43 h 53 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Two women love the same spoiled man, but Madrid gives them very different places in his world.
Juanito Santa Cruz grows up surrounded by the comfort of a rich merchant family. He marries his gentle cousin Jacinta, who loves him and longs for a child. But Fortunata, a proud young woman from Madrid’s working poor, loves him too. As their lives cross, marriage, jealousy and class shape what each woman can hope for—and what she must face.
In Fortunata and Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós builds a city around this intimate conflict. Shopkeepers, priests, pawnbrokers and café gossips crowd the streets and households of nineteenth-century Madrid. Among them is Maxi Rubín, a frail dreamer who adores Fortunata and hopes love can reform her. A close, often funny narrator keeps personal desires and social pressures in the same frame.
What you’ll discover
- Two women beyond rivalry Meet Fortunata’s fierce pride and Jacinta’s gentleness, each shaped by a different place in society.
- Madrid in full voice Step among street sellers, family friends and café gossips who fill the city with talk.
- Comfort and its costs Enter the Santa Cruz household, where wealth and fierce family loyalty surround a spoiled son.
- The longing for motherhood Follow Jacinta’s wish for a child and see how deeply it shapes her world.
- Love against social boundaries Explore how desire and class press upon people who want love, dignity and belonging.
Who will love it
For readers who love big realist novels, many characters and a whole city on the page, in the manner of Dickens, Balzac or Tolstoy. For anyone drawn to stories of marriage, desire, jealousy and class.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A spoiled son and a rich family
- Juanito meets Fortunata on the stairs
- Jacinta marries into comfort and longing
- Two women circle the same man
- The city and its crowd of voices
- Class and desire shape every choice
- Motherhood and the wish to belong
- Maxi's mind and the edge of madness
- How Galdós tells it: voice, scale and realism
Who’s who
- FortunataA proud, quick young woman of the Madrid poor who loves Juanito deeply and will not accept being treated as unworthy.
- JacintaJuanito's cousin and wife, gentle and well brought up, who longs for a child and wants to understand her husband's past.
- Juanito Santa CruzThe charming, spoiled son of a rich merchant family, who drifts through life and avoids hard choices.
- Maxi RubínA frail, shy and dreamy young man from a family of pawnbrokers, who adores Fortunata and hopes love can reform her.
- Doña LupeMaxi's aunt, a thrifty and tough woman who runs the Rubín household with a firm hand and a sharp eye for money.
- Barbara Santa CruzJuanito's mother, a proud matriarch who guards her son and the family name with fierce devotion.
- EstupiñáA family friend and endless talker, who knows the stories and gossip of the old center of Madrid.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 43 h 53 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 10 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Fortunata e Giacinta
by Benito Pérez Galdós · 1887
In Madrid, a rich wife and a proud, poor woman love the same man as class and family pride shape their lives.
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In short
Fortunata and Jacinta is a realist novel by the Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós. It was published in four volumes in 1886 and 1887.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A spoiled son and a rich family
The novel opens with the Santa Cruz family, a clan of cloth merchants in Madrid. Galdós traces how the family built its wealth over generations, shop by shop, and how it came to stand for the solid, rising middle class. The father, Barbara's husband Baldomero, is a decent man of business. His wife, Barbara, rules the house with firm opinions and a fierce pride in her son.
That son is Juanito, called Juanito Santa Cruz. He is charming, clever in a lazy way, and used to getting what he wants. His mother has shielded him all his life, and the narrator treats this with dry humor. Juanito studies a little, plays at being serious and spends freely.
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What is Fortunata and Jacinta about?
It follows two women in Madrid, Jacinta, a wealthy wife, and Fortunata, a poor woman, whose lives are bound by their love for Juanito Santa Cruz. It also gives a wide view of class and family life in Spain.
Who are Fortunata and Jacinta?
Jacinta is the cultivated wife of Juanito Santa Cruz, a rich merchant's son. Fortunata is a woman of the working poor who loves him too. The two stand for different classes and different kinds of longing.
When was Fortunata and Jacinta written?
Galdós published it in four volumes in 1886 and 1887. The story is fiction, but it is set in real Madrid after the revolution of 1868 and draws on the social life of the time.
The author
Benito Pérez Galdós
1843–1920 · Spanish realist novelist
Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) was a Spanish novelist and playwright. He was born in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and moved to Madrid in 1862. He wrote Marianela (1878), Fortunata and Jacinta (1886–1887), and Miau (1888), as well as the historical novel series Episodios nacionales. He died in Madrid.
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