Acceso usuarios
Fortunata y Jacinta represents a microcosm in which the different strata of late nineteenth- century Madrid society coexist and, like any human economy, this novel has its own rules for the creation and social transmission of identity. Everything in the novel exists to circulate and only through this circulation do things and people gain value. This triangular configuration invites a reading of relations as symbolic representations. Following Marcel Mauss's theory of the gift and its application to bourgeois society by Georges Bataille, I suggest that a symbolic rather than utilitarian principle governs the nature of human transaction. Analysing the symbolic value that comes into play in the exchange economy that Galdós's novel represents brings with it an understanding of the rules of signification that guide this literary and political project
