Confronting Earth's History: Deep Time in Marianela, Doña Perfecta, and La vuelta al mundo en la "Numancia" / [Confrontando la historia de la Tierra: el tiempo geológico en Marianela, Doña Perfecta, y La vuelta al mundo en la "Numancia"

Abstract

Environmental humanities explores behaviors and attitudes that facilitated the planetary climate crisis, looking especially at the growing divergence between human perception of time and the slower temporal processes of the natural, non-human world. In order to confront the imminent catastrophic conditions of a destabilized natural environment, it has become paramount to examine the development of behavioral stages in what is called the Anthropocene, to understand how Westernized cultures have envisioned humanity as disconnected or removed from the natural world. Fictional depictions expose the problematic interactions between a teleological view of human progress and the repercussions of such attitudes on the non-human natural world. In three of Benito Pérez Galdós's novels, Doña Perfecta, Marianela and La vuelta al mundo en la "Numancia," Galdós portrays his characters' encounters with the earth's slow tempo with different outcomes that underscore his own developing understanding of human entanglement with the natural world.