cover image The House of Ulloa

The House of Ulloa

Emilia Pardo, Bazan E. Pardo. University of Georgia Press, $35 (323pp) ISBN 978-0-8203-1372-6

Considered a masterpiece of Spanish naturalism, this is the second English translation (the first appeared in 1908) of Pardo Bazan's 1886 tale of rustic decadence in the Galician countryside. A feminist author in the vanguard of late 19th-century Spanish literature, Pardo Bazan dealt with the plight of women in a patriarchal world. Here she examines the lives of Dona Marcelina, wife of despotic Don Pedro Moscoso, the so-called marquis of Ulloa, and the peasant Sabel, his mistress. With sharp portraits of local clergy, especially the ineffective priest Julian Alvarez, the peasants (seen in the Marquis's steward Primitivo) and politicians, Pardo Bazan forcefully delineates conflicts between social classes, sexes, the spiritual and corporeal, city and countryside. This edition includes the first English translation of the author's Autobiographical Sketches. (Mar.)