SOURCE: "Pardo Bazán's Pessimistic View of Love as Revealed in Cuentos de amor," in Hispanofila, Vol. 64, 1978, pp. 7-14.

In the following essay, Feeny reviews the stories collected in Pardo Bazán's Cuentos de amor.

On examining Emilia Pardo Bazán's collection of short stories intitled Cuentos de amor, the reader might well wonder at the exceedingly grim view of love the author reveals in these tales. For although the theme of love is touched upon in nearly all of the forty-three stories, it will almost never be that of joyous or blissful love. Rather, Pardo Bazán chooses to write about love unfulfilled ("El viajero," "Más allá"); or love betrayed ("La perla rosa," "Así y todo . . . ," "Sor Aparición," "¿Justicia?"). She prefers the themes of unrequited love, treated in some depth in "El dominó verde," or aberrant love that inflicts pain and death ("A secreto agravio...