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Galdós' Use of Yellow in Character Delineation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The use of color by Galdós has so far failed to attract the detailed attention of literary scholars. This lack of attention may perhaps be explained by the fact that Galdós is so well known and so esteemed for his external and psychological realism that scholars have not been inclined to seek special connotative values, nuances, and interest for particular colors in his literary creativity. Galdós' penchant for drawing black-and-white sketches and two recent, very careful, and highly regarded studies—which only mention in passing specific instances of Galdós' lack of concentration regarding color—likewise fail to hint at its importance in his novels. That Galdós was interested in color, however, may be seen in his perennial use of yellow—an especially important chroma which occurs not only prominently at critical junctures in certain novels but also as the surname of an important character: Juan Amarillo in Gloria.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1964
References
1 Walter T. Pattison, Benito Perez Galdós and the Creative Process (Minneapolis, Minn., 1954), p. 99, n. 335; and William H. Shoemaker, “Galdós' Literary Creativity: D. José Ido del Sagrario,” HR, xix (1951), 212.
2 La Fontana de Oro, Doña Perfecta, Torquemada en la hoguera, and others as will be shown in the text of this study.
3 This is the only instance where Galdós ever used a color for the surname of an important character. Cf. “Ensayo de un censo de personajes galdosianos,” Obras completas, ed. F. C. Sainz de Robles (Madrid), vi, 1705–2078. All references to Galdós' works in the present study are to be found in this series; volume iv is the tercera edición (1954), and v and vi are the segunda (1950, 1951).
4 Shoemaker, p. 232.
5 Galdós definitely associated yellow with consumption. Fifteen years earlier, in La Fontana de Oro, he had described a lone flower in a patio as “pobre clavel amarillento y tisico” (iv, 37). For Jacinta in Fortunata y Jacinta, yellow “tiene cierto aire de poesia mezclado con la tisis, como en La Traviata” (v, 99).
6 Textual chronology seems to indicate that Galdós worked from the color yellow (Fortunata y Jacinta, v, 304) to the image of a tiger (Miau, v, 554, col. 2) to give Villamil a somewhat feline countenance to blend with that of the female members (“las tres Miau”) of his family (p. 554, col. 1).
7 For example, el Marqués de Tellería in La familia de León Roch (iv, 856). See José M. Sbarbi, Diccionario de refranes de la lengua española (Buenos Aires, 1943), p. 64.
8 See, for example, “Jew Badge,” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1948), VI, 89–90 (also picture, i, 351); see also the several references cited by M. Channing Linthicum, “Malvolio's Cross-Gartered Yellow Stockings,” MP, XXV (1927), 89. Even before Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, Der Große Brockhaus (Leipzig, 1930), vu, 105, listed yellow: “bei den meisten arischen Voelkern . . . die Farbe des Neides, Hasses, Geizes, der Streitsucht, Falschheit, Aechtung.”
9 Essays, Plays and Sundry Verses, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, Eng., 1906), p. 434.
10 C. A. Jones, “Galdós' Second Thoughts on ‘Doña Perfecta’,” MLR, liv (1959), 570–573.
11 Cf. Galdós' final disposition of Teresa Amarillo (iv, 681)
12 Maria, perhaps, inherits some of her passionate nature from her father, who is also characterized (but humorously) by green and yellow. When the incurable “viejo verde” (iv, 783) finds that León Roch will no longer finance his extravagances, “sus sienes, oprimidas y surcadas de venas verdes, tomaban el color amarillento de la cera de velas mortuorias” (iv, 856).
13 El doctor Centeno (iv, 1398, 1411), La de Bringas (iv, 1653, 1654, 1665), and Fortunata y Jacinta (v, 194–196). Galdós also found it necessary to change some other individualizing features, including Torquemada's speech-tag. See my “The Muletilla: An Important Facet of Galdós' Characterization Technique,” HR, xxix (1961), 305.
14 See H. Chonon Berkowitz, Pérez Galdós. Spanish Liberal Crusader (Madison, Wis., 1948), pp. 325, 334–335, 342, 424, et passim.
15 In the same novel one of the reflections of Padre Francisco Mancebo's devilish “desmedida afición al sórdido ahorro” (v, 1333) is his insistence on the purchase of (cheaper, foul-smelling) yellow soap for the household (v, 1330).
16 Such color inconsistencies are not uncommon in Galdós' creativity; see Shoemaker, p. 212.
17 Note, for example, the aggressive tone in the opening paragraph of the novel (v, 906).
18 This coloring for the bandits concurs with Galdós' opinion expressed fourteen years earlier in La desheredada that for many children, “el raquitismo . . . [les marca] con su sello amarillo . . . inscribiendo la predestinación del crimen” (iv, 1001). This apparently was not an uncommon opinion. As noted in “Delincuente,” Enciclopedia universal ilustrada (Bilbao, Espasa-Calpa, n. d.), xvii, 1472, the criminologist J. J. Arraez y Carrías found in a study of 150 Andalusian criminals that the only thing significant about their skin was that some had “cierto tinte amarillo verde.”
19 v, 1908–10. Cf. the choice of descriptive words and functional technique concerning Teresa Amarillo, created seventeen years earlier (iv, 598, 652).
20 Vida y obra de Galdós (Madrid, 1951), p. 252.
21 Doña Juana is “slant-eyed” (vi 118).
22 See “Jaundice,” The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1933), v, 558; see also “yellow” both in O. E. D., xii, 34–36, and in Gertrude Jobes, Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols (New York, 1961), ii, 1704.
23 For details concerning the full range of color values in Spanish Renaissance literature, see: Herbert A. Kenyon, “Color Symbolism in Early Spanish Ballads,” RR, vi (1915), 327–340; S. Griswold Morley, “Color Symbolism in Tirso de Molina,” RR, viii (1917), 77–81; W. L. Fichter, “Color Symbolism in Lope de Vega,” RR, xviii (1927), 220–231.
24 For example, see Cowley, p. 434. Whiteness in Galdosian characterization frequently symbolizes purity; see, for example, my “Galdós' Sephardic Types,” Sym, xvii, 94. Galdós uses yellow not only as a sign of discoloration (frequently using the simile of old paper) in physical descriptions but also for inanimate objects as well. The documents in the hated Inquisition office (El audaz, iv, 393), for example, are an unpleasant yellow, as is the crucifix on the wall.
25 See “Quarantine,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge, England, 1911), xii, 710. For social pariahs in general, see Linthicum, “Malvolio's . . . Yellow Stockings,” MP, xxv (1927), 89. Also, for Jews, see n. 8 above. For convicts, Jobes, Dictionary, ii, 1704; Geo. Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System (Chicago, 1958), p. 30; Stephen Crane, Maggie and Other Stories (New York, 1960), p. 2; and n. 18 above. For heretics, see n. 33 below. For prostitutes, see Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, 1958), pp. 336, 341. Another reason for the popular belief that yellow is the devil's color probably derives from the fact that the devil is thought to smell of sulphur, which is, of course, yellow in color. Lake Avernus, near Naples, “because of its mephitic and sulphurous vapors was thought by the Greeks and the Romans to be the entrance to the infernal regions. Through it Odysseus and later Aeneas were said to have entered the lower world” (Jobes, ii, 965). Hence the perennial notion that hell-fire is sulphurous. See also n. 29 below.
26 See nn. 8, 18, 22, and 25 above.
27 Rafaelito Carrillo (Lo prohibido), iv, 1755; Fortunata, and Luisito Cadalso (Miau), both in v, 265, 635.
28 Galdós' library contained Balzac's Œuvres complètes, 46 vols. (Paris, 1856–77) and four different editions of Dante's Divine Comedy. H. Chonon Berkowitz, La biblioteca de Benito Perez Galdós (Las Palmas, 1951), pp. 178, 193.
29 Dante Alighieri, “Inferno,” Le opere di Dante (Firenzi, 1921), p. 597. This chromatic symbolism has been variously interpreted as impotence, envy, and avarice, as may be seen in the translator's notes: The Divine Comedy, trans. John D. Sinclair (London, 1939), p. 430; and in the version by Henry Francis Cary (A. L. Burt Co., n.p., n.d.) p. 156. For additional references to yellow as the devil's color, see n. 25 above; Archer Taylor and Bartlett J. Whiting, A Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 416; and James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York, 1949), p. 696.
30 “Memorias de un desmemoriado,” Obras completas, vi, 1656, 1693.
31 Paris, Calmann-Lévy, n.d., ii, 214–216.
32 “Gobseck,” Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1875), ii, p. 466; and Eugénie Grandet (Paris, Calmann-Lévy, n.d.), p. 8. Because Grandet is such an inhuman miser (more so than Torquemada), Balzac even calls attention to the dingy yellow walls in part of his house and his use of cheap, shopworn yellow candles (p. 61). For an especially ruthless and jaundiced villain of Balzac's, note M. Troubert in Le Curé de Tours; his accomplice, Mlle. Gamard, significantly lives in a “salon jaune.” Œuvres (Paris, 1913), ix, pp. 208, 204.
An examination of all the references to yellow in Dickens' novels as listed in the O. E. D., xii, 34–36, does not reveal any sharing of Balzac's and Galdós' values for yellow. Two American authors, however, who do use yellow with unpleasant, stigmatizing connotations are Stephen Crane, Maggie, pp. 6, 7, 16, 60, 175, and Thomas Hal Phillips, The Golden Lie (New York, 1951), pp. 4, 5,. 44, 46–47. Ivan Schulman, Simbolo y color en la obra de José Martí (Madrid, 1960), p. 458, finds that yellow in the works of the Cuban patriot “señala decadencia, muerte, melancolía o impureza moral.”
33 For sambenito, see O. E. D., ix, 80; for crosses of infamy, see G. C. Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty (London, 1938), p. 127 (also picture, p. 136); for candles, see “Auto da fé,” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, i, 640. With the increasing use of yellow by the Inquisition, there occurred, it seems, a parallel decline in its popularity as an acceptable liturgical color after the fifteenth century. Finally it was proscribed. Cf. “Colours,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1908), iv, 135.
34 George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York, 1954), p. 275.
35 Cf. Berkowitz, Pérez Galdós, on religion, pp. 72–73, 139–141, et passim; on usury, n. 14 above.