ABSTRACT
The length and complexity of La Regenta have given rise to a large body of criticism, dealing with a wide variety of the text's themes concerning religion and spirituality. La Regenta is in many ways even more concerned with cursilería than La familia de León Roch. Hysteria, as it is constructed in much late-nineteenth-century medical discourse, may be read as analogous to cursilería. Both conditions are linked with both sickliness and femininity. While Mary of Egypt and Aloysius Gonzaga, are relatively unknown to a twenty-first-century readership, the same cannot be said of Teresa of Ávila. The significance of the figure of Teresa in La Regenta is derived from the relation established between her and the novel's protagonist, Ana. While Ana unconsciously turns to Teresa to affirm her own sense of distinction, her confessor Fermín de Pas consciously manipulates discourses around Teresa, distinction, and cursilería in an attempt to turn them to his own advantage.
