1 - El Sur, seguido de Bene (1985) and Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891): Physical and Moral Decay

Summary

El Sur [The South] and Bene, two short texts published in one volume, launched Adelaida García Morales on her very successful career. Despite their brevity (El Sur is only 52 pages long and Bene 58), they already contain much of what would come to be identifiable as this author's hallmarks, many of which this study is arguing can be subsumed under the umbrella term of Gothic features. Whether it was for the convenience of the publishers or in obedience to a desire on the author's part to present the texts as linked, the result is that El Sur, seguido de Bene comes to the reader with a built-in suggestion of some kind of twinning of the two stories. Accordingly, this chapter will take their single-volume publication as a signal that they are – figuratively as well as literally – bound up with one another.

In El Sur, the narrator, Adriana, addresses her father, Rafael, beyond the grave and gives him her perspective on the events of her childhood and particularly, her relationship with him. She depicts Rafael as a social outsider: he has rejected the central role of the Church in Franco's Spain, where the story is set and prevents her (at first) from going to school (necessarily entailing religious instruction). Added to this social self-marginalization, his marriage to Adriana's mother is clearly increasingly unhappy and an extramarital relationship with a certain Gloria Valle – which has produced a son, Miguel – is ended by letter from Gloria in the course of the narrative. Finally, Adriana herself seems to meet with her father's growing disapproval as she gradually integrates into society and especially, as she begins to meet boys during adolescence. He takes his own life when she is 15, after which she goes to his home town, Seville, ostensibly to visit his sister Delia, of whom she is very fond. Clearly, however, this is an excuse; what she seems to want to do is to acquire a deeper sense of who her father was and this she achieves, partly through staying in his house and talking to the old family servant, Emilia, partly through meeting Gloria and Miguel.

Bene is narrated by Ángela, who was twelve at the time of the action.