CLOTHING AS AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ELEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY NOVELS BY BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS
CLOTHING AS AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ELEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY NOVELS BY BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS

Summary/Abstract: Benito Pérez Galdós’s interest for clothing is undeniable, permanent, and not surprising at all for an author of that era, who incessantly aspires to faithfully reflect the lives of his contemporaries in his novels; all realist novelists pay very close attention to the way in which their characters are dressed. Galdós himself repeatedly stated this during his reception speech at the Royal Spanish Academy, as well as in some of his novels. Galdós never forgets to mention the way in which his characters are dressed (mostly if they are women), since a messy or a tidy clothing could make the readers draw many conclusions regarding the personality of the character. The quality of the clothes allows us to guess what social class a character represents. Clothing constitutes an unerring resource to portray the characters who, a hundred years after the death of the author, become a very interesting source of anthropological information. Fashion historians find in Galdós’s novels irrefutable data about the clothes the Spanish people were wearing towards the end of the 19th century.

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