The tribune of the people

Set against the background of civil unrest in the late 1860s after the overthrow of the monarchy - a period of turmoil, brief restoration, and the eventual triumph of the republicans in 1873 - the novel portrays the life of a young girl, Amparo, growing up in the streets of La Corufia, the city Dona Emilia knew so well from her own wanderings there some years earlier. Amparo's development from a disheveled street urchin into a lovely young woman, a leader among the women in the factory, and an inspired orator at a time of national conflict and decision, reflects the author's growing interest in the rights of women in Spanish society. Pardo Bazan offers the reader realistic depictions of the lives of proletarian and bourgeois inhabitants of a provincial capital. Dona Emilia feels obliged to caution any aspiring girl of the working class to tread with great caution near the many boundaries of class separation and she concludes her novel with a mixture of despair along with hope for a world that is still unlikely given the conditions of her time.