The thesis analyses and compares the novels La Regenta (The Regent's Wife) by Leopoldo Alas Clarín and Los pazos de Ulloa (The House of Ulloa) by Emilia Pardo Bazán, two of the most important works of Spanish realism and naturalism. The focus of the research is the interaction of three key aspects: literary figures, social criticism, and stylistic and narrative techniques. The purpose of the thesis is to show how the authors each in their own way address similar topics – the decline of aristocracy, corruption in ecclesiastical institutions, the oppression of women and the psychological disintegration of the individual – and situate them in the larger social and cultural context of the nineteenth century. The analysis uses a comparative method, involving interpretation and contextualization of the two novels, based on secondary literature such as academic literary-theoretical articles. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of space as symbol, internal monologue, free indirect speech and irony as one of the narrative strategies used by Clarín and Pardo Bazán to create complex characters and to express their critique of the social order. The main conclusion of the thesis is that the novel La Regenta (The Regent's Wife), with its introspective narration and lyrical-ironic style, reveals the inner psychological distress of the individual in a repressive bourgeois society, while Los pazos de Ulloa (The House of Ulloa), with its narrative straightforwardness and naturalistic attitude, portrays the relentlessness of the rural environment and the collapse of the patriarchal social order. Both novels reflect not only the authors' personal literary expressions but also the cultural struggle battle between the modern and the traditional in Spain in the second half of the 19th century.
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