Our Friend Manso: the education of Manso

Our Friend Manso
Benito Pérez Galdós
Translation by Robert Russell
Columbia University Press, 1987
ISBN 0-231-0604-7

Previous posts on Our Friend Manso:

I do not exist: on Manso’s special status
The education novel: from a “simple and pleasant story” to instruction
Female characters and the education of women: searching for the golden mean

The same perverse friend who had brought me into the world took me out of it, repeating the same magic words he’d said way back then, and also the diabolical sorcery of the bottle, the drop of ink, and the burnt paper which had preceded my incarnation.

“My dear fellow,” I said to him, “will you please have done with me once and for all and take back this mortal flesh you’ve put me into just for your own amusement? It’s not the least bit amusing to me…!”

As he let me slip from between his fingers, the serenity I felt made me realize that I was no longer a man. (page 258, ellipses in original)

The irony lies in the fact that a) Manso, in self-confession, was never a real man, just a character in a novel, and b) even as a character Manso wasn’t much of a man. Galdós telegraphs the last fact since “manso” means docile or meek, a fitting description for Máximo Manso. Even though he is an excellent narrator, Manso turns out to be a poor author of his fictional life in a tale where there is little separation between art and reality. Even though the novel highlights the idea that fictional characters aren’t in the real world, it also reinforces the belief that the logic and laws that govern fiction do not differ from reality.

Manso is a poor author of his own life inside the novel because he fails to fully participate in it. While everyone respects his professional work, his insistence on avoiding many aspects of life isolates him from much that makes the other characters human. Even though Manso sets things in motion to lead to a happy ending for most of the characters, he has marginalized himself in most every context. Supporting this marginalization lies a demonstration (by the “author,” not Manso) that there is no place for a man of honor and principle in (then) modern-day Spain.

In a novel focusing on education, Manso’s epiphany represents, possibly, the most education a character receives in the novel. During his epiphany, Manso identifies the reason for the problem with his passion for Irene—it was based on ideals, not reality:

What had happened to that repose and marvelous equilibrium of the North European woman I had seen in her? In those fine qualities, as in others, I had got the notion that she was, among all the creatures I had seen on earth, the most perfect. Oh, those perfections were in my books, they were the product of my penchant for thinking and synthesizing, and of my too-frequent dealings with an idea of unity and with the great laws of that deadly gift for perceiving archetypes and not persons.

Without a doubt, it’s a Cervantean resolution in a Cervantean world, where Manso’s idealism gets in the way of reality. In addition to Irene’s beauty, manner, and bearing, her education and (apparent) interest in books and learning attract Manso to her. Once he sets his ideals aside, reality turns out to be much more interesting for him:

My new affliction consisted of having a vision of her bereft of all the perfections in which my ideas had clothed her, and in realizing I found her more interesting and loved her more this new way. In a word, I reached the point of feeling a burning idolization of her. A strange contradiction! When she was perfect, I loved her in a Petrachan way, with cold sentimental feeling that might have inspired me to write sonnets. Now that she was imperfect, I adored her with a new and tumultuous affection, stronger than I and all my philosophizing. (page 227)

At one point in the novel, Manso stands admiring the portraits hanging in Doña Cándida’s living room. Both pictures depict shipwrecks, which highlight the shipwreck of his life and his ideals. Unfortunately for Manso, his realization came too late to assist in his passion for Irene—she was about to be married to his former student, Manuel. Perhaps if he had been more of a real man…OK, a fictional real man…things might have turned out differently between Manso and Irene. But in a wonderful little novel highlighting the distance between the fiction and real life, Galdós emphasizes the real-life logic that novels follow to appear realistic.

Our Friend Manso: female characters and the education of women

All quotes are from the 1987 Columbia University Press edition, translation by Robert Russell.

The author of Our Friend Manso told his character Manso that he wanted to write a novel “dealing with the great subject matter of Education.” There is a lot of education and teaching that goes on in the novel, both formally in a classroom or private room and informally through Manso and the author. Galdós includes some thoughts on women’s education in this mix while providing (once again) some strong female characters.

Manso assumes responsibility for providing books to Irene, an acquaintance’s niece. Later he finds out she has gone to Normal School (the Women's Central Normal School) and earned a teacher’s certificate. (Note in this chapter of Catherine Jagoe’s book Ambiguous Angels: Gender in the Novels of Galdós highlights the important difference between the Women's Central Normal School and the more rigorous School for Governesses during the setting of the novel.) Irene becomes the governess of Manso’s nieces and nephew and she shares with Manso a similar view on women’s education: there should be a certain level to avoid ignorance and superstition but not become “full-fledged professionals, exercising the callings proper only to men.” The secret here, as elsewhere, “is in finding a golden mean.” (pages 64, 65) That fits in nicely with Manso’s other maxims that seek a conservative, middle-of-the-road approach on everything. The widow in Manso’s building, Doña Javiera, prefers the old-fashioned approach: “I don’t like people with book-learning. A woman with a degree—how disgusting! Book-learning is for the men; wits, for the women.” (page 239)

Near the end of the novel Irene confesses that she hates books, teaching, and anything else associated with education. While this is the opposite of everything Manso believes in for himself and men, it’s difficult to tell just how he, the implied author, and Galdós feel education for women. The conclusion at the end of the chapter linked above by Catherine Jagoe summarizes the ambivalence well:

The implied author is deliberately ambivalent on the issue of women's education. The narrative seems to be progressive but undermines the bases of that progressiveness, as if disclaiming the position it seems to take. The self-referential elements of the novel, not integrated into the central body of the narrative but contained instead in a metafictional frame at the beginning and end, nevertheless have the effect of creating a mocking elusiveness, warning us not to extrapolate the author's position on women's education. The narrator tells us that the whole affair is a creation of the author's mind, a "trabajillo de poco aliento" (a trivial bit of work) and not the ultimate masterpiece on education which he had been planning… .Nonetheless, it is an undeniable and telling cultural coincidence that in the very year that Albareda's educational reforms raised in an unprecedented way the issue of women's right to secondary and higher education in her own right and not just as a future mother or wife, Galdós should create a narrative featuring a woman [Irene] given all the educational opportunities of the time, who confesses that her career bores her and turns thankfully back to wifedom, and motherhood.

Another reading of it, although probably a more modern interpretation, is that Irene has the freedom to choose what she wants to do. The novel’s ambiguity is compounded because Manso is mistaken about many things throughout the novel, most importantly his understanding of Irene. His mistakes don’t mean that all his beliefs are undermined but they do cast doubt on their suitability.

Irene is an unreal character for most of the book because Manso doesn’t understand her, describing her in ideal form until his education takes hold (more detail in the planned next post). Other female characters are much fuller developed. Irene’s aunt, Señora de Garcia Grande (Doña Cándida), starts out as a sadly amusing leech, cadging Manso for funds before attaching herself to his brother’s family. After Doña Cándida’s husband dies, the “sort of man who wearies neither posterity nor fame,” the widow continues her spendthrift nature trying to emulate the aristocracy/upper classes without the means. Manso warns his brother’s family on the nature of Doña Cándida:

“Nothing is enough for her: the more she has the more she wants. Her hunger has been satisfied and now she longs for certain comforts she didn’t have before. Give her those comforts and she’ll want luxuries next. Give her luxury, and she’ll be after opulence. She’s insatiable.” (page 109-10)

This common theme in Galdós of the middle-class going broke while striving to emulate the upper classes isn’t limited to Doña Cándida in the novel. Manuel, Manso’s student, has been courting the Pez sisters but he quickly sours on them. He sees their unappeasable appetites for things leading to larger damaging outcomes:

“People talk about young men and how corrupted they are, and how alienated they are from their families; they say that we have antidomestic tendencies because we’ve been students frequented cafés and casinos. But, what about the girls? The maidens of our Latin countries are so frivolous and spoiled and enamored of false refinement that they can hardly be counted on to shape the families of the future. What’s going to come of it? The destruction of the family, a society based on atomistic individualism, a wild pluralism without harmony or unit, the power of the nation in the hands of women…?” (page 88, ellipsis in original)

Manuel’s forecast may seem exaggerated at the moment but later in the novel Doña Cándida all but prostitutes Irene to Manso’s brother in order to secure better living conditions. [Aside: Doña Cándida is a character in The Spendthrifts (La de Bringas) published two years after Our Friend Manso. Another spendthrift, Doña Milagros, the Marquesa de Tellería, has a cameo in this novel but will have a more substantial role in the later novel.]

Manso’s sister-in-law Lica turns out to be a disaster of a different sort. Brought back from Cuba by Manso’s brother, her household devolves into anarchy as the parents avoid responsibility. Manso recommends Irene as the children’s governess which helps bring some order in the household. After the birth of a child, Lica chooses to bring in a wet nurse instead of breastfeed the baby herself. This choice leads to a similar outcome as the earlier anarchy resulting from abdication of responsibility in disciplining the children—control of the household passes to the wet nurse. It also leads to a depressingly hilarious chapter (Chapter 33) as Manso attempts to find a wet nurse for the family, inspecting the the “mammiferous squadron” being examined for certification at the Provincial Government Building.

From the older generation there is one balanced female: the widow Doña Javiera. Manso’s neighbor, she asks the professor to instruct her son. It’s clear she knows a lot about Manso but he assumes she has no amorous intentions toward him. Like so much else in the novel it’s difficult to if he’s correct in his evaluation. Doña Javiera manages her husband’s butcher shop expertly after his death (of an intestinal blockage at the age of 50…I couldn’t help but think Galdós meant that as a gag). Her devotion to her son isn’t completely selfless—she expects great things for him and that she will benefit as well. Part of the humor at the end comes from the lingering class consciousness (detailed in the previous post) she and Doña Cándida display at the planned marriage between Manuel and Irene. Doña Javiera believes marrying a governess limits what her son will achieve. Doña Cándida reconciles that Manuel comes from a butcher’s family but thinks she is too good for Doña Javiera.

What leads me to believe Manso's error in his evaluation of Doña Javiera’s intentions toward him (besides her changing clothes in front of him) is his ability to sway her to accepting Irene. It wouldn’t be the only time Manso is incorrect. For a novel on education, it turns out the narrator has the most to learn…

Our Friend Manso: the education novel

All quotes are from the 1987 Columbia University Press edition, translation by Robert Russell.

So how does an author approach writing a novel “dealing with the great subject matter of Education”? One of the reasons the author chose Máximo Manso’s “simple and pleasant story” to buy involves Manso’s role as a professor who studies and practices philosophy. Through Manso the author is able to highlight some of his beliefs on how a life should be lived as well as the state of things in Spain. Because of some of Manso’s blind spots, too, the author can also let the reader draw his own conclusions on how valid these beliefs are.

After meeting Doña Javiera in front of their building after a fire alarm goes off, Manso agrees to educate her son Manuel. He takes Manuel, not a very serious student at first, and molds him into a knowledgeable young man with impressive oratory skills. Manso was a bookworm growing up so he continually stresses the importance of learning from books. Manuel even learns to like Don Quixote. Later, to Manso’s chagrin, Manuel becomes a fan of Machiavelli’s work. Given his belief on the state of Spanish politics (below) and Manuel’s promising political future, this must be Manso’s hint that he doesn’t see things changing any time soon.

Some of Manso’s comments on poverty in Spain and the changing landscape of social classes sound like comments Galdós’ characters have sounded in other novels. When looking how poverty shapes people, Manso looks at a particular individual’s positive development and wonders if it helped shape her: “And it makes me wonder: was it bane or blessing for Irene to have been born amid want, to have learned life in that somber school of misfortune which brutalizes some people and strengthens and refines others, according to the character of each one?” (page 31)

Manso (and through him Galdós) looks at the improving social situation, although he believes a true leveling hasn’t been achieved. That’s why his student, Manuel Peña, was often called “the butcher boy” reflecting his parent’s occupation:

It is abundantly obvious that social democracy has put down deep roots in this country, and no one is asked who he is or where he comes from before being admitted anywhere, being lauded and applauded, just so long as he has money or talent. We are all acquainted with a number of persons of the humblest origins who have attained the highest rank, and even married into the historic nobility. Money and wits, or even their stand-ins, speculation and skullduggery, have broken down all the barrier here, bringing about a mixture of all the classes to a much greater degree and with more telling effects than in the “European” countries, where democracy, having no place in daily intercourse, is provided for in the laws. From this perspective, and leaving aside the great political differences, Spain is becoming, strange though it seems, more and more like the United States of America. Like that nation, we are becoming a skeptical and utilitarian country where everything is dominated by the spirit of the melting pot, and of social leveling. History has less and less applicability every day here in Spain; it has passed entirely into the hands of archeologists, collectors, and curious, erudite, dried-up monomaniacs. Improvised fortune and rank are now the general rule; and tradition, perhaps having become hateful because of the forcefulness of its adherents, has lost all prestige. Freedom of thought is flying high and the ruling forces of our era, wealth and talent, are expanding their immense empire.

But the transformation, advanced as it already is, has not yet reached the point of eliminating a certain circumspection, a certain reluctance regarding the admission of low-born persons into the inner circle, so to say, of our society. If one’s low origins are far from view, even though separated from the present moment by only a decade or so, that’s fine, just fine. Our democracy has a short memory, but it’s not blind; thus one’s vulgar origins are still there and easy to see, it’s hard for money alone to conceal them. (page 36)

Though the country is not blind, amazing things can happen in an atmosphere of change. Manso’s brother, José Marie, has returned from Cuba having made his fortune and desires power. After cheerfully spreading his money around town, it looks like he will get his wish, leading to questions about the sanity of it all:

There is no doubt about it: everything seems to call for, or even presage, a change or transformation that will be the greatest in history. Everything points to it: these transitional monarchies, hanging by a legalistic hair; this system of responsibilities and powers, resting on a loose rope held by rhetorical maneurverings; this society which tears the old aristocracy to bits and creates a new one out of men who’ve spent their youth behind a shopcounter; these Latin nations which fill their lungs with the air of equality, carrying that principle not only to their laws but to the formation of the most formidable armies the world has ever seen; these times we see and live in, both as victims of the aftertaste of tyranny and also as the masters of something new, as we become part of a sovereignty which slowly informs our existence. My brother, who had washed dishes and rolled cigarettes and whipped blacks, sold hats and shoes, been sutler to the army and trafficked in manure, was about to enter the select front ranks of national leaders, the image of established political power, and, as it were, the guarantee of its solidity and permanence. We must say, as someone already has, that “either the Universe is becoming unhinged, or the Son of God is perishing.” (page 77)

In such an unstable atmosphere, Manso repeatedly demands a reliance on reason and provides a constant call for moderation and balance as well as shunning as much of the chaotic world as possible:

Folk of this world, I implore you to submit your lives to a regimen of suitable work and satisfying regularity. Find a comfortable cocoon, like the skillful larva. Arrange all your duties, all your pleasures, your times of leisure and of work in a careful balance and measure, only then to have someone from the outside come and upset the whole thing, forcing you into the mainstream, upsetting, chaotic, hurried… (page 41, ellipsis in original)

Manso recognizes that it isn’t possible to stay outside the mainstream, especially as he finds himself sucked into the disorder and confusion of his brother’s family and his own passion. A constant theme running through the novel is that outside forces influence our lives. “It’s a fundamental truth: we are shaped by the world, not vice-versa” (page 71) is just one iteration of this principle. He still believes that reason helps an individual win over everything else. With reason, even when temporarily yielding to unworthy men, a man can focus on “the eternal and the profound.” Manso’s reliance on reason proves to be ironic since his power of logic and philosophy fails to help him as he becomes marginalized in his own story. More on this in the post on Manso’s education, although I’ll provide a quote that occurs during his epiphany that summarizes one weakness behind his approach to life: “Who knows,” I asked myself, “whether a completely cold and careful critique might lead you to affirm that what you thought of as a series of resounding, fine-grained perfections, if they came to life, would be the most imperfect state of affairs in the world?” (page 226, emphasis mine given the irony of Manso’s state)

Manso has some harsh words for Spain’s political class and artistic atmosphere, similar to what I’ve seen in other novels by Galdós. There is a wonderful description of the poet Francisco de Paula de la Costa Y Sáinz del Bardal. Consistent with his pretentious name, he proves to be a blowhard with little talent although he is popular in some circles. Manso accompanies his brother’s children and their governess to the theater, providing plenty of opportunity to comment on the state of the arts in Spain. Two of my favorite asides:

• As an artist, I meditated on what times these are that we live in, when it’s possible to make a musical comedy out of the New Testament. (page 68)
• At that moment the audience was calling for the author, who was not St. Luke. (page 69)

Because his brother joins the political fray, Manso also has plenty of opportunity to comment on the politicians of the day. Joining the salon at his brother’s house is Don Ramón Maria Pez, a ministerial deputy who employs florid but empty language. Federico Cimarra, another politician attending the salon that encapsulates the best and worst of Spanish politics:

He was a majority-party deputy too, one of those who never speak but can do enough dirty work for seventy men, and affecting total independence, are eager for a piece of any shady deal. These men, rather than a class, form a cancerous growth which spreads unseen through the whole body politic, from the tiniest village up to the two houses of Parliament. A man of the most wicked political and family background, but still welcome everywhere and known by all, Cimarra was sought after because he would accommodate anybody and was considered astute. … Madrid is full of people of this kind; they are her flower and her dross, for they both delight us and corrupt us at the same time. Let us take care not to seek out the company of these men except for a brief time of recreation. Let us rather study them from a distance, for these plague-ridden men have notorious powers of contagion, and it’s not hard for an overly attentive spectator to become infected by their gangrenous cynicism when least expected. (page 58)

There are many more commentaries on Madrid and Spain that Manso can’t resist evaluating. Education is the “great subject matter” of the novel and Manso thinks he has plenty to teach and correct. There is much more along these lines, but I want to focus on the education of women in the next post and follow it with the education of Manso.

Our Friend Manso: I do not exist

Our Friend Manso
Benito Pérez Galdós
Translation by Robert Russell
Columbia University Press, 1987
ISBN 0-231-0604-7

I do not exist. And just in case some untrusting, stubborn, ill-meaning person should refuse to believe what I say so plainly, or should demand some sort of sworn testimony before believing it—I swear, I solemnly swear that I do not exist; and I likewise protest against any and all inclinations or attempts to consider me as being endowed with the unequivocal attributes of real existence. I declare that I am not even a portrait of anybody, and I promise that if one of our contemporary deep-thinkers were to start looking for similarities between my fleshless, boneless being and any individual susceptible to an experiment in vivisection, I should rush to the defense of my rights as a myth, demonstrating with witnesses called forth from a place of my own choosing that I neither am, nor have been, nor ever will be, anybody.

I am—putting it obscurely in order for you to understand it better—an artistic, diabolical condensation, a fabrication born of human though (ximia Dei) which, whenever it grasps in its fingers a bit of literary style, uses it to start imitating what God has done with material substance in the physical world; I am one more example of those falsifications of a man which from the dawn of time have been sold on the block by people I call idlers—and by so doing I fail in my filial duties—though an undiscerning and overgenerous public confers on them the title of artist, poet, or something of the sort. I am a chimera, dream of a dream, shadow of a shad, suspicion of a possibility: I enjoy my nonexistence, I watch the senseless passing of infinite time, which is so boring that it holds my attention, and I begin to wonder whether being nobody isn’t the same as being everybody, whether my not possessing any personal attributes isn’t the same as possessing the very attributes of existence itself. This is a matter which I haven’t clarified as yet, and I pray God I never may, lest I be deprived of that illusion of pride which always alleviates the frigid boredom of these realms of pure thought.

Máximo Manso introduces himself this way in the opening chapter of Our Friend Manso. He also informs the reader that “in the home of all that does not exist” there are also social classes, animosities, and other things common to the world of the living. So what brings Manso to us? A friend who “has fallen under an infamous curse: he writes novels” came to Manso, telling him he wanted to write a novel “dealing with the great subject matter of Education.” The author, though, needed certain tools and methods to carry it forward. The author offers to buy Manso’s “simple and pleasant story” in order to complete the novel, willing to provide the character some tools of the trade: literary genres, outmoded ideas, sentimentality, and set phrases. Manso agrees to cooperate and after being plunged into a drop of ink and the page set on fire, the character emerges in human guise. “The pain I felt told me I was a man.”

This is the last we hear of Manso’s special status until the final chapter, the 48 chapters in between carrying out the story meant to educate. In the first and final chapter, though, a real person (the author) and the literary character interact. Galdós, a master of the so-called realist novel goes out of his way to call attention that a novel is, by definition, not the real world but only appear to be so. Galdós’ novel of education begins in the first chapter, highlighting his view on the novel. His autonomous character, fully formed at the age of thirty-five, will behave in a manner and with a logic that is fully his own. Unfortunately, he also has to “live” with those consequences, as we’ll see in further posts.