314 recíprocamente. No contamos con la Naturaleza, que es la gran madre y maestra que rectifica los errores de sus hijos extraviados. Nosotros hacemos mil disparates, y la Naturaleza nos los corrige. (Fortunata II 540)
While Maxi calls Nature, ―la gran madre y maestra‖ that, ―nos los corrige,‖ Nature seems to have been less than maternal with her correction since it involves the death of Fortunata and Maxi‘s descent into terminal madness. This is less Nature as a Great Mother and teacher than a Darwinian Nature that corrects indifferently by destroying those who do not conform to her rules.479 Maxi‘s final existential triumph in retreating to the, ―tálamo incorruptible de mi pensamiento‖ as he resigns himself to, ―un palacio o en un muladar‖ is, at one level, transcendently poetic. At another level, however, many of Galdós‘s readers would have appreciated this ironic confirmation of just how mad and detached from reality Maxi is, given the evil reputation of the asylum of Leganés at that time and the short survival time of many who entered it. They would have known that Maxi was headed for a muladar rather than a palacio, and would have wondered how long his other-worldliness would survive when surrounded by the grim reality that Galdós described in La desheredada.480
8) Mauricia La Dura: A Victim of Many Forms of Degeneration
indifferent Darwinian Nature: only four years after the publication of Fortunata y Jacinta, Thomas Hardy would publish his Tess of the D’Urbervilles with its similarly bleak view of Nature‘s intentions. While Galdós‘s epic novel has more richness and humor, Hardy‘s final verdict that the, “gods had finished their sport with Tess‖ might equally apply to Fortunata or to Maxi since he seems to be one of, ―those whom the gods wish to destroy.‖ I find that I am not the first to perceive links between Fortunata and Tess as Peter Goldman stresses a different one (Goldman, trabajo 187 n.16). V.S.Pritchett also links the representations of the two doomed heroines through their emotional power (Pritchett 154). 480 grim reality of Leganés: the disemmination of that notoriety was enhanced when Galdós‘s close medical friend, Manual Tolosa Latour, published part of the first chapter of La desheredada in El Diario Médico in 1882 (Schmidt 29). 479