That Bringas Woman

By Benito Pérez Galdós. Everyman, 1996. 218 pages.
Translated by Catherine Jagoe.
ISBN: 978-0-460-87636-0
Available from Amazon

Written by the famous Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, That Bringas Woman (1884) is part of a panoramic series of novels about Madrid’s social life and “La Gloriosa,” the 1868 revolution that overthrew the monarchy and ushered in the country’s short-lived First Republic.

Focusing upon the Bringas household in a manner reminiscent of Dickens, it offers a shrewd and none too flattering analysis of feminine psychology, and an intimate portrait of marriage. However, unlike Flaubert, Tolstoy and Alas, the other great novelists of adultery of his day, Galdós’ view of the subject and its consequences is both hard-headed and humorous rather than tragic.