Painting and Representation in Two Nineteenth-Century Novels: Galdos's and Alas's Skeptical Appraisal of Realism

Abstract

References to the visual arts are especially pertinent in the nineteenth-century novel, given the mission of realism to observe and portray the natural and social world. In PNrez Gald6s's La sombra and Alas's Dofia Berta such references reflect the novels' skepticism regarding the validity and efficacy of mimetic rep- resentation. Gald6s's narrative turns upon a fantastic painting, Clarin's upon a portrait. Both demythify con- ventions that are considered fundamental to realist writing: verisimilitude, documentary objectivity, truth claims, and the concept of the unified, coherent bourgeois subject. In dissolving the most cherished premises of real- ism, these authors shift their focus from referent to observer and from copying to creation, thus opening a space in narrative that is more congenial to the inclusion of memory, imagination, and perception. Such a space, which also revitalizes the reader's role, anticipates the problematization of representation characteristic of modernist fiction.