Romance Studies

ISSN: 0263-9904 (Print) 1745-8153 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yros20

The Buñuel Alternative to Galdós's Tristana

Lisa P. Condé

To cite this article: Lisa P. Condé (2000) The Buñuel Alternative to Galdós's Tristana , Romance
Studies, 18:2, 135-144

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/ros.2000.18.2.135

Published online: 19 Jul 2013.

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 Romance Studies, Vol. 18 (2), December 2000

-
THE BUNUEL ALTERNATIVE TO GALDOS'S
,

TRISTANA

LISA P. CONDE

University of Wales, Swansea, UK

In his film version of Galdos's novel, Tristana, Bufiuel moves the action fonvard from the late
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nineteenth-century in Madrid to the 1930S in Toledo. Nevertheless, there is still considerable

disagreement among critics as to whether this apparently (modernized' Bufiuelian alternative is, in
fact, more or less progressive in thematic terms than the original work. A great deal of the detail of
the original is retained, yet the emphasis and the ending are changed quite radically. It is the
intention of this article to explore the effect of Bufiuel's changes on the essence of Gald6s's novel and
its representation of the frustrated ambitions of a young woman in Spain in the 1890s. This will be
done by focusing on the shift of emphasis in Bufiuel's Tristana in terms of identity and desire,
gender and power, space and place, reality and imagination, in favour of a more dramatic effect, and
by considering the implications of this shift and the resulting radically changed conclusion to the work.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Benito Perez Gald6s published what was for
him a relatively short novel: Tristana. The novel's ambiguity, resulting from Gald6s's
subtle use of irony, together with the contentious nature of what most critics saw as its
main theme - the emancipation of women - meant that Tristana was not to be among
the writer's most highly esteemed works. For some, notably the novelist, feminist and
former lover of Gald6s, Emilia Pardo Bazan, it was a frustrating work which, had the
ending been different, could have been 'quiza la mejor novela de Gald6s'.1 Luis Bufiuel
perhaps shared Pardo Bazan's view to some extent, for he radically changed the ending in
his film version of Tristana in 1970, although not, as she would have wished, by
developing the potential 'gran fuerza dramatica' of the theme of women's emancipation.2
It was Bufiuel's adaptation of Gald6s's Tristana which first revived critical interest in
the novel in the latter part of the twentieth century, an interest further fuelled by a period
of active feminism. Tristana is now perhaps the most hotly debated of all of Gald6s's
novels, as critics continue to disagree vehemently in their interpretations, and are
particularly frustrated by the tantalisingly ambiguous closing words: '~Eran felices uno y
otro? .. Tal vez,.3
Although there is much that Bufiuel retains from the novel, there is also much that he
changes, most notably the ending - for some, a more satisfYing resolution with its elements

Address correpondence to Lisa P. Conde, Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Wales, Swansea
SA2 8pp, UK

© 2000 University of Wales, Swansea

 LISA P. CONDE

of poetic justice. In the novel, irony and ambiguity reign supreme, yet, while what
Pattison has described as the 'unfinished, inconclusive ending'4 was initially seen as a
weakness, it can also be seen, as Farris Anderson argues, as a feature of modernism:
'Modem art is characterized much more by ellipsis than by an illusion of completeness; in
this sense Tristana is a thoroughly modem novel, aligned more with the novelistic forms
of the twentieth century than with those of the nineteenth'. Furthermore, Anderson
stresses, 'ellipsis is the basic aesthetic principle that defines Tristana and gives it its
coherence';5 a coherence he describes as negative, as the novel is held together by a failed
quest for wholeness.
This sense of incompleteness, fragmentation and even exile is reinforced by its setting
in Chamberi, itself at that time a very unfinished area on the outskirts of the city of
Madrid. Just as the novel can be seen to lack a centre, so the centre of the city itself is
missing and unreachable: don Lope is forced to move progressively further away and
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Tristana's ambivalent attitude towards it reflects her own uncertainty and confusion
concerning her destiny, underlined by her acknowledgement: 'No tengo el menor sentido
topografico' (55). Fortunata in Gald6s's masterpiece, Fortunata y Jacinta, is also shown to
lack a sense of physical direction, and a Jungian explanation for this might be, as Anderson
suggests, that both women are dominated by the swirling movement of a powerful
unconscious mind and are correspondingly weak in the linear perception of reality by the
conscious mind.6 At the beginning of Tristana's relationship with Horacio, they go out
for walks and drives still further away from the centre of Madrid, but soon return to
interior settings (notably Horacio's studio, itself full of fragmented images), as Tristana's
physical relationship with him begins and, we are told: 'desde aquel dia ya no pasearon
mas' (43).
Thus, as Anderson concludes, in Gald6s's novel, both specific settings and abstract space
lend form and organisation to the work's thematic and characterizational material? Both
are used to underline the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of Tristana's quest for a
complete and autonomous identity within the 'reality' of that novel and, arguably, within
the reality of nineteenth-century Spanish society and even beyond. In Andres Amor6s's
view, Bufiuel's adaptation of the work suggests that the story of Tristana is one 'que brota
de la Espafia tradicional y esta en las rakes mismas del presente,.8 On the other hand,
Hans Felten considers that 'al optar en su versi6n de Tristana por la soluci6n radical, el
famoso director de cine no dio un paso adelante sino un paso atras,.9 So there is clearly
considerable disagreement as to whether Bufiuel's version of Tristana is more or less
progressive in thematic terms than the original.
This study will consider whether, in shifting the emphasis in Tristana in terms of
character (by modifying traits and behaviour to suit his own design), desire (by focusing
on the sexual), gender (by concentrating less on 'feminist' issues), space (by being less
ambiguous and open-ended), and place (by allowing more movement and thereby losing
the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia permeating the novel)IO in favour of a more
melodramatic effect, Bufiuel has lost the main force of the original work. 11 As indicated,
critics' comparisons of the two works vary quite radically: from Amor6s, who believes
Bufiuel remains faithful to the spirit of the original work, to Alonso Ibarrola, for whom
Bufiuel's Tristana 'es completamente distinta a la de Gald6s'.12 Whichever view one takes,
of course, the director's privilege of exercising freedom in the adaptation of the source of
his inspiration is not in question; and the differing exigencies and expectations of the two
 BUNUEL's TRISTANA 137

genres and their public are acknowledged, although there is not the space to focus upon
them in this article. Rather than considering the film primarily on its own merits,
therefore, it is the intention of this study to explore the effect ofBufiuel's changes on the
essence of the original work.
The most immediate changes apparent in the film are the shift in location from the
outskirts of Madrid to Toledo, and in time from the late nineteenth century to the 1930S.
It appears that Bufiuel had been interested in working on Gald6s's Tristana for some years,
but his plans to film in Madrid in 1963 were refused by Franco's government at the last
minute. It was not until late 1969 that filming was finally allowed to commence in
Toledo, a favourite city ofBufiuel's youth and a city of which Gald6s was also fond (and
had used for his previous novel, Angel Guerra). That Bufiuel persisted with this project,
continuing to revise and recast his original script during the sixties, before collaborating
with Julio Alejandro on a final version, is testimony to his affinity with the work. Colin
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Partridge has speculated that this may have had something to do with the fact that
Bufiuel's own mother was only eighteen years old when she married the forty-two-year-
old Leonardo Bufiuel, and with the film-maker's personal empathy with the figure of don
Lope, which arguably contributed to the shift in approach to the portrayal of this
character. According to Fernando Rey, who played the part, the fictional don Lope
approaching sixty closely resembled the indomitable Luis Bufiuel approaching seventy.13
John Baxter's recent biography stresses Bufiuel's celebration of the senorito character in his
films, highlighting the case of don Lope and confirming that 'he ran his life in much the
same way, with a disregard for money ... and a lack of concern for any morality but his
own,.14
Yet while Bufiuel was not unsympathetic towards don Lope, the fifty-seven-year-old
would-be knight-errant (more 'sedentaria' than 'andante') who seduces his young ward,
Tristana, it is clear that his imagination was fired by the plight of Gald6s's heroine, whom
he effectively re-created for the large screen. Although the outcome was a less overtly
'feminist' work (or 'anti-feminist', according to one's reading of the novel), it might be
viewed as a more satisfying one for some spectators as a result of the radically revised
resolution imposed by Bufiuel. This is effected through the totally different metamorphosis
which occurs in the heroine following the amputation of her leg, when she declares in
both novel and film: 'Soy otra'. For there is no disputing the fact that Bufiuel's 'other'
Tristana is radically different from that originally conceived by Gald6s as, from a similar
personal history, two distinctive constructions arise from the same fictional potential.
Apart from the ending of Tristana, a further major change made by the film director to
the plot was to have Tristana actually leave don Lope to go away and live with Horacio,
the young man she falls in love with after her seduction by her guardian. This means that
we are not privy, in the film, to the many revealing letters our heroine writes to her lover
during their enforced separation. The relative lack of access to the thoughts of Bufiuel's
Tristana is perhaps one of the reasons for Beth Miller's comment that she is one of the
film-maker's least understood female creations.1s The spectator who knows Gald6s's
Tristana will almost certainly alternate between recognizing, and at times recoiling from,
the various images of her offered by Bufiuel, which Beth Miller describes as 'familiar
stock images' probed by the film-maker. Convincingly portrayed by the beautiful
Catherine Deneuve, these move successively from innocent angel, obedient daughter,
malleable pupil and kept woman, to those of rebel and, in the final anaylsis, 'archetypal
 138 LISA P. CONDE

bitch' .16 It is, of course, this final twist to the heroine's personality by Bunuel which
provokes the greatest reaction, although according to Baxter, her role is intended to
illustrate the film-maker's conviction that 'life is a game of random chance where morality
is irrelevant and the strong prevail'. Indeed, the biographer declares: 'At the end of the
film Tristana embraces this conclusion, and graduates from don Lope's college of one by
killing the professor. Bunuel never had a heroine in whom he invested more of himself
and his beliefs.'17
Bunuel's depiction of don Lope, on the other hand, generates a more sympathetic
response. Engagingly played by Fernando Rey, the tyrant turned victim is pathetic and
more than likely to arouse the spectator's pity, regardless of the character's previous
behaviour. This shift is interesting, particularly when one looks at Gald6s's original
manuscript of Tristana, in which don Lope is actually portrayed in a harsher light than in
the final published version of the novel. It is also perhaps pertinent here to compare
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Miller's observation: 'Bunuel is sympathetic to Lope, with whom he sometimes identi-

fies,1s with Lambert's comment in relation to Gald6s: 'It would be consistent with the
savage mood of the novel if the portraits of don Lope and Horacio were in some respects
vicious self-portraits' .19
Despite the many similarities between the two versions of Tristana, it is, as Miller
stresses, 'Bunuel's consciousness that shapes the film', in which both Tristana and don
Lope are 'essentially his creation'.20 As, indeed, is Horacio, whose portrayal in the film has
attracted less critical reaction but is arguably less sympathetic than in the novel. Apart
from the fact that we are not privy to any of the details given in the novel of this
character's earlier victimization at the hands of his grandfather, Bunuel's Horacio appears
harsher, as in the episode where he knocks don Lope to the ground when challenged by
him to a formal duel. Partridge points out that 'this cruelly humorous scene shows how
distant he (don Lope) is from contemporary values; Horacio responds to his archaic
attitude with a punch to don Lope's jaw like a twentieth-century American film hero' .21
The significance of Horacio's role in the film is also shifted, as is that of Saturno, as
Bufiuel plays with one of his favourite themes, desire.
The theme of desire is also crucial in the novel, but the emphasis in the film is more
overtly on the sexual and the surreal, as one might expect in Bufiuel, and more closely
linked to death and religion. Desire in the film is given a more directly erotic expression,
although, in the view of a number of critics, this is already latent in the novel and drawn
out and developed by Bunuel. In David Grossvogel's view, however, Bunuel's Tristana is
essentially a more sexual character, whose sexuality is not lost with the loss of her leg, as
he concludes it to be in the case of Gald6s's heroine.22
In the film, we see Tristana running around freely with Saturno and his friend, the son
of the bell-ringer, in whose house she is invited to share the humble 'migas'. We see first
the boys' clumsy sexual advances, then the bell-clapper itself transformed into the head of
don Lope through Tristana's imagination, linking death, religion and sex, just as in the
scene in the Cathedral, where she leans over the figure of Cardenal Tavera in the
sepulchre almost as if to kiss it, and seconds later is kissed passionately outside by don
Lope. Religion is also linked more directly in the film to the heroine's mother, dona
Josefina. In the scene set in dona Josefina's last home where she died, Tristana asks to keep
the crucifix which her mother held on her deathbed, and don Lope remarks that although
dona Josefina was a good woman, she was somewhat lacking in intelligence. This radically
 BUNUEL's TRISTANA 139

changes the novel's account of dona ]osefina as an intelligent and well-read woman
(though of romantic and antiquated ideas), who loses her mind following the death of her
husband.
The tendency to idealize, which Tristana can be seen to have inherited from her
mother, and the role of art, as well as the quest for an autonomous identity and career,
are almost wholly missing from Bunuel's TristanaJ where desire has a different focus. A
major part of the novel consists of Tristana confined to don Lope's house, and later to her
room, writing letters to her lover in which she expresses her desire: for love, for
knowledge, for freedom, and increasingly for the ideal, which she projects on to a re-
created Horacio as her imagination 'se lanzaba sin freno a los espacios de 10 ideal .. .' (78).
It is, of course, only in her imagination that Tristana is able to escape her enclosure
through what Horacio describes as 'unas alas de extraordinaria fuerza para subirse a los
espacios sin fin' (103). Desire itself, as is widely recognized, can never be totally fulfilled,
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and through Tristana's letters in the novel, Horacio can be seen to represent her impossible
desire for the ideal. Hence, as Bikandi-Mejias observes, 'Tristana no necesita a Horacio a
su lado, por carta es suficiente' for 'en el fondo s610 10 necesita como representante del
deseo inalcanzable' .23As he further stresses, 'la busqueda del saber, del conocimiento, ya
era vista por Plat6n como manifestaci6n del deseo: el amor entre personas y la busqueda
del fil6sofo de la verdad parten de la misma raiz' and, in like fashion, 'el fil6sofo nunc a
colmara su deseo de conocimiento'.24 Very little of this sense of deeper yearning and
ambition is present in Bunuel's film.
So far as 'the woman question' is concerned, although it is Bunuel's don Lope who
actually voices the proverb, 'Mujer honrada, pierna quebrada y en casa', it is Galdos's
Tristana who engages in a more overtly feminist debate with both Saturna and Horacio,
during which she coins terms as yet unheard in Spain such as 'medica' and 'abogada':
professions women were not allowed to practise. One brief section is retained in the film
where Tristana tells Horacio of her wish to work and be involved in 'las cosas grandes',
but she receives no response whatever to this. Instead her lover pulls her into a doorway
to kiss her passionately, just as don Lope had done earlier.
The imagery used by Galdos is also of a more consistently feminist nature than the
religious imagery favoured by Bunuel, who juxtaposes such images as that of the Virgin
Mary with more erotic scenes which are not present in the novel. Apart from the image
of the doll, through which Tristana is first described in the novel, and to which she reverts
at the end, there are multiple images of controlled confinement such as 'cautiva' and
'esclava', reinforced by Saturna's insistence, as Tristana muses on the careers that she
might be capable of embarking upon, that women are not allowed the same freedom and
opportunities as men because 'la maldita enagua estorba para eso, como para montar a
caballo' (IS). Here we see a direct parallel with the image of 'el maldito corse' used in
Realidad, staged the same year as the publication of Tristana, where the heroine Augusta
also rebels against society's restrictions on women which, she declares, 'nos desfigura el
alma, como el maldito corse nos disfigura el cuerpo' .25
One of the most frequently used images in the novel is that of 'las alas', used to denote
female capacity and longing for independent thought and action. First found repeatedly in
Gald6s's early novel, Gloria, where 'las alas' were also repeatedly 'cortadas', this image
recurs in Tristana to the point where Emilio Miro has concluded: 'AI final: las alas cortadas
o la pierna cortada, todo es 10 mismo'. 26 Three years after this novel, Galdos presents his
 LISA P. CONDE

concept of 'Ia mujer nueva' on stage in the play Voluntad, where society is advised: 'iNo
Ie corteis las alas, y vereis hasta d6nde se remonta!' .27 Gald6s's Tristana, however, is to
remain don Lope's 'pobre mufieca con alas' (87), prevented from realizing her potential.
Tristana's quest for knowledge is stressed in the novel through the image of light, as
she repeatedly insists 'Quiero saber, saber, saber ... ' (67), reinforcing this with the cry
'Quiero luz, mas luz, siempre mas luz ... ' and imploring Horacio 'No me hables a mi de
duIces tinieblas' (71). Yet, as Emilia Pardo Bazan was to lament, in this novel 'Gald6s nos
dej6 entrever un horizonte nuevo y amplio, y despues corri6 la cortina'. 28 For Tristana is
to be confined to the dark interiors of the house, having been allowed glimpses of spaces
and places in the world outside but never given the opportunity to explore these freely
and independently. Instead, her great fear: '~He de estar encerrada toda mi vida?' (32), is
to be realised.
Bufiuel's Tristana is allowed to exercise more movement and control. She chooses to
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open the curtain and the window to ensure don Lope's death at the end of the film, thus
finding both revenge and final freedom from her oppressor. It is clear, however, that the
choices she seeks are essentially different from those sought by Gald6s's heroine,
notwithstanding the ambiguity and ellipsis built into the novel. And central to the issue of
choice is that of control or power. Again we see a distinction between the different types
of power sought by the two Tristanas; they can be seen to reflect the difference between
'women's powers' and 'men's powers' as defined by the French feminist, Helene Cixous.
Gald6s's Tristana, who wants to be free of the ties that bind ('Es que vivimos sin
movimiento, atadas con milligaduras'(IS) she laments), ultimately seeks control over her
own destiny and identity, while Bufiuel's Tristana ultimately seeks to exercise the other
kind of power seen by Cixous as essentially male: 'the kind of power that is the will to
supremacy ... that power is always a power over others,.29 This view is in some ways
similar to that of Luce Irigaray, for whom power is a male obsession and who herself is
anxious not to 'fall into the trap of wanting to exercise power' .30 It would seem this is the
trap Bufiuel's Tristana has fallen into, following her 'metamorphosis' after the amputation
and her insistence that now: 'Claro que soy otra'. In Julia Kristeva's more 'anti-essentialisf
vision of society, the fact of being born male or female would no longer determine the
subject's position in relation to power and thus the very nature of power itself would be
transformed. Toril Moi argues along similar lines: 'Feminism is not simply about rejecting
power, but about transforming the existing power structures - and, in the process,
transforming the very concept of power itself'.J1 Indeed, it could be argued that, in his
subversion of traditional gender roles in such plays as Voluntad, Gald6s is actually
questioning the concept of power, and he is certainly challenging traditional power
structures between the sexes.32 Judith Butler's view that psychic life is generated by the
social operation of power, and that the social operation of power is concealed and fortified
by the psyche that it produces,33 is a theory that might well be applied to a closer study of
the psychological evolution ofBufiuel's Tristana.
In Bufiuel's film we witness the total shift of power and control, in every sense and
literally to the death, from don Lope to Tristana. The victimiser becomes the victim, and
the victim the victimizer. At the end of the film, don Lope is left unable to move in his
bed in the house, rather than feeding his chickens outside in the yard which is where we
leave him in the novel, and Bufiuel's Tristana can be seen to abuse the power this gives
her, just as don Lope had previously abused the power he was in a position to exercise
 BUN-UEL'S TRISTANA

over her. Miller concludes from this that Bufiuel's Tristana 'has successfully broken out of
the traditional cultural conceptions of proper sex role behaviour only to become more
domineering, strong-minded, egoistic, spiteful, hostile, manipulative, and tough than Lope
had been in his prime.' This, of course, is not the form of 'libertad' sought by Gald6s's
Tristana or by the majority of feminists, but rather a form of revenge exercised through
the misuse of power or, put another way, the use of the 'wrong kind' of power. Miller
suggests this is the behaviour of the 'archetypal bitch', but goes on to say that 'as "bitch"
Tristana has become androgynous, incorporating qualities traditionally defined as masculine
as well as those considered feminine'. 34For Partridge, on the other hand, Tristana becomes
'an incarnation of female power holding together impossible contradictions born of
psychological bitterness rather than physical disability' .35 Between these polarized views,
psychologists would have a field day attempting to interpret the psychology of Bufiuel's
heroine.
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It is clear that the Tristana of Bufiuel's film actively seeks revenge on her former
oppressor, don Lope and, in the realm of revenge, gender roles can become increasingly
blurred. Otto Rank declared to Anals Nin: 'Revenge is necessary . .. to reestablish
equilibrium in the emotional life,36 and this can be seen as being the case for Bufiuel's
Tristana, while Gald6s's heroine '10 acept6 todo con indiferencia .. .' (IIO). Does this
mean, though, as Miller suggests, that Bufiuel's Tristana 'is certainly a far stronger woman
than the Tristana of the Gald6s novel,?37 Or is it that the latter is strong enough to rise
above the disagreeable aspects of material reality? Does stooping to don Lope's level make
Tristana essentially a stronger person, or just a harder, more dangerous one? One who is
more of a 'bitch', or more of a 'man'?
In contrast to the original Tristana's yearning for individual realisation and the ideal,
Bufiuel's film presents a more worldly Tristana who attempts to exercise power and
control over others, even from her wheelchair, as she is taken through the streets of
Toledo. Another notable scene where Bufiuel's heroine takes pleasure in her sexual power
over others is on her balcony, when she opens her robe to reveal herself to Satumo, and
the camera zooms in on the look of triumph on her face, then switching to the shrouded
image of the Virgin Mary in the Church where she is marrying don Lope. It is hard to
imagine Gald6s's Tristana feeling inclined to behave in like fashion, or gaining satisfaction
from such use of power. As her letters and behaviour indicate throughout, it is control
over her own destiny, through the realisation of her own self, which she seeks, not power
over others or revenge. When she quotes Lady Macbeth: 'Unsex me here', she is seeking
the freedom of movement and opportunity enjoyed by men, not the mercilessness needed
to become a murderess, as Bufiuel's Tristana has been described.
Gald6s's Tristana did not seek the 'power over others' which men have traditionally
exercised, and her struggle is arguably on a deeper level than that of her counterpart.
Hence the two heroines' separate declarations, 'Soy otra', following the amputation, refer
not only to their distinctive metamorphoses within the respective works, but to the
essentially distinctive characters given to them by their respective (male) creators. The
'nueva vida' which Gald6s's Tristana faces after 'aquel simulacro de muerte' (89) is totally
different from Bufiuel's version in which, as Partridge argues, 'Tristana's triumph becomes
the film's ultimate contradiction'.38
As Bufiuel's don Lope lies dying in his bed, and Tristana finally closes the window, the
camera flashes back to places and images: her feigned telephone call to Dr. Miquis; don
 LISA P. CONDE

Lope's head as the bell clapper; images of the Virgin Mary in the Church where she
marries him; Saturno's desire for her; her affair with Horacio; her seduction by don Lope;
and her lost innocence, as the film returns to the opening scene outside. Bufiuel's ending
to Tristana is a powerful and melodramatic one, while Gald6s's is left in the air with the
enigmatic words, 'Tal vez'. Gald6s clearly wanted this novel to have an open ending. He
had originally closed with the words 'lQuien 10 sabe?' in answer to the question as to
whether Tristana and don Lope, newly married against all their previously firmly held
convictions, were happy, and subsequently modified the response in the manuscript to
'Tal vez,.39
Rather than the dubious tragedy of a death, the novel has been seen as 'a warped
comedy', and one which clearly lacks poetic justice. But maybe this is just the point
Gald6s wished to make as an indictment of society: a society which (rather than its being
the author who, as Pardo Bazan complained, 'corri6 la cortina,40) will close, in one way
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or another, the window of opportunity for women. For it is clear that all the images of
restriction and enclosure in the novel serve to reaffirm the realities of life for women in
nineteenth-century Spain. We are told from the beginning how 'los horizontes de la vida
se cerraban y ennegredan cada dia mas delante de la sefiorita de Reluz' (17) as she begins
to dream of freedom and independence, and many of the problems encountered by
Tristana in her quest for autonomy still find echo in today's society.
It seems highly probable that Gald6s deliberately introduced the dramatic deus ex
machina of the amputation of Tristana's leg to illustrate not only how archaic, but how
wrong and unnatural it was for women's choices and opportunities to be so curtailed.
Bufiuel picks up on this limitation of choice by showing Tristana deliberating over which
chickpea to eat first and over which pillar was the most attractive. After her operation we
see her furiously pacing up and down on her crutches like a caged animal and finally
giving vent to her frustration by taking revenge on don Lope as she leaves him to die.
Gald6s's heroine, on the other hand, forced into 'un hueco honroso de la Sociedad', goes
through the motions expected of her 'con indiferencia' (IIO).
Unlike her mother, dofia Josefina, who is driven to obsessive rituals of cleansing and
moving by an external reality which, as Partridge puts it, 'is invading and staining her
home' ,41 Gald6s's Tristana has succeeded in distancing herself to the point where none of
it touches her, as indeed already at the beginning, when it seemed she could 'decir a las
capas inferiores del mundo fisico: fa vostra miseria no me tange' (3). In this way Tristana can
be seen to have found a form of refuge in her predicament, a kind of ataraxia,42 although
the predicament remains, arguably revealing a greater social awareness in the Galdosian
meditation on woman's situation. In Bufiuel's film, the emphasis seems to lie in reversing
disadvantaged power roles at whatever cost, regardless of gender, and the work can be
seen as exploring a more atemporal psychological form of determinism, rather than a
social dilemma.
Notwithstanding the complicated, subversive role of the narrator(s), Gald6s's novel
seems to me a distinctly pro-feminist work,43 in which the heroine is acknowledged as
'una mujer superior', capable, as Horacio surmises, of seeing 'un futuro que nosotros no
vemos' (102), a future that society was not yet ready to contemplate. This would be in
line with the author's subsequent development of '1a mujer nueva' through his drama, as
well as with his own declaration of 1917 that 'el dia en que la mujer consiga emanciparse,
el mundo sera distin to'. 44
 BUN-UEL's TRISTANA 143

The film clearly does not focus so intensely on the theme of women's emancipation.
Some critics maintain that Bufiuel, in resolving Gald6s's open and ambiguous ending, is
merely developing something already present in the novel. 45But this begs the question: is
Bufiuel's Tristana happier following the death of don Lope? Has the exercising of power
and revenge in this way 'reestablished equilibrium in the emotional life' as predicted by
Otto Rank? Bikandi-Mejias points out that, while the film's ending is also open to various
interpretations, the film script actually states: 'En su lecho, Tristana no puede descansar,
victima de una pesadilla. Por su imaginaci6n pasan vertiginosamente las imagenes que la
torturan desde hace afios'. As the same critic observes, 'para el gui6n, es obvio: pesadilla,
imaginaci6n, en la cabeza de Tristana. Para los espectadores, y para los criticos, nada esta
tan claro.,46 The film script thus implies that Bufiuel's Tristana cannot distance herself
from the reality of the past. Gald6s's Tristana, on the other hand, succeeds in distancing
herself from reality, by placing space between herself and 'todo 10 terrestre' upon which
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she looks 'con sumo desden' (I 10).

Bufiuel's alternative interpretation and representation of Gald6s's heroine and her
dilemma resulted in a powerful and dramatic version of Tristana, but one which is arguably
less progressive on a social level and less penetrating, though no less provocative, on a
psychological level. The film has qualities lacking in the novel, and vice versa. By
changing the ending so radically, the film-maker fundamentally changes the spirit of
Gald6s's text. Bufiuel's Tristana is not simply a filmic version of Gald6s's Tristana; she is
a different character, despite the many common features, just as the film she inhabits is a
different, though still brilliant, artistic creation.

1 Emilia Pardo Bazan, La mujer espanola y otros artleulosfeministas, ed. by Leda Schiavo (Madrid: Editora
Nacional, 1976), p. 137.
2 Ibid.

3 Page references from the text are taken from B. Perez Gald6s, Tristana, ed. by Gordon Minter
(Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1996).
4 Walter T. Pattison, Benito Perez Galdos (Boston: Twayne, 1975), p. 125.
5 Farris Anderson, 'Ellipsis and Space in Tristana', Anales Galdosianos, 20, no. 2 (1985), 61-76, (p. 62).
6 See Anderson, n. 21, p. 76.
7 Anderson, p. 63.

8 Andres Amor6s Guardiola, 'Tristana: de Gald6s a Bunuel', Aetas del Primer Congreso Internacional de
Estudios Galdosianos (Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 1977), 319-29, p. 322.
9 Hans Felten, 'Tristana: Esbozo de una lectura plural', in B. Perez Galdos: aportaciones con oeasion de su

150 aniversario, ed. by Eberhar Beisler and Francisco Poveadano (Frankfurt: Vervuent, 1996), 51-57,
(p. 57)·
10 An important element in the novel is that there is simultaneously a loose-knit, open-ended spatial
frame and tightly drawn, claustrophobic restriction of spatial movement.
11 Deliberately made less melodramatic by Gald6s through the creative process, as I discovered on
studying the manuscript in the Biblioteea Nacional in Madrid in 1985 and subsequently discussed in a
paper given at the Gald6s Symposium at the University of Birmingham in 1986. See also my study Perez
Galdos: Tristana, Critical Guides to Spanish Texts (London: Grant & Cutler, 2000); John Sinnigen,
'Tristana: La tentaci6n del melodrama', Allales Galdosianos xxv (1990), 53-58; and Michael Allen
Schnepf, 'Gald6s's Tristana Manuscript', R01llallcc Notes, 3 I (1990-91), 11-17.
12 Jose Manuel Alonso Ibarrola, 'Don Benito Perez Gald6s y el cine', Cuadernos Hispanoamerieanos
250-52 (1970-71), 650-55, p. 654.
13 Colin Partridge, Tristana: Bunuel's Film alld Gald6s' Novel - A Case Study in the Relation Between
Literature and Film (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), pp. 213-14.
 144 LISA P. CONDE

14John Baxter, Bufiuel (London: Fourth Estate, 1994), pp. IO-II.

15 Beth Miller, 'From Mistress to Murderess: The Metamorphoses of Bufiuel's Tristana', Women in
Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols (ed. B. Miller), (California: University of California Press, 1983),
P·34°'
16 Ibid., p. 353.
17 Baxter, p. 294.
18 Miller, p. 356.

19 A. F. Lambert, 'Gald6s and Concha-Ruth Morell', Anales Galdosianos, VIII (1973), 33-49, p. 43.
20 Miller, p. 356.

21 Partridge, p. 222.

22 David I. Grossvpgel, 'Bufiuel's Obsessed Camera. Tristana dismembered', Diacritics, 2.1 (Spring,
1972): 51-56.
23 Aitor Bikandi-Mejias, Galaxia textual: cine y literature, ltTristana" (Galdos y Bunuel) (Madrid: Editorial
Pliegos, 1997), p. 150
24 Ibid.

25 El teatro de Galdos: Realidad (1892), ed. by Lisa P. Conde, (Lewiston, New York: Mellen Press, 1993),
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p.28.
26 Emilio Mir6, 'Tristana 0 la imposibilidad de ser', Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 250-252 (1970-1971),
505-22, p. 520.
27 B. Perez Gald6s, Obras Co mpletas , Cuentos, Teatro y Censo, ed. by F. Sainz de Robles (Madrid:
Aguilar, 1971), p. 382.
28 Pardo Bazan, p. 141.

29 Helene Cixous, 'Entretien avec Franc;oise van Rossum-Guyon', Revue des Sciences Humaines, 168
(Oct.-Dec. 1977), 483-84. Quoted and translated by Toril Moi, Sexual Textual Politics: Feminist Literary
Theory (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 124.
30 Luce Irigaray, Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (Paris: Minuit, 1977), p. 161.
31 See Toril Moi, p. 172•

32 See my study 'Womanpower in Gald6s's Voluntad', in New Frontiers in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian
Scholarship, eds T. J. Dadson, R. J. Oakley and P. A. Odber de Baubeta (Lewiston, New York: Mellen
Press, 1994), 209-23.
33 Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, California: Stanford University

Press, 1997).
34 Miller, p. 353.
35 Partridge, p. 223.

36 AnaYsNin, The Diary of Anais Nin: 1931-1934, ed. G. StuWmann (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1966), p. 307.
37 Miller, p. 357.
38 Partridge, p. 219.

39 Copy manuscript and galley proofs held in the Casa-Museo Perez Galdos in Las Palmas, Caja 19,
Num.I.
40 Pardo Bazan, p. 141•
41 Partridge, p. 186.

42 In some ways perhaps comparable to that of Maxi in Fortunata y Jacinta, the difference being, of
course, not only that he was declared mad but that he was a man who was singularly unprivileged by his
maleness. Indeed, like Tristana, he was also arguably punished for failing to conform to conventional
gender roles.
43 Detailed arguments for this conclusion are given in my forthcoming article, 'Is Tristana a Feminist

Novel?', to be published in the proceedings of the Galdos Seminars given at the University of Sheffield
in May, 1998, and also in Perez Galdos: Tristana, op.cit.
44 Quoted by Angel Martin (Gald6s's coachman) in El Excelsior (Mexico City), I I November 1917.
45 Cristina Martinez-Carazo, for instance, argues that Bufiuel 'lleva a sus ultimas consecuencias algo que
ya estaba en la novela'. 'Tristana: EI discurso verbal frente al discurso visual', Hispania, 76 (1993), 365-70,
(p. 368).
46 Bikandi-Mejias, p. 176.