Liturgicization and the Satire of Politics in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s La Tribuna (1883)

La Tribuna (1883) by Emilia Pardo Bazán is one of the first Spanish naturalistic novels, portraying workers’ lives in a tobacco factory in La Coruña, Spain. Critics have traditionally read the novel from either a Marxist or a feminist perspective. This chapter analyzes how the author uses pseudo-religious language not only to mimic the working class’s lack of political consciousness but also as a resource to convey her political stance and to criticize contemporary society. This strategy allows Pardo Bazán to configure her didactical purpose as well as what has been defined by Susan Rubin Suleiman as a counterthesis: the responsibility to extract a lesson from among the plurality of messages—both positive and negative models—within the text. The distinctive features of Pardo Bazán’s narrative form are thus reexamined, particularly her naturalistic style and Catholic-conservative ideology.