La Regenta: Clarín’s Masterpiece of Desire, Religion and Provincial Spain
La Regenta is a realist novel published in 1884–85 by the Spanish writer and journalist Leopoldo Alas, known as Clarín. It is set in the fictional city of Vetusta, modelled on Oviedo, the capital of Asturias in northern Spain. It is without doubt Clarín’s masterpiece and one of the most important Spanish novels of the nineteenth century.
Author: Leopoldo Alas “Clarín” (1852–1901)
Title: La Regenta (1884–1885)
Format: English paperback (Penguin Classics), 736 pages, translated and introduced by John Rutherford
Scope: Realist novel of provincial life in Restoration Spain
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0140443460 (ASIN 0140443460)
A Provincial City
The novel portrays in all its complexity a provincial city that represents Spanish society during the Restoration: its clergy, its aristocracy, its casino, its gossip and its boredom.
Ana, Víctor, Álvaro and Fermín
In Vetusta, Ana Ozores is married to the former Regent of the city’s high court, Víctor Quintanar, a kind but eccentric man much older than she is. Feeling emotionally abandoned, Ana begins to be courted by the provincial Don Juan Álvaro Mesía. To complete the circle, the cathedral’s canon theologian, Don Fermín de Pas, who is Ana’s confessor, also falls in love with her and becomes Mesía’s secret rival.
The struggle between the priest and the seducer for Ana’s body and soul is the engine of the book, and Clarín follows every movement of their minds with remarkable psychological depth.
The Famous Opening
The novel begins with one of the best-known sentences in Spanish literature: "La heroica ciudad dormía la siesta", the heroic city was having its siesta. From there Clarín climbs with Fermín de Pas, the Magistral, to the top of the cathedral tower, where he surveys Vetusta through a telescope as if it already belonged to him. In a few pages the reader understands the city’s hierarchy, its torpor and the ambition of the man who wants to rule it through the confessional.
A Psychological Novel
What makes La Regenta modern is its inner depth. Clarín uses free indirect style, slipping into his characters’ thoughts without quotation marks, to follow Ana’s swings between mystical fervour, boredom, guilt and desire, and Fermín’s struggle between priestly ambition and jealous passion. Every character is drawn with the same precision, from the vain Mesía to the hypocritical ladies of the city’s charitable committees. The influence of Flaubert and of French naturalism is clear, but the result is entirely Spanish.
Clarín the Critic
Leopoldo Alas was born in Zamora in 1852 and spent most of his life in Oviedo, where he was professor of law at the university. In his day he was best known, and feared, as a literary critic: his pen name, Clarín, means a bugle. Besides La Regenta he wrote a second novel, Su único hijo (1890), and many short stories, of which ¡Adiós, Cordera! is a staple of Spanish schools. The novel was condemned by the Bishop of Oviedo when it appeared, which only confirmed how close to home it struck.
On Screen
Gonzalo Suárez filmed the novel in 1974, and Spanish television made a celebrated series in 1995 with Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Ana. Neither replaces the book, whose pleasures lie in its slow, ironic accumulation of detail.
Who Should Read It
Readers who love the great nineteenth-century novels of adultery and society, and anyone who wants to understand Spain beyond its clichés. Set aside time: it is long, but it rewards patience.
Reading It in English
The novel scandalised Spain when it first appeared, with its searing criticism of provincial hypocrisy and the Church. John Rutherford’s translation for Penguin Classics is widely admired and makes this long, rich book a pleasure to read in English; it deserves a place beside Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.
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