Class and Gender in Pardo Bazán's "La Tribuna"

Abstract

Although most critical studies of La Tribuna pay tribute to the novelty of the subject matter—the working class—Pardo Bazan's treatment of the social question and class relations is generally deemed to be inadequate. The novelist's conservative political and social ideology, it is argued, has prevented her from seriously questioning the social structure. She is charged with concentrating on superficial and picturesque aspects of working-class life, adopting a primarily moral perspective and failing to grasp the significance of Republicanism for the working class. By dramatizing class antagonism in the feuilletonistic tale of the seduction and betrayal of a working-class woman by an upper-class man, she has, it is claimed, diverted the narrative focus from collective, social issues to individual, psychological concerns.1