2017 MLA Convention Conference Paper Impairment of Vision and Visions of Impairment in Galdós’s Marianela Wan Sonya Tang Boston College Since its publication in 1878, Galdós’s Marianela has been interpreted in myriad contradictory ways: as a lyrical interlude (Berkowitz, qtd. in Jones 516) and as a profound tragedy (Blanco García, Menéndez Pelayo, and Montesinos, all qtd. in Dendle), as an allegory of the triumph of science (Casalduero, Ruiz) and as the exact opposite: a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked positivism (Wellington, Dendle). Yet regardless of their interpretive framework, these studies have all recognized that Marianela is a story about disability. After all, the novel’s two protagonists, Nela and Pablo, are each defined by a disability, which, in the words of Elizabeth Smith Rousselle, “cannot allow them to function pragmatically in a positivist society” (96). Pablo, who is blind from birth, is guided around town by Marianela—Nela for short—who is physically underdeveloped and feeble. Nevertheless, the ending that awaits these two characters could not be more disparate: whereas Pablo is cured by the miracles of modern medicine and weds his beautiful and wealthy cousin Florentina, Nela is abandoned by her only companion and dies pitifully of sorrow. In contrast to previous studies that have focused on the symbolic value of these wildly dissimilar fates, this paper seeks to examine how nineteenth-century Spanish society’s prejudices contribute to the distinct situations of Pablo and Nela, focusing on the roles of class and specifically gender in the perception of disability. Whereas scholars such as Joaquín Casalduero or Mario Ruiz find Nela’s death to be inevitable from a narrative perspective—as a symbolic representation of man’s turn away from ignorance and superstition, I argue that dying is Nela’s