The Book that Took Forty Years to Write

Cecilia Valdes

By Cirilo Villaverde

Though it may be Cuba's counterpart to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Cecilia Valdes nonetheless stands apart as its own work with its own agendas. More than forty years after publishing Cecilia Valdes as a short story, Cirilo Villaverde, in 1882, published it as a novel - a very large novel. Villaverde confesses that the length of time it took to finish the novel, including how little he could dedicate to it at extended periods of time, accounts for the novel's unevenness, which includes long stretches of unnecessary detail and other such disruptive passages. Most disruptive of all is the one hundred page trip to a Cuban slave plantation, which damages the novel beyond repair. One has to wonder how much better the novel could have been, had Villaverde had the chance to write this novel without interruption (he faced many political conflicts, which led to his exile to the United States). This isn't to say it's not a great novel, in many ways it is, but it's not, in the end, a successful novel. The fatal flaw, as I've already said, is the lengthy scene, three hundred pages in, at the plantation. The novel never recovers from it. Wikipedia describes the ending accurately: "as if [the] author h[ad] lost interest in his story and wanted to finish it as fast as possible." For scholars on slavery and race, Cecilia Valdes is a crucial read, but for the rest of us, it just breaks our hearts to see the novel crumble before our eyes.

Does that mean you shouldn't read it? No. As a matter of fact this novel does many things very well. You could even say that an excellent book was ruined by one hundred pages of poor writing, but those first three hundred pages aren't any worse for it. The book's downfall, it seems, can easily be explained by Villaverde's politics. While the book is essentially an anti-slavery novel, it is only in a very complicated way. For one, the novel provides hints that, though Villaverde may have truly been against slavery, he was nonetheless a racist. His stance against slavery was owing to the fact that abolishing slavery would abolish Spanish rule in Cuba, which is what Villaverde wanted. There is evidence that he was pro-slavery up until he learned that slavery was what kept Spain in Cuba, and it is at this point I imagine he decided to take the anti-slavery route that Stowe made very popular. Three hundred pages into the writing of his book he decides to insert an agenda that turns out to be ruinous.

But first I want to show why these ruinous pages are so heartbreaking.


Though the novel has a somewhat slow start it quickly proves to be an enjoyable read. We meet with some intriguing characters and the set-up for potential conflicts. An early character Villaverde introduces us to is the musician Jose Dolores Pimienta, who unfortunately plays a very minor role the rest of the way. As a mulatto, he helps establish the race politics of the novel. The mulatto in Cuba inhabited a space between whites, which were the highest class/race, and blacks, which were the lowest. Pimienta, we learn, is in love with the "Little Bronze Virgin," Cecilia Valdes. If you couldn't tell, she is also a mulatto. However, race politics play against the union of the two mulattoes because a mulatto woman, especially a very attractive and desirable one like Cecillia, would rather marry a white man because she would elevate her status. A black woman, too, would like to marry white, but she doesn't have the same opportunities as a mulatto, who can pass as white. This is key because a white man wouldn't want to shame his family by marrying a colored woman. But don't let this description fool you into believing that this is simply a tale about a mulatto woman tricking a white man into marrying her because he thinks she's white.

Like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Cecilia Valdes doesn't give its title character the leading role. This role goes to Leonardo Gamboa, the man who has captured Cecilia's heart. This is okay because Leonardo makes for a very nice character study. He is likably unlikable. He has as many women, if not more, enamored with him as Cecilia has men enamored with her. Leonardo is fickle, inconstant, and spoiled. He has a very close relationship with his mother, who does the spoiling, but a distant one with his father, who warns Leonardo's mother that her babying him will lead him to ruin. He beats the horse-carriage servant because his father finds out from the servant that Leonardo had been out late carousing with women instead of studying. Why is he likable, you ask? Villaverde sets up a contrast early on that helps color the reader's judgment of him. Before we really get to meet Leonardo, we learn a lot about him from his own father, who has many negative things to say about his laziness and his tendency to party rather than do anything useful. Trusting the father's judgment, we already have a disliking for this young man. But when we do finally meet him, things change. His law school teacher calls on him to answer a question, and Leonardo says, "I'll be damned if I've studied the lesson." He then follows up with a brilliant explanation that reveals him to be imaginative and funny, if not hardworking. Of course, I know many people who truly don't like Leonardo, but I don't think that is Villaverde's intent. If you like him by this point of the novel, I can safely say you'll likely be forgiving of him for his many flaws.

His character develops in interesting ways through his relations with others. With Cecilia he's inconstant, a lover who makes promises, breaks them, and then persuasively promises to make up for the broken promises. His charm wins her over nine times out of ten, though sometimes Leonardo has to wait for her jealousy to burn off first. Although Leonardo would never admit it, she is rightly jealous. Leonardo has another lady love who has a much better shot at him than Cecilia. This is Isabel Ilincheta, and though she doesn't have Cecilia's looks or charms, she holds one very important advantage over the Little Bronze Virgin: she's white. This is the central romantic conflict of the novel, though, of course, I won't say how it concludes.

Leonardo has a mixed relationship with his family. He's closest with his mother, in an Oedipal kind of way. Dona Rosa wants the best for her son and mistakenly believes spoiling him will provide that. She does take her husband's warnings into consideration, but her instincts as a mother beat out her good judgment almost every time. One of the novel's most memorable moments, and perhaps the most telling of her character, is when Dona Rosa gives into Leonardo's rather obvious hints about a new watch he wants. Just as she's about to give him the watch her conscience kicks in and she's left wavering, caught in a battle with herself as to whether she should give him the watch or hold onto it. The decision she ends up making is the only one that could clear her troubled conscience - and I'm sure it's not too difficult to guess what it is. Such are the torments of the wealthy.

Leonardo's father is another important character. He isn't like fathers of today's literature or movies, who serve solely to resist their children's wishes before finally realizing their errors. Don Candido has good reason for being hard on Leonardo, not that this means his being hard on him is very helpful. However, he is very distant from his family. A quiet dinner scene is very revealing, as the family only relaxes when Don Candido leaves the dinner table. Don Candido also acts as the novel's main connection to slavery. He's the owner of several large slave plantations, though Villaverde doesn't use this detail to turn him into a villain. Owning a business that does vile things doesn't make one necessarily evil, but it doesn't mean their hands are clean of the vileness, either. When Don Candido mistreats his domestic slaves the reader can pity them without Villaverde turning Don Candido into a monster. It was the way of life for the wealthy in Cuba at this time, and Villaverde depicts it truthfully. He is much more successful in this novel when his agenda doesn't get in the way of his human drama.

When Villaverde's agenda does get in the way of his human drama is when his characters visit one of Don Candido's slave plantations. The plantation episode essentially brings the story to a halt. It comes between an exciting series of events whose outcome we must await until a one-hundred page break, by which time you'll likely forget what happened previously. Not only does the plantation episode halt the story, it transforms Villaverde's well-developed, well-rounded characters into one-dimensional monsters or saints. Isabel, whose father owns a plantation, becomes an Eva character (from Uncle Tom's Cabin), whose slaves love her so much because she treats them so well that they cry when she has to leave for a few weeks. That such a scenario ironically suggests that the slave is better off with a kind master than no master at all never seemed to cross the minds of the likes of Stowe, but that's a separate discussion. Isabel serves as the novel's saint, while the Gamboas are transformed into monsters who laugh at the sight of their slaves being whipped. They lose the humanity Villaverde worked so painstakingly hard to infuse them with, and the novel's magic has vanished.

Try as he might, Villaverde never can get the novel back on track. The harder he tries the more everything gets bogged down. New characters are introduced who only muddle up the plot, including one character who offers a lengthy explanation of events the reader already knows. The ending is a mess; as Wikipedia (above) states: the conclusion is rushed; everything happens hastily and erratically. Some outcomes are inevitable, and others are just forced. Had the novel been allowed space to develop the story instead of visit Don Candido's slave plantation, perhaps it would have had a more deserved ending. What happens at the end isn't believable because the character motivation isn't sufficiently there. What we have by the time we reach the last page is a masterpiece of literature that could have been.