44 pages • 1 hour read
Benito Perez GaldosMarianela
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1878A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Stony Hearts”
Nela returns to Señor Centeno’s house, where she resides. The humble and crowded house consists of Señor Centeno and Señora Señana and their children, Tanasio, Mariuca, La Pepina, and Celipin in addition to Nela. Despite being a resident of the household, Nela is frequently forgotten by the family. Often, the family has to remind Señana to give Nela food. Señana tolerates Nela’s presence, believing that taking the orphan girl under her family’s care is a show of benevolence that will earn her merit in the afterlife. Due to her treatment, Nela often tries to stay out of the way and makes her bed in whatever nook is available in the cramped house.
Recently, Nela has started sleeping in one of the large baskets in the kitchen that Tanasio has made. The night that Teodoro arrives, Nela emerges from her basket to give Celipin, the youngest of the children, a peseta that Teodoro has given her. She has always given the grateful Celipin her meager earnings, having no use for the money herself. Celipin reveals that he is saving up to purchase a spelling book to teach himself how to read. He wants to leave the mines and attempt to better his social rank in a big city like Madrid. When Nela expresses surprise over his plans, he admits that he is determined to leave the mines because he has no love for his father and mother, who have confined him to the working-class life of the mines. He laments the dehumanizing work of the mines, much to Nela’s shock and dismay. In comparison, Nela lives a far more impoverished and tragic life than Celipin, though she does not say it aloud. She implores him to not speak ill of his parents and coaxes him back to sleep.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Labor and a Landscape with Figures”
The next day, the workers who reside in the mines slowly wake up and begin their labor. They are charged with digging, rolling, and stirring the materials in the mines until they yield zinc silicate, a precious metal that is considered the silver of Europe. Nela passes by the workers on her way to see Pablo. She arrives at one of the houses at Aldeacorba, where Pablo resides. Francisco, Pablo’s father, greets her at the front of the house and calls to Pablo to come out. Francisco is considered one of the kinder wealthy men in Aldeacorba. His wife died young, leaving him as Pablo’s sole parent. Since then, Francisco has strived to give his son every advantage and care to compensate for Pablo’s lack of sight.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Absurdities”
Pablo and Nela take a walk through the meadows with Choto. Pablo presents Nela with a gift of chocolate, which she delights in. She praises his kindness. With Pablo, Nela comes alive and is more spirited than she is with anyone else. As they walk, Pablo asks Nela about the sensation of pain when one looks at the sun, which Nela says is difficult to explain. Pablo understands that there are some things that cannot be expressed through words alone. He confesses that his understanding of the world is largely shaped by Nela. He can distinguish time of day according to their time spent together and apart, stating, “it is day when you and I are together, and it is night when we are apart” (53). Nela affectionately declares that she feels the same way.
Pablo and Nela sit by a field of flowers and engage in a discussion of life and death, spirituality, and religion. Nela claims that flowers are what the dead turn into when they are buried. She also believes that the Virgin Mary watches over everyone through the beautiful objects of the world. Furthermore, she insists that her experiences prove that the earth stands still and does not rotate around the sun, as science claims. Pablo contests that science and rationality have alternate explanations for her views of the world but praises her wonderful imagination and innocence. He tells her that he will implore his father to teach her how to read as an education will help cultivate her mind. Although he believes her views are absurd, her imagination and zeal for life speaks to something within him as if it were “a voice speaking in my own heart” (59).
Pablo asks, “Tell me, Nela—what are you like?” (59). Nela is pained by the question and does not answer.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
In Chapter Four, the novel introduces the members of the Centeno family, who have taken Nela under their care, as she is an orphan. Although the Centeno family has given Nela shelter, their care is perfunctory if not neglectful at times. In particular, Señana is largely critical of Nela’s presence. She often comments of Nela, “[w]hat a plague the creature is; she does nothing, and lets no one else do anything” (29). In other instances, Señana does not notice the young girl and neglects to feed her if not reminded by other members of the family to do so. As a poor family that makes a decent enough living in the mines to support the basic needs of each family member, Señana does not aspire to anything more than her current means. In describing Señana’s attitude towards life, Galdo writes, “Señana, with her narrow capacities, could not at all understand this diabolical ambition to be something better than a stone” (38). Señana represents a predominant attitude in the Centeno family through her lack of desire for social ascension through education and knowledge acquisition. Thus, the Centeno family’s view of moral life is determined only by their poverty, which sequesters them from imagining any improvement to their circumstances. The exception to this way of thinking is the youngest child, Celipin, who dreams of leaving Socrates and becoming an educated man.
In Chapters Five and Six, the novel explores the unique dynamic between Pablo and Nela. The two possess a co-dependency where Pablo’s spiritual imagination of the world is largely informed by Nela’s words. Lacking sight, Pablo is at the mercy of those around him to inform his imagination of the world. Francisco, Pablo’s father, attempts to intervene in Nela’s whimsical and innocent views by reading to his son about the various sciences. However, Nela’s zeal for her fantasies about the world are intriguing to Pablo despite his better judgment. Pablo says to Nela, “I, who know the truth about the world and religion, I was stirred to enthusiasm as I listened to you” (59). Although Pablo possesses the education that Nela does not, he is drawn to her wild imagination, which is lacking in scientific rationale.
When Nela proclaims to Pablo “that my eyes would be of no use at all, if it were not to guide you and tell you how beautiful the world is” (59), she incites a curiosity within him about the notion of beauty. He asks Nela what she is like in the hopes that she would be one of the beautiful things in the world. However, Nela’s lack of self-worth, attributed to her poverty and unfortunate family history, makes this an especially difficult question to answer. The question pains her, as she believes that she is not beautiful or worthy and will not live up to Pablo’s excitement about her potential beauty.
