Masculinity, Affect, and Carlist Malestar in Zumalacárregui / [Masculinidad, afecto y malestar carlista en Zumalacárregui

Abstract

In 1898, Galdós inaugurated the Third Series of the Episodios Nacionales with the publication of Zumalacárregui. Published in the midst of the escalating conflict with the United States, Galdós's novel revisits the foundational crisis of the liberal nation state: the First Carlist War. Galdós embeds the reader in the Carlist army through the point of view of José Fago, a military chaplain who abandons ecclesiastical life to become a soldier in an attempt to imitate his hero, the famed General Zumalacárregui. The tension between Fago's vocation and his frustrated desire for military glory provokes a crisis of identity and masculinity, which reveals Fago's emotionality. Dierdra Reber has proposed that the dominant episteme of the modern age is based on feelings, rather than logic; the thinking head of the Cartesian episteme has been replaced by the body that "thinks" by feeling. This essay analyzes how Galdós critiques Carlism through Fago's affective understanding of the war and the Cause. Galdós portrays Fago as a subject suffering from the "effects" of Carlism, a system that causes "malestar," both emotionally and physically, for its followers.