Restless Gentleman: Jorge Isaacs in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Maria (1867) is one of the most widely read Spanish-American novels of all times; this work compares it to the ups and downs in its author's life. Jorge Isaacs had been rich and fallen on hard times; had been a conservative Catholic and turned into an anti-clerical liberal; had been a merchant and rose up in arms; later he was exiled from his native province. The parable of his life deserves an explanation and this paper offers two clues: Isaacs' ineptitude for business and the high price he had to pay for changing his political-ideological sign into one that ten years later opposed the political regime of La Regeneracion (1878-1900). Ironically, a later conservative regime (1900-1930) crafted the literary canonization of Maria, a nostalgic and sentimental novel, and established it as a national model of immutable private morality.