My dissertation is a study of Galdós's use of hysterical discourse in his critique of melodrama in the novel, paying particular attention to three novels of Galdós's "Serie contemporánea": La desheredada, Fortunata y Jacinta, and Miau. In addition to these three novels, I also examine several of Galdós's essays in order to paint a clear picture of his critical engagement with the popular novel (1840–1870) and the ways in which he sought to change the novel from a sentimental, melodramatic genre to one that embraced realism and reflected a more accurate image of the Spain of the late nineteenth century. I contend that Galdós's distaste for the sentimental novel goes beyond a simple stylistic preference. I frame his commitment to realism as a response to what Henry Kamen calls "the myth of perpetual decline," by which nineteenth-century Spaniards falsely came to understand their history in terms of unremitting decadence since the fifteenth-century. I analyze the impact of this myth within nineteenth-century Spanish political and literary historiography, and I examine its relationship to discourses of melodrama and hysteria. When Galdós comes on the literary scene in the late 1860s, he is aware of Spain's history and its reputation as a nation characterized by melodramatic excess. His criticisms of the popular novel come from a desire to disassociate Spain from melodrama, as well as to write novels from which Spanish readers will learn how better to understand the circumstances in which they live. In this context, I argue, Galdós's representation of hysterical characters in the "Serie contemporánea" operate as cautionary tales concerning the dangers of unbridled melodramatic imagination, not only for individuals, but also for a nation he believes to have lost its ability to distinguish fact from fiction.