The tale of a high-spirited, ambitious young woman or man breaking free from stifling provincial constraints to pursue a life of independence is a staple of the novel. In 'Tristana' the great Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós disconcertingly reverses the formula.

His beautiful and brilliant and very winning heroine breaks free from a perverse and imprisoning relationship to a womanizing older man, supposed by all to be her father. But after a terrible stroke of misfortune, she retreats—either out of timidity or, perhaps, simply because confinement has its own seductive power.