ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Emilia Pardo Bazan's treatment of disease over the course of her work. In her early work, she concentrated on specific diseases such as chlorosis and tuberculosis and through them examined the individual's relationship to society, specifically how the construction of disease supported societal notions concerning gender. In her middle phase, she moved away from the physical to the social aspect of disease to study alcoholism and criminality. An evaluation of the alcoholic's personal, moral, biological, and social history could determine his responsibility in any given situation. During the reformist campaigns of the 1870's, alcoholism was recognised as a social pathology. In Bazan's last period, disease became a spiritual or psychological experience that resulted from an obsessive reading of the self. The scientific detachment of the experimentalist is revealed to be a self-projection. The paradigm of the experiment that structured the experimental novel ultimately reveals the uncertainties of human knowledge since there are no objective readings.
