The House of Ulloa

by Emilia Pardo Bazan

Other authorsLucia Graves (Translator), Lucia Graves (Introduction), Paul O'Prey (Translator), Paul O'Prey (Introduction)

Paperback, 1990

Status

Available

Call number

863.5

Publication

Penguin Classics (1990), Paperback, 288 pages

Description

Don Julián Álvarez, a young and timid priest, goes to the Pazos de Ulloa to serve the Marquis Don Pedro Moscoso as administrator, on the recommendation of the nobleman's uncle. Upon arriving at the Pazos, located in a rural area of Galicia, the priest is scandalized by the decaying state of the palace and the behavior of Don Pedro and his employees: The palace is in a dilapidated state, the library and the accounts abandoned, the chapel neglected by the current abbot. Don Pedro, who is not really a marquis since the title was sold, is ignorant and rustic, although he gives himself the air of a great lord. He spends most of his hunting time surrounded by disreputable characters.

Media reviews

The Guardian

User reviews

LibraryThing member cammykitty

The House of Ulloa is a late 19th century classic from Spain, written by a woman too!!! This novel was many things, and a certainly don't know how to give you a synopsis. A naive priest (yes, many a Latino story starts with a naive priest) is sent to work as the chaplain for the House of Ulloa, a

crumbling estate with more pretensions than class. Once he is there, he sees sin when it hits him over the head but always finds excuses to deal with the problems another day. He also finds that the marquis is hardly the one in charge. His attempt to make things better results in the betrayal of the woman he most admires.

This book contains politics, infidelity, domestic violence, corruption with a pinch of gothic on the top. Well done and thought provoking. I'm hoping to find more of Emilia Pardo Bazan's fiction translated into English.

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LibraryThing member madepercy

This book was hard to put down. Unlike Charlotte Brontë and Mary Shelley (even though I admire their work); not to mention era, translation, and social-construction-of-gender issues, Bazán writes of a socially-constructed man better than any biologically-female woman from the nineteenth century I

have read to date (to mention but a few qualifications, if indeed, I could possibly know what a socially-constructed man of the nineteenth century was like, but I doubt it could be anything like The Professor or the annoying, whingey, whiney Frankenstein). Given that George Eliot and Miles Franklin and many others had to pretend to be men to be published, even in the early 1900s, it makes me wonder if Spain was not considerably more advanced than Anglo countries in Bazán's time? Or maybe her feudal titles helped? I can only imagine what is lost in translation - and if the use of the good old "Mrs Grundy" was true to Bazán's words - but there is much to this novel that I lost due to my lack of historical knowledge of the Spain of these times. I would not have read this novel other than it was there to be read, so this was fortunate. What is unfortunate is that the book has given me a glimpse of Spanish literature that will probably remain beyond my reach for some time to come. But it is pleasing to discover classic works by female authors that is so very good, but at the same time, sad that such talent lies buried in the biases of history.

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LibraryThing member sometimeunderwater

A largely-forgotten classic of 19th century Spanish literature, dusted off for a new publication by Penguin a few years back. I found a tatty paperback of it in some back-alley bookshop in Colombia, and devoured it happily.
Wonderfully merging the gothic and the farcical, the novel rotates around a

naive priest trying to claw order from a crumbling mansion in rural Spain, with feral children and evil gamekeepers. Midway-through a slapstick local election takes place, with all the appropriate caricatures of stupid and venal local politicians. Nicholas Lezard called it “a bit like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but with jokes”, which is spot on.

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LibraryThing member pamelad

The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazan was first published in Spain in 1886. It is set in 1868, the time of the Liberal Revolution that brought the vote for men over 25. The Carlists, backed by the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, opposed the Liberals. Towards the end of the book there's an

election, wildly violent and blatantly corrupt, described in slapstick detail. An abbot and a priest are right in the thick of it. A great contrast to these hunting, drinking, fighting clerics is the newly ordained Father Julian, whom we meet in the first chapter, on his way to the House of Ulloa to provide guidance to the Marquis, the head of the House of Ulloa.

The pious, well-meaning, unworldly Father Julian is shocked by the unsavoury situation at the manor. His attempts to provide spiritual guidance to the marquis and to stem the corruption and disorder that surround him create new disasters. On his very first evening, Primitivo, the corrupt majordomo and the father of the serving girl who is the marquis's mistress, pours alcohol down the throat of his three-year-old grandchild. It's Gothic, and as you read on you're thinking, "Something terrible is going to happen," as though that's not terrible enough.

This is an extraordinary book, particularly considering that it was written in 1886. It's a gleeful satire of the corruption of society and the decline of the aristocracy in rural Spain. It's lively and funny, with characters a great deal larger than life. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member stillatim

A very odd little book, but wildly enjoyable: priestsploitation, plus gothicising HORROR, but the very next paragraph is broad satire or slapstick, so the gothic becomes funny. And I assume that's intentional. It moves very quickly for the 19th century, which helps. Even the clunky "oh, this book

is kind of winding down too soon... I know, politics subplot!" twist ended up quite being quite fun.

Anything which just ignores genre boundaries like this is always more fun than even the best books that stick to them, I think.

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LibraryThing member quondame

The story a callow, unobservant newly consecrated priest sent by the man in whose house his mother is housekeeper to assist his nephew run a dilapidated estate. The estate is controlled by a local peasant gamekeeper who accompanies the almost illiterate nephew in a continual hunt, having pimped his

daughter to his master and intimidated the locals. The young priest, helpless to do more than straighten a bit of the paperwork proceeds to cause misery to those he cares for the most by the end of the main action. In this almost nothing interested me, as with most mid-19th novels I want to put everyone up against a wall and have special prejudice against the hidalgo. But the sly observations of the author preserve this from being a soap opera or morality tale but instead a portrait or erring humanity in a spare and unforgiving world.

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