I. Capítulo 1
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A Galician novel of manor and power for C1
The House of Ulloa Los pazos de Ulloa
Emilia Pardo Bazán
Emilia Pardo Bazán’s complete novel of 1886, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C1: about 83,400 words and 20 words per sentence on average. 30 chapters in two tomos about a young priest sent to a decaying manor house in Galicia; chapters with long descriptions or political asides are the hardest, the dialogue chapters go much faster.
- C1
- 83 386 words
- 14-23 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the dialogue chapters are within reach, but the long descriptive and political passages of chapters IV, XV and XXIX, at 34 to 40 words per sentence, and rural words like rocín or repecho will need word-by-word help.
B2C1
This text
At C1 the novel reads steadily: sentences average 20 words, and the rural and 19th-century vocabulary is the main work. Chapters run from about 1,200 to 4,800 words, so one or two make an evening.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the long periods of chapters IV, XV and XXIX are no longer a barrier, and the novel can be read for its irony and its descriptive craft rather than for comprehension.
Start readingThe average sentence has 20 words, the same as in A Wedding Trip, another C1 novel by the same author, and longer than in Doña Perfecta (15, B2) or Blood and Sand (17, C1). About one word in nine has 9 letters or more (10.8%, against 10.2% in A Wedding Trip), above the one in ten that marks C1 in the catalog. The difficulty is uneven: chapters IV, XV and XXIX run at 34 to 40 words per sentence, while chapters VII, VIII, XVI and XXVII average 13 to 14. Rural and legal vocabulary and a 19th-century style add to the load. Hence C1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 83 386
- words
- 20
- words in an average sentence
- 14-23
- hours of reading
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Julián Álvarez, a shy young priest, rides into the Galician hills to become chaplain of the Ulloa manor house, owned by the marquis don Pedro Moscoso. He finds a crumbling estate where the marquis lives like a hunter among his servants and neighbors, and where the steward Primitivo and his daughter Sabel run things as they please. Julián tries to put the family archive and the household in order, until the marquis decides to travel to Santiago and marry a cousin. What this brings to the manor, and to everyone in it, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Los pazos de Ulloa
VIII. Capítulo 8
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Choose an underlined word.
A sentence that holds its verb back
Por más que means “however much”, so the first clause is a concession and the main verb waits: seguía empeñándose, “kept insisting”, comes only after the rider’s efforts are described. Read it in two steps: first the rider tries to rein the horse in, then the horse keeps trotting down the slope. The clause cuando no a trancos desigualísimos means “if not at uneven bounds”, a joke on how rough the ride is.
Dialogue dashes carry the speaker
Spanish dialogue has no quotation marks: a dash opens each line, and a second dash closes the speaker’s tag inside it. In -La yegua-respondió Primitivo sin alzar la voz-no sirve para el camino the words respondió Primitivo are the narrator, and the line itself is La yegua no sirve para el camino. Read the parts between the dashes as one sentence of speech.
Chapters
- ICapítulo 1
- IICapítulo 2
- IIICapítulo 3
- IVCapítulo 4
- VCapítulo 5
- VICapítulo 6
- VIICapítulo 7
- VIIICapítulo 8
- IXCapítulo 9
- XCapítulo 10
- XICapítulo 11
- XIICapítulo 12
- XIIICapítulo 13
- XIVCapítulo 14
- XVCapítulo 15
- XVICapítulo 16
- XVIICapítulo 17
- XVIIICapítulo 18
- XIXCapítulo 19
- XXCapítulo 20
- XXICapítulo 21
- XXIICapítulo 22
- XXIIICapítulo 23
- XXIVCapítulo 24
- XXVCapítulo 25
- XXVICapítulo 26
- XXVIICapítulo 27
- XXVIIICapítulo 28
- XXIXCapítulo 29
- XXXCapítulo 30
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
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The very first sentence of chapter I opens with Por más que el jinete trataba de sofrenarlo (“however much the rider tried to rein it in”) and holds its main verb, seguía empeñándose, back for several clauses: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows how the pieces fit.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Emilia Pardo Bazán’s complete novel of 1886, both tomos and all 30 chapters. The text comes from Project Gutenberg, produced from the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes edition, and ends with the author’s own dateline, París, Marzo de 1886.
Is there an audiobook?
The House of Ulloa has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rural and old-fashioned words such as rocín, repecho or ferradura.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in long sentences like the opening of chapter I, Por más que el jinete trataba de sofrenarlo..., and in chapters IV, XV and XXIX, at 34 to 40 words per sentence. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 14-23 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters run from about 1,200 to 4,800 words, so one or two make an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It does not get steadily easier: the difficulty alternates. Chapters VII, VIII, XVI and XXVII are the quick ones, at 13 to 14 words per sentence, while chapters IV, XV and XXIX, at 34 to 40, are the slowest. The rest sits near the book’s average of 20.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can return to the novel each evening where you left off. Any of the 30 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter XII, the start of the second tomo.