EVERY INCH A MAN (Nada menos que todo un hombre)
by Miguel de Unamuno, 1916

"Every Inch a Man" ("Nada menos que todo un hombre") is one of the more peculiar pieces of fiction of Miguel de Unamuno and a fitting conclusion to the volume entitled Three Exemplary Novels (Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo) . The story is significant both in terms of the thematics of the volume as a whole and because of the way it adumbrates the notion of exemplarity. The prologue—which is usually not included in English translations of the stories—emphasizes that exemplarity is to be understood in the same sense that Cervantes used the word in the title of his own Exemplary Novels. As Unamuno points out, this means that "llamo ejemplares a estas novelas porque las doy como ejemplo—así, como suena—ejemplo de vida y de realidad" ("I call these novels exemplary because I offer them as an example—that's right, just as it sounds—as an example of life and of reality"). And Unamuno goes on to offer the interpretive key to the three stories, including "Every Inch a Man": "Sus agonistas, es decir, luchadores—o si queréis los llamaremos personajes—son reales, realísimos, y con la realidad más íntima, con la que se dan ellos mismos, en puro querer ser o en puro querer no ser, y no con la que le den los lectores" ("The agonists, that is, combatants—or if you wish we'll call them characters—are real, very real, and with that most intimate reality that they confer upon themselves, in the pure wanting to be or in the pure wanting not to be, and not the reality that might be conferred upon them by readers").

The "real" characters of "Every Inch a Man" are Julia Yañez and Alejandro Gómez. She is the local beauty of the town of Renada, who must save her family's economic fortunes through marriage; he is quite literally a self-made man who, having married into and made his fortune in Mexico, returns to Spain to make his home in Renada. Once Alejandro sets eyes on Julia, he must have her for his very own. So he settles the Yañez family's debts and marries the beautiful young woman. If Julia had anticipated feeling nothing for the man to whom she would eventually be virtually sold, she realizes that, to her surprise, she is deeply in love with Alejandro. After their initial correspondence, she muses over their mutual salvation: "Here is a real man. Will he save me? Will I save him?" But when she later attempts to find out if he in turn loves her, he answers, "Only fools talk about such things." The crux of the story comes down to the question of love. There is the question of the depth of Julia's love for Alejandro, and of whether or not Alejandro truly loves Julia, or can be inspired to love her through jealousy. There also is the question whether or not love is dependent merely upon individual will and desire, or if it of necessity implies the existence of another and of another's desire.

Frustrated by her husband's lack of affection, Julia begins to see more of Alejandro's friend the Count of Bordaviella, an unhappily married and somewhat inept Don Juan. She finally reveals to her husband that the count is her lover. But, rather than responding as a jealous spouse, Alejandro has Julia declared insane for her delusions of infidelity. As he explains it to the count, "So then you thoroughly understand, Count, either my wife is declared insane or I will blow out your brains and hers, too." Only once she is able to admit that she was indeed mad is Julia allowed to leave the sanatorium. And at that point she asks Alejandro once again if he loves her. With tears in his cold eyes, Alejandro admits, "Do I love you, my dear child, do I love you! I love you with all my soul, with all my blood, and with all my being, more than my own self!" With this admission, Alejandro lets Julia see into the "depths of the terrible and reticent soul which this wealthy, self-made man had kept jealously concealed." He then takes her home, whereupon she becomes deathly ill. Although he tries desperately to save her, even offering his blood and life in exchange for that of his wife, Julia escapes him. As he holds her during the final moments of her life, Julia whispers to him, "Won't you tell me now who you are, Alejandro?" In a play on the title of the story, Alejandro answers, "I? Oh, just a man—the man you have made of me."

Julia's death sends Alejandro in search of himself and his past, of that "life of his which he had concealed from everybody—even from himself." After kissing his son good-bye, Alejandro closets himself with the body of his dead wife and swears, "Death has taken you away and now I am going to come and get you." The story ends with these words: "When later on, they had to break down the door of the death chamber, they found him with his arms around his wife. He was pale and deathly cold and bathed in the blood that had been drained completely from him."

The play in the story between the related notions of economy and honor, redemption and salvation, desire and fulfillment, and reality and appearance comes down to Alejandro's reluctant admission of his love for, and dependence on, a woman. The man who asserts that "I live by realities and not appearances" and that "I am only a man, but I am a real man" (literally, but every inch a man) finally realizes that, in fact, he only becomes what he defines as a man when he admits that his desire—in Unamuno's terms, his wanting to be—is contingent upon his wife's love for and recognition of him and on his awareness that he is "the man you have made of me."

Of course, Julia is likewise what Alejandro makes of her, since, for Unamuno, one "is" to the extent that one is part of another. But the couple can never really enjoy their newly discovered oneness or unity. As the possibility of a spiritual communion in their mutual love becomes more real, death approaches. And it is in the darkly ironic and ultimately empty final image of the story that the true exemplarity of these "real" agonists is to be found. Such oneness is itself a fiction, and Alejandro's desire for transubstantiation—the one true redemption—can never occur and the man is condemned to aspire to the status of fiction, of completion and wholeness, while living the reality of insufficiency.

—James Mandrell