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and the Mexican Background of Santa
Santa (1903) is the story of a young campesina [farm girl] from Chimalistac, a small village in the Mexican countryside. The protagonist, Santa, falls in love with Marcelino, a second lieutenant in the Mexican Army, who seduces and later abandons her. She becomes pregnant by him and is thrown out of her home when her mother and two brothers learn of her miscarriage. Dishonored and rejected, Santa decides to go to Mexico City, where she finds employment in Elvira’s brothel, one of the more exclusive houses of prostitution in the Mexican capital. Her career as a courtesan to the rich and powerful in Mexican society is interrupted twice, first when she moves in with an Andalusian bullfighter, and again when she becomes the mistress of one of her wealthy married customers. After these two short interludes, both of which come abruptly to an end because of Santa’s alcoholism and promiscuity, her life disintegrates. She descends from the most luxurious to the most squalid of brothels in Mexico City and ends up totally devastated, physically as well as psychologically. In the end, she is rescued from the gutter by Hipólito, the blind piano player from Elvira’s brothel who has steadfastly loved and stood by her from the very beginning of her plight in the Mexican capital. But she is near death when he comes to her aid. She has contracted cancer and dies during surgery. Subsequently, she is buried by Hipólito and his lazarillo [blind man’s guide] in her native Chimalistac.
In their respective studies of the Latin-American novel, Manuel Pedro González and Kessel Schwartz observe that Naturalism has earned a place among the major literary movements in Latin-American letters.1 According to González, of all Mexican writers in the late nineteenth century, Federico Gamboa is perhaps the most loyal and enthusiastic follower of the Brothers Goncourt and Émile Zola.2 Other critics go further in seeing the work of Gamboa almost entirely as the result of Zolaesque influences. One such critic is Francisco Mena. He argues that Gamboa’s work as a whole bears all the unmistakable traits of Naturalism. In his article “Federico Gamboa y el naturalismo, como expresión ideológica y social,” Mena reads Santa in the light of the literary themes and formulas of the Zolaesque roman expérimental.3 To be sure, he points out characteristics in Gamboa’s novel that are indeed naturalistic, but at the same time he overlooks others that call into question the orthodox Naturalism that he seeks to expose.
Mena contends that Santa is brought into prostitution because of hereditary factors. What the critic appears to be saying is that even if Santa were helped (which she is), sooner or later she would still turn to prostitution. He views Santa as a woman without alternatives. According to Mena, the protagonist cannot help giving in to her instincts. Santa acknowledges that she is unable to control the forces that push her toward prostitution, and tries to deal with her plight as best she can. She is, in short, a “víctima de sus propios instintos”4 [victim of her own instincts]. Here, the view of the protagonist as a helpless individual controlled by heredity and environment conforms neatly, perhaps too neatly, to naturalistic literary ideology. Indeed, one wonders if the concept of naturalistic determinism as used by Gamboa is not being forced onto the work so as to make it conform to pre-established literary precepts rather than the other way around, as Mena suggests.
The language, theme, and form of Santa clearly characterize it as a naturalistic novel. Descriptions that emphasize the crude, the obscene and the grotesque prevail throughout the work. On the surface, Gamboa appears to be moving in the same direction as Crane and Azevedo. The Mexican author presents descriptions that bear clear naturalistic traits. He strives to give as accurate and detailed a description of Santa’s world as possible, without any softening or exaggeration. However, sometimes he makes use of this type of discourse not so much to shock his readers by exposing the ugly, the crude, or the obscene, but rather, oddly enough, to preach against prostitution.5 Passages structured along these lines are nowhere to be found in O cortiço. Azevedo does not sermonize against the evils of prostitution or the vices of the lower class, nor does he present the sordid milieu of his characters in any didactic or moralistic light.
Although influenced by his Catholic upbringing and the mores of his cultural heritage, Gamboa nonetheless manages to write effectively as a naturalist. To the casual reader, his novels seem to embody most of the literary precepts advocated by the French naturalists. In Santa, Gamboa succeeds in rendering a scrupulous reproduction of the life of the Mexican lower class in all its aspects. The detailed and objective depiction of reality advocated by Zola is exemplified, for instance, in Gamboa’s account of Santa’s miscarriage:
Destacábase, sin embargo, con admirable y doliente precisión, el aborto repentino y homicida a los cuatro meses más o menos de la clandestina y pecaminosa preñez, a punto que Santa, un pie sobre el brocal del pozo, tiraba de la cuerda del cántaro, que lleno de agua, desparramándose, ascendía a ciegas. Fue un rayo. Un copioso sudar; un dolor horrible en las caderas, cerca de las ingles, y en la cintura atrás; un dolor de tal manera lacerante que Santa soltó la cuerda, lanzó un grito y se abatió en el suelo. Luego, la hemorragia, casi tan abundosa y sonora cual la del cántaro, roto al chocar con las húmedas paredes del pozo. Agustina, inclinada junto a ella, aclarando el secreto, titubeante entre golpearla y maldecirla o curarla y perdonarla . . . el [perro] “Coyote” lamiendo la sangre que se enterraba, y uno de los gallos de lidia, cantando inmotivamente.6
The sudden and murderous miscarriage in the fourth month of [Santa’s] clandestine and sinful pregnancy stood out with remarkable and painful clarity [in her mind]. . . . Santa, with her foot on the curbstone of the water well, was pulling out the bucket by its rope, when it spilled all of its water as it she blindly tried to raise it. It was like lightning. She was sweating profusely; a terrible pain in her hip, near her groin, and in her lower back; such a raging pain that Santa let go of the rope, let out a cry, and threw herself on the ground. Then, the hemorrhage set in, almost as abundant and sonorous as that of the bucket, which shattered as it hit the humid walls of the well. Leaning over her daughter, Agustina discovered [Santa’s] secret, and could not decide whether she should beat and curse her or care for her and forgive her. . . . [Their dog] Coyote was meanwhile licking the blood that was fast vanishing into the ground, and a fighting cock crowed dispassionately.
Later in the novel, Gamboa presents another among many passages that characterize his work as distinctly naturalistic. Again, the author concentrates on the lowest and darkest side of human nature. He reveals Hipólito, arguably the most endearing character in the entire novel, to be subject to the same drives that control Santa and her customers. Although he has waited patiently for Santa’s affection, and has gone so far as to entertain the idea of paying for her services, he has received nothing from her in terms of sexual favors, and he feels cheated. Thus, in a fit of rage, the blind man gives in to his instincts and momentarily forsakes his role as Santa’s friend and protector. Realizing that, as he puts it, “si más aguardo, no me tocará nada” (299) [if I wait any longer, I will not get anything], he rapes his protegée:
La lucha se tornó implacable, con encarnizamiento de enemigos. Ya no había ídolo ni idólatra, sino el eterno combate primitivo de la hembra que se rehusa al macho que persigue. . . . Un descuido de Santa que se resbaló en el suelo; luego dos gritos, el de pavor de ella y el de victoria de él; luego . . . un jadear meramente animal, de personas enlazadas que forcejan, el ciego encima, magullando la carne idolatrada que al mundo entero pertenecía, abriéndose brecha con crueldades de gorila (299).
The struggle became relentless, with the fury of enemies. No longer was there idol or worshipper, only the primitive battle between the female who refuses and the male who pursues his goal relentlessly. . . . [Because of] a false move on her part, Santa slipped and fell to the floor . . . then, two cries were heard: one of terror from her and another of triumph from him; shortly thereafter . . . the animalistic panting of individuals bound together in a fierce struggle, the blind man on top, pounding the idolized flesh that had been enjoyed by everyone else, making his way [through her body] with the ferociousness of a wild beast.
Descriptions like the one above are in keeping with the general tone of the naturalistic novel. Here, and in many other passages in Santa, Gamboa appears as a faithful disciple of Zola. Like his French mentor, Gamboa makes terrible things happen in his novel. Without fully realizing what is happening to her, the protagonist in Santa is wrenched from her tranquil life in the countryside, only to be placed at the center of a horrifying drama that works itself out in dishonor, humiliation, and ultimately in death. In some respects, Santa’s story bears a resemblance to classical Greek tragedy. Hers is a life that evokes pity. In order to inspire this emotion, Gamboa has his protagonist undergo a drastic and traumatic change of fortune. Just as Aristotle prescribes, this is not the story of an entirely virtuous person thrust from a high and enviable position to a low one. Neither is Santa the story of an evil person’s promotion from a low position to a prosperous state. Santa elicits pity and her environment inspires fear because the ordeal at the heart of the novel involves someone who is not entirely virtuous nor thoroughly corrupt but, like most people, somewhere between these two extremes. Hers is the story of an unfortunate soul who experiences great misfortune as a result of what Aristotle calls hamartia, a mistake, an error in judgment or conduct.7
Santa arouses pity because the suffering of the protagonist is in part undeserved. Her misfortune evokes compassion just as her environment provokes fear. These responses are central to our understanding of Gamboa’s work because it is by a reasonably skillful manipulation of them that the author manages to purge the feelings of pity and fear that his novel elicits in the reader. The environment in which Gamboa chooses to present his grim story is as wretched and frightful as Santa’s ordeal itself: “nido de víboras, trono del hampa, albergue de delincuentes, fábrica de dolencias y alcázar de la patulea” (302) [nest of vipers, throne of the underworld, den of criminals, source of disease and suffering, and fortress of the rabble]. Here, as throughout the novel, the author aims to merge realistic elements with his particular style – which at times can be romantic, sentimental, or even melodramatic – and the world of the novel in order to make his fiction appear verisimilar, a chief objective and a hallmark of naturalistic writing.
The passages presented thus far place Santa in the general corpus of naturalistic novels. They establish clearly that Gamboa subscribes to Zola’s literary agenda and that he is indebted to the French naturalists as far as the language, theme, and form of Santa are concerned. Mena’s reading of Santa addresses these points, and seeks to find in the novel its salient naturalistic characteristics. Mena points out that Gamboa observes his surroundings carefully and aims to describe human society as objectively and truthfully as the subject matter of science is studied and presented. However, there are other aspects of Gamboa’s work that Mena either misses or chooses to ignore. The most obvious of these are the lyrical passages that crop up unexpectedly in many places throughout the novel. Although Gamboa still presents himself as a deterministic writer, he is not necessarily as punitive as Crane nor as disdainful of humanity and its works as Azevedo. We can see that, despite his cynicism, Gamboa retains certain attitudes that are at odds with traditional naturalistic literary ideology.8 Alongside Zolaesque descriptions of the crude, the ugly, and the immoral (by the accepted standards of the time), one can also find in Santa idealized characterizations, interventions of nature, pathos, sentimentality, and melodrama. The passage in which the author extols the wholesomeness of the idyllic environment in which poor country girls grow up exemplifies this juxtaposition and apparent discontinuity:
La historia vulgar de las muchachas pobres que nacen en el campo y en el campo se crían al aire libre, entre brisas y flores; ignorantes, castas y fuertes; al cuidado de la tierra, nuestra eterna madre cariñosa; con amistades aladas, de pájaros libres de verdad, y con ilusiones tan puras, dentro de sus duros pechos de zagalas, como las violetas que escondidas crecen a orillas del río que meció su cuna blandamente, amorosamente, y después se ha deslizado, a espaldas de la rústica casuca paterna, embravecido todos los otoños, revuelto, espumante; pensativo y azul todas las primaveras preocupado de llevar en su seno los secretos de las fábricas que nutre, de los molinos que mueve, de los prados que fecundiza, y no poder revelarlos sino tener que seguir con ellos a donde él va y muere, lejos, allá . . . ¡dicen que al mar! (39)
The simple story of impoverished girls who are born and grow up in the countryside, in the open air, with the [gentle] breeze and flowers; naive, chaste and strong; looked after by mother Earth, our eternal and loving mother; with the winged friendship of birds that are truly free, and with such pure illusions inside their firm young girl’s breasts, like the violets that grow hidden on the banks of the river that gently, lovingly rocks their cradle to and fro, and afterwards swiftly slides towards the sea . . . pensive and blue . . . intent on taking in its bosom the secrets of the factories that it nourishes, of the water mills that it turns, of the meadows that it fertilizes, and not being able to disclose them but rather having to take them along to its deathbed, far, far away in the sea.
Another passage that illustrates this mawkish type of discourse appears at the beginning of the novel. Here, the author describes Santa’s home in the countryside as a pastoral haven:
Por todas partes aire puro, fragancia de las rosas que asoman por encima de las tapias, rumor de árboles y del agua que se despeña en las dos presas. En el día, zumbar de insectos, al sol; en la noche, luciérnagas que el amor enciende y que se persiguen y apagan cuando se encuentran. Detrás de la casita, una magueyera inmensa, de un verde monótono y sin matices; a los dos lados, huertas y jardines; al frente, la propiedad del padre Guerra . . . más allá el cementerio, abierto y silencioso, sin mármoles ni inscripciones, pero brindando un cómodo asilo para el eterno sueño, con sus heliotropos y claveles que al echarse encima de los sepulcros, tapan codiciosamente los nombres de los desaparecidos y las fechas de su desaparecimiento. . . . En ese cuadro, Santa de niña, y de joven más tarde; dueña de la blanca casita; hija mimada de la anciana Agustina, a cuyo calor duerme noche a noche; ídolo de sus hermanos Estéban y Fabián, que la celan y vigilan; gala del pueblo; ambición de mozos y envidia de mozas; sana, feliz, pura . . . ¡cuánta inocencia en su espíritu! (42-43)
Fresh air everywhere, the fragrance of roses that peek above the walls, the murmur of trees and of the water that hurls itself down the dam. During the day, the buzzing of insects in the sun; at night, fireflies kindled by love chase one another, their lights going out as they run into each other. Behind [Santa’s] house, an enormous maguey tree, with monotonous hues of green; on both sides, orchards and gardens; in front, Father Guerra’s property . . . and further down, the cemetery, open and silent, without marble or inscriptions, but offering its comfortable shelter for one’s final rest, with its heliotropes and carnations that cover covetously the names of the deceased and the dates of their demise as they throw themselves on the graves. In this environment, Santa [lived] as a little girl, and as a young woman later on; lady of the little white house; the pampered daughter of old Agustina, who kept her warm night after night; worshipped by her two brothers Estéban and Fabián, who watched over her and protected her; the pride and joy of her little village; the dream of the town’s young men and source of jealousy to the other girls; wholesome, happy, pure . . . so much innocence in her soul!
The first type of discourse that I have examined – the language of violence and crudeness of the vulgar scenes – shows Gamboa’s work as naturalistic, whereas the second does not conform neatly to a Zolaesque conception of the world. Indeed, there are episodes in Santa in which the language used by Gamboa rivals that of the romantic school in its “sentimentality and melodramatic traits.”9 In isolation, these different types of discourse have little significance. What is of relevance here is the contrapuntal interplay between the two, which Gamboa uses as a key structural device in the novel. We can see this counterpoint at work in the passage following Santa’s expulsion from home. Having decided to seek refuge in Elvira’s brothel, Santa is greeted by the doorkeeper, who calls attention to the grim future that awaits the protagonist:
Condolida . . . de verla allí, dentro del antro que a ella le daba de comer; antro que en cortísimo tiempo devoraría aquella hermosura y aquella carne joven que ignoraba seguramente todos los horrores que la esperaban (14).
Sorry . . . to see [Santa] there, in the den of iniquity that provided her own livelihood; the lair that in very little time would ravage the beauty and young body of this girl who most certainly ignored all the horrors that awaited her.
However, Gamboa lessens the crudeness of this description by following it immediately with a passage that stands in stark contrast to the first. This line lacks any trace of naturalistic coarseness, and is very positive in tone: “La portera, humanizada ante la belleza de Santa . . . sonrió con [amable] sonrisa” (13). [The porter, touched by Santa’s gracefulness . . . put forth a friendly smile]. In many other parts of the novel, the author employs the same contrapuntal movement. For example, note the passage in which Pepa, one of the older prostitutes at Elvira’s brothel, displays her decrepit and hideous body to Santa:
E impúdicamente, se levantó el camisón, con trágico ademán triste, y Santa miró, en efecto, unas pantorrillas nervudas, casi rectas; unos muslos deformes, ajados, y un vientre colgante, descolorido, con hondas arrugas que lo partían en toda su anchura, cual esas tierras exhaustas que han rendido cosechas y cosechas enriqueciendo ciegamente al propietario, y que al cabo pierden su secreta e irremplazable savia, para sólo conservar la huella del arado, a modo de marca infame y perpetua (19).
And [the prostitute] lewdly raised her nightgown with a tragic and sad gesture, and Santa gazed at her sinewy, almost upright calves; her crumpled, deformed thighs, and her droopy, colorless belly, with deep wrinkles . . . like the exhausted earth which has yielded one harvest after another, blindly enriching its proprietor, and which in the end loses its secret and irreplaceable sap, only to retain the scars made by the plough, like an infamous and eternal mark.
The grotesque display on the part of the old prostitute is attenuated at once by her own remarks on the detrimental effects of prostitution on one’s body. If the author were to interject moralistic considerations on the evils of prostitution here, that would not be in keeping with the setting and atmosphere that he has created thus far. As a general rule, readers do not expect streetwalkers to go on puritanical tirades attacking prostitution on ethical or religious grounds, especially in a naturalistic novel. Faced with this restriction, Gamboa settles for the next best thing. Through a character with many years of experience as a courtesan, the author provides a ghastly description of the physical toll that prostitution takes on a woman’s body. Although this account contains all the literary accouterments of naturalistic discourse, it fails to gloss over or do away with its inherently moralistic tone:
Tú misma, que ahora me ves y oyes espantada, tampoco has de apreciar esto. Te sientes sana, con pocos años, con una herida allá en tu alma, y no te conformas; quieres también que tu cuerpo la pague . . . pues menudo que es el desengaño, hija; el cuerpo se nos cansa y se nos enferma . . . huirán de ti y te pondrás como yo, hecha una lástima (18-19).
You yourself, who look on and listen to me in amazement now, won’t fully understand this either. You feel wholesome, young, your heart has been broken, and you can’t accept it; you also want your body to pay for it. . . . Well, girl, insignificant though your disappointment may be, your body will become diseased . . . people will avoid you, and you will end up like me, like a wretch.
The author makes a clear attempt to lessen the harshness of his naturalistic descriptions with positive remarks or interjections. This is accomplished in a pattern in which the former are invariably followed and abated by the latter. Mena’s study seems incomplete because he concentrates almost exclusively on those aspects of Santa that place the novel in the general corpus of naturalistic works while ignoring others that are just as relevant. Santa is done a disservice when one disregards a juxtaposition that is so recurrent, and hence compels the reader to see the novel from a more complex perspective.
We detect in Gamboa a sense of propriety that is missing from Azevedo and, to a certain extent, from Crane. To be sure, Maggie and Santa have more in common with each other than they do with O cortiço. Both novels bear signs of an ethical or religious heritage. They differ, however, as far as the nature of these heritages is concerned. Crane is moralistic, but in a puritanical and punitive way, whereas Gamboa shows more compassion toward his characters, and as a result offers them the possibility of redemption. The difference between Gamboa and other naturalistic writers such as Crane stems primarily from their backgrounds and from the way they react to the religious and ethical influences of their respective cultures. In his book La novela de Federico Gamboa, Alexander Hooker observes that a certain Catholic sense of propriety pervades Gamboa’s fiction, and draws a parallel between the Mexican writer and a major exponent of naturalism in Spain, Emilia Pardo Bazán:
A pesar de lo que dice Gamboa . . . hay una gran incompatibilidad entre sus creencias religiosas y la concepción naturalista de la vida. La teoría del naturalismo supone que el individuo está sometido a unas leyes de herencia y de medio ambiente que determinan de un modo fatal el curso de su vida. De esa manera el hombre que tiene padre alcohólico o vicioso o que vive en los bajos fondos sociales tendrá que ser inmoral y desgraciado. Pero esa premisa es falsa según la religión. El cristianismo tiene el concepto del libre albedrío por el cual el hombre puede salvarse a pesar de su herencia y de su medio ambiente. Es más, el pobre tiene más probabilidad de llegar al cielo que el rico. A causa del conflicto entre el optimismo católico y el pesismismo ateo, el naturalismo no tuvo muchos discípulos en España ni en Hispanoamérica. El caso de Gamboa es semejante al de la Pardo Bazán: a pesar de los asuntos que presentan, el tono de sus novelas es casto y moral. . . . En las novelas de Gamboa es la ciudad . . . que ejerce una mala influencia sobre las personas, pero éstas tienen que pagar sus pecados. . . . La vida de Santa es determinada por su medio ambiente, y su muerte trágica después del descenso por los bajos fondos sociales realza la moralidad de la novela. . . . Aquí la fuerza de la voluntad religiosa puede más que las influencias desmoralizadoras que iban destruyendo la vida de [Santa]. . . . En todas las novelas de Federico Gamboa . . . el fin casto y moral justifica los medios que utiliza el novelista.10
Despite what Gamboa says . . . there is a great incompatibility between his religious beliefs and the naturalistic conception of life. The theory of Naturalism supposes that the individual is subject to the laws of heredity and nature that determine in an irrevocable way the course of his life. Thus, the man who has an alcoholic or dissolute father, or who is a member of the lower class, will have to be immoral or ill-fated. According to religion, however, this premise is false. Christianity has the concept of free will by which man can be saved despite his heredity or environment. Moreover, the poor have a better chance of going to heaven than the rich. Due to the conflict between Catholic optimism and atheist pessimism, Naturalism did not have many followers in Spain or Spanish America. Gamboa’s case is similar to that of [Emilia] Pardo Bazán: despite the topics that they present, the tone of their novels is chaste and moral. . . . In Gamboa’s novels, it is the city . . . that exerts an evil influence on the characters, but the latter have to pay for their sins. . . . Santa’s life is determined by her environment, and her tragic death after she has sunk to the lowest levels of the underclass highlights the morality of the novel. . . . Here, the forces of religious desire are more powerful than the demoralizing influences that were destroying [Santa’s] life. . . . In all of Gamboa’s novels . . . the chaste and moral ending justifies the means used by the author.
Even in those passages that are not central to the story line, Gamboa counterbalances the crudeness of his naturalistic descriptions. He does this with elements that diminish the harshness of such passages and purge the reader’s feelings of repulsion and fear. For example, in the first part of the novel, the author presents a grim description of Hipólito:
¡Que horroroso era! . . . Picado de viruelas, la barba sin afeitar, lacio el bigote gris y poblado, la frente ancha, grueso el cuello y la quijada fuerte. Su camisa, puerca y sin zurcir en las orillas; . . . las manos huesosas, de uñas largas y amarillentas por el cigarro (31).
How disgusting he looked! . . . Pockmarked, unshaven, with his withered and grey moustache, a broad forehead, a thick neck, and a strong chin. His shirt, filthy and with the edges of the collar and the cuffs yet to be mended; . . . his bony hands, with long fingernails yellowish from smoking.
However, immediately following the above passage, the author lessens the negative impact of this grotesque account by bringing to notice the blind man’s artistic abilities. Now, Hipólito is described as a skilled pianist, and the tone of the characterization changes markedly:
¡Qué lindamente tocaba! . . . [las manos] expresivas y ágiles, ora saltando de las teclas blancas a las teclas negras con tal rapidez, que a Santa le parecía que se multiplicaban, ora posándose en una sola nota, tan amorosamente, que la nota aislada adquiría vigor y sonaba por su cuenta, quizás más que las otras (31).
How beautifully he played! . . . his expressive and agile [hands] leaping from the white to the black keys with such swiftness that to Santa they seemed to multiply, sometimes hovering over a single note, so lovingly, that the winged note seemed to acquire energy and sounded on its own, perhaps longer than all the others.
This sense of propriety is pervasive throughout the novel. Whether one calls it Hispanic, Mexican, or Catholic, one can safely assume that among New World naturalistic writers it is unique to Gamboa. It is certainly absent from either Crane’s or Azevedo’s works. The Brazilian novelist seems to indulge in his depiction of what, to the aesthetic and social sensibility of his time, would no doubt have been considered ugly, sordid, and obscene. He has no reservations about depicting in minute detail sexual acts between lesbians, something that even Zola himself would have hesitated to do. Gamboa touches on the topic of lesbianism, only to dismiss it altogether from his novel. His propriety is apparent in his condemnation of this sexual practice:
Vaya, la propia “Gaditana,” apasionada igualmente de Santa por efecto no de una perversión, sino de una perversidad sexual, luengos años cultivada poníalo [a Hipólito] en menos atrenzos que el “diestro”: primero porque Santa abominaba de la práctica maldita . . . y segundo, porque . . . a Hipólito no le producía la tal celos propiamente dichos, producíale más bien indulgencia y risa. . . .
Esta pasión de la “Gaditana” hacia Santa, no era un misterio para ninguna de las de la casa. . . . Santa le despepitó la ocurrencia desde que ella apuntó:
– ¡Hipo! ya no aguanto a la “Gaditana.” Figúrese usted que está empeñada en que yo la quiera más que a qualquier hombre. ¿Se habrá vuelto loca? . . . Se lo dije, le dije: “Anda y acuéstate, mujer, para que se te pase la cruda y te vengan otros pensamientos, no seas tonta . . .” mira, “Gaditana,” me alegro por la noticia y márchate a tu cuarto, que me voy a levantar (149-150).Gaditana herself, also in love with Santa due not to some perversion but rather to a sexual fixation, which she developed over the years, posed less of a threat [to Hipólito] than did the bullfighter: first, because Santa loathed that wicked practice . . . and second, because . . . [Gaditana] didn’t necessarily make Hipólito feel jealous. He was actually tolerant of [Gaditana’s amorous overtures toward Santa], and would have a laugh or two at Gaditana’s expense. . . .
Gaditana’s passion for Santa was no secret to the women of the brothel. . . . Santa strongly repudiated [Gaditana’s advances], and made things quite clear from the very beginning:
Hipo, I can’t stand Gaditana anymore! Can you believe she actually wants me to love her more than any other man? Has she gone mad? I told her [in no uncertain terms]: “Go on, woman, go to sleep, so that you may get over your hangover, and have better thoughts, don’t be silly” . . . look, Gaditana, I’m happy for the news, now go to your room because I’m going to get up.Santa's disapproval of lesbianism exemplifies the divergence that exists between Gamboa and the more radical factions of Naturalism. This difference becomes apparent when one compares Santa to Pombinha. Viewed from this perspective, Azevedo appears to follow the precepts of Naturalism more closely than Gamboa. Of the two, the former is the more orthodox naturalist.
Besides those passages in which the crudeness of naturalistic language is attenuated by positive remarks, Gamboa also makes use of a discourse that stands on its own as a clearly moralistic stance against the very subject matter of his novel (i.e., prostitution). Reflecting on the fate that befalls a virgin who chooses to stray from the path of righteousness, Gamboa writes:
Cuando una virgen se aparta de lo honesto y consciente, que la desgarren su vestidura de inocencia; cuando una mala hija mancilla las canas de su madre, de una madre que ya se asoma a las negruras del sepulcro; cuando una doncella enloda a los hermanos que por sostenerla trabajan, entonces, la que ha cesado de ser virgen, la mala hija y la doncella olvidadiza, apesta cuanto la rodea y hay que rechazarla, que suponerla muerta y que rezar por ella (69).
When a virgin strays from the path of honesty and responsibility, she should be stripped of her cloak of innocence; when a disobedient daughter blemishes her mother's grey hair, a mother who is about to leave this world; when a young woman disgraces her brothers who work hard to support and protect her, then, she who is no longer a virgin, the bad daughter and the forgetful maiden infects and corrupts all those around her, and she must therefore be shunned, she must be considered dead, and prayers ought to be said for her.
None of the patterns analyzed earlier is as revealing as the one in which there is a clear intention on the part of Gamboa to exonerate his protagonist from any blame or responsibility for her predicament. At first, the pattern seems to conform to naturalistic tenets. In a roman expérimental, man is merely an animal responding to environmental forces and drives over which he has no control and which he cannot understand. In Gamboa, however, there is more than just the faithful observance of the literary directives put forth by European naturalists. As in Maggie, there is in Santa an "added ingredient" that characterizes it as a Spanish-American naturalistic work and at the same time sets it apart from other novels of the same genre.
Azevedo is indifferent to the fate of his characters. He takes an amoral stance vis-à-vis his work, and at times appears to derive pleasure from his shocking accounts of life in the Brazilian underworld. Crane depicts the awesome forces of the physical and social environment over man, and at the same time, punishes the protagonist in Maggie for having sinned. He does this in a manner that could accurately be described as puritanical. Gamboa is neither as amoral as Azevedo nor as punitive as Crane. Like Crane, he portrays a young woman who suffers a fall, and dies in the end. Unlike his American counterpart, however, Gamboa shows compassion toward his characters, especially at the conclusion of the novel. From the beginning, Gamboa uses the prescribed naturalistic formula of "environment over the individual" to exonerate Santa from responsibility for her predicament. He lessens the misery of her situation by rationalizing her decision to go into prostitution. When Santa is first admitted to the brothel, the author presents the first of a long list of explanations justifying her decision:
Vengo . . . porque ya no quepo en mi casa; porque me han echado mi madre y mis hermanos; porque no sé trabajar y sobre todo, porque . . . juré que pararía en esto y no lo creyeron (17).
I'm here . . . because I'm no longer welcome in my home; because my mother and bothers have thrown me out; because I don't have a job, and above all because . . . I swore I would end up here and they didn't believe me.
The blame for Santa's plight is made to fall on people other than the girl herself: her brothers and her mother. Throughout the novel, Gamboa tries to find plausible reasons to justify the protagonist's decision to become and remain a prostitute. He regards this move on her part not as something that depended on her will but rather as the result of impositions beyond her control. The author approaches the question of prostitution as though streetwalking were the only option available to Santa, which it is not, as the protagonist herself makes clear. Gamboa portrays the protagonist as an innocent girl who falls from grace and now finds herself battling against forces that completely overwhelm her. Faced with such a bittersweet description, one cannot help but feel compassion for Santa. Along with her blind friend, Hipólito, she is one of the few characters in the novel to elicit genuine concern and sympathy. The portrayal of Santa at this point stands in stark contrast to the way Gamboa describes her later as a promiscuous and successful prostitute. The author's desire to exculpate Santa for having gotten herself into such a terrible predicament is evident in many passages throughout the novel. For example, shortly after her arrival at Elvira's brothel, Santa tries to run away from her new home environment:
Por segunda vez en su trágica jornada, la ganó la tentación de marcharse, de huir, de retornar a su pueblo y a su rincón, con su familia, sus pájaros, sus flores . . . donde siempre había vivido, de donde nunca creyó salir (21).
For the second time in her tragic journey, [Santa] was tempted to leave, to flee, to return to her little village and home, to her family, her birds, her flowers . . . where she had always lived, [the haven] she never thought she would leave.
Later, reflecting on her condition, Santa feels miserable for having allowed herself to sink to such a level:
Tan miserable y abandonada se sintió, que escondió el rostro en la almohada, tibia de haber sustentado su cabeza, y se echó a llorar mucho, muchísimo con hondos sollozos que la sacudían el encorvado y hermoso cuerpo; un raudal de lágrimas que acudían de una porción de fuentes; de su infancia campesina, de unas miajas de histerismos y del secreto duelo que vivía por su desdichada pureza muerta (22).
She felt so miserable and abandoned that she hid her face in her pillow, not willing to hold her head up high, and she began to weep copiously, with deep sobs that made her entire curvaceous and lovely body tremble; a torrent of tears that sprung from many sources; from her childhood in the countryside, from traces of hysteria, and from the secret pain that she had to endure because of her wretched, lost chastity.
Gamboa presents the drive that forces Santa into disagreeable situations sometimes as a person – mother, brothers, procuresses – and at other times as nature. The transfer of culpability may, for example, take place between the protagonist and something as impersonal as the rain:
Un gran trueno celeste, anunciador del aguacero que se echaba encima de la ciudad, la estremeció; y volviendo la cara a la puerta de la calle, que le quedaba a un paso, se asió la falda de seda y se adelantó a la salida, guiada por un deseo meramente animal e irreflexivo de correr y correr hasta donde el aliento le alcanzara, y hasta donde, en cambio, el daño que se le antojaba inminente no pudiera alcanzarla. . . . Mas, a tiempo que se adelantaba, la lluvia desatóse iracunda, rabiosa, azotando paredes, vidrios y suelos con unas gotazas que al caer o chocar contra algo, sonaban metálicamente, salpicaban, como si con la fuerza del golpe se hicieran pedazos (30).
A resounding thunder, herald of the storm which was about to fall on the city, shook [Santa]; and turning toward the main door that lay but a few feet from her, she tidied up her silk dress and made her way to the exit, guided by an impetuous and purely animal desire to run and run as far as her breath would take her, far away, where the harm that she perceived as imminent could no longer reach her. . . . However, as she approached [the door], the rain fell irascibly, furiously, whipping the walls, windowpanes, and the ground with raindrops so big that they sounded metallic as they hit something, spattering, as if the force with which they fell tore them to pieces.
It is ludicrous, to be sure, but what Gamboa in effect seems to be saying here is that Santa became a prostitute because on her first night in the brothel she tried to run away, but it was raining so hard that she could not leave. These oppressive forces – family, nature, social environment – may be viewed as naturalistic symbols for the insurmountable barriers that a Mexican girl might encounter as she tried to battle the elements that threatened to destroy her. However, one detects a certain heavy-handedness on the part of the author as he explores the factors that lead Santa into prostitution. This heavy-handedness makes it difficult to dismiss my argument that at this point in the novel the author is engaged in an un-naturalistic attempt to present Santa in a morally acceptable light. He seeks to accomplish this by exonerating the protagonist from any blame or responsibility for her predicament. Gamboa portrays Santa as an unfortunate individual who is dragged into prostitution against her will by forces beyond her control:
Santa, impotente para subtraerse al influjo incontrastable que Elvira ejercía en su voluntad, desprendióse del piano y se aproximó al personaje. . . . Traigo mucha plata en la cartera y en el chaleco . . . para ti toda si duermes conmigo esta noche. . . . ¿Qué dices? !Que sí! le murmuró Santa, intimada por Elvira, que antes de retirarse detúvose a mirarla (35).
Unable to extricate herself from the powerful influence that Elvira exerted on her, Santa left the piano, and walked toward the customer. . . . I have lots of money on me . . . all for you, if you agree to sleep with me tonight. . . . What do you say? Yes, muttered Santa, prodded by Elvira, who, before leaving [the room], stopped to give [the girl] one long, hard look.
To be sure, the portrayal of an individual caught in the grip of deadly environmental forces or harmful personal influence is characteristic of naturalistic novels as a whole. However, Gamboa seems to go out of his way as he attempts to exonerate Santa from the fate that has befallen her. In many passages, the author seeks openly to elicit sympathy for the protagonist. Of her first night at the brothel, when Santa is forced by Elvira to sleep with a drunken customer whom the protagonist loathes, Gamboa writes:
Santa apagó su lámpara y principió a desvestirse, regocijada con la idea que esa primera noche nadie se adueñaría de ella. De pronto y a pesar de las tinieblas de la estancia, llevóse la mano al cuello y se subió el camisón, cual si temiese que la sorprendieran. Aguardó un momento, y la respiración acompasada del gobernador la tranquilizó; soltóse el camisón y, devotamente, se sacó un viejo escapulario que ya no podría llevar más, que tenía que ocultar ¡pobre trapo desteñido y roto como su pureza, testigo íntimo de sus épocas de dicha, guardián de reliquias que no habían sabido protegerla, compañero de sus suspiros de doncella y de sus palpitaciones de enamorada! . . . Castamente, lo besó muchas veces, como besamos lo que no hemos de volver a ver (37-38).
Santa put out the light, and began to undress, rejoicing in the idea that on her first night [at the brothel] nobody would take possession of her. Suddenly, and despite the darkness of her quarters, she raised one hand to her neck, and lifted her nightgown, as though she feared someone might catch her off guard. She waited a while, and the rhythmical breathing of the [sleeping] governor calmed her somewhat; she dropped her nightgown, and, devoutly, took out an old scapulary which she no longer could wear, which she had to hide; a scruffy-looking rag, discolored and torn like her chastity, an intimate reminder of happier times, guardian of relics that hadn't known how to protect her, companion of her childhood dreams and adolescent aspirations. . . . She chastely kissed it several times, as one kisses that which one will never see again.
Even when Gamboa portrays Santa as an experienced prostitute, he does so with some reticence, interjecting observations that reflect her misery at having to lead a life that she finds unpalatable:
En los instantes . . . en que oleadas de remordimiento la asaltaban y entristecían, entraba en fulgaces coloquios consigo misma; pero por mucho que volvía el rostro dispuesta a pedir auxilio, a modo de persona que se ahoga, sólo contemplaba a entrambas orillas de su vivir, gente que se encogía o que se esforzaba porque de una vez se ahogara y con ello desapareciese la tentación lindísima de su cuerpo . . . remordimientos . . . recuerdos de su catecismo, de su niñez y de su madre . . . víctima de sus propios instintos . . . ¿dónde finalizaría con semejante vida? . . . pues en el hospital y en el cementerio (75).
In the moments . . . when waves of remorse overtook and saddened her, [Santa] would go into brief dialogues with herself; but as much as she turned [to people], ready to ask for help, as a drowning person would, she only found in her world individuals who either withdrew from her, or who tried to help [fearing that] if she [killed herself], the beautiful temptation of her body would disappear [as well] . . . remorse . . . memories of her catechism, of her childhood and her mother . . . a victim of her own instincts . . . where would she end up with such a life? . . . certainly, in the hospital and the cemetery.
Obviously, Gamboa could not possibly go through the entire novel portraying Santa as an innocent or reluctant courtesan. Given the mores of his time, that would be a contradiction in terms. Moreover, he would be deviating too far from the model of the roman expérimental. Therefore, by the second half of the novel, he starts to move away from his initial position, and begins to portray Santa as a promiscuous and willing prostitute:
Santa, en pleno período de dominio y boga, en pleno período triunfal de su carne dura, de su carne joven, de su carne al alcance de cuantos anhelaban probarla, llegaba de las últimas a estos bailes, escoltada por brillante cauda de gomosos (109).
Santa considerábase reina de la eterna ciudad corrompida; florescencia magnífica de la metrópoli secular y bella, con lagos para sus arrullos y volcanes para sus iras, pero pecadora, cien veces pecadora; manchada por los pecados de amor de conquistadores brutales, que indistintamente amaban y mataban; manchada por los pecados de amor de varias invasiones de guerreros rubios y remotos, forzadores de algunas de sus trincheras; . . . manchada por los pecados complicados y enfermizos del amor moderno. . . . Santa sentíase emperatriz de la ciudad históricamente imperial, supuesto que todos sus pobladores hombres, los padres, los esposos y los hijos, la buscaban y la perseguían, la adoraban, proclamábanse felices si ella les consentía arribar, en su cuerpo de cortesana, al anhelado puerto, al delicioso sitio único en que radica la suprema ventura terrenal y efímera (119).During the time she was the toast of the brothel, during the time her young and firm body was at the disposal of all those eager to try it, Santa would be seen in many balls, always followed by a long string of [admirers].
Santa considered herself sovereign of that iniquitous and corrupted city; a beautiful flower [growing] in that secular and pleasant metropolis, with lakes for her lullabies and volcanos for her fits of temper, but a sinner [nonetheless], sinner one hundred times over; sullied by the carnal sins of brutal conquerors who would make love and kill indiscriminately; tainted by the sexual vices of several invasions of blond and exotic warriors, who would demand from Santa what she had never delivered before; . . . blemished by the complex and sickly sins of modern love. . . . Santa felt she was the empress of that imperial city, because its male inhabitants, fathers, husbands, and sons all sought her company and coveted her, they adored her, proclaiming their joy if she let them mount her, [and enjoy] her gracious courtesan's body, [specifically] the much craved harbor, the delectable site that houses the supreme and ephemeral earthly happiness.The author seems to be going the opposite way now. Instead of attenuating Santa's concupiscence and promiscuity with redeeming positive remarks, he actually highlights her depraved condition. The passage in which Santa comes close to being rescued from prostitution by one of her live-in lovers, the Andalusian bullfighter, illustrates this point. Here, the protagonist wastes an ideal opportunity to have a home of her own and lead a respectable life. Gamboa juxtaposes the propriety and wholesomeness of Santa's new home environment with the protagonist's sordid predispositions in order to better delineate the predicament at the heart of the novel:
El amancebamiento de Santa desenvolvióse tranquilo. Quietamente deslizábanse las semanas unas tras otras, en la insípida atmósfera de la [pensión] (208).
Santa se [había] cansado de él; [lo había] dejado sin odios, al contrario, más también sin penoso esfuerzo (209).
Era verdad. Aquel ensayo de vida honesta la aburría, probablemente porque su perdición ya no tendría cura porque se habría maleado hasta sus raíces, no negaba la probabilidad, pues en los meses que la broma duraba, tiempo sobraba para aclimatarse (210).
Un domingo traicionero, Santa traicionó a "El Jarameño" entregándose cínicamente a Ripoll (211).Santa's illicit union developed peacefully. The weeks passed quietly, one after the other, in the insipid environment of the [boarding house].
Santa got tired of [El Jarameño], she didn't feel any hate when she left him, on the contrary, but she didn't have to make any painful effort either.
It was true. That attempt at leading a decent life bored her, probably because she was already beyond help, for she had been corrupted through and through, [and] she didn't deny that possibility, because during the two months that "the joke" lasted, she had plenty of time to get acclimated. . . .
On a fateful Sunday, Santa cheated on El Jarameño by cynically agreeing to have sex with Ripoll.Here, Gamboa depicts Santa as a prostitute caught hopelessly in the grip of her life of promiscuity and vice. Once ousted from El Jarameño's home, Santa returns to Elvira's brothel at once. There is no question in her mind that this is the right thing to do. It never occurs to her that she has other alternatives. In this respect, the second part of the novel stands in stark contrast to the first, in which Santa tries several times to leave the life of prostitution, although to no avail. At this point in the novel, Santa comes the closest to other naturalistic characters such as Nana and Pombinha. All three women are prostitutes, and none of them wastes any time making excuses for their lives of vice. Rather, they try to survive as best they can. To Santa, survival means going back to the brothel:
Derechamente, sin asomos de titubeos ni vacilaciones, como golondrina que reintegra al polvoriento alero donde quedó su nido desierto resistiendo escarchas y lluvias, así Santa enderezó sus pasos fugitivos a la casa de Elvira, sin ocurrirle que sobraban recursos más seguros y más honestos, sobre todo; sin rememorar sus proyectos bordados hacía algunos meses, cuando la muerte de su madre habíala estrujado el espíritu y prometídole, con el abandono del vicio, una resurección de alma y cuerpo. Nada de eso (213).
Straight [as an arrow], without any trace of hesitation, like the swallow that returns to the dusty gable-end where its deserted nest lay, overcoming rain and snow, Santa directed her quick steps toward Elvira's [brothel], without it even occurring to her that there were more reliable and especially more decent ways to earn a living; without remembering the projects that she had devised a few months ago, when her mother's death left her spirit crushed, and prompted her to promise to resurrect her [own] body and soul. [However, she did] nothing of the kind.
When Rubio, her second and last live-in lover, asks Santa to become his mistress, she accepts his offer gladly. On the surface, she gives the impression of making a sincere attempt at living honorably as a "dueña y señora de una casita suya, con criadas de ella y muebles de ella y todo de ella, en cuenta, unos pájaros que se prometía colgar en los corredores para que con gorjeos alegraran la vivienda y en la morada evocaran placenteros recuerdos de días desaparecidos y felicidades difuntas" (268-269). [Lady and ruler of her own home, with her own servants and furnishings, and all her things, including some birds whose cages would be hung in the hallways in order to cheer up the place with their singing and bring back pleasant memories and the erstwhile happiness of days long gone by]. However, this second attempt at leading a respectable life away from prostitution is of even shorter duration than her idyll with El Jarameño. Gamboa suggests that at this stage in her life, Santa is hopelessly addicted to alcohol and the vices of prostitution. She is depicted as a woman destined to remain a prostitute for the rest of her life, sinking increasingly lower into the bowels of the underworld:
Por alcohólica, por enferma y por desgraciada engañó a Rubio con frenesí positivo, sin parar, donde se podía, en la calle, en el baño, en los carruajes de punto, en la mismísima vivienda. Y antes y después del engaño reincidente, bebía, bebía. . . . En ocasiones, se quejaba, reapareciéndole los dolores alarmantes y raros. . . . Cuando al fin Rubio se enteró, al cabo de varios perdones y participaciones en excesos alcohólicos, cuando la expulsó despiadada y brutalmente, Santa estaba borracha. Al cochero, que le propuso al reconocerla llevarla a casa de Elvira, le contestó riendo y tambaleando: No, allí no . . . llévame a otra, hombre, de tantísimas que hay, pero que sea de a ocho pesos, siquiera . . . ¡todavía los valgo! (278).
Due to her alcoholism, her sickness, and wretchedness, she cheated on Rubio with a vengeance, without a break, wherever she could, in the streets, in the public bath houses, on streets cars, even in her own home. And before and after the deception which she couldn't help but relapse into, she would drink copiously. . . . Sometimes she would complain of pains and aches that returned increasingly stronger. . . . When Rubio finally caught on, after having several times forgiven her and taken part in her drinking sprees, when he threw her out forcefully and heartlessly, she was drunk. To the coachman who, upon recognizing her, suggested that she be taken to Elvira's brothel, she replied laughing and staggering: No, not there . . . take me to another [brothel], man, there are so many of them, but one where customers are charged at least eight pesos. . . . I'm still worth that!
Santa becomes more like Pombinha. On the surface, Gamboa and Azevedo appear to be following the same path. That, however, is not the case. Gamboa portrays Santa the way he does for reasons altogether different from those that lead Azevedo to take an amoral stance vis-à-vis his literary creation. In the second half of Santa, one detects a drastic change in the way Gamboa depicts the protagonist. The first part of the novel outlines the predicament of a young woman who is dragged into prostitution, practically against her will. The second part introduces a Santa who differs markedly from the naive girl presented earlier. Now, she is as depraved as any of her many customers. To many critics, this change conforms to the naturalistic notion of the environment's ability to shape and destroy lives. Santa can be seen as the proverbial "human insect," caught in the grip of forces and drives that she can neither understand nor control. However, this view focuses on naturalistic themes sometimes at the expense of other important patterns and elements in the novel. Contrary to what critics like Mena propose, there is more to Santa than merely naturalistic themes and formulas.
The fact that Santa undergoes a drastic change in the second half of the narrative reflects the extent to which Gamboa may have been following naturalistic tenets. However, this transformation may also point to a desire on the part of the author to make credible a final redemption of Santa's sins. This could be attained by a cathartic and poignant finale. In order to accomplish this, Gamboa is compelled to portray Santa as a depraved prostitute who seems to enjoy her sexual exploits.
The tale of an innocent country girl who is seduced, and then is rejected by lover and family alike to die diseased and abandoned would betray a puritanical callousness bordering on sadism if it were to close tersely with the protagonist's death, as Maggie does. This would be especially true if such a story were to come from a writer steeped in the Catholic tradition like Gamboa. To Gamboa, no purpose would be served if Santa were to die disfigured and neglected. Consequently, he permits the protagonist to change and develop into a successful prostitute. She also appears to enjoy her success and the influence derived from her position as a courtesan to the rich and powerful. By giving his protagonist this life, the author allows for the possibility that Santa may eventually be punished for her sins. Gamboa goes on to structure his novel in such a way as to make plausible the subsequent implementation of this development. The author would be left with few reasons to punish Santa with disease, abandonment, and death, if she had not become so depraved and had not enjoyed her exploits so licentiously. By positing a cruel punishment for the protagonist as something feasible and believable, the author makes it possible for Santa to receive divine mercy and forgiveness, if she should reflect and repent. She does both:
[Santa] sentíase lo que en realidad era: un pedazo de barro humano; de barro pestilente y miserable que ensucia, rueda, lo pisotean y se deshace (124).
Su instinto sugeríale a Santa el encaminarse a un templo. . . . Habíanla ganado tales ansias de cambiar de vida . . . sí, de cambiar de vida ¿por qué no? . . . ¿o sólo de eso se podía vivir? . . . ¿Cómo de muy diversos modos vivía tanta mujer, hasta con criaturas de nutrir y abandonadas igualmente de sus seductores? . . . Pues a imitarlas y a pegarse al trabajo, que fuerzas y salud poseía de sobra. ¿De qué trabajaría? . . . ¿de planchadora? ¿de lavandera? . . . De lo que se presentara, en cualquier oficio. . . . Y proseguió bordando el plan de toda una existencia de arrepentimiento y enmienda, con la que se regeneraría poquito a poco, mucho más despacio que cuando se envileciera, pero lográndolo al cabo por remate a sus empeños (128-129).[Santa] . . . realized what she really was: a piece of human dirt; of a disease-ridden and wretched dirt that is defiled, trampled upon, and destroyed.
Her instinct led her to a church . . . the desire to change her way of life had overtaken her . . . yes, to change her life, and why not? . . . was that the only way she could earn a living? . . . Didn't many other women have [decent] employment, even those who were abandoned by their lovers with babies to look after? So, [Santa] could follow their example and get herself a good job since she was still strong and healthy. What would she work as? . . . pressing clothes? as a laundress? . . . [She would take] whatever came her way, whatever job. . . . And she went on to devise the plans for a whole lifetime of repentance and rehabilitation, which she would accomplish little by little, more slowly than when she debased herself, but attaining her goal in the end as the result of her determination.When confronted with the magnitude of her predicament, Santa, like Maggie, turns to religion for understanding and forgiveness:
Santa, en éxtasis, pidió mentalmente la muerte, olvidada de su vida y de sus manchas. Morir ahí, en aquel instante, frente por frente del Dios de las bondades infinitas, y de los misericordiosos perdones (132).
In ecstasy, Santa mentally asked to die, forgetting her life and her blemishes. To die right there, in that very instant, face to face with the God of infinite goodness and of compassionate mercy.
Like Maggie, Santa does not find compassion or redemption with institutionalized religion. As a result, she looks for it elsewhere. Santa's search remains constant throughout the latter part of the novel, and eventually takes the protagonist to Hipólito:
Se amarían . . . era infalible y era misericordioso: todos aman, todo ama, hasta los insectos, hasta los seres más débiles y desgraciados. . . . Sí, ese día amañecería, tendría crepúsculos, saldría el sol entre nublazones de oro y se hundiría entre los opalos de la tarde. ¿Qué importaba que el cuerpo de él fuese deforme y que el de ella se hallara marchito por todas las lascivias? . . . El amor hermosearía el cuerpo del hombre y limpiaría el cuerpo de la hembra, y ya redimidos, caminarían gozosos rumbo a la Sión de las almas, sin memorias de lo pasado, dejando la carne en las zarzas, para las fieras. . . . El mal no existía, el mal acabaría, el mal acaba. . . . Santa se bañaría en el Jordán del arrepentimiento y saldría más blanca que los armiños blancos (237-238).
They would love each other . . . it was inevitable and redemptive: we all love, everything loves, even the insects, even the weakest and most wretched of creatures. . . . Yes, this day would come, and there would be a [beautiful] twilight, the sun would come out from golden clouds and would sink between the opals of the evening. What difference did it make that his body was deformed and that hers had become withered due to the lasciviousness that it had suffered? . . . Love would restore beauty and grace to his body, and would cleanse hers, and the two, already redeemed, would walk joyfully toward the Zion of souls, without any memories from the past, leaving their physical body by the wayside, for the wild beasts. . . . Evil wouldn't exist [there], evil would come to an end, evil does come to an end. . . . Santa would bathe in the Jordan of repentance, and would come out whiter than a white ermine.
Santa is given several chances to reform herself before she sinks to the lowest levels of the underworld. However, for some reason she never takes advantage of any of these opportunities. She actually wastes them by cheating on both men who try to take her away from prostitution. It seems as though to Gamboa a genuine redemption is valid only if earned by the person to be redeemed. Santa cannot have other people – family, lovers, friends – walk her path or carry her load for her. She must do it herself if she is to receive divine clemency and salvation. Gamboa, however, does not stop there. He goes to the opposite extreme, and chooses for Santa a road that is harsh at best and horrifying at worst. Not only is Santa not allowed to be rescued by her two pleasant and worldly lovers, she is forced to traverse the most squalid brothels of Mexico City only to be saved at the end by the least physically attractive character in the entire novel, Hipólito. The religious symbolism is apparent in many parts of Santa, and a careful reader should have little difficulty in recognizing Hipólito as a Christ-figure.
Obviously, Gamboa is a naturalistic writer. But he is also a Mexican responding to cultural directives that may be as strong and important an influence on his writing as the aesthetic tenets of European Naturalism. Unlike Crane or Azevedo, Gamboa infuses his work with religious images and symbols that create an atmosphere conducive to bringing the novel to a redemptive close. Echoing traits of the mystic tradition in Hispanic culture, after having subjected Santa to extreme suffering and a brutal cleansing of her sins, Gamboa turns his protagonist to death, to the transcendence of the actual world, as the only way out of her torment:
Uno de los cuartetos contenía ofrecimientos tan misericordiosos:
" . . . dicen que los muertos, reposan en calma,
que no hay sufrimiento en la otra mansión. . . ."
que Santa los repetía sin descanso, obsesionada ya por la muerte, creyendo a pie juntillas en la garantía de los versos sepulcrales. Sin aquel entusiasmo ni aquella devoción con que decía lo primero, cantaba el resto por no truncar la estrofa:
" . . . que si el cuerpo muere, jamás muere el alma,
y ella es la que te ama con ciega pasión. . . ." (307-308)One of the quatrains contained such merciful offerings:
" . . . it is said that the dead rest peacefully,
that there is no suffering in the other world. . . ."
which Santa repeated over and over again, already obsessed with dying, believing wholeheartedly in the promise of these funereal verses. Without the enthusiasm or devotion with which she recited the first lines, she uttered the rest only to complete the stanza:
" . . . that if the body dies, the soul lives forever,
and [the soul] is the one that loves you with blind passion. . . ."Santa goes full circle from being an innocent country girl to a reluctant prostitute, to a concupiscent whore, to a contrite harlot, only to die a purified and dignified human being in the end: "El sufrimiento, el amor y la muerte habían purificado a Santa" (341-342). [Suffering, love, and death had purified Santa]. The road that Santa traverses as her grim story unfolds eventually takes her back to her idyllic Chimalistac. The circle is finally closed as Hipólito and his lazarillo [blind man's guide] bury her body in the little village where she had enjoyed an innocent and pristine childhood:
Y allá, en el risueño cementerio de Chimalistac, del pueblecito en que se metió la cuna blanca de Santa, allí la enterraron Hipo y Jenaro, en el simpático cementerio derruido, siempre abierto y siempre aplacible, en cuyos bardales desmoronados, los lagartos toman el sol y corretean, las hormigas trabajan y las abejas anidan; en cuyos árboles copudos y viejos dan sus pájaros moradores, estupendos concertantes de gorjeos (342).
And there, in the cheerful cemetery of Chimalistac, in the little village where Santa's white cradle was laid down to rest, there Hipólito and Jenaro buried her, in the pleasant, neglected cemetery, always open and always quiet, on whose dilapidated walls the lizards sunbathe and chase one another, the ants work, and the bees build their hives; in whose old and bushy trees the local birds put on outstanding twittering concerts.
At the end of the novel, one finds another trait that sets Gamboa apart from other naturalists such as Crane or Azevedo. In Maggie, Crane tells of the girl's suicide, and closes the novel with the terseness and detachment that have come to characterize many of his works, especially his Bowery tales. In O cortiço, the last image of Pombinha stands in stark contrast to that of Maggie. The former is alive, successful, and having a grand time as a prostitute: "Agora as duas cocotas [Pombinha e Léonie] eram vistas por toda parte onde houvesse prazer" (O cortiço 155). [Now the two coquettes Pombinha e Léonie were seen everywhere where there was pleasure]. While it is true that Santa dies, it is not at all in the same way that Maggie does. Between the days when Santa is the toast of her brothel and the time when she finds herself transfigured and abandoned in the most squalid whorehouses of Mexico City, there is a long period of suffering. During this period, Santa reflects on her predicament in a characteristically Catholic fashion. Subsequently, she repents, and thus becomes eligible to receive divine mercy and forgiveness. This clemency is bestowed upon her through Hipólito. As a Christ-figure, the blind piano player suffers his own ordeal. He desires Santa, but refuses to have her in the same way that her customers and lovers do, so that she may be redeemed and saved. To be sure, he rapes her in a fit of rage. Later, however, he acknowledges his dastardly transgression, and eventually earns Santa's trust and affection once again. Gamboa closes the novel with a reference to Hipólito's love for Santa that is at once lyrical and cathartic:
Y sucedió una vez, cuando Hipólito ya no tenía qué dar a Santa, – ni lágrimas, porque se las había dado todas – que de tanto releer en alta voz el nombre entallado en piedra: ¡Santa! . . . ¡Santa! . . . vínole a los labios, naturalmente, una oración. [A Santa y a Hipólito] sólo les quedaba Dios. ¡Dios queda siempre! Dios recibe entre sus divinos brazos a los desgraciados, a los que apestan y manchan, a . . . los que padecen de hambre y sed de perdón . . . ¡A Dios se asciende por el amor y por el sufrimiento! . . . Y seguro del remedio, radiante, en cruz los brazos y de cara al cielo, encomendó [Hipólito] el alma de la amada, cuyo nombre puso en sus labios la plegaria sencilla, magnífica, excelsa, que nuestras madres nos enseñan cuando niños, y que ni todas las vicisitudes juntas nos hacen olvidar:
Santa María, Madre de Dios, . . . principió muy piano, y el resto de la súplica subió a perderse en la gloria firmamental de la tarde moribunda:
Ruega, Señora, por nosotros, los pecadores . . . (344-345).And so it happened once, when Hipólito no longer had anything to give Santa – not even tears, because he had shed as many as he could for her – on account of repeatedly reading aloud the name engraved in stone: Santa! . . . Santa! . . . there came to his lips, effortlessly, a prayer. . . . [Hipólito and Santa] had only God to turn to. He is always there [when one needs him]. God receives with open arms the wretched, those who are blighted and tainted, those . . . who yearn for forgiveness. . . . Through love and suffering, one is able to ascend to the kingdom of God! . . . And certain of the power of his prayer, beaming with joy, his arms stretched out in the shape of a cross, and his face turned upward to the heavens, [Hipólito] entrusted the soul of his beloved [to God]. [Santa], whose name placed on his lips the simple, magnificent, and lofty prayer which our mothers teach us when we are young, and which not even the worst vicissitudes can make us forget:
Holy Mary, mother of God, . . . he began very gently, and the rest of his prayer soared up to the heavens, fading away into the celestial glory of that late afternoon:
Pray for us, sinners. . . .In her article, "Función del prostíbulo en Santa y Juntacadáveres," Ana María Alvarado touches briefly on Gamboa's use of names and plot developments that have clear religious connotations. The name of the protagonist, Santa [saint], itself is an indication of the extent to which the author is responding to a cultural tradition that places great significance on religion. Even if this religious quality may sometimes manifest itself in the form of irony or criticism toward institutionalized religion, it is nevertheless pervasive throughout the novel. Furthermore, it is used as a positive device to transcend the very predicament and suffering against which it is juxtaposed and by which it is criticized. One of the more charged scenes in Santa is the one in which the protagonist tries to go into a church to pray for her dead mother. According to Alvarado, "hay una enorme carga emotiva que se traduce en crítica hacia la iglesia, que condena en vez de salvar, que es su función ante la sociedad."11 [There is a great deal of emotional tension, which is articulated as criticism toward the church, which condemns when it should rescue, which is its function before society]. Santa chronicles in vivid and sometimes shocking detail the descent of this woman "de nombre demasiado simbólico"12 [with an overtly symbolic name], to present at the end a cathartic denouement in which the protagonist is finally redeemed, forgiven, and at last able to rest:
En la muerte de Santa, halló Hipólito su purificación. Ella volvió al lugar de partida, lejos de la vida de la ciudad y de la sociedad que corrompen y que tanto mal le habían hecho. . . . Dos veces solamente amó Santa: la primera vez en la inocencia que le abrió las puertas a la realidad de la vida; la segunda en los umbrales de la muerte. El segundo amor le reintegró la pureza que el primero le había quitado. El primero la mancilló, el segundo . . . la adoró como a una santa. Hipólito la redime en la muerte.13
In Santa's death, Hipólito found his purification. She returned to the starting point, far away from city life and the society that corrupt and that had done her so much harm. . . . Only twice did Santa love: the first time with the innocence that opened [her eyes] to the reality of life; the second time just before death. The second love restored to her the purity that the first had taken away. The first crushed her, the second . . . adored her as one would a saint. Hipólito redeems her in death.
Like many of Emilia Pardo Bazán's novels, Santa belongs in the general corpus of works that have come to be associated with the "Catholic" Naturalism, sometimes referred to as the "shy" Naturalism, of Spain and Spanish America. We can detect in Gamboa's fiction, as well as in the fiction of most other naturalists in the Hispanic world, a propensity to depict the human drama as something more than just the result of impersonal forces, blind instinct, or unbridled concupiscence. Santa is a prime example of a Hispanic naturalistic novel whose language, imagery, and theme at times seem to conspire against the stated goals of the roman expérimental, after which it is modeled. In his unwillingness to accept wholeheartedly the idea that the individual is inevitably condemned to a predetermined fate and a life of suffering, Gamboa's loyalty to principles that run counter to naturalistic literary ideology becomes apparent. His brand of naturalistic fiction is unique in the Americas in that with it the author sought to bridge two very different and distant worlds: the intellectual milieu of European letters and the social and religious ambience of his native Mexico, both of which are treated with mastery, candor, and understanding in Santa.
Notes
1 Manuel González, Trayectoria de la novela en México (México: Ediciones Botas, 1951) 66-78.
See also Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish-American Fiction, vol. 1 (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1972) 105-106.2 González, Trayectoria 72.
See also R. Anthony Castagnaro, The Early Spanish-American Novel (New York: Las Américas, 1971) 60-61.3 Francisco Mena, "Federico Gamboa y el naturalismo, como expresión ideológica y social," Explicación de textos literarios 2 (1976): 207-214.
4 Mena, "Gamboa" 75.
5 For an assessment of the moralizing strain in Santa, see María-Guadalupe García-Barragán, "Santa, La novela olvidada que vuelve: Sus símbolos e influencias sobre la literature actual," Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages 25 (Corvalis: Oregon State University Press, 1974): 184-188. García-Barragán argues that "Santa . . . sí es un libro moralizador porque intenta hacer detestar el vicio de la carne mostrando sus terribles estragos morales y físicos en el personaje de la heroína y en su temprana y dolorosa muerte" (184). [Santa . . . is indeed a moralizing book because it aims to foment hatred for the sins of the flesh by revealing the terrible moral and physical havoc visited on the protagonist and her early and painful death]. Gamboa himself sheds some light on his intent in Santa, when, quoting a much admired fellow naturalist from France, Edmond de Goncourt, he writes in the preface to his novel that, like Goncourt's La fille Elise, Santa is the story of a chaste and innocent girl. To be sure, Gamboa's novel has passages that strike even our post-modern sensibility as erotic and sensational. Yet, as will be demonstrated later, even here the author "guarda cierto recato o discreción aun en las escenas más escabrosas" (184) [maintains a certain modesty or discretion even in the crudest scenes].
See also Seymour Menton, "Federico Gamboa," in Latin-American Writers, vol. 1, ed. Carlos A. Solé and Maria Isabel Abreu (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989) 373. Commenting on Santa, Menton observes that "Gamboa's lip service to heredity is totally gratuitous. He would have the reader believe that Santa quickly adjusted to the nocturnal life of Mexico City because of the vice of some unknown ancestor. . . . The novel ends on a religious albeit incongruent note, [and] despite its crude naturalism, Santa is an edifying, moral novel" (373).6 Federico Gamboa, Santa (México: Ediciones Botas, 1960) 67. All subsequent quotations from Santa are from this edition. Citations by page number appear in parentheses in the text.
7 "Poetics," Crowell's Handbook of Classical Literature, 1964 ed.
8 Many Spanish and Spanish-American naturalistic writers had a difficult time reconciling their Christian beliefs with the grim view of the individual in the harsh world of the roman expérimental. Federico Gamboa in Mexico and Emilia Pardo Bazán in Spain exemplify perhaps more poignantly than any other novelist of their generation the nature and extent of this dilemma. On the one hand, they embrace willingly the teachings of Zola and the other French naturalists. On the other hand, however, they are unable to let go completely of certain religious beliefs that run counter to naturalistic literary ideology. This tension is apparent in novels such as Santa and Los pazos de Ulloa. On the question of Spanish and Spanish-American Naturalism vis-à-vis Catholicism and Hispanic culture, see:
M. Gordon Brown, "La condesa de Pardo Bazán y el naturalismo," Hispania 31 (1948): 152-156.
Gifford Davis, "The Critical Reception of Naturalism in Spain before La cuestión palpitante," Hispanic Review 22 (1954): 97-108.
Harry L. Kirby, "Pardo Bazán, Darwinism, and La madre naturaleza," Hispania 47 (1964): 733-737.
Guillermo Ara, La novela naturalista hispanoamericana (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1965).
Jorge Campos, "El naturalismo mejicano: Federico Gamboa," Ínsula 20 (1965): 21.
Walter Pattison, El naturalismo español: historia de un movimiento (Madrid: Gredos, 1965). See especially Chapter 9, "Hacia un naturalismo espiritual" (140-165).
Fernando José Barroso, "La intención naturalista y reformadora en la novelística de Emilia Pardo Bazán," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1970.
Carlos Feal Deibe, "Naturalismo y antinaturalismo en Los pazos de Ulloa," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 48 (1971): 314-327.
Alexander Hooker, La novela de Federico Gamboa (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1971) 36.
Fernando Barroso, El naturalismo de la Pardo Bazán (Madrid: Playor, 1973).
Gifford Davis, "Catholicism and Naturalism: Pardo Bazán's Reply to Zola," Modern Language Notes 90 (1975): 282-287.
Emilio González López, "Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán y el naturalismo español en la narrativa: Los pazos de Ulloa, La madre naturaleza, Un destripador de antaño y otros cuentos," Sin Nombre 7 (1976): 62-67.
Michael E. Gerli, "Apropos of Naturalism and Regionalism in Los pazos de Ulloa," South Atlantic Bulletin 42 (1977): 55-60.
Mariano López, "Naturalismo y espiritualismo en Los pazos de Ulloa," Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 12 (1978): 353-371.
Ana María Alvarado, "Función del prostíbulo en Santa y Juntacadáveres," Hispanic Journal 2 (1980): 57-68.
Maurice Hemingway, "Grace, Nature, Naturalism, and Pardo Bazán," Forum for Modern Language Studies 16 (1980): 341-349.
R. C. Boland, "The Antithesis Between Religion and Nature in Los pazos de Ulloa: A Different Perspective," Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 5 (1981): 209-215.
Maurice Hemingway, Emilia Pardo Bazán: The Making of a Novelist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
David Goldin, "The Metaphor of Original Sin: A Key to Pardo Bazán's Catholic Naturalism," Philological Quarterly 64 (1985): 37-53.
João Sedycias, "Crane, Azevedo, and Gamboa: A Comparative Study," Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1985.
Mercedes Tasende-Grabowski, "Otra vez a vueltas con el naturalismo," Hispania 74 (1991): 26-35.9 John Englekirk, ed., An Outline History of Spanish-American Literature (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965) 90.
10 Hooker, Novela 36.
11 Alvarado, "Función" 57-68.
12 Alvarado, "Función" 60.
13 Alvarado, "Función" 61.
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