Naturalism/Las Medias Rojas

Before reading the stories in Cuentos de la tierra, I did a little background research on naturalism. I got what I thought was a workable understanding of the style as a departure from the emphasis on the individual (subjectivism), legends, fantasy, and the triumph of freedom found in romanticism, and towards an attempt to reproduce reality of the human condition objectively, as it is experienced in everyday life. The themes of naturalism focused on the weak and vulnerable as well as the ills and harshness of life such as: prostitution, inequalities in gender, poverty, violence, greed, prejudice, etc. I got the sense that the naturalist writer was going to take the reader to a place or situation somewhere in this world, in contrast to the romantic writer who took reader to somewhere in his imagination.

Las medias rojas was the perfect story start off this collection of stories as an introduction to naturalism. Emilia Bazan does an amazing job reproducing a world that the reader (or at least this reader) feels as if they are actually there, like a fly on the wall. Bazan effectively makes the reader feel the vulnerability, the harshness, the violence and the desperation that Ildara feels and from which she desires to escape. But quite possibly what is most amazing was that she was able to give the reader a vivid sense of the setting, the mood, and the conflict in so few lines. This was the best short story I think I have ever read, as well as a great introduction into naturalism.