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Made famous by Buñuel's film version, Galdós' Tristana remains one of the novelist's most controversial works. Critics disagree over whether the two central characters are positively or negatively portrayed, and whether the work is inspired by feminist sympathies or is, on the contrary, an ironic critique of feminist aspirations. We seem unable to locate the message of the novel with any degree of clarity. This article looks succinctly at key aspects of character-portrayal and at the use of an unstable narrator to argue that Galdós has pre-empted any one-sided conclusions, whether psychological or sociological, about the central issues raised by the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mystical or spiritual turn of Benito Pérez Galdós in the 1890s is well known and was remarked upon by his contemporaries. How did this shift towards the non-material dimension of human existence accommodate itself to the still powerful positivist predilection for explaining psychological phenomena in terms of physical and physiological causes? Nazarín (together with its sequel Halma) is a good example of an apparently spiritual quest (or rather quests, since several characters are involved), yet Galdós' treatment of the spiritual cast of mind is anything but straightforward. Dostoyevsky, whose interest in abnormal mental states and behaviour was a dominant characteristic of his fiction, is a useful precedent with which to gauge the extent of the shift between 1868 (The Idiot) and 1895 (Nazarín). This essay compares the spiritual outlook of the protagonists of these two works and the way such an outlook is presented and handled by the respective authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]