However, after Cecilia reads a letter from Luisa detailing from her perspective
the tragic outcome of the affair, she remarks: "...en cuanto yo sea sei‘iora de
casa he de mimar mucho a los periodistas para que digan de mi cosas bonitas
en los periédicos” (Il,8). The letter serves a critical point in the debate. Cecilia's
initial disgust at the letter is tempered when she learns that Luisa's purpose in
writing is to tell her that she now has a son. Luisa reminds Cecilia that the latter
had tried to dissuade her from marrying Fernando because he was poor. Luisa
assures Cecilia that spiritual wealth outweighs ﬁnancial poverty: "Preguntame si
venderia mi pobreza por todos los millones del mundo, y veras qué pronto
respondo que no. ¢En que almacén de modas podrla yo comprar con todos
esos millones un corazén como el de mi Fernando?" (Il,8).

Tamayo contrasts Luisa's qualities with those of Elena, who married for
similar materialistic reasons that Cecilia contemplates marriage. The playwright
offers the moral conclusion through the postscript to Luisa’s letter. She writes
that Elena's husband had challenged a "joven de la alta sociedad que
frecuentaba mucho la casa” (Il,8). explaining that in the ensuing duel, the young

man died of a gunshot wound. The husband separated from Elena, taking their

116

children with him. Luisa concludes with the moralistic admonition: "Aqui tienes
las consecuencias de casarse por el interés. iMaldito sea el dinero! iAy Cecilia
mla! Note cases tL’l con hombre a quien no ames, y menos aun si sientes Ia
mas leve inclinacién hacia otro” (Il,8). Her decision inﬂuenced by the magnitude
of Elena's losses, "Mujer sin honra, esposa sin esposo, madre sin hijos” (”8),
Cecilia heeds Luisa's advice and marries Rafael instead of Muﬁoz. In contrast,
Lapez de Ayala in Consuelo, focuses on the effects that a marriage for
materialistic ends has on the protagonist when Consuelo, unlike Cecilia and
against the advice of her mother, rejects an honorable suitor for a prosperous
businessman.

Cecilia echoes the ideas of her father but feels the pull of the opposing
values expressed in the letter which she receives from Luisa, the friend whom
she has scorned because she married for love rather than money. Luisa is
Tamayo's model wife and mother, and she reﬂects the image of Cecilia's angel-
mother. Through Luisa, Tamayo extols marriage and motherhood, and thus
further deﬁnes a role for women which albeit anti-materialistic will subsequently
in part contribute to the formulation of the “angel de hogar". "Dios me ha dado
un hijo: iun niﬁo que tiene la misma cara de su padre! iEstoy tan contenta que
muchas veces me pongo a saltar como una local” (Il,8). Luisa is a highly
sentimentalized ﬁgure, in whom emotion rather than reason dominates: "Esta
mancha que veras aqui es un lagrimdn, tamaflo como una avellana, que se me
ha caido sobre el papel. No sabes tu qué Iloriconas somos las madres: cuando

no tenemos motivo para llorar de pena, lloramos de alegria" (Il,8).

117

Tamayo's depiction of Luisa and Cecilia reﬂects theories elaborated
during the nineteenth century regarding women's sensibility and lack of
emotional control. ”In the 19‘" century especially, young women and girls were
expected to be delicate and vulnerable both physically and emotionally, and this
image was reﬂected in their disposition to hysteria and the nature of its
symptoms" (Aldaraca, 78). Cecilia's response to Luisa's letter is accompanied by
stage directions that indicate a heightened emotional state: "A Cecilia le saltan
las lagrimas...Se enjuga los ojos con el paﬁuelo...Con voz ahogada por los
sollozos, cubriéndose el rostro con el paﬁuelo y dejandose caer en la butaca”
(Il,8).

The ideology of domesticity conveyed by Tamayo in the ﬁgure of Luisa
reﬂects that expressed in the popular periodicals addressed to women during the
latter half of the century.‘ In a study of the literary stereotype known as the
"angel in the house", Bridget Aldaraca notes that the male ideal of the woman as
mother and spiritual center of the family "lived and breathed in the pages of the
women‘s and family magazines which abounded in Spain from the 1850's on”
(63).

She further traces this female stereotype to characters in Charles
Dickens's novels and comments that "the ideology of domesticity, which limited a
woman's social existence to a sphere of activity within the family institution
gained in strength throughout the nineteenth century and Spain is no exception."
(63). In addition to the inﬂuence of journalists, Aldaraca cites the “sentimental

hacks” among novelists as largely responsible for promoting the cult of

118

domesticity in Spain.

However, within the limits of her study, Aldaraca makes no reference to
the function of the “angel del hogar" in the dramatic works that preceded the
appearance of this ﬁgure in the periodical literature of the 1850's. As was shown
in the discussion in previous chapters of the anti-materialistic dramas from the
ﬁrst third of the century, Martinez de la Rosa and the duke of Rivas introduced
the model of the domestic angel as an essential element in their program to
reintegrate aristocratic values within a society dominated by the bourgeois
values of materialism. The ﬁgure of the daughter in Martinez’s La niﬁa en casa y
la madre en la mascara (1821), who lacks the example of a mother dedicated to
the needs of her family, is instructed by both her uncle and her suitor in the role
she is to play as the angel of the hearth. In Rivas's Tanto vales cuanto tienes
(1834), the ﬁgures of the uncle and suitor remove the daughter from the
materialistic inﬂuence of the mother and provide her with a home in which to
assume her future role as wife and mother. By restricting the female to the
private space of the home, the patriarchal rule of the family is reinforced.

By the time of the staging of Tamayo y Baus's Lo positivo (1862), the
aggidel hogar has become a sentimental ﬁgure. Exempliﬁed in the
impoverished ﬁgure of Luisa, she marries for love and expresses her
contentment with her role as a wife and mother in excessively emotional terms.
Luisa declares that her happiness derives from her role within the family.
Further, she tells Cecilia that poverty, suffered with resignation, is a joy denied to

the rich: “hasta las mismas privaciones, sufridas con resignacidn en

119

cumplimiento de un deber, son otras tantas alegrias negadas a los ricos y
concedidas a los pobres por la divina Misericordia" (Il,8).

The anti-materialistic principle that wealth leads to disastrous
consequences is exempliﬁed in the history of Elena. Like doﬁa Leoncia in La

nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara, Elena encourages the attentions of a

 

c_o_rLejg. But she is not saved from the consequences of her actions. She
becomes the victim of a “desgracia horrorosa” when her husband restores his
honor by killing the young man. In response to the narrative of Elena’s fate,
Cecilia turns to the symbolic paper on which she had written her calculations for
yearly expenses. Reading the ﬁgures aloud, “Veinticuatro mil... Cincuenta y
ocho mil...Cuarenta mil... iQué tonteria" (Il,8). she tears the page and throws it
on the ﬂoor, enacting her dramatic break with the ideology of materialism.
Cecilia's rightness of choice in rejecting a wealthy banker for an
impoverished aristocrat is validated through a dramatic technique that relates
plot to didactic intent and ideology. To give Cecilia the opportunity to conﬁrm her
love for Rafael and her rejection of materialism, the Marques suppresses the
news that Rafael has become a wealthy man. The marques asks Cecilia “gCon
que renuncias al lujo, a los placeres? (,COI'I que ya no estas por lo positivo?”
She replies “Si, seftor; lo positivo es el amor y la virtud" (lll,6). This is a
contradiction to her earlier statement regarding Muﬁoz: “(ﬂue mas ha de
perdirsele a un novio? Tiene dinero y esto es lo positivo" (l,5). Cecilia’s
response signiﬁes the loss of the power wielded by “el excelentisimo sefior don

Dinero” (lll,7).

120

In conclusion, Tamayo achieves a synthesis of the opposing ideologies of
materialism and humanism by extending materialistic, ﬁnancial imagery to a
metaphysical level. God is represented as a banker who rewards or issues
interest for moral actions. The marques tells Rafael that through his generosity
toward Eduardo “sin conocerlo has hecho un gran negocio... Emplear tu dinero
en acciones mucho mejores que las de minas y ferrocarriles, y ponerlas en
manos de un banquero que paga réditos incalculables" (I NJ). He declares that
“Ese banquero, que se llama Dios, no abona jamas todas las ganancias sino en
la otra vida; pero a veces suele conceder en ésta alguna recompensa por
adelantado” (lll,7). The Marques delivers the closing line, advising the audience
that happiness is a consequence of the use of wealth for charitable purposes:
“ifelices los que tienen dinero y la dan por el amor de Dios!” (lll,8).

Consuelo, the second play selected for study in this chapter, was written
by Ldpez de Ayala in 1867 and staged for the ﬁrst time on March 30, 1878 at the
Teatro Espaﬁol. In this work Ayala takes his moral argument against materialism
a step farther that his predecessors. He establishes the dominance of
materialism and its destructive effects. In the earlier anti-materialistic dramas
studied in previous chapters, the conﬂict between materialism and moral values
is resolved through the victory of moral values.

In Moratin’s El si de las niﬁas (1806), the starting point in the trajectory of
nineteenth-century anti-materialistic drama, the patriarchal ﬁgure of don Diego
prevails over dofia Irene, emblematic of materialistic interests. Don Pedro is the

moral voice in La nifia en casa y la madre en la mascara (1821) by Martinez de

121

la Rosa; he arranges the marriage of his niece to don Luis and routs the
materialistic Teodoro. ln Rivas’s Tanto vales cuanto tienes (1834), don Blas
arranges the marriage of his niece Ruﬁna to don Juan, despite the efforts of her
mother to force her to marry for social status. And in Lgmsijiyg (1862), the
Marques overcomes the materialism of his brother-in-law and arranges the
marriage of his niece on the basis of love rather than money. In these previous
plays, the threat of materialism to social unity is resolved and the family structure
is restored. Ayala, on the other hand, structures the drama for a more intense
elucidation of the issue. He presents a moral argument against materialism and
depicts emphatically the tragic outcome of a marital relationship founded on
materialistic interests.

In Consuelo (1878) materialism overcomes moral values, and the family
structure is destroyed. The male ﬁgures who represent the upper bourgeoisie
inﬂuence the protagonist’s decision to marry for wealth and the moralizing lesson
is developed through the consequences of Consuelo’s choice between
Fernando, a morally upright suitor of modest means and Ricardo, an
unscrupulous businessman. Ayala substantiates the thesis that the ideology of
materialism leads to the complete alienation of the individual. As Tamayo had
demonstrated earlier through the ﬁgure of Elena in Lo positivo, her choice of the
wrong set of values led to tragic consequences. Through the conclusive
dramatization of the thesis, the protagonist ﬁnds herself totally alone - Ricardo
abandons her and her mother, the moral voice, dies.

Unlike other works in which a male ﬁgure represents the anti-materialistic

122

principles of the playwright, Ayala reﬂects the “superﬁcial, valueless society”
(Gies, 256) that he condemns through the ﬁgure of Fulgencio, a businessman
who has attained wealth and status through unethical business practices.
Fulgencio is responsible for the ﬁnancial success of Ricardo, who has
participated in Fulgencio’s speculative schemes; the dramatic antithesis to this is
Fernando, who although offered the same opportunity to increase his wealth,
declines to do so for moral reasons. Subsequently Fulgencio applies his
successful business practices in his effort to negotiate the marriage of Consuelo
to Ricardo, encouraging her to break her commitment to Fernando. Fulgencio
follows standards based on self-interest and material possessions, standards
that Consuelo readily adopts. Thus, Consuelo is shaped by the false values of
bourgeois society represented in Fulgencio, and Ayala “is not so much
condemning the individual but rather the materialistic society which has
formed her" (Coughlin, 99).

Antonia, Consuelo’s mother, provides a moral voice to counter
Fulgencio’s philosophy of materialism; Consuelo, however, refuses to heed her
words. In the dialectic, Ayala argues through Antonia against the principle of
materialism as a source of happiness. Consuelo opines that private ownership
and the luxuries afforded by wealth bring greater enjoyment in life than her
modest life allows; and Antonia maintains that satisfaction can result from simple
pleasures accessible to all of society. Rather than own original paintings, she is
content to see them in the Prado: “...no hay principe, ni aun monarca, que

tenga mejores cuadros que yo” (L11). Antonia counters Consuelo’s offer of a

123

spacious house and gardens with the reply that she is content to visit the
gardens of the Retiro: “gQué mas haria si fuese su propietaria?" (L11).

Antonia conveys Ayala’s image of the model woman through her modest
and virtuous outlook, reﬂected in her taste in music and art. She cites Schubert's

Ave Maria and Murillo's Santa Isabel as examples. She exclaims to Consuelo

 

“iQué dulzura! iqué modestia resplandecen en la Santa! iQué noble
desprendimiento de vanidades mundanas!" (L11). Consuelo, however, has no
emotional reaction to the painting and talks only of wanting to buy it. Like Cecilia
in L0 Positivo, she has a “metallic“ heart. Consuelo’s talk of material
possessions preludes her news to Antonia about her plans to marry Ricardo: “Y
su inmensa fortuna pone a mis plantas" (L11). She asks Antonia to pretend that
she opposes Consuelo’s marriage to Fernando as an excuse for breaking her
word. Antonia refuses, saying that she will not take part in such a mockery,
while Consuelo argues that her mother should concede this favor for the sake of
the “beautiful future that awaits them”.

At this point Antonia alludes to the inﬂuence of Consuelo’s father in
forming her materialistic outlook. Her mother recalls that Consuelo’s self-interest
parallels that of her father: “De ese modo tu padre infeliz me hablaba. Quiero
ascender, me decia; quiero cefiirme la faja de general, y moverme en una esfera
mas alta” (L11), but, she adds, “surgio su afrenta y su muerte, y tu orfandad y
mis lagrimas” (L11). The history of the father foreshadows the daughter‘s
unhappy future: Consuelo will suffer an “afrenta” by her husband, who

abandons her for an opera singer, and the death of her mother completes her

124

isolation.

Ayala criticizes the desire for social advancement on the part of middle-
class society through the education that Consuelo has received. Among her
classmates had been the daughters of aristocrats, landholders and bankers,
while she represented one of many middle-class students “...en mi colegio habla
hijas de grandes de Espaﬁa, de hacendados, de banqueros, y yo, como una de
tantas...” (L10). This association has fueled Consuelo‘s materialistic desire for
wealth and position beyond her ordinary expectations. Ayala blames the parents
for their lack of judgment, as Antonia reﬂects on the sacriﬁces that she made to
send Consuelo to an exclusive school and concludes that “Locura fue de carir'io”
(L10). Consuelo commends the mother’s sacriﬁces and plans to marry for
wealth and provide her mother with the luxuries she has not had, an action that
implements the principle of materialism -- material sacriﬁces will be repaid with
material reward.

Consuelo’s preoccupation with material possessions is marked by the
contrast in stage settings between the ﬁrst and the following acts of the play. As
the play opens, the scene is set in Antonia’s house: “sale modesta, pero
decentemente amueblada”. Consuelo’s marriage to Ricardo takes place
between the ﬁrst and second acts and the couple establishes residence in a
house adjacent to that of Fulgencio and his wife. The setting for the second act
is an “elegante despacho en el hotel de Fulgencio”. The third act takes place in
Consuelo’s sitting room, “adornado al estilo modemo con el mayor lujo y

elegancia posibles”. The contents are described in detail and indicate that

125

Consuelo has acquired the material possessions she sought to achieve. The
room is decorated with “magniﬁcos jarrones de Japan" and the walls are covered
with paintings that display “marcos riquisimos”. An antique armoire that serves
as a jewelry chest completes the furnishings. The ambience of bourgeois luxury
complements the materialism that characterizes her thoughts and decisions
throughout the play.

The dramatist ironically converts the material possessions that Consuelo
acquired through marriage into the symbol for her abandonment by her husband.
Ricardo removes a piece of jewelry from the armoire and gives it to Abela, his
mistress, planning to replace the original with an imitation. In the meantime, he
arranges an elaborate deception with the aid of Fulgencio. The latter agrees to
tell Consuelo that he has the original in his possession in order to make a copy
for his wife. Fulgencio substitutes the imitation for the original, but Consuelo is
not deceived and detects the difference. In keeping with the materialism issue,
her awareness of the attempted deception is a virtual anagnorisis in the
development of the play.

In contrast to the necklace that don Blas gives to his niece as a symbol of
his affection in Tanto vales cuanto tienes, the jewels that Ricardo has given his
wife do not embody the value of sentiment, but rather only their material worth.
Be they real or artiﬁcial, the jewels function merely as one more object
possessed or given as a medium of exchange. Love is not a motivating factor
in giving his wife’s necklace to another woman, for he sees everything in terms of

self-interest. When F ulgencio expresses concern that Ricardo’s gifts to his

126

mistress will make inroads in his fortune, Ricardo explains: “No temas tales
reveses. Yo nunca suelto la rienda, y gasto de alma y hacienda no mas que Ios
intereses. Nunca llegan mis dispendios al capital: tengo calma interior, y
hacienda y alma asegurados de incendios” (ll,9).

The marital relationship is clearly hypocritical. Appearance constitutes its
operative principle - the appearance of material worth, the appearance of social
appropriateness, the appearance of happiness, the appearance of harmony. For
this reason, Ricardo considers that he has made an excellent choice in his wife,
provides she displays no emotion over his affairs. Ricardo tells Fulgencio that
should Consuelo Ieam of his indiscretions, she should overlook them: “Pues
debe ignorarlo, aunque lo sepa” (ll,10). Fulgencio has no moral scruples, and
agrees to help his friend, as long as the semblance of calm is not disturbed:

“Mas si surgen incidentes de drama, y tu te alborotas, y ella se irrita, y hay notas
desaﬁnadas, no cuentes con mi apoyo" (ll,10). Fulgencio has based his own
marriage on outward appearances as well, and keeps silent about the affairs that
his wife conducts.

Fulgencio aids Ricardo in his deceptions by asking Fernando for
assistance. Fernando has it in his power to appoint Ricardo as a member of a
business commission to Paris, where Ricardo plans to travel accompanied by
Abela. Fernando asks “aCuando, dulclsmo amigo, tendras sentido moral?"
(ll,10). Fulgencio dismisses morality on the grounds that maintaining a serene
atmosphere takes precedence. “Tras ella se quiere ir. Yo te ruego, por cubrir Ia

apariencia y evitar las censuras, que la demos Ia misidn" (ll,14). Fernando

127

'W"

11373

refuses, until his resolve is broken by a letter which he receives from Consuelo
inviting him to visit her when her husband is not at home.

Fernando willingly accepts materialism, and decides to live according to
Fulgencio’s example: “iSi ese ha nacido para que el remordimiento no exista, y
viva contento el mundo!” (Il,20). Fernando becomes like the ﬁgures he has
exposed, and exchanges honor for cynicism. For the moment he is afraid that
his intentions will be apparent to anyone who looks at his face, then he realizes
that he can learn to mask his feelings: “gQué semblante miraré que no me
enser‘ie a mentir?” (“.20). He readily agrees to send Ricardo to Paris in
anticipation of his meetings with Consuelo in her husband’s absence. Consuelo
confesses to Fernando that the letter to him was meant to inspire jealousy in her
husband, and begs Fernando to leave before Ricardo returns. Fernando
refuses, demanding vengeance for her falseness and pretense. Consuelo calls
upon Antonia to save her honor. Antonia succeeds in preventing Fernando from
confronting Ricardo by appealing to his sense of morality. Consuelo is unable to
evoke feelings of affection in Ricardo, despite her pleas to him not to abandon
her. Instead, he hurries to join Abela, who waits impatiently. His actions parallel
those of Consuelo, who had abandoned Fernando for Ricardo in the same way.
Fernando, who has overheard the scene between Consuelo and Ricardo,
abandons her as well. The death of Antonia completes Consuelo's isolation and
aloneness.

Through Femando’s parting speech, Ayala sums up the anti-materialistic,

moral principle that Consuelo dramatizes. As he leaves, Fernando foretells the

128

(7

(D

8’

Bl!

empty future that awaits Consuelo. Outwardly, she will present an appearance
of contentment at having achieved social and economic success, but her smile
will mask spiritual and emotional desolation. “Viviras como tantas...cercada de
ostentacion, alma muerta. vida loca, con la sonrisa en la boca y el hielo en el
corazdn” (lll,10).

In a critical essay on Consuelo, Leopoldo Alas (1852-1901), a literary
critic and contemporary of Ayala, asserts that "la crueldad no es de Ayala, es de
Ios tiempos” (104). Maintaining that Consuelo reﬂects the inﬂuence of her
environment, Alas explains: “...quiere lo que quieren todas: subir, brillar; ...el
mal no el en aquella criatura innato, sino reparado en el ambiente social que la
rodea" (105). Alas concludes his analysis with the observation that the play
constitutes a profound lesson on the effects of materialism: “Consuelo...vivi6
enamorada de la materia, olvidada del espiritu, y al ﬁn aprende que la materia
no tiene entraﬁas“ (109-10). Alas further argues that Consuelo is a reﬂection of
“el mal del siglo” by comparing this play brieﬂy with El tanto por ciento, an earlier
alta comedia by Ayala. First presented in the Teatro del Principe on May 18,
1861, El tanto por ciento is a “thesis drama that demonstrates the evil of
positivism, or materialism“ (Coughlin,87). Coughlin notes that the materialistic
ﬁgures in this drama were undoubtedly inspired by historical reality, citing as an
example José de Salamanca (1811-1883), “who amassed and lost great fortunes
with investments, not only in Spain but in various foreign countries” (88).

In El tanto por ciento the malice of ﬁgures who represent speculators

almost destroys the love of the protagonists, who nevertheless maintain their

129

F?

(1)
1

moral integrity. The Countess Isabel, an aristocratic ﬁgure who represents the
values of love and honor, resolves the conﬂict. However, the protagonist of
Consuelo, who represents the upper bourgeoisie, is driven by the desire for
material wealth and sacriﬁces her love to her ambition. Alas observes that

Consuelo, like the speculators in El tanto por ciento, is a victim of materialism,

 

“enfenna de la misma lepra (102)”. Continuing the analogy of materialism with
disease, Alas explains that Consuelo illustrates that “la Ilaga social ha penetrado
en la fuente de toda ventura, en el santuario del amor" (102).

. Antonia and Fernando clearly mirror the effects of the illness of
materialism on society as they are shown to be ﬁgures “infected” by Consuelo.
Antonia, who represents the virtues of love and honor, displays the ﬁrst
symptoms of illness when she learns that Consuelo plans to marry Ricardo.
Femando’s love turns to bitterness and his sense of honor turns to vengeance
after he discovers that Consuelo‘s invitation to make amends was a deception:
“LHay mas plagas que derrame tu ingratitud en mi pecho? gQué hiciste de mi?
(“,Qué has hecho de mi probidad?” (lll,7). Antonia continues to grow steadily
weaker and dies of a heart attack soon after exerting the effort to prevent
Fernando from confronting Ricardo and dishonoring her daughter.

In support of the thesis that materialism was an illness that pervaded
‘society throughout the century and provided substance for literary discourse,
Leopoldo Alas drew attention to the social criticism expressed earlier by Mariano
José de Larra (1809-1837). Alas refers to the early decades of the century, in

which this literary critic and social essayist advised playwrights to censure

130

materialism in their dramas. Alas adds ironically that the didacticism of these
plays had little effect on their audiences, since Ayala, writing in the second half
of the century, continued to ﬁnd materialism to be a timely theme: “Mucho
tiempo ha pasado desde que Figaro aconsejaba a los autores dramaticos de su
época que ahondaran en la Ilaga social mas venenosa, la concupiscencia del
interés, del sentido deslumbrado por el falso brillo de las grandezas de oropel, y
poco debio valer Ia predicacion cuando hoy todavia, Ayala, al tratar el mismo
tema, es oportuno y aplica el cauterio al punto doloroso del cancer” (101 ).

As shown in this chapter, in L0 positivo and Consuelo Tamayo and Ayala
reﬂected the criticism of materialism evident in the didactic dramas composed by
Moratin, Martinez and Rivas. In contrast to the earlier anti-materialistic dramas,
signiﬁcant changes in the aesthetic treatment of materialism in the two later
dramas were elaborated. In the earlier works, the ideology of materialism was
presented as a weakness of character and was centered in a female ﬁgure. A
male ﬁgure, representing the aristocratic political system and its moral values,
emerged symbolically to restore social order. By mid-century however, the
upper middle class had become the dominant political and economic force. In Lg
998M and Consuelo, materialism is dramatized primarily through male ﬁgures
who have become more powerful than their aristocratic counterparts. The
female ﬁgures reﬂect the dominant ideology of materialism in choosing to marry
for wealth rather than for love.

The purpose of the alta comedia, like that of the earlier anti-materialistic

drama, was to provide moral instruction. This chapter examined the didactic

131

techniques used by Tamayo and Lopez de Ayala to depict materialism as
socially destructive and moral values as integrative. ln Lo positivo the opposition
between self-interest and altruism is centered in the ﬁgures of a wealthy ﬁnancier
and an aristocrat. The use of an aristocratic ﬁgure to represent the moral voice

of the playwright and to resolve the dramatic conﬂict reﬂects the ﬁgure of the

 

raissoneur in La niﬁa en casayla madre en la mascara. Tamayo's idealization
of the ﬁgure of an aristocratic mother to personify moral values is readily
identiﬁable with the angel del hggar, a stereotypical image previously associated
principally with nineteenth-century novels and journalistic writing. Explicating the
image in the drama of the period is a critical innovation, and tracing its
development conﬁrms the emergence of the female ﬁgure as a threat to social
order in anti-materialistic dramas. The metaphor of social order or disorder ﬁnds
its dramatic analogy in the institution of marriage in which is elucidated the
destructive force of materialism and the resulting social alienation of the

individual.

132

 

NOTES

 

‘ In addition to Carr's excellent commentary on the socio-economic conditions of
the period, see also: Carlos Marichal's In Smain (1834-1844L A New Socim.

2 Marichal traces the rise of the new capitalists to the sale of church properties
following the law of the Desamortizacion of 1837: "The result was that a large
number of wealthy landowners, merchants, and ﬁnanciers bought up most of the
Church properties. The speculation in the land business in the 1840's was
terriﬁc“ (208).

 

3 Bahamonde cites the law enacted in January 1856 that permitted foreign credit
companies to participate in the modernization of the Spanish economy. Foreign
capital resulted in the construction of the railroad system for the northern,
central, and southern Spain (322-24).

‘ In Bridget Aldaraca's article on the cult of domesticity in nineteenth-century
Spain, she cites La Moda Elegante Ilustrada, El Correo de la Moda, Lg
Guimalda, and el Museo de la Familia as examples of the women's and family
magazines which abounded in Spain from the 1850's on. The articles in these
periodicals instructed women on home life and household affairs.

 

133

CONCLUSION

The alta comedia occupied a mimetic and didactic role in the shifts that

 

were taking place in nineteenth-century Spanish society as the expanding middle
classes' interests in economic conditions were heightened. Topics that formerly
might have been discussed in the privacy of homes new served as the grist for

the public forum of the theater. As Gies has said, “the alta comedia comprises

 

one of the best series of documents we possess about the Spanish middle class,
that is, the upper middle class, since the plays capture not only the anxieties but
also the manners, customs, look, frailties, and strengths of this newly privileged
segment of society” (231 ). The subjects of the plays and the audience constitute
the core of Madrid society, and the themes that interested them quite regularly
had to do with the impact of economic values on the institution of marriage and
the family. In this scenario the dramatist emerges as the champion of marriage,
family and the spiritual values that steel them against the divisive force of
materialism. Within this context this study has shown that materialism held a
dominant place in the composition of early nineteenth-century Spanish drama
and that the nineteenth century - known as the bourgeois century to social
historians and the romantic age to others -- brought changes in social values and
institutions to which authors in the humanist tradition utilized the theater as their
didactic tool to stabilize the changes and reestablish patriarchal values as the

benchmark of right and wrong.

134

The use of drama as an instrument for social rejuvenation in the earlier
productions of Martinez and Rivas has heretofore been overlooked by literary
critics, who have focused principally on works considered representative of a
“high” but short-lived romanticism. Other plays by these writers have been
disregarded in formulating their understanding of the totality of the Romantic
view. Their omission has resulted in a very limited view of Romanticism. From
my perspective, the anti-materialistic dramas represent an important contribution
to reaching a more complete understanding of the development of Romanticism,
more precisely as an opposing ideology to that of materialism, for in these works
one sees mirrored the values of the rising bourgeoisie and their diverse masks,
which the authors reject as they propose a return to the patriarchal system
through which the values of male subjectivity are reestablished.

As has been shown, the consternation of Martinez and Rivas at the
disruption of social order is evident in La niﬁa en casa y la madre en la mascara
and Tanto vales cuanto tienes. Through the microcosmic use of the metaphor of
marriage for society, these dramatists depict the threat of society when wealth
becomes the sole criterion for marriage and/or social contract. The dramatic
conﬂict of these opposing ideologies is resolved through the intervention of a
patriarchal ﬁgure who restores social order through a union and relationship
based on moral values.

In addition, this study has brought to light the important technical function
of female characters in these plays; through them the dramatists' didactic intent

to censure the philosophy of materialism becomes more patent. In the early anti-

135

materialistic dramas this critical perspective has been shown through the ﬁgure
of the mother, a dramatic representation of materialism and the subversion of
moral values. Irony, exaggeration, caricature and humor are the mechanisms by
which the authors show the effects of these self-interested female subjects
whose actions fragment the family and disrupt in turn the social order. Casting
the opposing male ﬁgures to personify inner moral and spiritual values, the
playwrights skillfully outline the framework for a uniﬁed society, one that can be
reestablished under their leadership.

To further support the signiﬁcant role of the earlier words in shaping the
reestablishment of patriarchal values within the changing society of nineteenth-
century Spain, this study has shown that the image of the angel del hogar
appears in nascent form in those early plays. The concept of the angel del hogar
served to deﬁne clearly the social roles and expectations of the female following
the reign of Isabel II, a time when the inﬂuence of materialism had reached its
fullest development and when ﬁnanciers and speculators had achieved political
and social hegemony. The aggel del hogar and her newly formulated role was
represented repeatedly in the novelas contemporaneas of Pérez Galdés and the
narratives of other writers. In fact, these prose works have heretofore constituted
the literary corpus for the study of the image and concept.

Throughout the anti-materialistic dramas of the nineteenth century,
beginning the works of Martinez and Rivas and culminating in the alta comedia of
Tamayo and Ayala, the representation of the female subject is central to the

playwrights' aim to support the patriarchal structure of society. By the second

136

half of the century, the ideology of materialism achieved predominance in social
reality and the upper bourgeoisie attained a privileged political and social status.
Accordingly, male writers promoted the patriarchal society by urging the wise use
of material wealth by the dominant group. Through satire the female was shown
to be a contradictory element in society, a feature that was superseded by
sentimentalization. Formerly a symbol of materialism and threat to male
subjectivity, the female ﬁgure becomes aligned with subjective values and

idealized through the angel del hogg' image. The explication of the image's

 

presence at such an early date in the century--and especially in drama, is
another contribution of this study.

To substantiate the thesis that materialism prevailed as a dominant theme
throughout nineteenth-century drama, and that Romanticism constituted an
opposing ideology which preceded the incorporation of patriarchal values in the
alta comedia, it was necessary in the study to consider anti-materialistic works
from both halves of the century. The comparative study of the plays of Martinez
and Rivas with representative works by Tamayo and Lapez de Ayala plausibly
demonstrated that anti-materialistic drama functioned as an integrative element
in Spanish society by proposing a solution to the dilemma of economic progress
at the cost of traditional moral values through a return to the Aristotelian concept

of a patriarchal society.

137

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