La Regenta is one of the books which comes closest to fulfilling, the prescriptions of Ortega y Gasset in Ideas sobre la novela. The novel, he says, should transport the reader into another, hermetically sealed world, making him into a 'provinciano' transitorio.1 It should not narrate events, but present characters and objects, convince the reader they are truly present. It should deal preferentially with the psychology of the characters, whom we should know so well that we perceive them as old friends. Most importantly, we should never perceive the novel as a novel: El lector no tropieza nunca con los bastidores del teatro sino que se siente sumergido en una cuasi-realidad perfecta, siempre aut6ntica y eficaz (p. 184). Any reader of La Regenta knows that it succeeds admirably in all these respects. Within this framework, the reader is free to interpret and judge the actions of the complex characters, and interpretations of La Regenta have often concentrated on Ana: her quest, her freedom of choice, her responsibility. Other interpretations have focused on Vetusta, on its denaturalization of sex, on its irrepressible mixing of the sacred with the profane. Still others explore the way certain episodes in the novel foreshadow its ending, the way minor characters function as surrogates for the protagonists.2 All these interpretations search for, and elucidate,