Before 1898: Architecture and Nation in Emilia Pardo Bazán's El tesoro de Gastón

Abstract

This essay explores the link between architecture and nation in Emilia Pardo Bazan’s El tesoro de Gaston (1897). By calling attention to the depictions of the exteriors and interiors of dwellings, this study demonstrates how the author availed herself of the descriptions of her main characters’ private quarters to comment on national decadence and to map Spain’s path to recovery and mod-ernization. Attentive to Pardo Bazan’s observations on architecture in her travel accounts and the political crisis in her journalistic writings before and after 1898, the article examines the ways in which images of buildings, i.e. an aristo-cratic castle in ruins and a remodeled residence in the style of an orderly English cottage, reveal the novelist’s concern with the present-day decline. Additionally, by drawing on the connection between architectural designs and national mat-ters in the turn-of-the-century intellectual debates in Spain, the study points to the author’s efforts to reinvigorate the nation’s spirit through encouragement to attend to the crisis and engage in renovation.