Narrating the Naturalist Novel: Matilde Cherner’s Approach in María Magdalena (1880)

This article examines the narrative strategies employed in María Magdalena: estudio social (1880) by Matilde Cherner. I argue that Cherner’s work is a foundational and revolutionary contribution to Spanish Naturalism primarily for its narratological experimentation within the novela lupanaria (brothel novel) tradition. Though the novel follows some conventions of Naturalist fiction, it simultaneously resists and expands the boundaries of these conventions through innovative narrative techniques, layered narration, and an implicit critique of gender roles and patriarchal society in the novel’s structure itself. Rather than merely depicting the inevitability of social determinism, María Magdalena interrogates it by foregrounding a female voice—albeit mediated through male narrators—and exploring the limitations imposed on women within a rigid moral and social order. Through this complex interplay of narrative voices, pseudonymity and framing devices, Cherner challenges the objective approach of Naturalist literature, introducing ambiguity and subjectivity into a genre traditionally dominated by male scientific authority. In doing so, Cherner’s novel can be considered as pioneering in its own style within Spanish Naturalism.