SOURCE: "Murderous Impulses and Moral Ambiguity: Emilia Pardo Bazán's Crime Stories," in Romance Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2, May, 1992, pp. 205-10.

In the following essay, Cate-Arries examines Pardo Bazán's frequent use of crime in her short fiction.

In an article published in La Ilustración Artística in 1909, Emilia Pardo Bazán writes somewhat wistfully of her secret desire to join the ranks of professional crime solvers: "Todos llevamos dentro algo de instinto policíaco; cuando leo en la prensa el relato de un crimen, experimento deseos de verlo todo, los sitios, los muebles, suponiendo que, de poder hacerlo así, averiguaría mucho y encontraría la pista del criminal verdadero." It is well known that the Condesa confined her restless powers of detection to her armchair; indeed, criminals and their victims fill a wide range of her short stories and novelettes. In this essay I propose to...