SOURCE: Moore, John A. “Buero Vallejo—Good Mistresses and Bad Wives.” Romance Notes XXI, no. 1 (fall 1980): 10-15.

In the following essay, Moore examines the portrayal of mistresses and wives in several Buero Vallejo plays.

Anyone acquainted with Antonio Buero Vallejo as man or dramatist knows that he is a highly moral writer, but a peculiar turn of circumstances has caused him to write a series of plays with mistresses who uphold standards of conduct which command respect or sympathy from the audience while other plays picture wives who are presented as shallow selfish women. In this article I would like to develop this anomaly and seek a plausible explanation.

In Aventura en lo gris Ana is the mistress of the fallen dictator, Goldmann. She gradually falls under the influence of the pacifist, Silvano, since she can see the contrast between the stoic idealism of Silvano and the selfishness...