Social marginality as a novel subject

Modes of prostitution in three of Pérez Galdós’s novels

Abstract

The 19^th century was a landmark period for the status of women in European countries due to the founding of diverse movements for female emancipation as well as contemporary political and social debate challenging the submissive position of women in bourgeois society. This subject is reflected in Spanish literature of the time, especially in the realistic and naturalistic novel. Specifically, the topic of deviant social or sexual behaviour is an essential part of the novels of Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), especially those concerning “contemporary Spanish life” which reveal the controversy surrounding the suggested mechanisms of control and modes of correction of socially undesirable and unacceptable elements. In this analysis I focus on three of Pérez Galdós’s novels, La desheredada (1881), Fortunata and Jacinta (1886-1887) and Nazarín (1895), in which prostitution appears not only in various forms and degrees, but also presented from the perspective of different philosophies and ideological points of view. The subject of prostitution and of the women involved in it helped Galdós in developing and disseminating his criticism directed at the Spanish society of his time. Using as a starting point the theoretical postulates of Michel Foucault (on institutionalized surveillance, the correction of abnormal female behaviour, the marginalization of people deemed dangerous to social order etc.), as presented in his studies Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of sexuality, 1. The will to knowledge (1976), the following thematic segments of literary discourse are analysed in this article: body discipline, the social and sexual oppression of Spanish women, male panoptic surveillance, and the image of women according to the postulates of bourgeois society in the 19^th century.