257 while a medical historian reflects that, ―anthropological pessimism was also the product of the incorporation of the degenerationist doctrine into the literary sphere […] for instance, Lo prohibido‖ (Huertas, Madness I 403). This sense of a world permeated by disease is recognized by Clarín in his review of the novel in 1885 with its fierce critique of the pretensions, corruption and vanities of contemporary society,
Es un estudio penetrante y muy aproximado a la exactitud de la miserable vida de nuestra pobreza encopetada y ostentosa, y de nuestra riqueza holganza, viciosa y enfermiza. José María representa el dinero que se gasta mal, que se desperdicia en locuras y tonterías, en sobornar a la virtud y levantar templos a la prostitución […] Es Lo prohibido también reflejo de la vanidad más antipática e irracional en ciertas clases, y sobre todo en los grandes centros; la vanidad de fingir fortuna y gastar como si se tuviera; reflejo de corrupción estúpida, casi animal,396 que vende cuerpos y honras por el boato, por trapos y muebles, por objetos de arte que sólo se estiman por lo caros.‖ (Alas, prohibido 144)
In this novel, Galdós has wide scope for his skills as a social commentator and as a physician manqué observer, both of physical disease and also of pathological behavior that belongs to the province of psychiatry.
casi animal: a recurring theme in degeneration theory, after the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, was that perverted or antisocial human behavior represented an evolutionary regression (atavism) to more primitive human or animal forms (Russett 63-64). In the sphere of criminal anthropology, this was the basis of much of Lombroso‘s work, which was being discussed in Spain at the time that Lo prohibido was published. Labanyi claims that Lombroso‘s ―work on ‗degenerate types‘ was first aired publicly in Spain at the 1881 trial of Garayo el Sacamantecas‖ (Labanyi, Gender 79), though the Italian criminologist was not actually named. 396