Insolación de Emilia Pardo Bazán: De la burguesía “fin-de-siècle” al psicoanálisis

Abstract

Insolación (1889) is Emilia Pardo Bazán’s version of the Don Juan myth, incarnated in the male protagonist Diego Pacheco. A signifier of masculine desire, Pacheco will become Pardo Bazán’s object of projections of men she loved, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, a womanizer, and José Quiroga, her husband from whom she was separated. He also represents a mother figure in the mind of Asís, the religious protagonist whose sexual repression makes her the typical bourgeoise of the so-called Victorian era that preceded the work of Sigmund Freud. The novel, intended to be a confession to a priest, instead turns into a confession to the readers, who thereby become psychoanalysts, modern confessors of souls, as well as recipients of stories. Doña Emilia’s love letters to Galdós, contemporaneous with the novel, contribute to its understanding: external and internal worlds, in Melanie Klein’s terms, interact creatively. The surprising ending (the marriage of Asís and Pacheco) gives rise to a confrontation between the narrator and Asís. Catholic marriage, which binds the spouses forever, is paradoxically seen as the most natural thing and, at the same time, as irrational, senseless. To the Lacanian demand for impossible love that Asís brings to bear must be added the desire of the desire of the Other, experienced by both Asís and Pacheco.