Doña PerfectaBeliever in modernism loves pious girl and personifies the struggle between scientific enlightenment and obscurantism. |
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Common terms and phrases
Acero alcalde anger answered appearance arms asked asleep atheist beautiful believe brigadier Caballuco called canon Casino cathedral Centaur CHAPTER Clarín confess countenance cousin cried daughter dear aunt dining-room Don Juan Tafetan engineer entered exclaimed Doña Perfecta eyes face father Frasquito garden garlic girl give hand hear heard heart Heaven honor ideas imagine Jacinto lady laugh leave Librada live looked Madrid Maria Remedios matter mind mistress mother nephew niece night noble Orbajosa passed Pepe Rey person Polentinos poor priest responded Rosario seemed Señor de Rey Señor Don Inocencio Señor Don José Señor Licurgo Señor Penitentiary Señor Pinzon Señor Ramos Señora Doña silence smiling soldiers soul Spain speak stairs talk tears tell terrible thing tion to-day to-night told town trembling Troyas turbed turned Uncle Licurgo Villahorrenda violence voice W. D. HOWELLE wish woman words young
Popular passages
Page 112 - To dare to propose to me — to me — to palm off a child —a criminal action ! It is the first time in my life that I have received such an outrage, and I have not deserved it — heaven knows." " But, who is wronged by it? My sister and the person she desires to marry are single ; both regret bitterly the child they have lost ; to deceive them is to restore to them happiness — life ; it is to assure some forsaken young girl...
Page vi - Dona Perfecta is, first of all, a story, and a great story, but it is certainly also a story that must appear at times potently, and even bitterly, anti-Catholic. Yet it would be a pity and an error to read it with the preoccupation that it was an anti-Catholic tract, for really it is not that. If the persons were changed in name and place, and modified in passion to fit a cooler air, it might equally seem an anti-Presbyterian or anti-Baptist tract; for what it shows in the light of their own hatefulness...
Page ix - From the first moment to the last it is like some passage of actual events in which you cannot withhold your compassion, your abhorrence, your admiration, any more than if they took place within your personal knowledge. Where they transcend all facts of your personal knowledge, you do not accuse them of improbability, for you feel their potentiality in yourself, and easily account for them in the alien circumstance. I am not saying that the story has no faults; it has several. There are tags of romanticism...
Page viii - ... more and more the human heart, and broken once for all with the picturesque and with the typical personages, to embrace the earth we tread." For her, as I confess for me, "Dona Perfecta " is not realistic enough — realistic as it is ; for realism at its best is not tendencious.
Page 261 - ... launching these words like thunderbolts against her daughter. " He has counseled me to do it. We have agreed to be married. We must be married, mamma, dear mamma. I will love you — I know that I ought to love you — I shall be forever lost if I do not love you.
Page 19 - Perfecta, the girl's mother, who is warmly attached to the father of Pepe, her brother, and furthermore under heavy obligations to him for his excellent management of her large property interests. The landscape is the arid and poverty-stricken country of central Spain, though the town itself — "seated on the slope of a hill from the midst of whose closely clustered houses arose many dark towers, and on the height above it the ruins of a dilapidated castle...
Page ix - Such loss carries the reader beyond himself in the sense that he becomes implicated in the characters' lives. Perez Galdos' Dona Perfecta provided a substantial example: It is so far like life that it is full of significations which pass beyond the persons and actions involved, and envelop the reader, as if he too were a character of the book, or rather as if its persons were men and women of this thinking, feeling, and breathing world, and he must recognize their experiences as veritable facts....
Page 258 - her mother asked her. ' " What time is it ? " asked the girl. "It will soon be midnight." . Rosario was trembling, and everything about her denoted the keenest anxiety. She lifted her eyes to heaven supplicatingly, and then turned them on her mother with a look of the utmost terror. " Why, what is the matter with you ? " " Did you not say it was midnight ? " " Yes. " " Then — but is it already midnight ? " " Something is the matter with you ; you have something on your mind," said her mother,...
Page vii - Marianela, and it surprised me the more because I was already acquainted with his later work, which is all realistic. But one does not turn realist in a single night, and although the change in...
Page 261 - Perfecta, with indescribable agitation. " You say that that man — " * Is my husband — I will be his wife, protected by the law. You are not a woman! Why do you look at me in that way ? You make me tremble. Mother, mother, do not...