Pepita Jimenez by Juan Valera

[Liz M]

Why it is included in the 1001 list: "The narrative structure is free and imaginative; it incorporates the devices of discovered documents, written correspondence, and a narrator who completes what the letters fail to do..."

The novel begins with a frame story: an unnamed narrator is going through the papers of a religious figure and finds a narrative bundled together with some letters. Intrigued, the narrator begins to read the story of the downfall of Don Luis de Vargas, a young man training to be a priest.

Before taking orders Luis makes a final visit to his father, a wealthy landowner in a rural town, whom he has not seen for some time, as Luis had been sent to his uncle, a priest in the city, to be educated when a young child. Through letters written to his uncle, and confessor, we learn about Luis' growing admiration for Pepita Jimenez, a young beautiful and pious widow being courted by his father. You can probably guess what happens next, but the outcome may still surprise you.

In many ways, this is almost an utopian novel -- the life style of the wealthy landowners, benevolent overseers of land and town, balanced with faith and propriety resulting in a perfectly bucolic existence.

[Diane]

Rating: 3.5 stars


A teenage girl is wed to an uncle in his 80's (ick). By the age of 20, she is widowed, wealthy, and a good marriage prospect. She quickly becomes betrothed to a prominent local man, but falls in love with his adult son who is studying to become a Catholic priest. Overall, a good insight into the conflict between religious piety and human emotion.

[Patrick]

** 1/2

Poor young country girl weds 80-year old man then quickly becomes widow. Young priest in training visits his father and becomes acquainted with the said widow. Despite mutual restraint based on Catholic piety, they still end up falling in love. Etc. Almost formulaic and heavily burdened (spoiler: in vain) by religious arguments. While it attempts to represent the mental struggle between religious ideals and the power of human emotions with a veiled social critique about Spanish country life in the 19th century, I much preferred a similar, but less predictable and more enthralling novel by Emile Zola, La faute de l'Abbé Mouret.

[Valerie]

Read May 2021

I ended up enjoying this book a lot more than I thought I would. Although, maybe not in the way the author intended. I doubt that I am/was the intended audience at all. I spent most of the novel thinking Don Luis was an ass, interspersed with laughing at him. However, all’s well that ends well and we end with a nice romance story.

I didn’t think the epistolary portion of the novel was special enough to add it to the 1001 list. However, I was interested in the portions of the novel that seemed like proto-metafiction, these seemed to make it worthy of at least remembering. The religious arguments (that Don Luis bangs on about at length) are VERY snooze-worthy, but 3.5* (for making me laugh). I should add, that Pepita is a stronger character than you would expect for 1874.

[Amanda]

I gave this one 3 stars. I respect the tropes it has helped contribute to literature (that Liz mentioned above), and did appreciate the conflict of duty (religious in this case) versus love to a certain respect. I also liked how Pepita is portrayed as a highly intelligent women with a life and personality of her own outside of Don Luis' affection- which you can't always count on from stories like this from this time (hell, you can't always count on that from modern female love interests in movies and Tv).

But, I can't say I find these types of plots to really be my jam. It wasn't bad at all, I just wasn't in love with it- no pun intended lol.