Ladebringas

Dorota Heneghan
is a doctoral candidate in
the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese
at Yale University.
Her dissertation, entitled
"Fashion, Gender,
and Modernity in Galdós,
Pardo Bazán, and Picón,"
examines the role of
clothing and accessories
in the literary
construction of gender in
the context of
nineteenth-century
fashion and
commodity culture.

How to cite this article:
Heneghan, Dorota.
"Shopping Angel:
Fashion, Gender, and
Modernity in Galdós' La
de Bringas". Dissidences.
Hispanic Journal of Theory
and Criticism.
On line. Internet:
15/09/06
(http://www.dissidences/
Ladebringas.html)

"Just as the gaze
of Baudelaire's
stroller
is not the stare
of an indifferent
pedestrian,
but the look of a
passionate spectator
absorbing his
surroundings,
the stare of Galdós'
protagonist
at the shop windows
of fashion is
unambiguously
a look beset with
longing and lacking,
distance and desire.
It is clear that
Rosalía's eye is not,
to borrow the
expression from the
nineteenth-century
dress artist, Charles
Blanc, simply
a passive organ
of sensation,
but rather
the pupil
of judgment
and feeling"

"However,
the importance
of the mosaic-like
appearance of
fashionable
artifacts
in La de Bringas
lies not only
in the images they
produce with
respect to the
representation
of gender.
The plethora of
sartorial images
conjured from the
bewildering array
of clothing
articles accentuate,
along with
Galdós' fascination
with the
permanent
transitoriness
of his protagonist's
existence
her persona
as a work
in progress"

When La de Bringas, Galdós' fifth novel of the "Contemporary Series," was completed in
May 1884, critics could hardly contain their lack of enthusiasm. They criticized exaggerated
attention to detail, the story's prosaic nature, and the unappealing protagonist, Rosalía de
Bringas. Luis Alfonso complained in his July 1884 review in La Época that the entire novel
does not have "otro tema que las trampas, enredos y bellaquerías de la protagonista para
gastar más en trapos y moños de lo que puede" (qtd. in Bly 13). Under the pseudonym
Orlando, another critic questioned in an 1884 review in Revista de España the profusion and
purpose of so many trivial objects:

Unos no han podido salir del laberinto en que Pérez y su acompañante se meten en busca de Don
Francisco Bringas; a otros se les ha atragantado el cuerpo de pelo que éste fabrica … muchas personas
de ambos sexos se han visto punto menos que ahogados entre tanta cinta, tanto lazo y tanto trapo (…)
¿Para qué se habrá pretendido hacer con materiales tan ínfimos y deleznables una novela (qtd. in Bly
13).

Why, indeed, was so much space given to describing ordinary and inessential objects or, to
borrow the late Naomi Schor's expression, "bad details" (59)? What did all the ribbons,
lace, clothing, and other sartorial goods mentioned in Orlando's review, mean in La de
Bringas? What role did they play in Galdós' artistic recreation of reality and in the literary
construction of his protagonist?

Although clothing and accessories play a vital role in Galdós' novels, only a few studies have
analyzed their deeper significance in his narratives (see Wright). In La de Bringas, a novel
replete with references to fashionable clothing and luxurious accoutrements, Rosalía's
passion for finery and inordinate love for sartorial goods have traditionally been interpreted
as evidence of egotism, social ambition, and/or the cause of her moral decline [1]. More
recently, critics have explained the protagonist's penchant for self-adornment as an
expression of her repressed sexuality (Tsuchiya), a manifestation of her secretly experienced
emancipation from her husband's tutelage (Aldaraca "Revolution of 1868"), and as a sign of
her alienation from male society (Smith). Although these interpretations are enlightening,
nevertheless, by reducing the protagonist's fascination with clothing to a private vice and the
meaning of her elegant outfits to a commodity fetish, such views tend to diminish fashion's
significance in Galdós' literary construction of the cultural image of gender.

In the following pages, I propose to study the role of clothing and accessories in Galdós'
construction of gender in La de Bringas in the context of nineteenth-century fashion. I will
examine how Galdós used fashion to enrich the cultural images of his character, and how
these images challenge the stereotypical representation of gender in nineteenth-century
society and literature. More specifically, I aim to analyze how Galdós' extraordinary
portraits of bourgeois woman, presented in the context of her insatiable vanity and passion
for fashionable dresses and accessories, challenge the traditional nineteenth-century image
of middle-class women as domestic angels. In particular, I shall examine how Galdós used
exalted religious rhetoric and euphemism implemented in describing clothing and the
protagonist's fascination with it to poke fun at the traditional discourse of domesticity and the
heavily-promoted image of bourgeois woman as domestic angel. I want first to interpret the
fashionable outfits of Galdós' protagonist, composed artistically from various fabrics and
luxurious accessories, not as evidence of her frivolity or social ambition, but rather as an
image of modernity embodied in the complex and creative nature of her persona. The
second part of my analysis will explore what clothing and accessories meant in this novel in
the context of the nineteenth-century commodity culture and the cult of consumption. I
propose to take a close look at the description of modern shops presented in La de Bringas
as places of sartorial seduction and to explore the impact of modern commodities such as
ready-to-wear clothing, on the literary construction of woman in the context of modern life.

Before the nineteenth century, the image of a woman of fashion presented by Spanish
Renaissance and Baroque moralists and social commentators was mainly negative. In the
sixteenth century, Francisco de Osuna in Norte de los estados en que se da regla de vivir a
los mancebos, y a los casados, y a los viudos, y a todos los continentes y se tratan muy por
extenso los remedios del desastrado casamiento, enseñando, que tal ha de ser la vida del
cristiano casado (1531) attributes women's penchant for adornment and fine dressing to
vanity and an innate desire for ostentation and imitation:

Las mujeres son como las monas, que imitan mucho y ninguna cosa a derechas. Ninguna mujer verás
que imita el buen miramiento de otra; ni su mesura; ni el moderado vestir; ni otra virtud; más viendo
una mujer que sale su vecina con algo nuevo; luego se le antoja que meresce más que la otra; y como
la mona trabaja por imitar el vestuario ajeno (qtd. in Vigíl 190).

Similarly, in La perfecta casada (1583) Fray Luis de León censures women's passion for
luxury and excessive adornment as causing lust and moral corruption. In his lengthy
diatribe against female delight in ostentatious clothing and make-up, he presents the fashion-
conscious woman as self-absorbed, unproductive, and wasteful, while the ideal wife is
modest, industrious, and thrifty. Likewise, in Verdades morales en que se reprenden, y
condenan los trajes vanos, superfluos y profanos; con otros vicios y abusos que hoy se usan;
mayormente los escotados deshonestos de las mujeres (1678) Pedro Galindo emphasizes
fashion's pernicious effects by describing how morality is negatively influenced by the
seventeenth-century woman's art of dressing:

Si hay un traje notablemente provocativo es el de los escotados, pues con la gala, con el garbo, con los
colores, y esplendor que comunican las aguas de rostro, y otros afeites, e invenciones, y a veces con
otros ademanes, gestos … se junta la desnudez, que es el mayor incentivo de la lujuria (qtd. in Vigíl
196-97).

With the exception of Fray Vincente Mexía, who, in his Saludable instrucción del estado del
matrimonio (1566), does not disapprove of wives, adorning themselves in order to “querer
usar del matrimonio en buena voluntad” (qtd. in Vigíl 191), most Spanish moralists and social
commentators, such as Alonso de Carranza in Rogación en detestación de los grandes
abusos en los trajes y adornos nuevamente introducidos en España (1636) in the seventeenth
century, and Fray Antonio Arbiol in Estragos de la luxuria, y sus remedios, conforme a las
Divinas Escrituras, y Santos Padres de la Iglesia (1725) in the eighteenth century, reiterate the
traditional criticism of women's attraction to fashion and the display of luxury as
synonymous with female depravity and moral corruption [2].

Although la moda was described consistently as threatening female virtue and economic
prosperity until the end of the eighteenth century, as the nineteenth century advanced
attitudes toward sartorial art and the image of a woman of fashion began to change [3].
Alongside articles comparing fashion to a "despótica innovadora que avasalla gustos y
opiniones," [4] "deidad caprichosa y voluble,'' [5] or "el capricho de los caprichos, la más
veleta de todas las veletas," [6] more and more defenses of fashion began to appear. As
early as 1840, an anonymous author described fashion in a popular Spanish women's
magazine, Mariposa, as "hija … del progreso y adelantado," [7] and in 1866, María del Pilar
Sinués de Marco described it in El ángel del hogar as "la maga joven y graciosa, risueña …
y amable" [8]. Fashion, in fact, became a necessity in the nineteenth-century women's
world. As Francisca Carlota del Riego Pica emphasized in her 1862 article, "La moda,"
published in La Violeta: "Que el seguir la moda o darla culto es una necesidad … es una
verdad tan reconocida que me parece inútil señalarla" [9]. Similarly, luxury became
identified as an intrinsic component of the modern world, symbolizing progress and
civilization, as Fernando Garrido described it in his article, "El lujo," in El Nuevo Pensil de
Iberia in 1857: “El lujo es una necesidad natural en todos los seres, es la consecuencia del
irresistible encanto del que nacen las artes y las ciencias, padre de la industria, alma del
progreso y de la civilización” [10].

This new attitude toward fashion and luxury, presented in these articles in the context of
necessity and progress, clearly demonstrates that in nineteenth-century Spain, as modern
forms of commerce and advertising were developing, fashion could no longer be easily
condemned. Moreover, transformations in the image of a fashionable woman portrayed by
some writers as "mujer elegante … segura de sí misma … una creación moderna" [11] and
by others as "sacerdotisa de la moda … para la cual la moda es el oráculo," [12] indicate
that fashion not only enhanced the cultural representation of femininity, but also challenged
its traditional boundaries. For as much as such neo-Catholic authors as María del Pilar
Sinués de Marco, Faustina Sáez de Melgar, Angela Grassi de Cuenca, Concepción Gimeno
de Flaquer, and Joaquina García Balmaseda, advocated the conventional model of
femininity, by advising middle-class women to dress simply and modestly, the angel of
domesticity was, as Bridget Aldaraca observed, no longer "marketed with complete
success" (114). This doesn't mean, of course, that neo-Catholic writers discouraged middle-
class women from dressing up. As fashion's popularity now made it harder to ignore or
condemn, neo-Catholic writers began to tailor their views on fashion to fit the traditional
image of femininity. In 1866, Sinués de Marco wrote in her article, "La mujer española,"
published in El ángel del hogar:

Hoy la moda en España no es considerada tal como debe serlo, y se la ofende atribuyéndola todos los
desórdenes que ocasionan el lujo y la vanidad: día vendrá en que, más adelantada la industria y más
desarrollado el sentimiento de lo bello y de lo justo, se la mira como a una buena y amable amiga,
como a una útil consejera, como a una deidad hermosa y bienhechora que gusta que la mujer sea
laboriosa, inteligente y cuidadosa de su persona, de su familia y de su casa (225-26) [13].

And years later, she added in her manual, La dama elegante (1892): "saber vestir bien es
una ciencia muy útil, y hasta me atrevo á decir que es una ciencia indispensable en la
mujer" (190). "Useful" and "indispensable," under the condition, of course, as she already
highlighted in La mujer de nuestros días (1878), that "el arte de vestir bien, no consiste en
gastar grandes sumas … para ataviarse con elegancia … solo hacen falta un poco de
paciencia, de buen gusto y de habilidad" (36-37). In other words, as long as middle class
women were willing "no adoptar más que las modas que convienen a la edad, a la figura y a
la condición social," (192) and as long as vestir bien did not exceed the boundaries of the
conventional model of femininity, the bourgeois angel was encouraged and even obliged to
keep up with fashion.

However, if one is to believe that the bourgeois angels followed the advice of Sinués de Marco
and dressed according to their means and social status, how should one understand the
constant criticism in her articles of "el uso de los adornos pomposos, de los colores fuertes,
de las formas extraordinarias en los vestidos" (270)? If fashion did not disrupt the angel of
domesticity's cultural image and fit so well into the traditional representation of gender, how
should one interpret the contradictions in the writings of the neo-Catholic authors, who
urged women to wear "trajes … de forma sencilla y de color modesto" (Sinués de Marco
187) and not to "rendir un culto tan ciego a ese ídolo llamado Moda," [14] while dedicating
long passages in their articles to advertising the latest, "verdaderos modelos de elegancia,"
[15] trying to convince readers that "cuando la Moda ejerce su imperio … no hay más
remedio que aceptar sus órdenes" [16]. How credible was this prescription for bourgeois
simplicity and understated elegance in fashion magazines when flanked by colorful plates
describing the newest seasonal outfits, advertisements of Parisian fabrics and
accoutrements, always available, at a "precio módico," at "el nuevo establecimiento de
Agaudo y Jarto" described by Joaquina García Balmaseda in Correo de la Moda as "un
almacen muy surtido, cuya necesidad se hacía sentir por aquella parte de la población (2)
[17]? And finally, how believable were the words of these women who themselves
succumbed to sartorial temptations inconsistent with their own advice [18]? Rich
contradictions arouse in talking about fashion and in the image of a woman of fashion.
Besides being portrayed as an embodiment of female depravity and moral corruption, the
woman of fashion was represented as both a domesticated woman, always "bien vestida y
bien peinada … agradable a los ojos de … esposo y familia," [19] and as a worldly,
sophisticated shopper, confident "en la elección de las telas y las joyas" [20]. This view of
the fashionable woman, comfortable in the modern world where there was 'tanto que ver y
admirar', showed that the cultural representation of femininity was changing in Spain during
the nineteenth century. While the neo-Catholic writers sought to preserve the traditional
image of the bourgeois angels by praising the cult of domesticity and family, the angels of
domesticity, seduced by the beauty of their fashionable wings, appeared to be escaping their
domestic sanctuaries into a modern world whose shops and window displays of fashionable
goods engendered their desire to move outside the unitary, static image of domesticated
women, submissive wives, and dedicated mothers. Here was an opportunity to transform
their looks, to create and to 'buy' a modern, individuated self.

Rosalía Bringas and the Dream Worlds of Fashion

Let us turn to the literary world of Galdós to examine fashion's role in the artistic
construction of gender in La de Bringas and how the narrative uses sartorial goods to enrich
the cultural images of Rosalía Bringas. Sartorial goods are omnipresent in La de Bringas.
Dispersed throughout the novel, seemingly without purpose and order, the articles of
clothing persistently mark their presence in the story by aggressively invading the domestic
space of the Bringas family. Clothing is the recurring topic of the protagonist's
conversations with Milagros, and, above all, constantly occupies Rosalía's mind. Mute and
meaningless on the surface, clothes convey Rosalía's fantasies and intimate desires for the
unusual. The scenes describing the protagonist before her mirror composing and
recomposing her image from colorful fabrics and fashionable accessories, discussing with
Milagros a new outfit for the coming season, and "haciendo reformas, combinando trapos e
interpretando más o menos libremente lo que traían los figurines" (Galdós 93) [21], show
sartorial goods as a rich source for her aesthetic creativity, material imagination, and
intimate pleasure. However, Rosalía's unseemly passion for "el gros glasé, color cenizas de
rosa," (Galdós 95) "glasé verde naciente," (Galdós 95) or "botones verdes," (Galdós 95) out
of which she creatively invents and puts together her 'look,' plays a bigger role in the novel
beyond merely conveying her private feelings. In fact, by employing exalted religious
rhetoric and euphemism in describing clothing and the protagonist's fascination with it,
Galdós pokes fun at the traditional discourse of domesticity and the conventional image of
bourgeois woman as domestic angels.

Religious rhetoric is introduced early in the novel. We are told that "los regalitos de
Augustín Caballero" (Galdós 92) which Rosalía received in the past, "fueron la fruta cuya
dulzura le quitó la inocencia" (Galdós 93) and that "por culpa de ellos un ángel con espada
de raso … la echó de aquel Paraíso en que Bringas [her husband] la tenía tan sujeta"
(Galdós 93). Through the ironic reference to the Garden of Eden and to the sin of biblical
Eve, the novelist mocks the centuries-old, but nonetheless still current Catholic and neo-
Catholic view equating women's passion for sartorial luxury with sin. By evoking the figure
of the biblical serpent, portrayed ironically as "la serpiente de buena fe," (Galdós 92) the
theme of sin, presented euphemistically as one of "las más peligrosas vanidades que pueden
ahuecar el celebro de una mujer," (Galdós 93) and the expulsion from paradise as the
consequence of the consumption of "la fruta prohibida," (Galdós 92) Galdós parodies the
vocabulary and style of thought characteristic of nineteenth-century conservative
intellectuals [22]. However, if the symbolic expulsion from Paradise of Francisco's wife took
place in Galdós' previous novel, Tormento (1884), in La de Bringas, his angel of domesticity
appears to move even further away from her domestic life. It is worth stressing that Paradise
is also the author's ironic allusion to the commonly-idealized domestic sphere in the
traditional discourse of gender. Although Rosalía is physically present in her home playing
her role of submissive wife and dedicated mother, the happiest times in her life, we are told,
have nothing to do with the intimacy of her house, marriage, or motherhood, but with the
world outside, with clothing and shopping:

Ratos felices eran para Rosalía estos que pasaba con la marquesa discutiendo la forma y manera de
arreglar sus vestidos. Pero el gozo mayor de ella era acompañar a su amiga a las tiendas, aunque
pasaba desconsuelos por no poder comprar las muchísimas cosas buenas que veía. El tiempo se les iba
sin sentirlo (Galdós 97).

In fact, the times she spends with Milagros, talking about the newest fashion, planning to
alter her wardrobe for the season, or shopping, are the only episodes in the novel when
Galdós' protagonist seems to be transformed into a different person. In those few unguarded
moments, Rosalía acts spontaneously. In these instances, she can not cover up her true
feelings. Unintentionally she reveals her genuine fascination, passion, and desire for clothing
to the outside world. Clothing, as critics have observed, gets the attention and affection
throughout the entire story that Rosalía Bringas can not give her husband or her children
(see Aldaraca). Galdós' irony toward the ideal angel of domesticity is also noteworthy in the
description of clothing and Rosalía's passion for it in scenes when the protagonist cares for
her incapacitated spouse. During the crisis of her husband's illness, the author portrays
Rosalía stepping into the role of the perfect wife, full of "hastío verdadero de lujo" (Galdós
205) and "abnegación," (Galdós 205) that is, full of qualities that, by coincidence or not,
echo the model woman depicted centuries earlier by Fray Luis de León. She seems the
ideal angel of domesticity, as once described by Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer in her La
mujer española: Estudios acerca de su educación y facultades intelectuales (1877), eager to
"serve, soothe, nurture, and comfort others" (252):

Ello es que Rosalía, con la agravación del mal de su marido, se acercaba moral y mentalmente a él,
apretando los lazos matrimoniales. […] ¡Y con qué celo le cuidaba! ¡Qué manos las suyas, tan sutiles
para curar! ¡Con qué gracia y arte derramaba el bálsamo de palabras tiernas sobre el espíritu del
enfermo. Él estaba tan agradecido, que no cesaba de alabar a Dios por el bien que le concedía,
inspirando a su compañera aquel admirable sentimiento del deber conyugal (Galdós 205).

But even here Galdós cannot resist parodying the traditional notions of gender. He
lampoons Rosalía's brief moments of self-sacrifice and renunciation of luxury by making her
temporarily blind husband see her not as a woman but as "un ángel" (Galdós 206).
Rosalía's fleeting occasions of extraordinary sacrifice do not extend to putting aside her
finery and "presentarse delante del señor Pez con el empaque casero más prosaico que se
podría imaginar" (Galdós 205). Galdós' irony toward the ideal angel of domesticity
intensifies as he describes his protagonist's 'submission' to her husband's authority. The
influence of the domestic god, as the author ironically calls Francisco de Bringas, who kept
her well under control in their paradise, has been replaced in Rosalía's life for some time now
by the authority of current dogma and contemporary god, that is, fashion and Milagros.
Even though Milagros' authority supposedly does not extend beyond matters of dressing,
nevertheless, we are told from the start that Rosalía "elevó a Milagros en su alma un
verdadero altar," (Galdós 92) that "una palabra de Milagros…era ya cuerpo jurídico para
toda cuestión que ocurriera después," (Galdós 92) and, more importantly, that "[n]adie en
el mundo, ni aun Bringas, tenía sobre la Pipaón ascendiente tan grande como Milagros"
(Galdós 92).

The narrator-commentator's ironic attitude toward Rosalía's passion for sartorial art and the
exalted religious rhetoric used in the novel to describe her frenzy for it, can be easily
misinterpreted as Galdós' critique of female love for (see Jagoe). It is tempting to conclude
from this attitude that the author disapproves of women's consumption of luxury and
condemns the protagonist's spendthrift ways and, thus, should be included in the chorus of
nineteenth-century, conservative intellectuals and social moralists. One also might interpret
the protagonist's delight in finery from the feminist point of view and explain her obsession
with clothing as "a visible manifestation of new and precarious albeit secretly experienced
autonomy" (Aldaraca 52). But does the irony employed in describing clothing and Rosalía's
love for her outfits necessarily express the author's moral approval or disapproval of luxury
and his protagonist's passion for it? Could it also be that Galdós' manner of portraying
Rosalía's unrestrained passion for luxurious attire is his way of portraying a more complex
female subjectivity that in the rapidly-developing modern commodity culture took a different
shape from the traditional representation of femininity encased in the dominant image of an
angel of domesticity?

Galdós' literary portrait of Rosalía de Bringas clearly does not reiterate the characteristics of
a conventional angel of domesticity. Throughout the novel the author mocks not only the
qualities of the angel of domesticity, but also, as noted by Arthur Ramírez, the various
images of angels themselves. Instead, the author's literary portrait of his protagonist takes
on the features of a different angel, a modern angel painted years later by Paul Klee as
Angelus Novus and described by Walter Benjamin as follows:

A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to
move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is
open, his wings are spread […] His face is turned toward the past. [...] A storm is blowing
from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer
close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned.
[…] This storm is what we call progress (257-58).

Like Klee's Angelus Novus, Galdós' protagonist resembles an angel who, while still turning
her face toward tradition and past aesthetic ideals, is already being blown away from her
Paradise by the irresistible storm of the finest commodities and latest innovations, toward the
modern world. The position of Angelus Novus with his face turned toward the past, "as
though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating," immediately
brings to mind the scene of Rosalía during her strolls with Pez, imitating the gestures and
the bearing of the figures from paintings by Rubens, Veronese, and Van Loo that she had
seen earlier in the Royal Palace [23].

El paseo por sitio tan monumental halagaba la fantasía de la dama, trayéndole reminiscencias de
aquellos fondos arquitectónicos que Rubens, Veronés, Vanlóo y otros pintores ponen en sus cuadros,
con lo que magnifican las figuras y les dan un aire muy aristocrático. Pez y Rosalía se suponían
destacados elegantemente sobre aquel fondo de balaustradas, molduras, archivoltas y jarrones,
suposición que, sin pensarlo, les compelía a armonizar su apostura y aun su paso con la majestad de la
escena (Galdós 106).

Just as the draperies of Rubens and Veronese, Baudelaire tells us in "The Painter of Modern
Life" (1863), will not teach the modern artist "how to depict moire antique, satin à la reine or
any other fabric of modern manufacture," (13) neither will they teach Galdós' protagonist
how to compose her looks from the aristocratic manner and style of such figures. For, as
Baudelaire reminds his readers later in the essay, "the gesture and the bearing of the
woman of today give to her dress a life and a special character which are not of the woman of
the past" (13). In order to adopt a new mode of representation, Rosalía must turn to the
current ideals of feminine beauty advertised in women's fashion magazines, displayed and
offered for sale in modern department stores.

Galdós' description of Rosalía's love for sartorial novelties and her frequent visits to Sobrino
Hermanos as well as to other shops in the Madrid of 1868, raises some other intriguing
questions with regard to his novelistic representation of femininity. What roles do the
sartorial goods and the modern commercial world play in Galdós' literary construction of
woman in La de Bringas? How do the nineteenth-century emerging commodity culture and
the cult of consumption influence the artistic representation of gender in his novel?

Galdós' depiction of the commercial world of the Sobrino Hermanos shop and other shops in
La de Bringas brings immediately to mind the literary portrait of the commercial world in
Zola's Au bonheur des dames (1883). Like Zola's fictional Ladies' Paradise, set in Paris
between 1864 and 1869 and modeled on the well-known, nineteenth-century department
store, the Bon Marché, Galdós' Sobrino Hermanos and other stores in La de Bringas, set in
Madrid in 1868, are presented as modern establishments with advanced retailing
techniques. These are the literary representation of nineteenth-century modern department
stores or, as Michael B. Miller once described them, a "fantasy land of colors, sensations,
and dreams" (169) with fixed prices, credit, gallant male attendants, and 'free entry' for
customers to examine the goods on display without obligation [24]. And so from Galdós'
scene of Rosalía buying her shawl in the Sobrino Hermanos store, we learn that she bought
the magnificent garment at the fixed price without bargaining, as she might have done
before. "Preguntó con timidez el precio y no se atrevió a regatearla" (Galdós 98). From the
same episode we also learn that the Sobrino Hermanos shop offered the option of credit, one
of the strongest incentives for Rosalía to buy the expensive shawl: "No se prive usted de
comprarla … No le pasarán a usted la cuenta hasta dentro de algunos meses, a la entrada
del verano, y quizá a fin de año. La idea del largo plazo hizo titubear a Rosalía, inclinando
todo su espíritu del lado de la compra…" (Galdós 99).

When we see Rosalía later on in the novel browsing unchaperoned in "las tiendas
conocidas" (Galdós 243) during the summer, we discover that despite financial worries, she
continues to take advantage of the 'free entry' to the stores. There, the shopkeepers "con
infernal amabilidad" (Galdós 263) would show her "telas diversas y cositas de capricho"
(Galdós 244) and she would fall "en la tentación, unas veces porque se le presentaban
verdaderas gangas, otras porque el género le entraba por el ojo derecho, encendiendo todos
los fuegos de su pasión trapística" (Galdós 244).

However, the shopping episodes from La de Bringas show that, unlike the author of Au
bonheur des dames, Galdós does not spend much time describing modern sales techniques,
the physical dimensions, or even geographic location of the stores [25]. Instead, he
concentrates more on recreating the atmosphere in the shops and the impact of the
commercial world and of the sartorial novelties on his protagonist's outward appearance and
above all, on her emotions and mind. The literary world of modern shops creates a special
mood in Galdós' novel. This differs from the atmosphere in the Madrid shops from the
beginning of the nineteenth century humorously recreated by Carlos Frontaura in Las
tiendas (1826) and by Mesonero Romanos in his social sketches, Panorama matritense
(1835) [26]. The episodes of Rosalía Bringas' frequent escapades "de tienda en tienda"
(Galdós 104) to have a quick look at the newest seasonal merchandise, reflect quite faithfully
the atmosphere of the new commercial world portrayed in Zola's notes for Au bonheur des
dames:

Department stores tend to replace the church. This derives from the religion of body, of beauty, of
flirtation and of fashion. They [women] go there to pass the time as they would in a church: an
occupation, a place where they become excited, where they struggle with their passion for clothes and
their husband's budget, and finally with the whole drama of existence, the above and beyond of beauty
(11).

Indeed, department stores and the cult of novelty seem to replace church and old religion in
La de Bringas by becoming new temples of ecstasy and delight in the female world, temples
to which Galdós' protagonist makes her pilgrimage in order to worship her new deity:
fashion. The modern shop, described by Zola in Au bonheur des dames as "the cathedral of
modern commerce," (275) is in Galdós' narrative a place where, as in church, all pretence to
rationality is abandoned. It is a place where a "woman is both goddess and worshipper at
the altar of fashion," (XV) as Kristin Ross notes in her introduction to Ladies' Paradise, and
where euphoric loss of self through surrender to the cult of novelty is encouraged. Rosalía's
escapades to "dar una vuelta por las tiendas" (Galdós 243) mainly promise genuine
excitement and ecstasy fueled by carefully orchestrated displays of clothes. The need to
frequent the Sobrino Hermanos store and the urge to acquire and consume the content of
"las cajas blancas … donde se archivan los sueños de las damas" (Galdós 98) seem to
replace the need for church and Holy Communion. The act of getting new clothes seems to
relieve the protagonist's sufferings, bestow her with a new body, a new look, and allow her to
leave the new temple of commodity with the perennial promise of becoming a different
person.

Interestingly, the real church is presented in La de Bringas as a "teatro de tercer orden"
(Galdós 134) where the protagonist feels only boredom and despair from the tedious
proceedings. The Maundy Thursday observance at the royal palace is described as a
"comedia palaciega" (Galdós 86) with the characters as actors on stage dressed up in their
pompous costumes clumsily performing pious acts. The elaborate and enticing
surroundings of Sobrino Hermanos shop and other stores, on the other hand, appear in the
novel paradoxically as the only place where the genuine emotions of Galdós' heroine come
alive. The sensations the protagonist experiences from seeing the desired novelty ("en sus
hombros los nervios le sugirieron tan al vivo la sensación del contacto y peso de la
manteleta" {Galdós 98}) or even from imagining a fashionable hat ("[s]intiendo un bulle-
bulle en su cabeza y representándose, con admirable poder de alucinación, el conjunto y las
partes todas del bien descrito sombrero" {Galdós 103}) seem more sincere and natural than
any emotions she might experience before a relic or altar.

It is worth noting that as early as 1879, women's intoxication with commodities and their
behavior in the elegant, seductive surroundings of department stores intrigued not only
writers but also psychiatrists such as Charles Lasègue, Legrand du Saulle, Paul Dubuisson,
and Roger Dupouy. In his studies on female shoplifting in Parisian department stores,
Legrand du Saulle drew attention to the dream-like atmosphere of the stores in which
women could live out their fantasies of effortless consumption. By describing the sensuous,
boudoir-like aura of these store interiors, the French psychiatrist identified it as an ideal
condition and, in effect, a cause of women's unpremeditated, almost savage impulse to seize
the luxury goods on display. In his essay, "Hystériques," (1883) du Saulle observed the
following with respect to the behavior of female shoppers:

These immense galleries, as freely accessible to the idle in search of distractions or adventures as to
serious shoppers, enclose and expose…the richest cloths, the most luxurious dress articles, the most
seductive superfluities. Women of all sorts, drawn to these elegant surroundings by instincts native to
their sex, fascinated by so many rash provocations, dazzled by the abundance of trinkets and laces, find
themselves overtaken by a sudden, unpremeditated, almost savage impulse (qtd. in Miller 437).

At the turn of the century, women's intoxication with commodities and shoplifting, codified
as a "modern disease," (52) as pointed out by Rita Felski, continued to be a popular
research topic for psychiatrists. In 1902, Paul Dubuisson dedicated an entire book, Les
voleuses de grands magasins (Department Store Thieves), to the study of kleptomania in
bourgeois women. Dubuisson interviewed many respectable middle-class women of leisure
who would describe their experiences of shopping in the Parisian department stores, their
visual seduction by luxurious commodities on display, and their thirst for possession as
follows:

Once plunged into the sensuous atmosphere of the grand magasin, as told …by a very respectable
provincial lady recently arrived in Paris and whose first outing had been a double visit to the Bon
Marché and the Louvre, I felt myself overcome little by little by a disorder that can only be compared to
that of drunkenness, with the dizziness and excitation that are peculiar to it. I saw things as if through a
cloud, everything stimulated my desire and assumed for me, an extraordinary attraction. (…) It was
like a monomania of possession (qtd. in Miller 413).

Others, in their interviews in 1905 with Dubuisson's colleague, Roger Dupoy, likened their
attraction to sartorial goods to fetishistic fantasies: "When I grab some silk, then I am just as
if I were drunk. I tremble…I only think of one thing: to go into the corner where I can rustle
it at my ease, which gives me voluptuous sensations even stronger than those I feel with the
father of my children" (qtd. in Miller 413). Regardless of the discrepancies in psychiatrists'
opinions as to whether nineteenth-century women's intoxication with commodities and
shoplifting was linked to hysteria, monomania, or fetishism, the fact is that these
explanations contributed significantly to the already popular image of women as insatiable
shoppers, unable to resist the lure of commodities or to control their waves of desire.
Meanwhile, the act of consumption and women's excitement and fascination with sartorial
luxuries were commonly compared to sexual experience and were attributed almost
exclusively to female displacement of erotic fantasies and desires.

The erotic driven nature of female consumption is, in fact, still the most popular
interpretation among literary critics of Rosalía's obsession with sartorial items and her
experience of shopping in the Sobrino Hermanos. Referring to the protagonist's act of
buying the exquisite shawl in the Sobrino Hermanos, Peter Bly suggests that the
"physiological details of Rosalía's reactions…clearly point to a physical experience akin to
orgasm" (59). In the opinion of Akiko Tsuchiya, the protagonist's physical sensations, as
she tries on clothing at the store, "could be interpreted as those of sexual arousal" (38).
According to Bridget Aldaraca, the intensity of Rosalía's desire "to possess the fabulous
cape elevates her to a state of physical sensibility" (51) that could be only compared to "the
first shy kiss of two passionate lovers" (51). However, by overemphasizing the sexualized
representation of Rosalía's passion for luxurious goods and by dwelling on the erotic
pleasure she derives from buying things, critics seem to focus more on the protagonist's
bodily reaction and less on the role that the sartorial goods play in the act of consumption
and ultimately in her character's cultural image. In other words, by devoting more attention
to Rosalía's sexuality than to the features of the desired objects, most critics miss out on the
intricate, intimate relationship between the protagonist and the rich, material world of
sartorial artifacts that enhances the complex, creative nature of her persona [27]. According
to Arjun Appadurai, we tend to regard "the world of things as inert and mute, set in motion
and animated…only by persons and their words" (4) and to forget that objects in
conjunction with the human body represent very complex cultural meanings [28]. Things
have their own cultural biographies, mini-histories that, besides the obvious, convey more
subtle meanings and "make salient," as pointed out by Igor Kopytoff, "what otherwise
remains obscure" (67). Cultural artifacts, especially clothes, are "congealed memories of
the daily life of times past,"(Wilson 1) carriers of images, ideas, and "the moral and aesthetic
feelings of their time" (Baudelaire 2). They are, as Carmen Burgos once wrote, "como
viejas ruinas que nos hablan de otros amores, de otras alegrías, de otras juventudes que
pasaron y que nos conmueven y nos asustan un poco" (29).

By describing Rosalía dazzled by the allure of goods inside and outside the stores while she
wanders, like Baudelaire's flâneur, aimless and unhurried along the streets, drawing
pleasure from the window displays, Galdós surely explores his heroine's voyeuristic
relationship to commodities:

Pensando en estos y otros planes, recorría despacio las calles…deteníase ante los escaparates de modas
y de joyería, y hacía mil cálculos sobre la probabilidad más o menos remota de poseer algo de lo mucho
valioso y rico que veía (Galdós 244).

Just as the gaze of Baudelaire's stroller is not the stare of an indifferent pedestrian, but the
look of a passionate spectator absorbing his surroundings, the stare of Galdós' protagonist at
the shop windows of fashion is unambiguously a look beset with longing and lacking,
distance and desire. It is clear that Rosalía's eye is not, to borrow the expression from the
nineteenth-century dress artist, Charles Blanc, simply "a passive organ of sensation," but
rather "the pupil of judgment and feeling" (50). It is also obvious that the sartorial fripperies
she sees in the window displays, on the tailor's dummies, in the fashion magazines, or
described to her by Milagros are not simple, lifeless objects in her eyes. Instead, Rosalía's
enthralled gaze reveals that the luxurious fabrics that mesmerize her with the limitless
variety and diversity of their textures and colors seem to possess her and to hold her by their
allure of appropriation. Thus, the attractiveness of sartorial goods in Galdós' novel can be
compared, as the critics already noted, to the charms of a lover that rekindle new passions
and desires in Bringas' wife:

…los ojos se le iban tras de las originales telas, y más aún tras de los admirables modelos
colocados en los maniquís. En fichús, encajes, manteletas, camisetas, pellizas estaban allí
las Mil y una noches de los trapos (Galdós 263-64).

However, by taking a closer look at the protagonist deriving enormous pleasure not only
from getting the desired items, but also from daydreaming about them, altering them
artistically in her head, and visualizing herself wearing them, one wonders what these
fashionable dream-designs mean [29]. What do these combinations, spawned ceaselessly in
Rosalía's head out of the profusion of colorful laces, ribbons, and luxurious fabrics and never
described as a complete outfit, but instead as a series of elusive, fragmentary images, convey
to us about the author's artistic construction of female subjectivity?

Rosalía's resistance to her husband's request that she wears the same old thing every day
and her growing desire for a new mode of representation, embodied in the passion for
creating, if only in her imagination, forever new, always à la mode, dream-designs, carry a
symbolic meaning in the novel. The aesthetic qualities of these rapidly changing, always
incomplete, fashion designs are used in La de Bringas as a metaphor. They are an artistic
reflection of the transitory, transformative image of a woman depicted in a literary context of
the fragmentary, chaotic motion of modern life. The finely drawn details of Rosalía's dresses,
the vast array of textile colors: "un bies estrecho de glasé verde" (Galdós 95) and "unas
veinte varas de poplín azul marino" (Galdós 120), serve Galdós as references to modern
inventions, contrivances that give his protagonist an opportunity to compose her appearance
with a "capacidad camaleónica de transformación" (Delgado 39). Thanks to the discovery
of aniline dyes in 1856 by the English industrial chemist, William Henry Perkin, "emerald
green as well as brilliant purples and pinks, and 'azuline' blue of a garishness never seen
today, were the most popular shades" (Gernsheim 54) in fashion during the sixties. As a
result, the colors of female outfits are described as "outrageously crude," (19) by the French
philosopher and art historian, Hippolyte Taine during his walks in London's Hyde Park.
Women were wearing them, in the opinion of the nineteenth-century English dress artist,
Marry Merrifield, "without reference to … the complexion of the wearer" (55) [30].
Likewise, the rich assortment of fabrics and accessories in the novel, such as "unas
veinticuatro varas de Mozambique," (Galdós 119) "unas veinticuatro varas de Bareges,"
(Galdós 123) or "cintas de mil clases, plumas, marabús egretas, penachos, amazonas, toques,
alones, colibrises, esprís," (Galdós 182) constitute the author's allusion to the rapid
production and the availability of the newest clothing items. Through them, Galdós refers to
the increased accessibility and popularity of foreign novelties in Spain, thanks to the railroads
and to the new free-trade tariff schedule policy, introduced in 1869 by the Spanish Finance
Minister, Laureano Figuerola [31]. They are the novelist's allusion to the prominence of a
new trend in women's attire, described by Carlos Soldevila as” trajes compuestos de tejidos
distintos: los cuerpos … de uno, las faldas de otro y la sobrefalda de un tercero … El prurito
combinatorio [in which]…las cenafas, galones, y demás adornos agregaban coloridos y
muestras al conjunto, que tendía al contraste y al abigarramiento” (44-45).

But if the variety of colors, fabrics, and patterns made modern female outfits look like a
"patchwork quilt," (190) to borrow the expression of the British costume historian, James
Laver, these highly elaborate, fancy, patchwork quilts were clearly the products of women's
free interpretation rather than their passive imitation of fashion plate designs. As a result, it
became impossible to describe women's dresses exactly, according to an anonymous writer
for the fashion magazine, The Young Englishwoman (1876):

the skirts are draped so mysteriously, the arrangement of trimmings is usually one-sided and the
fastenings are so curiously contrived that if I study any particular toilette for even a quarter of an hour
the task of writing down how it is all made remains hopeless (qtd. in Laver 190).

In addition, as observed by the French fashion historian, Octave Uzanne, in looking at
Parisian fashion in the 1860's, "[t]he more wild and mad and utterly improbable a woman's
dress became the more reasonably she might expect to hear herself proclaimed the reigning
queen of fashion" (135). One might say that the new fascination with originality in dressing
and boldness in style indicated that in the modern era, as noticed by Gilles Lipovetsky,
things were no longer loved and valued "for themselves or for the social status" (147) they
conferred, but rather for the novelty and pleasure they gave.

It must be emphasized that, in the literary world of La de Bringas, neither slavishly-faithful
descriptions nor the historically-accurate portrayals of the heroine's costumes are of much
concern to Galdós, since "el novelista necesita," as Carmen Burgos once wrote, "no copiar,
sino estilizar la moda en sus creaciones" (49) [32]. Nevertheless, the author's depiction of
Rosalía's outfits, comprised of continuously changing combinations of fabrics and colors, and
presented as a succession of fragmentary, heterogeneous images, brilliantly captures his
main character's infatuation with novelty, her quest for new modes of representation, and her
intoxication with sensation and modern novelties. The protagonist's love for stylish
appearance and her endless reinvention of herself through the kaleidoscope of new attire,
seen traditionally by literary critics as indicators of her social aspiration, accentuate, in fact,
not so much her docile imitation of others, but rather her own talented imagination,
resourcefulness, and enjoyment of self-invention. Furthermore, Rosalía's "público alarde de
su vestido mozambique" (Galdós 185) heightens her pride in her ingenuous creations and
underscores her delight in converting them to spectacle. Although the rich combinations of
colors, fabrics, and the vast array of fancy accouterments adorning Rosalía's body seem to
be placed in the novel in order to present the protagonist in light of the popular nineteenth-
century image of a woman as a spectacle and commodity, they neither turn her into an
object, as argued recently by Tubert, nor do they epitomize her fragmented and dispersed
subjectivity. The scene describing Rosalía Bringas diligently contriving her toilette before
receiving Pez emphasizes not only her verve and ingenuity for improvising a desired image
out of sartorial novelties, but also shows that, instead of taking on the character of a "strolling
commodity," (Benjamin 367), an object passively exposed to the male gaze, it is Rosalía who
actively "takes the concept of market-ability itself for a stroll" (Benjamin 448).
The dynamically changing looks of Galdós' protagonist based on her talent for making
diverse images out of her wardrobe and the calculated manner of presenting her adorned
self to Pez challenge the idea of a woman as an object commodified by fashion. The larger
point is the notion of femininity as an ongoing gender performance. The descriptions of
Francisco Bringas' wife, first during her walks with Pez ("cargada con un ramo de lilas, el
velo un poco echado atrás" {Galdós 126}), and then, on another encounter, as
"elegantísima…con su bata grosella, adornada de encajes, abanicándose" (Galdós 173)
suggest that dressing well is not only part of her visual representation but also an aspect of
her well-staged seduction technique. The fan, for example, is not merely an exquisite
accessory in Rosalía's attire, but rather, as Charles Blanc once wrote, a "formidable weapon
of coquetry" (194), a displacement of speech in the gracefully performed game of flirtation.
The fan in Galdós' protagonist's hands "para atenuar el vivísimo calor que a su epidermis
salía" (Galdós 174) while listening to Pez's blarney works not only to enhance her feminine
appeal but also to engage in a flirtatious dialogue with her admirer. Blanc expresses this
'language' as follows:

For a Spaniard all the intrigues of love, all the maneuvers of flirtation, are hidden in the folds of her fan.
The shy audacity of her looks, her venturous words, her hazardous avowals, half uttered, half dying on
the lips, all are hidden by the fan, which appears to forbid while it encourages, to intercept whilst it
conveys (195-96) [33].

Similarly, the train of Rosalía's elegant dress, sweeping along the clean paving stones …
while she goes for a walk round the terrace, functions, not just as a descriptive detail of her
outfit, but also as part of her coquettish demeanor. The fashionable long train of Rosalía
Bringas' dress following discreetly, as does Manuel Pez, her plump body is, to use Maureen
Turim's term, another "storytelling wardrobe" (222) that, in conjunction with the main
character's seductive bearing, articulates her subtle invitation to her future lover's romantic
endeavors. Galdós' emphasis on Rosalía's pleasure in dressing and undressing, her delight
in adorning herself with fashionable accoutrements, and her willingness to take them off "to
the highest bidder," (Labanyi 160) does not aim to turn her into a powerless object,
subjugated to the male gaze. The scene of Rosalía going through the list of potential lovers,
watching them in the Prado, examining "las condiciones pecuniarias de cada uno," (Galdós
258) shows that she is a creative producer and adept performer of her own spectacle.

Finally, the profusion of sartorial items in the novel has little to do with "la fragmentación y
dispersión de la subjetividad de Rosalía" (Tubert 386). After all, as pointed out by Noël
Valis, "[n]either Rosalía de Bringas nor any other character in this novel is given over to self-
reflection" (167). Hence, the maze of ribbons, feathers, laces, and other fashionable
ornaments, never composed into a complete outfit but instead dispersed into many
fragments, serves Galdós as artistic means to capture the fragmentary, elusive images of his
protagonist and to depict, like Baudelaire in "The Painter of Modern Life," the transient,
modern character of feminine beauty.

Galdós is one of the few Spanish writers of his time, who, to use Carmen Burgos' phrase,
"poniendo … aquí un pliegue, allí una gasa, más allá un tul," (66) was able to create out of
his protagonist "un figurín nuevo de arte, audaz, sin patrón … de todos los tiempos, para
que no envejezca jamás su novela" (Burgos 48). However, it is not enough to say that the
fashionable artifacts in this novel serve only to provide the reader with aesthetic pleasure.
Fashion in La de Bringas is more than what Elizabeth Wilson once called, "a snapshot of
time, passing mood and fleeting moment made permanent in the fixative of color, line, and
surface" (33). The mosaic-like appearance of the protagonist's outfits, the constantly
changing and shifting fragments of her clothing convey, besides the plasticity of her
character, the notion of the impossibility of framing her in a single image. Hence, the
fragmentary images of Galdós' protagonist created out of the labyrinth of garments and
presented in the form of erratic montages of fabrics, colors, and styles suggest that she is,
like Benjamin's modern metropolis, "a sprawling entity marked by discontinuity,
dislocation, and fragmentation … with no possibility of any overarching perspective, no
definitive view of the whole" (Gilloch 182). Like Benjamin's modern city described as a
"multi-faceted entity, a picture puzzle that eludes any unequivocal decipherment," (Gilloch
169-70) the main character is presented as a montage of unexpected and ephemeral
combinations of fragments that resists encapsulation in the traditional image of gender and
escapes any one-dimensional, clear-cut interpretation.

However, the importance of the mosaic-like appearance of fashionable artifacts in La de
Bringas lies not only in the images they produce with respect to the representation of
gender. The plethora of sartorial images conjured from the bewildering array of clothing
articles accentuate, along with Galdós' fascination with the permanent transitoriness of his
protagonist's existence her persona as a work in progress. She is half ephemeral and
fleeting, half an eternal and immutable work of art. She is the essence and dynamic style of
modernity. Just as Benjamin captured the spirit of modernity in describing the modern city,
Galdós did so in depicting his main character's fashionable attire. Similar to Benjamin's
metropolis with its "mass of diverse artefacts and distractions," (Gilloch 103), Galdós'
literary outfits with their mass of "cosas de tanta novedad y buen gusto" (182) reflect "a site
of the perpetual stimulation, the intoxication of the modern" (Gilloch 103). As for Benjamin,
the modern city is a dream world of modernity, the setting for and the product of fantasies,
the place where "edifices and the objects … are utopian wish-images frozen representations
… of genuine wants and aspirations that remain unfulfilled or thwarted," (Gilloch 105) so for
Galdós, fashion is a dream world of modernity in La de Bringas. In this world, the different
materials and bits of fabrics, the strips and pieces of glasé, the "veinticuatro varas de
Mozambique…bonita y vaporosa tela que la Pipaón, en sueños, veía todas las noches sobre
sus carnes" (Galdós 119) are the key components of the protagonist's fantasies, literally the
materialized expression of her frustrated aspirations, unfulfilled ambitions, and desires.
Lastly, like Benjamin's city with 'its swirling, buffeting crowds, its swift and compelling
tempo, its rude encounters and intrusive distractions', Galdós' fashion, described in La de
Bringas as constellations of motifs from past and present, as a montage of "mil especies de
arreos diversos, los unos antiguos, retocados o nuevos los otros, todo a medio hacer…"
(Galdós 119), presents itself as a locus of the ever-new and always-the-same, the illusion of
progress and change, the beauty of modernity.

Notes

[1] See Montesinos, Palley, and Jagoe as cited in the bibliography.

[2] For more information on the image of a woman of fashion in the writings of the Spanish
Renaissance and Baroque moralists and social commentators, see Vigíl. For the association
between the eighteenth-century women's attraction to luxury and moral depravity, see
Aldaraca, Bridget A. El Ángel del Hogar: Galdós and the Ideology of Domesticity in Spain.
Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1991. 96-
102.

[3] In Las Modas from 1728, Feijoo described fashion as a threat to economic prosperity in
the following way: "Antes el gusto mandaba en la moda, ahora la moda manda en el gusto
[…] la moda se ha hecho un dueño tirano […] que cada día pone nuevas leyes para sacar
cada día nuevos tributos; pues cada nuevo uso que introduce es un nuevo impuesto sobre las
haciendas. No se trajo cuatro días el vestido, cuando es preciso arrimarle como inútil, y sin
estar usado, se ha de condenar como viejo. Antes la nueva invención esperaba que los
hombres se disgustasen de la antecedente, y a que gustasen lo que se había arreglado a
ella. Atendíase al gusto y se excusaba el gasto: ahora todo se atropella. Se aumenta infinito
el gasto, aun sin contemplar el gusto" (67).

[4] Concepción Gimeno Flaquer, "A las sacerdotisas de la moda," La Mujer, July 24, 1871, 3.

[5] Emilia Pallares, "Privilegios de la moda," Ellas, 6, October 30, 1851, 47.

[6] Emilia Pallares, "Revista de modas," Ellas, 5, October 23, 1851, 35.

[7] Author unknown, "Modas," Mariposa, 45, April 16, 1840, 122.

[8] María del Pilar Sinués de Marco, "La mujer española," El ángel del hogar, August 8,
1866, 225-26.

[9] Francisca Carlota del Riego Pica, "La moda," Violeta, 4, December 28, 1862, 4.

[10] Fernando Garrido, "El lujo," El Nuevo Pensil de Iberia, 2, October 20,1857, 1.

[11] Author unknown, "La mujer elegante," Mariposa, 25, November 28, 1839, 108.

[12] Concepción Gimeno Flaquer, "A las sacerdotisas de la moda," La Mujer, July 24, 1871, 2.

[13] María del Pilar Sinués de Marco, "La mujer española," El ángel del hogar, August 8,
1866, 225-26.

[14] Concepción Gimeno Flaquer, "A las sacerdotisas de la moda," La Mujer, July 24, 1871, 3.

[15] Joaquina García Balmaseda, "Revista de Modas," Correo de la Moda, 37, October 2,
1874, 1.

[16] Joaquina García Balmaseda, "Revista de Modas," Correo de la Moda, 9,March 2, 1874, 1.

[17] Joaquina García Balmaseda, "Revista de Modas," Correo de la Moda, 1, January 2, 1874,
2.

[18] Notably, many of the neo-Catholic writers were founders, co-founders, owners, and
editors of the most popular fashion magazines for women. María del Pilar Sinués de Marco
founded El ángel del hogar, Faustina Sáez de Melgar was owner and editor of La Violeta,
and Angela Grassi was editor of El Correo de la Moda. Joaquina García Balmaseda was in
charge of the fashion section in several fashion magazines and newspapers in which she
regularly described the newest Parisian outfits for the season. Judging by the content of
these magazines, and especially the detailed descriptions of fashionable outfits, itis
reasonable to conclude that these women were not only very knowledgeable about fashion
but that they themselves enjoyed fashion as well. For more about these writers and their
writings on fashion, see Antología de la prensa periódica isabelina escrita por mujeres (1843-
1894). Ed. Iñigo Sánchez LIama. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Cádiz,
2001 and Andreu, Alicia. "Arte y consumo: Angela Grassi y El Correo de la Moda." Nuevo
Hispanismo 1 (1982): 123-135.

[19] María del Pilar Sinués de Marco, "La mujer inglesa," El ángel del hogar, September 16,
1866, 249-51.

[20] Joaquina García Balmaseda, "Revista de Modas," Correo de la Moda, 37, October 2,
1874, 1.

[21] All referenced given to La de Bringas 1884, Ed. Alda Blanco and Carlos Blanco
Aguinaga (Madrid: Catedra, 1985).

[22] See, for example, Fisas, Carlos. La doncella cristiana. 1874. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés,
1998. 66-72.

[23] The author's choice of the artists mentioned in this episode is not coincidental.
Veronese and Rubens represent artistic styles that are reflected in the description of
ornament in the novel. Paolo Veronese represents the Venetian school of painters who
preferred ornamental art that is sensuality over reason, dazzle over effect, color over line, and
ornament over severity. Rubens represents the Dutch style of painting, which is known for
the association of the feminine with ornamental detail and the sublimation of the prosaic that
is the transformation of an insignificant object into an art object. For more on these painters
and their manner of incorporating ornamental details in their works, see Schor, Naomi.
Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine. New York: Methuen,
1987. 11-42.

[24] For more information on nineteenth-century department stores and modern
commercial techniques of retailing, see Miller, Michael. The Bon Marché. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981 and Bowlby, Rachel. Just Looking. New York: Methuen,
1985. 1-18.

[25] It is worth noting that, unlike in other his novels, Galdós does not provide any specifics
regarding the location of the Sobrino Hermanos store. For more information on the
commercial world in Galdós' narrative, see Pla, Carlos. El Madrid de Galdós. Madrid:
Avapiés, 1987. 67-89.

[26] It is interesting to compare the humorous description of sales assistants and female
customers in these authors who poke fun at the women's lack of knowledge of fashion and
the dishonest, simple sales techniques in the shops, to the description of the more
sophisticated customers and shopkeepers in La de Bringas.

[27] I am indebted to Noël Valis' work for this understanding of the significance of things in
La de Bringas. For Valis, "is not so much the purchase or possession of things themselves
but the complex and sometimes unpredictable relationship with things that paradoxically
adds to the human dimensions of the nineteenth-century texts and culture" (147).

[28] Appadurai's comment on the world of things is drawn from Mauss, Marcel. The Gift.
New York: Norton, 1976.

[29] The nexus of imagination and materiality in La de Bringas has been discussed at
length by Valis, Noël. The Culture of Cursilería. Bad Taste, Kitsch, and Class in Modern
Spain. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002. 139-78.

[30] On women's fashion in the 1860's, see Uzanne, Octave. Fashion in Paris. The Various
Phases of Feminine Taste and Aesthetics from 1797 to 1897. Trans. Lady Mary Loyd.
London: Heinemann, 1898. 127-46.

[31] On the Laureano Figuerola's free-trade policy of 1869 and its effects on the importation
of foreign textiles into Spain, see Vicens Vives, Jaime. An Economic History of Spain. Trans.
Frances M. López-Morillas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. 702-12.

[32] The chronological inaccuracies of dress designs in La de Bringas are discussed in Bly,
Peter. Pérez Galdós: La de Bringas. London: Grant & Cutler, 1981. 52.

[33] For more information on the fan as a feminine adornment and its meaning in
nineteenth-century Spain, see Valis, Noël. The Culture of Cursilería. Bad Taste, Kitsch, and
Class in Modern Spain. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002. 88-117.

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Dorota Heneghan,
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Shopping Angel:
Fashion, Gender, and Modernity in Galdós' La de Bringas

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