In Praise of what is Left Unsaid: Thoughts on Women and Lack in Don Quijote
Author(s): Ruth El Saffar
Source: MLN, Vol. 103, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1988), pp. 205-222
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905339
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In Praiseof What is LeftUnsaid:*
Thoughtson Women and Lack in
Don Qu ote
RuthEl Saffar
In the fracturedmirrorthat is the mad gentlemanof La Mancha
we come face to face not only with the defectsof character Don
Quijote strivesto keep hidden fromhimself,but withthose of the
society he has decided to take on in his anachronic reversionto
knighterrantry.A successfulaccount of Don Quixotemust attend
not only to the hero's failurebut also to weaknesses in the societal
structurebrought to light through his madness. Cervantes' unswervingcapacityto expose the limitationsof social as well as personalitystructuresmake of his work somethingmore than a contestin which he can be shown to favorone or the other,eitherthe
selfagainst society,or societyagainstthe self. It is no longer useful
to ask of the texta decision regardingthe meritsof structureperse.
Instead I would like here to consider the text for what it leaves
unsaid, for its exposure of the voids out of which,willynilly,language, story,and meaning are generated.
Cervantes haunts the conventionby which storiesare told and
lives are led witha sense of distanceand of absence. It is in the gap
which the author establishes between storyand teller, between
storyand reader, thatthe novel depotentiatesthe absolutizingpretences of ego, and all tendencies to identifywiththe divisionsand
* Cide Hamete asks, in Chapter 44 of Part II, to be praised "no por lo que
escribe, sino por lo que ha dejado de escribir".
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206
RUTH EL SAFFAR
oppositions which structurelanguage as well as society.Don Quirole vis 'a vis his contemporariesis anjote's conflictive/mimetic
other way by whichCervantesjumbles the patternsof expectation,
judgement, belief, and social role that make up our participation
in the collective.He also frustratesthe reader's desire for textual
stabilityby puttinginto question the validityof his sources and the
reliabilityof his narrator. Using a madman for hero and a deceitfulMoor for scribe Cervantes clouds his text with an aura of
uncertaintywhose functionis to relativizeall those effortsof law,
word, and custom to tame the incongruitiesand anomalies of lived
experience.
Cervantes' challenge of established forms,social as well as literary,extends even to his own authority.The Prologue to Part I
reveals his doubts about degrees, titles,and erudition,as well as his
capacity to offera proper introductionto his work.' Uncertainty
regardinghis authorityis projected,nine chaptersinto Part I, onto
the figureof the fictionalnarratorCide Hamete, who carries for
him his sense of incapacitybefore the task of faithfulrepresentation. Debates about how best to representand formulatein words
any given experience run throughout the work, as do implied
questions, through the multiplicationof voices, dialects and literary forms,of how any verbal constructrelates to the events it
seeks to recall to the imagination.
The question of authority,however, is too vast for a paper of
modest size to encompass. For the sake of limitingthe topic,and in
order to offer a specific example, I want here to consider how
Cervantes challenges in Don Quixoteone of the most deeply-ingrained assumptionsof literaryas well as social structurethrough
the parody of sexual conventionDon Quixote's obsession withdistresseddamsels invites.The historyof Cervantescriticismprovides
surprisinglylittleguidance on the role of women in Don Quixote.
Those few studies that exist tend either to list them, categorize
them, or to single out specificwomen for special mention.2EmI For example, Cervantes says in his Prologue: "de todo esto [notas y comentario
erudito] ha de carecer mi libro, porque ni tengo que acotar en el margen, ni que
notar en el fin,ni menos se que autores sigo en el.... Tambien ha de carecer mi
libro de sonetos al principio,al menos de sonetos cuyos autores sean duques, marqueses, condes, obispos, damas o poetas celeberrimos" (Prol., 68-69). All quotes
come from the John Jay Allen edition of Don Quijote,and will be cited by Part,
Chapter, and page.
is Edith
2 The best-knownstudydevoted exclusivelyto the women in Don Quixote
Tradition.Regarding the treatmentof
Trachman's book Cervantes'WomanofLiterary
specificwomen, I thinkespeciallyof Casalduero on the inn prostitutes,Madariaga
on Dorotea, and Auerbach on Dulcinea, to name onlya fewof the mostprominent.
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207
phasis has fallen far more often on the male characters, the
women figuringas symptomsof theirconflicts,objectsof theirdesires, figmentsof their imagination,or obstacles in their forward
progress.
Male-based readings,while undeniablyrichand rewarding,generally leave unmolested the dominant cultural expectations regarding sexual politics.Those expectations,built into the literary
traditionsof courtlylove, the pastoral,and the chivalricromances,
are well described by Rene Girard.3They make of woman an object of desire whom men pursue and about whom theywrite.Don
Quixote, who in this as in so much else is spokesman for a whole
of the femaleobject
tradition,exposes the essentialinsubstantiality
of desire when he explains to Sancho in Chapter 25 of Part I:
las Filis,las Silvias,las Dianas,las Galateas,
ePiensasti que las Amariles,
las Alidasyotrastalesde que los libros,los romances,. . . los teatrosde
damas de carne y
las comediasestdnllenos,fueronverdaderamente
No, porcierto,sino
hueso,y de aquellosque las celebranycelebraron?
que las mas se las fingen,por dar sujeto a sus versos,y porque los
tenganpor enamoradoso por hombresque tienenvalorpara serlo(I,
25, 300).
As Arthur Efron has so rightlypointed out, "Dulcineism", far
frombeing the afflictionof a singlegentlemanfromLa Mancha, is
a way of life for a whole culture.
The intercalatedstoriesthat tell of Grisostomo'sfrustratedlove
for Marcela, Cardenio's self-sabotagedeffortto marryLuscinda,
Anselmos's handing over of his wife Camila to his best friendLotario, and the goatherd Eugenio's failure to win Leandra, reveal
again and again across the pages of Don QuijotePart I the tendency
both to turn the desired woman into an object and to create a rival
who willasure the lover's failure.The tales of conflict,rivalry,and
madness that surround the stories'obssessiveerotictheme render
almost entirelyinvisiblethe women who have ostensiblyinspired
theirtelling.It is far easier for all concerned to adopt instead the
role of pursuer, and to explain away the loved-one as an invention
motivatedby the hope of fame or the effortto win out over a rival.
My point here willbe that-just as Freud told us not too long ago,
3 See especially his Deceit: "Triangular desire is one. We can start with Don
Quixote and end withPavlovitch,or we can begin withTristanand Isoldeas Denis de
Worldand quicklyreach that 'psychologyof
Rougemont does in Love in theWestern
jealousy' which pervades our analysis .... De Rougemont correctlyobserves: 'One
reaches the point of wantingthe beloved to be unfaithfulso thatone can court her
again'." (48).
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RUTH EL SAFFAR
echoing Aristotle-woman (in the novel and elsewhere) signifies
lack: she both representsand embodies his lack.4She stands offto
the side of male discourse,fromwhichposition,in worksthatturn
attentionto her place of marginalization,she can be seen unraveling the tales of fragilityand helplessnesswhich are generallyintended to representher.
By embedding such tales as those of Cardenio and Grisostomo
within a larger context,Cervantes invitesa comparison between
and the manner in which,
the words of his character/narrators
outside theirstories,theyconduct themselves.The absence which
for Derrida is language's principle characteristicfigures in the
novel in the hero's relationto the women he simultaneouslydesires
and refuses. Like that gap-already alluded to-that Cervantes
reveals between events and the formulae designed to capture
them, the woman figuresin the text as that spectral other who is
both looked over and overlooked.
Leslie Fiedler has characterizedAmerican fictionas featuringas
its typicalprotagonist"a man on the run, harried into the forest
and out to sea, down the riveror into combat-anywhere to avoid
'civilization', which is to say, the confrontationof a man and a
woman which leads to the fall to sex, marriage,and responsibility"
(xx), and Edward Said, on a similartack,has observed of the novel
in general its proclivityfor celibate male heroes who create an alternate world of fantasyin the place of the expected one of marriage and self-perpetuationthrough progeny.5The case could be
made that the novel is the locus of conflictingdiscourses, all of
which,like the wandering male heroes who populate them,fail in
preciselywhat they most desire-to achieve through words and
wanderingan experience of the real. That failure,furthermore,is
intimatelyrelated to whatthose characters,even as theychase after
4 Consider, for example, thisreading of Freud fromLacan: ". . . we arriveat the
question of structure,whichwas introducedby Freud's approach: whichmeans that
the relationof privationor lack-in-beingsymbolizedby the phallus, is establishedby
derivationfromthe lack-in-havingengendered by any particularor global frustration of demand" (90). That sense of woman as imperfectvis a vis man has a long
traditionis affirmedin Ian MacClean's study,whichtakes the issue back to Aristotle
fromthe Renaissance: "In the distinction[in scholasticthought]of male and female
may be discerned Aristotle'sgeneral tendency to produce dualities in which one
element is superior and the other inferior.The male principle in nature is assowhile the female'sis pasciated withactive,formativeand perfectedcharacteristics,
sive, materialand depressed, desiringthe male in order to become complete" (8).
5 More pointedly,using termsbeing developed in thispaper, Said sees novelistic
heroes as caught in the "fear of the void" (92).
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it, avoid: the confrontationwithwoman not as object but as independent other, procreative, relational, obligational, the woman
whose presence, were it fullyrecognized,would expose in the man
who desires her the void.6
As should be obvious by now, the void is figuredin many guises
in the novel. Though frequentlyimaged as the desirable and maddeninglyinaccessiblewoman, it also is associated withMother Nature, whose continued status as bountifuland beneficentwas the
subject of much concern in the sixteenthcentury.In his famous
speech to the goatherds, Don Quixote, while givinghis firstfullalso evokes
fledged explanation of his mission as knight-errant,
the world of the nurturingmother whose all-givingcare of her
children has been lost irrevocablyin the mistsof time. His nostalgia for that bucolic Golden Age betraysboth his wish for a return to a condition of dependency and his transformationof that
forbidden desire into the more socially-acceptableimpulse to be
himselfthe protector.The de-centeringimplied in that assumption of a false autonomyis basic not only to Don Quixote's psychological make up, but to that of our own age.7
Don Quixote's Golden Age speech is set in the formof an afterdinner talk and representshis effortto bring his classical/literary
orientationinto association with the company in which he finds
himself.His recourse to the "beatus ille" topos, however, fails to
make its mark. The shepherds on whom he drops his version of
the pastoral ideal stare at him in dumbfounded silence, munching
on the acorns whose literaryassociationshad triggeredwhat Cide
6
It mustbe noted here thatthe emphasis on the male experience is not intended
subjectto the fearof dependencythat
to suggestthatwomenare not similarly
it is the masculine
impossible.Intrapsychically,
of relationship
makesmutuality
forwardmotion,whilethe
activity,
autonomy,
aspectof the selfthatrepresents
and stasis.That,historipassivity,
feminineaspectis associatedwithrelationship,
modesofbehaviorformen
intoprescribed
cally,thoseaspectshavebeentranslated
withonly
and womendoes notmeanthateithersex in factis properlyidentified
oftheunconscious,
so attunedtothecontents
one halfofitsfullnature.Literature,
of socialrealities,however,tendto representthose
and the novel,so reflective
innerrealitiesin theoutertermsheredescribed.
7 It is onlyveryrecently,
as
psychologists
in theworkof such"objectrelations"
thattherealmofthemotherand herrolein
MargaretMahlerand W. D. Winnicott
thatunderliesall humanrelationships
and individuation
thedialecticof symbiosis
has been explored.EvelynFox KellerandJessicaBenjaminhavecarriedthework
that
realm,callingintoquestiontheapotheosisof autonomy
intothephilosophical
of
It issucha privileging
"regressive".
demandforconnection
makesofitscorollary
thathas provedso damand autonomyoverdependency,
over passivity,
activity
and thechild.
agingto thehalfof our lifeassociatedwithnature,mother,
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RUTH EL SAFFAR
Hamete uncharitablycalled Don Quixote's "arenga" (I, 11, 159),
and changing the subject as quicklyas possible.
The separation revealed in Chapter 11 between speaker and lisand itsletteredrepretener,as well as thatbetweenactual rusticity
sentationreiteratesthe structuresof alienationcharacteristicof the
novel as a whole and basic to the workings of parody. Don
Quixote's speech, being scarcely comprehended either by the
goatherds, who listen politely,or by Sancho, who does not, is essentiallya monologue whose bi-partitenature measures the span
of Don Quixote's own inner spaces. On the one hand he presentsa
"then", when "todo era paz, ... todo amistad, todo concordia" (I,
11, 158), when "aun no se habia atrevidola pesada reja del corvo
arado a abrir ni visitarlas entrafiaspiadosas de nuestra primera
madre" (I, 11, 158). On the other hand thereis the "now" in which
"no esta'segura ninguna" (I, 11, 158).
Refractedoffa venerable bucolic tradition,Don Quixote has exposed both the secret of his own erotic historyand the nature of
discourse, which is to disguise desire in the rhetoricof its denial.8
Spurred on by the unbearable demands of his eroticlongings,yet
unable to acknowledge them as his own, Don Quixote diverts,like
so many of his fellowcharacters,his energyaway fromthe object
of desire towardthe "other"on whom itis projected. Between rival
and rival is the "distressed damsel" whose place of unapproachabilityDon Quixote seeks to sustainby forceof arms.
When Don Quixote tells his audience of goatherds that women
are no longer safe in thisage of iron,and thatgreed and lust have
broken the bond of motherearth and her children,he is evoking
-as only a madman can-the very heart of the issue. For the
"distressed damsels" Don Quixote feels called upon to protect
seem vulnerable only in theirisolationfromthe motherprinciple.
Mothersare conspicuous by theirabsence as much in Part I of Don
Quixoteas in the literaryand dramaticworksof Cervantes'contemporaries. No model of conjugal love or of motherhoodexistsin the
world out of which Don Quixote comes. Nor does he find such
8 Appealing to a Lacanian construct,we could say that whatDon Quixoteexposes
is the emptinessof the Phallic structuresin which,willynilly,he is caught. As Ellie
Ragland-Sullivan has put it, "We are faced with a choice between individuation
throughpsychicCastration(thatis, learningdifferenceby alienationinto language,
social conventions and roles) or failure to evolve an identityadequate to social
functioning.Lacanian Phallic Law is, therefore,a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, it saves people from (m)Other domination; on the other, it tyrannizesbecause it is arbitraryand artificial"(273).
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models in the world into whichhe escapes. And yet,whereverintimationsexistof an intactbond between motherand daughter-as
in the cases of Dorotea, Luscinda, and Zoraida-we see instances
not of female helplessnessbut of ingenuity,strengthand perdurability.
Cut off from the mother as are, for example, Leandra, dofia
Clara, and Marcela, the damsel is deeply implicated in the male
world of the chase, one which leads to literature,to trickery,to
madness, and to other endless displacementsof desire. For the fact
is that what Don Quixote sees yet does not want to see is that the
virginis an aspect of the motherand thatthe successfulpursuitof
her leads inevitablyto Fiedler's "fall to sex, marriage,and responsibility." By taking the position that he hopes to protect the
daughter,Don Quixote is simultaneouslyaffirmingand lamenting
the mother's absence. In the mythicsubstructureof Don Quixote,
which we touch in the Golden Age speech, we glimpse the face of
Demeter, withdrawingin grief,her daughter Persephone in the
process of being snatched into the bowels of earth by Hades.9
Don Quixote's contrastingof that Golden Age, when the dominant female figure was imaged as an all-nourishingmother,with
the age of iron, in which she appears as a vulnerable maiden,
carries fascinating psycho-mythologicalimplications,bearing as
much on the particularitiesof Cervantes'own make-up as on issues
of importance for his time.10Principally,the contrasthighlights
9 It needs to be noted thatthe Demeter/Persephonestoryfromthe HomericHymns
representsa later version of the myth,earlier ones offeringno tale of abduction.
Charlene Spretnak pointsout that"whateverthe impulse behind portrayingPersephone as a rape victim,evidence indicatesthatthistwistto the storywas added later
afterthe societal shiftfrommatrifocalto patriarchal,and thatit was not part of the
original mythology.In fact,it is likelythatthe storyof the rape of the Goddess is a
historicalreferenceto the invasion of the northernZeus-worshippers. . ." (107).
10From the point of view of individual psychology,Louis Combet's "psychostructural"study of Cervantes' works points to a strong identificationwith the
mother in Cervantes, as witnessboth by the nature of his typicalheroes, and by
certaineventsof his biography.That complex relationshipto the mother,however,
has collectivesignificanceas well.
Erich Neumann points to the Renaissance as a period in whichmotherand earth
are stronglyfigured in the psychesof creativemen, while Walter Ong shows how,
in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,thatidentificationwiththe all-powerful
mother is broken through a complex conjunction of historicaland technological
forces.
Situatedjust at the cusp, ideologicallyas well as chronologically,between the
sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies,betweena Renaissance search forrecovery
of oneness and the Baroque engagement in duality,Cervantes, through Don
Quixote, articulatesboth man's archaic,anachronisticyearningto returnto the
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RUTH EL SAFFAR
the strugglebetween the desire for oneness and union expressed
by so many writersand philosophersof the sixteenthcentury,and
the sense of regret,revealed in the formationof the novel, that
that union, that mother-childsymbiosis,must be broken. From a
mythologicalpoint of view,Don Quixote's strange,revisionaryupdate of the old beatusille topos highlightspreciselythat moment
when the maiden is about to be snatched away-when, concomitantly,the motherwillbe throwninto mourning,and throughthat
mourning,into the role of rejector.
The idea of a MotherEarth turningcold and rejectingin answer
to the predator attitudetaken by suitorswithregard to the young
maiden gives contextto both the novel and to the period in which
it was written.The "detestableage" of iron of whichDon Quixote
speaks marksthe end of plenty,the expulsion fromEden. But, like
the Fall, of which Don Quixote's discourse is but a variation,the
gap left in earth by the discoveryof the severing of the motherchild bond is one which language and literaturewill seek to fill.
Don Quixote, separated from home and dreaming, through the
absent Dulcinea, of an eventual return,is the figureof his age, the
figure of the wanderer, the conquerer, the colonizer. He images
his flesh and blood compatriots in their travels about the new
world, and enacts, in the imaginationsof his readers, theirrole of
restlessadventure.
Levi-Strauss'sdescriptionof European man's impacton the New
World resembles in many ways that of Don Quixote when lamenting the age of iron, with its destructive attitude toward
Mother Nature." And like Levi-Strauss,Don Quixote playsout, as
much withrespect to the earth as to the woman, the contradictory
positionof symbiosiswiththe mother-to what Lacan would call the imaginary
realm-, and his participationin the power and literacyof the patriarchalwhat Lacan would call the Symbolic. The unwanted knowledge that Don
Quixote, in his madness, forces us to recognize, is that desire is organized
around the lost identificationwith the mother. As Ellie Ragland-Sullivan has
put it,referringto Lacan, "The Imaginaryidentificationwiththe motheris the
bedrock text of 'self', the site of the primordial discourse of the unconscious
... (p. 279-80). Nowhere does Don Quixote more clearlyarticulatethatidentificationthan in his Golden Age speech.
11He says, in Tristestropiques:"The relationshipbetween Man and the soil had
never been marked by thatreciprocityof attention[in the New World] which,in the
Old World, has existed for thousands of years . . . Here in Brazil the soil was first
violated,then destroyed.Agriculturehad been a matterof lootingforquick profits.
Withina hundred years,in fact,the pioneers had worked theirway like a slow fire
across the State of Sao Paulo, eating into virginterritoryon the one side, leaving
nothingbut exhausted fallowland on the other" (97-8).
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role of counter-adventurer,opposing those who would exploit the
one and the other, even as he mimicsthem. In order to see how
Don Quixote carries out his program as outlined in the Golden
Age speech we need to see how closely intertwinedare the questionsof lust and greed in his mind,and how consistentlyhis "mad"
adventures of the firsthalf of Part I involve both a protectionof
the earth and a protectionof the woman, as if,by preventingabductions, by stopping, symbolically,the father'sintrusionon the
mother-childdyad, Don Quixote could avert the Fall, could stop
his painful experience of separation and individuation.
In the incidentsimmediatelypreceding Don Quixote's Golden
Age speech, his firsttwo adventures on his second sally, Don
Quixote takes on two major symbolsof the new economy, while
also projectingonto one of them the figureof the damsel in distress.The famous attackon the windmills,as Charles Aubrun has
shown,was far frominnocent,froman economic point of view,as
windmills represented part of an increasing effortin sixteenth
centuryEurope to dominate and subdue by means of machinery
the forces of nature.12Not long afterhaving been throwninto a
heap of bruises by the blades of the windmill,Don Quixote sees a
woman in a coach, ahead of whom are riding some Benedictine
friars.Don Quixote attacks the friarson the basis that they are
necromancers carryingthe lady off against her will. The fantasy
thata lady is being taken against her will,so basic to the versionof
the world Don Quixote is bent on enacting,is countered by the
narrator,who tells us that she was "going to Seville to meet her
husband, who was there in order to embark for the Indies." Far
frombeing simplya damsel in distress,the lady in factrepresentsa
new class of people, of people who will become successful and
wealthyin an economybased on power and greed, on the colonization of the new world. That she may be in distressis also worth
considering.
A similar confluence of economic and erotic obsessions can be
seen in the incidentof the armies of sheep and goats. Don Quixote
justified his attack on the flocks, which in the sixteenthcentury
representedanother powerfulinterestthatthreatenedthe agricul12 Aubrun says: "Windmillsaltered not only the landscape, but also traditional
life. The giants are the origin of the decline and povertyof the hidalgos.... [Don
Quixote] charges an enormous structurewhere one grinds grain, his grain, the
wheat of La Mancha. It is enough to make one lose one's head; his unreason is not
withoutreason." (63).
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turally-basednobility,on the basis that he was saving a Christian
princess being taken in marriage against her will by a Moorish
warrior.
The attacks are not always linked directlywith the question of
the woman. Sometimes,as in the cases of the merchantsof Toledo,
or the episode with the galley slaves, aggression is focused on
images associated withthe Spain of money,industry,and military
power. In either case Don Quixote exhibitsan attitudecongruent
withwhat Carolyn Merchanthas called the organic image of earth
-an image that was, precisely in the sixteenth century,losing
dominance to an image, and a corresponding set of activities,of
subdual. Merchant contrasts the conflicting images of humankind's relationshipto earth as follows:
ofnature,especially
Centralto theorganictheorywastheidentification
femalewho
mother:a kindlybeneficent
the earth,witha nurturing
provided for the needs of mankindin an ordered, planned uniin whichfemaleprinciples
orientedmentality
verse.... An organically
and replacedbya mechanirolewas undermined
playedan important
or usedfemaleprinciples
thateithereliminated
mentality
cally-oriented
in an exploitativemanner.As Westernculturebecame increasingly
mechanizedin the 1600's,thefemaleearthand virginearthspiritwere
subduedbythemachine(2).
Among the machines which Merchantcatalogues are liftand force
pumps, cranes, windmills,under and overshotwater mills,fulling
mills,and geared and wheeled bridges.
The reference to fulling mills plunges us once again into the
world of Don Quixote withits madness thatis not so mad, itssanity
that is not so sane. Don Quixote and Sancho spent a nightin the
mountains terrifiedby the relentlesspounding that later turned
out to be "only" fullingmills.The mills,used in the cloth industry,
are linked associativelyboth with the merchantsof Toledo and
with the sheep herders whose flocks Don Quixote attacked,and
even to the silk manufacturersto whom the Arabic versionof Don
Quixotemightwell have been sold had not the "Second Author" of
chapter 9 rescued it.
The picture becomes more and more compelling of Don
Quixote's lonely battle to protect mother earth from the exploitative approach to her that technology,increasingly,was making
possible. His battle,however,serves ironicallyto strengthenthose
whom he has set out to defeat, since hidden beneath his anti-authe all-powerful
thoritarianstance is the same fear-of/desire-for
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motherthat drives his adversaries. It is far easier to attackfigures
of oppression and authoritythan to come to termswith the passivityand vulnerabilityMother Nature demands of her children.
To allow for such a symbolic identificationwith the feminine
would be to expose mankind'sdeepest and best-keptsecret.
The sixteenth century writerswho worried about the abuse,
through mining,daming, and drainage, of Mother Earth, warned
that she would not be fruitfulif she were ill-treated,a concern
worthconsideringin the contextof the barren landscapes of Part I
of Don Quixoteand the general sense that there is never enough
food or water. In one last desperate attemptto release the earth
goddess from her withdrawal, an attempt made when Don
Quixote himselfhad been caged as a madman and was being taken
as if in procession back home, Don Quixote throwshimselfat a
procession of penitents carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary,
shouting:
cuyaslIgrimasytriste
Luego al puntodejeislibrea esa hermosasefiora,
semblantedan clarasmuestrasque la llevdiscontrasu voluntady que
algin notoriodesaguisadole habedesfecho(I, 52, 574) ...
Don Quixote, also mournful and being carried off against his
will, while once again exposing his unconscious identitywith the
also reveals the degree to whichhis unconscious is
Virgin/Mother,
one withthat of the collective,for the penitentswhose procession
he attacks carry the statue of the Virgin in order to beg of the
heavens an end to drought. The textreads:
Era el caso que aquel afiohabianlas nubesnegadosu rocioa la tierra,y
rogapor todoslos lugaresde aquella comarcase hacianprocesiones,
y
tivasydiciplinas,
pidiendoa Dios abrieselas manosde su misericordia
les lloviese.(I, 52, 573)
Like the generalized absence of the mother in Part I, the dry,
barren landscape serves to underscore the condition of deprivation that abuse of the mother appears to have fostered.But Don
Quixote, as we have already seen, inhabitsboth sides of the dialecticwhose termshe set forthin the Golden Age speech. He also
enacts, through his addiction to arms and letters,through his
abuse of power and his exercise of authorityover Sancho, the very
patriarchalconsciousnesswhose suppression of the motherand of
earth it is his goal to avert. When Don Quixote tellsthe goatherds
about the equalitythatis at the basis of the knightlyideal he saysto
Sancho:
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RUTH EL SAFFAR
Porque veas, Sancho, el bien que en si encierra la andante caballeria, y
cuAna pique estAnlos que en cualquiera ministeriodella se ejercitande
venir brevemente a ser honrados y estimados del mundo, quiero que
aqui a mi lado y en compaflia desta buena gente te sientes,y que seas
una mesma cosa conmigo,que soy tu amo y naturalsenor ... porque de
la caballeria andante se puede decir lo mesmo que del [amor se dice]:
que todas las cosas iguala. (I, 11, 156)
Sancho refusesDon Quixote's demand thathe sitwithhim,saying:
Como yo tuviesebien de comer, tan bien y mejor me lo comeria en pie y
a mis solas como sentado a par de un emperador (I, 11, 157) ...
But Don Quixote will not take no foran answer: "Con todo eso, te
has de sentar" (I, 11, 157). The text goes on to say, "Y asi6ndole
por el brazo, le forzo a quejunto d6l se sentase" (I, 11, 157).
Like it or not, Don Quixote is part of the hierarchizedworld,the
world of the intellect,of absence, of abuse of earth and of the
body. All his actions intensifythe conflict and separation he is
seeking to efface.Don Quixote freesthe galleyslaves and becomes
himself,in the process, an outlaw. He rides out to the aid of defenseless maidens and orphans, leaving behind unprotected the
maiden niece entrustedto his care. He warns offthose who would
pursue the independent Marcela, but then goes afterher himself.
He mourns the depredation of the earth forcommercialinterests,
yet sells off parcels of his own land for money to buy books. As
Don Quixote he both combats and perpetuates his core problem,
which is alienation from woman and nature, from all that represents nurture: of the body, the child, the land.
It is no accident thatDon Quixote experiences,in his adventures
across Part I, severe afflictionof the body. The servantsof the
merchantsof Toledo beat him senseless in Chapter 4. In his battle
against the Basque gentlemanin Chapter 9 he nearlyloses an ear,
and in the tramplingby the sheep and goats he loses a handful of
molars and gains the title "Caballero de la tristefigura" (I, 21,
254). He is battered so badly in his battlewiththe Yanguesan carriers that he has to be taken to the inn thrownover the back of
Sancho's donkey. And in the inn to whichhe and Sancho repair his
already heavilybruised ribs receive furtherbone-shatteringblows.
As if the external damage were not enough, Don Quixote also
tormentshis body from within,in part by eating far less than he
was surelyaccustomed to eat at home, and in part by inflictingon
his stomach such concoctions as Fierabras' balsam, which cured
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him of his afflictionsby rackinghis entrailswitha purge that left
them cleansed down to the last bacterialremain.
The theme of the body as subject to both batteringand ridicule
runs throughout Part I. Vomit, excrement,head bashing, exposure of privyparts,lack of nourishmentand rest,and finallytotal
exhaustion mark the experience of Don Quixote's two sallies in the
1605 novel. The countryside through which Don Quixote and
Sancho travel is equally lacking in softnessand plenty,and the
landscape is one filledwithmen no less violence-pronethan Don
Quixote himself.
In sum, Don QuixotePart I reiteratesat everylevel the theme of
the lost Age of Gold of which the mad gentleman spoke so eloquently in Chapter 11. The absence of the all-powerfuland nurturing mother creates a vacuum in which violence, competition,
lust,greed, and madness come into play. Don Quixote, who is both
victimand perpetratorof such a situationonly calls attentionto
the identical if less dramatic behavior of other male charactersin
the novel.
Grisostomo,moved by desire for Marcela, gives up controlover
his property and ultimatelykills himself. Cardenio seems incapable firstof claimingLuscinda for himselfand then of defending
her against the desires of his sociallysuperior rival Fernando. In
the interpolated tale "El curioso impertinente"Anselmo literally
gives his wife Camila over to his best friend Lotario. In the Captive'stale the fatheris portrayedas a man unable to hold onto his
property.
What stands out in Part I and then emerges in Part II as a dominant theme, however, is the real power that belongs to the "defenseless" women over whom the men ostensiblystruggle. Don
Quixote is only an extremecase of the de-centeringthatafflictsall
the male charactersin a novel that exposes above all the damage
done when the organic world view-the view that locates self
within the context of an all-embracing mother-is lost. When
Marcela's mother dies, her father dies soon after of grief. Marcela's celibate priest uncle is unable to persuade her to marry
anyone, or to keep her fromdoing exactlyas she chooses. In the
woods and mountainsthatshe makes her home she rules over the
men who desire her. Dorotea and Luscinda prove far more capable of gettingwhattheywantand controllingtheirfortunesthan
do either Cardenio or Fernando. The Captive's father,and the
fatherof Leandra, both withoutwives, prove irresolute,and suc-
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cumb to the power of theiroff-springfor the importantdecisions
in theirlives.
It boils down to a situation discussed at the beginning of this
paper: to the separation revealed again and again in the novel between word and deed. The codes used by the chivalricromances,
as well as those used by the priests,the readers of courtlylove
poetry,and in short the whole literatecommunityrepresentedin
Don Quixoteare constructedso as to stereotypethe women,leaving
completely invisible any distinguishingcharacteristics.Even the
women assume the male-centereddiscourse. Dorotea, as well as
Luscinda, for example, has read the chivalricnovels. When need
be, theyboth can play "damsels in distress"to the hilt.
But over and over again we see that out of the chaos of the rivalries-of those of Cardenio and Fernando, or of Anselmo and
Lotario; out of the failure of the Captive's attemptto escape, it is
the "distresseddamsel" who comes to the rescue, using vision,determination,courage, and ingenuityto untangle the webs of confusion in which theirlovers and husbands have become caught.
What Cervantesoffersus in Don QuixoteI is a world in whichthe
traditional structuresof authorityare called into question. The
multiplelayersof authors,the conflictingand varied archivaldocuments regarding Don Quixote's story,the struggle for dominance between Don Quixote and Cide Hamete, Cide Hamete's
own unreliabilityas narrator,all contribute,on the formallevel, to
the failure,examined here at the level of theme,of the male characters to exercise the authoritytheirpositionhas granted them.
The plane of consciousness achieved in Don QuixoteI resembles
more than many criticsare prepared to admit that underlyingthe
picaresque. Don QuixoteI, like Lazarillo de Tormesand Guzmande
Alfarache presents figures torn from the mother, figures ungrounded whose disorientationis rendered in the presentationof
an ultimatelyanti-authoritariancentralviewpoint.That viewpoint
renders every statement,every position, every authorial stance,
everysocial situationproblematic,uncertain,subject to change. In
such a shifting,uncertain atmosphere debilitatingstruggles for
power take place, and the body, the land and the feminineare
furtheralienated.
What distinguishesDon Quixotefrom the picaresque, however,
and here I am referringin particularto Part I, is the presence of
traces of an all but lost unitaryvision. In the veryChapter 11 in
which Don Quixote delivershis Golden Age speech, we glimpsein
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the goatherd's acceptance, caring,and healing of Don Quixote the
unspoken, non-literate,non-hierarchicalworld toward which Don
Quixote's speech points. In Dorotea's telling of her own story,
Cardenio's careful listeningto it, and in the faithof Zoraida, we
also intuitthe unmediated world where the distinctionsbetween
"mine" and "thine" momentarilycollapse. The fragmentationof
authoritative figures and structures seems designed, in other
words, not to deny but ratherto expose-in the gaps and breaks
-the real world's redemptivepresence.
In Part II a change takes place thatboth continuesand radically
alters the balance of forces analysed in Part I. In Part II, where
Don Quixote's hold on his conscious creation as knighterrant is
breaking down, women take on monstrously,overwhelmingly
powerfulroles. It startswiththe housekeeper and the niece, who,
largely silent in Part I, talk loudly and not so kindly to Don
Quixote in Chapters 2 and 6, and even take overtaction to prevent
his escaping for a thirdsally.That theireffortsfailis verymuch to
the point, for what is happening, as the Cave episode later shows
very clearly,is that Don Quixote is stillboth seeking out and resistinghis desire to be one withthe primordialmother.Images of
water and enclosure draw Don Quixote from within,even as he
clings to the figureof knighterrantthatfromwithoutis suffering
increasing erosion. What needs to be noted is that that external
wearing away of the knightlyarmor and project is one carried out
by and large by the female characters,or by figuresfromthe natural world.
Teresa Panza is as vociferous in her protestsagainst Sancho's
wanderings as are Don Quixote's housekeeper and niece. The
peasant women whom Sancho tries to fool Don Quijote into acceptingas Dulcinea and her attendantsin Chapter 10 are far from
the damsels of Don Quixote's imagination. They push Don
Quixote aside and leap onto horses, riding off,as do so many of
the women in Part II, "a horcajadas" (II, 10, 98) . . . "astride,like a
man" (531). Only a littleless assertiveis the Duchess, a huntressso
eager to show her horsemanshipthatthe author says "pero a todos
se adelantara la duquesa, si el duque no se lo estorbara" (II, 34,
287).
The listof aggressivewomen in Part II is trulyastounding.Dofia
Rodriguez, the Duchess, Altisidora,Claudia Jeronima,Ana Fenix
come immediatelyto mind. There are also the transvestitescenes,
in case the situationis not clear enough: the brotherand sisteron
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Sancho's island who dress in one another's clothes; the steward
who dresses as Dulcinea; the men in the Duke and Duchess' service
who pretend to be Trifoldi and her attendants-women with
beards; Don Gregorio, who, dressed as a woman in a harem in
Algiers,awaits rescue by his fiancee,who has disguised herselfas a
Turkish sailor.13 Even the major charactersparticipatein the sex
thatonlydeath
reversalsthatunderscore the mother-identification
and madness can expose as honor's underside. Sancho rides sidesaddle on Calvileflo; Don Quixote becomes the object of a serenade, and the victimof attacksby cats and women. In Barcelona
Don Quixote is stepped all over at the dance, and on his way home
Altisidorahumiliatesboth him and Sancho.
Part II, extendingand deepening the challenge to authorityand
stereotypeimplied in Part I, totallyshattersthe reigningillusions,
the easy assumptions,the accepted commonplaces. It also undermines faith in the possibilityof recovering Eden-that Golden
Age of Don Quixote's speech. In Part II the substance of reality
itselfproves false. The shepherds are now courtiersin disguise;
the travelers, dressed as emperors and knights,are actors; the
Knight of the mirrorsand his squire are figuresof papier-mache.
Don Quixote does not descend into the depths of the cave, but
rather,remains close to the surface,just as his understandingof
the dream he had there remains steadfastlysuperficial.In Part II
Don Quixote finds himselfcaught in every direction by games,
trickery,and deceit, and can only reclaim the world of wholeness
and innocence once represented by Mother Nature and the distresseddamsel by radicallyrenouncingnot only the novels of chivalry, but life itself,allowing death and the mysticalreunion with
God to take the place of all the precious illusions of safe harbor
that he had created.
In Part II the once benign images of Demeter and Persephone
have yielded to figures of the Amazon and Medusa, as Don
Quixote clings to a persona of knighthoodand combat inappropriate to the world he hopes somehow to restore.Yet even as he
clings to the image of honor and power, the void is making its
claim. Don Quixote seeks out the cave, the underground water
systems,the vast expanse of the ocean, even as he comes to perceive the yawninggap between the world of illusion in which he
13 Arthur Efron has developed this theme considerably in "Bearded Waiting
Women".
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has been caught and the realitywhichcontinuesto elude. When in
Chapter 72 he finallyrecognizes that Dulcinea will never escape
the fragile web of words in which he has caged her image, will
never slip into the world of flesh and blood creatures,he is also
owning,for the firsttime,his lack-recognizing her in himselfas
his own projection. It is then, properly,that the woman-escaping/
pursuing hero, and withhim the novel designed to bring forthhis
story,properly dies. On giving up the search for the archetypal
distresseddamsel, Don Quixote encountersthe void he has been,
all novel long, avoiding, enteringinto the space in between.14
Don Qupotesituates reader and author in the very place of the
in-between which Don Quixote-and with him the other male
charactersin the novel-seeks so valiantlyto escape. As readers we
stand outside the established structures,in a place shared by the
female characters whom Don Quijote imagines it is his task to
rescue or protect.What criticshave blinded us to who have insisted
on a personalisticview of Don Quijote-the view that the main
character is either a champion of misunderstood idealism or of
pointless social rebellion-is Don Quixote's engagement in the
central issue of masculine identityas that issue was being experienced in a societyrapidly shiftingfrom land to money and technology as principal instrumentsof power. Only througha parodic
presentationof the hero and the societywhose conflictsthe hero
embodies can Cervantes declare his disengagement from its dynamics. Don Quixoteis "about" neitherrebellion nor social conformism. Rather, it is a work thatspeaks, at everylevel of analysis,in
the directionof silence, toward that which,despite the words, remains irrevocablyunsaid.
University
ofIllinois,Chicago.
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