ABSTRACT
Imagesoftheunstableenergiesofbourgeoismodernityaboundthroughout naturalistfiction;fmancialspeculationandthescrambleforthespoilsof expansion,theprofusionofgoodsandequallyabundantrefuseofconsumerism, theinflationofmonetaryvalue,fortunesanddesires.DrawingonGeorgSimmel's theoriesofmetropolitanconsciousness,thispaperfocusesontherepresentationof theexperienceofurbanmodernityinnovelsbyGissing,EmileZolaandBenito PerezGald6s.Iarguethatdespitetheirtypicallybroadlypositivistposition, recordingthestruggleforsurvivalwithinthemodemcityandpicturingthosewho thriveuponandthosewhosuccumbtoitsinfluences,allthreewritersultimately eschewacrudelydeterministicscientificideologyintheirambivalentfascination withthephantasmagoriaofurbanmodernity.Ofcourselatenineteenth-century London,ParisandMadridinmanywayspresentdistinctsocialandcultural cityscapes,atdifferentstagesofimperialmightandspectacularmodernity.Yetfor Gissing,ZolaandGald6srespectively,eachconcentratesthesocial,economicand psychologicalclimateoftheburgeoningEuropeanmetropolis.Declaringwith moreorlessvigourthesocial-scientificfocusoftheirworks,eachtookupthetask
of portraying the multi-levelled middle classes within the social and economic landscape of metropolitan modernity. Gald6s argued in 1870, for example, that
the social order nowadays is built on the middle-class: through its initiative and intelligence it has taken on the sovereign role in all nations; it is there that nineteenth century man is to be found, with all his virtues and vices, his noble, insatiable aspirations, his passion for reforms, his frantic activity. (Labanyi, pp . .32f.)
Just as Zola's Rougon-Macqart novels (1871-1893) depict the transformation of Paris into Benjamin's 'capital of modernity', so Gissing's 1890s novels record the social and fmancial complexities of late-nineteenth-century London, and Gald6s' nove/as contemporaneas (contemporary novels) the social, political and spatial development of bourgeois Madrid from the fall of Isabel II in 1868 to the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1875. All three writers embrace the naturalist aesthetic in their depiction of an organic urban milieu, their socialscientific focus on the influence of heredity and environment, and their relation of personal histories to the broader social and political climate of city and nation. Turning from labour to leisure in their depiction of bourgeois modernity, however, and from spaces of production to those of consumption, they also reveal the challenge to objective observation within the modem metropolis, and the illusions and distorted perceptions that pervade its everyday life. Through the perceptions and experiences of their female protagonists, in particular, the novels discussed here trouble the sociological gaze of scientific realism as they mirror the artifice of the modem city.
