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Cover of the 1887 New York edition by D. Appleton: a woman in a flounced dress and shawl holding a fan, drawn in dark red on a beige cloth cover with a blue ornamental border
D. Appleton, 1887

A novel in letters about a seminarian, for B2

Pepita Jiménez Pepita Jiménez

Juan Valera, 1874

Juan Valera’s complete novel from the 1874 edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 56,600 words and 22 words per sentence on average. Luis de Vargas, a young seminarian almost ready for the priesthood, writes to his uncle the dean about the widow Pepita Jiménez. The preface and the first letters are the hardest, the narrative that follows is easier.

  • B2
  • 56 556 words
  • 9-16 hours
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Will this text hold?

B1

Earlier

At B1 the preface and the letters up to 20 April will be slow going: sentences of about 40 words, with the main verb held back behind asides, and church and country vocabulary.

B1

B2

This text

You can manage it at B2: the preface and the early letters can be read slowly, translating single words and whole sentences, and from the letter of 4 May the sentences shorten and the narrative moves along.

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C1

With room to spare

At C1 the novel reads freely; only the longest periods of the early letters and the elaborate irony of the editor’s asides slow you down.

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The average sentence has 22 words, more than Marianela (15) or Niebla (13) and a little above El capitán Veneno (20), but below Martín Fierro (25), which is in verse. One word in twelve has 9 letters or more (8.2%), near the top of the B2 range yet short of the one in ten where the catalog starts C1. The difficulty is uneven: the preface and the letters up to 20 April average about 33 words per sentence, with a peak of about 40 in the letters of 28 March and 4 April; the letters from 4 May average about 22, the narrative called Paralipómenos about 19, and the epilogue about 28. Long periods and church and country vocabulary add work, but the story itself is plain. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.

56 556
words
22
words in an average sentence
9-16
hours of reading
1874
J. Noguera, a cargo de M. Martínez

J. Noguera, a cargo de M. Martínez, 1874. Project Gutenberg

What it is about, without the ending

Luis de Vargas, a young seminarian who is about to become a priest, comes home after years away and writes to his uncle, the dean of a cathedral, about everything he finds in his native village. His father, don Pedro, is a rich landowner, and the whole village talks about Pepita Jiménez, a young widow who was married to a man of eighty and now lives quietly on his fortune. Luis meets her, is troubled by his own feelings and sets his doubts down in his letters, until a narrator takes up the story where the letters stop. Whether his vocation survives, and what becomes of Pepita, is not revealed here.

Compare two places

Pepita Jiménez

I. Cartas de mi sobrino: 22 de Marzo

, , , , , , , . . , , , . :

—, ¿ ?

4 de Mayo

—. , , . , .

—¿ ?— —, . .

— — , .

, . , . .

Choose an underlined word.

Project Gutenberg

A proposal inside one long sentence

The first sentence rests on one frame: tan inverosímil y tan desatinado el suponer que... (“so improbable and so senseless to suppose that...”), closed by que ni la madre... sospecharon jamás (“that neither the mother... ever suspected”). What is being supposed sits in the middle: that a man of eighty would think of marrying. Spot tan... que first and the rest falls into place. Pensase is the older -se form of the subjunctive, the same as pensara, and a boca de jarro means point blank, as the question comes.

Vd. means usted

Vd. is the written abbreviation of usted, and the novel uses it on almost every line of dialogue, so read “Vd. me ha de perdonar si soy maliciosa” as “you will have to forgive me if I am shrewd”. Ha de plus an infinitive says something is bound to happen or has to. The passage is a letter: Luis narrates, and Pepita’s words come inside his account, with dije yo slipped in to show who speaks.

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Where the text gets harder

Translation while you read

The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.

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In the early letters sentences run to about 40 words: translating the whole sentence in Reader helps with the book’s very first one, “El señor deán de la catedral de..., muerto pocos años ha, dejó entre sus papeles un legajo, que, rodando de unas manos en otras, ha venido a dar en las mías”.

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If this book is not the one

Spanish books B1 Earlier Juanita la Larga Another book by the same author B2
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Before you read

Is this the original or a learner adaptation?

It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Juan Valera’s complete novel, with the editor’s preface, the fifteen letters of Luis de Vargas, the narrative part called Paralipómenos and the epilogue of letters, 34 chapters in all. The reader follows the text of the 1874 Madrid edition (J. Noguera, a cargo de M. Martínez) as Project Gutenberg gives it. The cover shown is from a different edition, D. Appleton, New York, 1887.

Is there an audiobook?

Pepita Jiménez 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 words from the clerical and country world such as legajo, balduque or requiebros.

Can I translate a whole sentence?

Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the early letters, where sentences reach about 40 words, starting with the book’s first sentence: “El señor deán de la catedral de..., muerto pocos años ha, dejó entre sus papeles un legajo”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

How many hours does it take?

The whole novel takes about 9-16 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters vary from about 300 words (the letter of 11 June) to about 4,800 (the letter of 4 May), and most run 1,000 to 3,000 words, so one or two make an evening.

Where does the text get easier?

Yes, from the letter of 4 May. The preface and the letters up to 20 April average about 33 words per sentence, with a peak of about 40 in the letters of 28 March and 4 April. After that sentences shorten to about 22, the narrative of Paralipómenos runs at about 19, and only the short epilogue goes back up, to about 28.

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 come back to the novel every evening where you left off. Any of the 34 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example the letter of 4 May or the start of Paralipómenos.

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