The Spendthrifts
(Perez Galdos)
Rather apt for these days of credit
cards in Britain. The author who is farely unknown here in England is
the Spanish equivilant of Charles Dickens and on a level with him if
this book is anything to go by. Galdos has skillfully weaved a tale of
a spendthrift wife in the 1860's who wants to get a few dress bills
passed her careful husband , who is a minor Spanish courtier. She, Dona
Rosalia Bringas has a love of fashion that they cant afford and
her two friends who are further down the track in debt, manoeuvre
her more and more into trouble to use her for their own finances.
They all live for free in the huge royal palace that forms a palace
city world of its own, and the novel is set during the last year of the
reign of Queen Isabella II, whose government has become very unpopular
for all the show on the outside and the debt and mismanagement below
the surface.
To get out of being found out for her extravagance Rosalia resorts to
more and more loans and debts and her husband is struck with temporary
blindness, which buys her more time to use his savings without him
seeing, all the time egged on by her friends and getting more
entangled, until Rosalia attempts to sell herself to a powerful friend
who has always flattered her. When this doesnt work the fateful day
when she will get found out arrives. The revolution also happens
peacefully and help for Rosalia comes from an unlikely quarter. It
shows well what it must be like to be a wife where the husband
absolutely controls the purse strings, but she wants to buy things for
herself and the machinations she goes through to get them. The insights
into snobbery and doing things for show are brilliant and the interview
with her poor relation who has suddenly come into money is priceless.
It all shows a decadent society that hasnt the means to pay for itself
, very well. Quite a master peace really.
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