Naturalism: The Stimulus for Pardo Bazán’s Artistry with Nicknames

Abstract

The recent study Bazan's Literary Use of Three Uniquely Personal Nicknames: Gedeon, Surena, and Feita (Chamberlin 35-45) has demonstrated that Dona Emilia achieved a sophisticated artistry with sobriquets that differentiated her from her contemporaries, Galdos and Leopoldo Alas. However, this achievement was not immediate. In fact, in her first two novels (Pascual Lopez 1879 and Un viaje de novios 1881) there is in each only very slight utilization of two nicknames. It is not until her third novel, La tribuna (1883), that nicknaming can be considered an important aspect of her creativity. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate that naturalism, especially with its emphasis on human and animal comparisons, was the aesthetic that stimulated the countesses' interest in and successful employment henceforth of sobriquets. Additionally, we shall show how the women workers of La Coruna's tobacco factory vented their political opinions through nicknaming, and also how the newspaper-nicknamed, title protagonist resisted animalization by becoming a workers' advocate. Before writing La tribuna, Pardo Bazan had become attracted to Zolaesque Naturalism, which stimulated her to write a series of twenty articles between November 1882 and April 1883 for the Madrid newspaper La Epoca. These weekly contributions, drawing heavily on Zola's critical works Le Roman experimental (1880) and Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881) were collected and published as La cuestion palpitante (1883). Her next step was to follow Galdos's lead of 1881, when he created the first Spanish Naturalist novel La desheredada (1881), and write her own Naturalist novel. From the Naturalists, Pardo Bazan learned the importance which members of that school gave to preliminary, precise documentation. Zola is well known for his notebooks of extensive preparatory documentation; however, Pardo Bazan says that [Edmundo] Goncourt fue el primero que llamo documentos humanos a los hechos que el novelista observa y acopia para fundar en ellos sus creaciones (Cuestion 233). Thus, as she relates in her Apuntes autobiograficos, Dona Emilia was motivated to spend with the women workers of La Coruna's tobacco factory, dos meses manana y tarde, oyendo conversaciones, delineando tipos, cazando al vuelo frases y modos de sentir (74). Like other Naturalists, Pardo Bazan had great sensitivity to the brutal, denigrating conditions of most nineteenth century workplaces. She affirmed that El verdadero infierno social a que puede bajar el novelista [...] es la fabrica. [...] !Pobres mujeres las de la Fabrica de la Coruna! Nunca se me olvida todo lo bueno instintivo que note en ellas, su natural rectitud, y caridad espontanea. Capaces son de dar hasta la camisa si ven una lastima como ellas dicen (Apuntes 76). Twelve years. The popularity of Physiognomy and Zoology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century stimulated Balzac to state in the Avant-Propos to his Comeie Humaine that the basic idea for his vast panorama vint d'dune comparaison entre l'Humanite et l'Aninmalite. (7). Believing that there are social species analogous to animal species. Balzac described himself as docteur en medicine social, le veterinaire de maux incurables (Dedicace 53). Critics are in genral agreement with Zola that Balzac was, in fact, the first Naturalist. Zola also believed that the Naturalist novel should have an abundence of animal-like characters and in the preface to his first novel, Therese Raquin (1868), he states that the two protagonists sont des brute humaine, rien de plus (319). Twelve years later he announced the animality of the protagonist in the title of another novel, Le Bete humaine (1890). With so many characters resembling animals in behavior and / or appearance, it is understandable that, as occurs in every-day, non-fiction life, some characters in both Balzac and Zola would receive animal based nicknames. (1) Even before the advent of Naturalisnm, the verisimilitude of the late nineteenth century novel, as has been demonstrated, often reflected the dynamics of nicknaming as an important facet of personal interactions. …