Fortunata y Jacinta

Fortunata y Jacinta, naturalistic novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, published in four volumes in 1886–87 and considered a masterwork of Spanish fiction. Fortunata y Jacinta offers deft characterizations and incisive details of the social, personal, and psychological aspects of its era. The novel was part of Pérez Galdós’s lengthy series of novelas españolas contemporáneas (“contemporary Spanish novels”), and it established many characters who would reappear in subsequent novels.

The main plot concerns two unhappily married Spanish women of different classes. Fortunata is the working-class wife of Maxi Rubín and the mistress of Juanito Santa Cruz, a self-indulgent Madrileño (citizen of Madrid). Middle-class Jacinta is Santa Cruz’s wife. Ironically, Fortunata bears Santa Cruz children out of wedlock but is childless with her husband; the marriage of Jacinta and Santa Cruz is similarly barren. After sundry vicissitudes, now on her deathbed, Fortunata sends her newborn child to Jacinta.