Who She Is
Dorothea is the daughter of wealthy farmers from Andalusia, pure Old Christians, vassals of a duke, who raised her as the mirror in which they saw themselves and made her steward of the whole estate (ch. XXVIII of Part One). She appears in the Sierra Morena dressed as a boy, with her feet in the water of a stream, and the blond hair that falls when she takes off her cap undoes her disguise before Cardenio and the priest. She was seduced by Don Fernando, the duke's younger son, with the promise of marriage, and abandoned by him; she followed him in disguise, and escaped two men who wanted to take her by force. She wants her honor back; she fears being found by her parents before she has it; she knows that the chivalric books can move her, because she has read many romances and knows the style of distressed damsels (ch. XXIX of Part One); and she miscalculates by trusting a word given before an image, knowing that his will may last only as long as his desire (ch. XXVIII of Part One). The romance makes her twice: a girl who claims to be treated as an equal, and Princess Micomicona, queen of a kingdom in Ethiopia, in the stage set up to bring Don Quixote down from the sierra. In the end it is she, and not Cardenio, who disarms Don Fernando (ch. XXXVI of Part One).
Trajectory
In ch. XXVIII of Part One, to the three who surround her, she tells who she is. Don Fernando became attached to her with a single look, bribed the household, and wrote notes full of promises, and her parents told her that the difference in rank showed he sought his own pleasure and not her advantage. When she learned that her parents meant to marry her off, he entered her room at night, where she, dismayed, had no voice to cry out and no strength to defend herself, and took her in his arms with such arguments that she cannot understand how a lie could seem so true. Once the shock had passed, she answers:
Tu vasalla soy, pero no tu esclava; ni tiene ni debe tener imperio la nobleza de tu sangre para deshonrar y tener en poco la humildad de la mía; y en tanto me estimo yo, villana y labradora, como tú, señor y caballero, I am your vassal, but not your slave; nor does the nobility of your blood have, nor should it have, power to dishonor and hold in low regard the humility of mine; and I esteem myself, a peasant and farm woman, as much as you, lord and knight.
Dorothea answers with the hierarchy he uses, and turns it around: she recognizes herself as a subject, but does not accept being a thing, and puts the worth of each in what each esteems of himself. It is a discourse of equality that asks nothing of anyone, and she says it held fast in his arms, before he disarms her with the promise of marriage. Erich Auerbach observes, in Mimesis - ch. 06 - The Courtly Knight's Departure, that in the courtly romance only knights and ladies of the courtly class can experience serious things, and whoever does not belong to it enters the scene only as scenery, in a comic, grotesque, or contemptible way:
they are worthy of the adventure and, therefore, only they can have serious and important things happen to them, says Auerbach of the knightly and courtly people, in direct contrast to the villain of Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain, who tends the flock and knows the magic fountain without ever being able to live its adventure.
Don Fernando replies that, if only the marriage is missing, he gives her his hand there, with the heavens and an image of Our Lady as witnesses. She reviews what remains to her and yields:
Sí, que no seré yo la primera que por vía de matrimonio haya subido de humilde a grande estado, ni será don Fernando el primero a quien hermosura, o ciega afición, que es lo más cierto, haya hecho tomar compañía desigual a su grandeza [...] puesto que en éste no dure más la voluntad que me muestra de cuanto dure el cumplimiento de su deseo; que, en fin, para con Dios seré su esposa, yes, for I shall not be the first who by marriage has risen from humble to high estate, nor will Don Fernando be the first whom beauty, or blind affection, which is the likelier, has made take an unequal companion for his greatness [...] though in him the will he shows me may not last longer than the fulfillment of his desire; for in the end, before God, I shall be his wife.
Dorothea weighs the reasons one by one: the precedent of others, the risk of his using force and leaving her defenseless before her parents, the oath made before an image. She accepts, knowing that his will may last only as long as his desire, and keeps what remains to her, honor before God. It may be calculation, it may be love, and she herself says that his tears and his gentleness also persuaded her. He leaves her before dawn, with a ring on her finger, and a month passes without her seeing him. Then news comes that Don Fernando has married in a nearby town a maiden named Luscinda, and Dorothea dresses as a shepherd boy, with a servant of her father's, and goes to the town, where she hears the story of the betrothal. The servant wants to take her by force; she throws him down a ravine and leaves him not knowing whether he is alive or dead; she serves for months as a shepherd boy for a herdsman, until the master recognizes her and the same bad thought is born in him; without a ravine at hand, she flees again and hides among the rough places, praying to heaven to help her get out or to let her lose her life.
In ch. XXIX of Part One, her story ends, and she asks for advice: where to live without fearing being found, for the shame of showing herself to her parents in any other way than they expected makes her prefer exile. Cardenio reveals himself as the unhappy man whom Luscinda said was her husband, and swears not to abandon her. Sancho returns and delivers the message the priest taught him, and Dorothea, who knows the style, proposes to play the needy damsel herself, and takes out of her bundle a skirt, a mantilla, jewels, and a necklace with which she looks like a great lady. The priest tells Sancho, with the air of one saying something of little account, that she is the heiress in direct male line of the great kingdom of Micomicon:
es, como quien no dice nada, es la heredera por línea recta de varón del gran reino de Micomicón, is, as one who says nothing, the heiress in direct male line of the great kingdom of Micomicon.
It is what convinces the squire: he needs only a name and a kingdom, and he brings them from home. Dorothea kneels before Don Quixote, already dressed but without arms, and asks for a boon without rising. He grants it, without knowing what it is:
Yo vos le otorgo y concedo -respondió don Quijote-, como no se haya de cumplir en daño o mengua de mi rey, de mi patria y de aquella que de mi corazón y libertad tiene la llave, I grant and concede it to you, answered Don Quixote, provided it is not to be fulfilled to the harm or detriment of my king, my homeland, and she who holds the key to my heart and my freedom.
Don Quixote grants it with the only reservation of the three fidelities he keeps: the king, the homeland, and the lady. Whoever asks on their knees, in the manner of the books, cannot be refused by someone who knows the books, and Dorothea knows this. The request gives him what he always wanted, a grievance to repair. In ch. XXX of Part One, she tells the story of Princess Micomicona: her father, King Tinacrio the Wise, versed in the magic arts, learned by science that her mother, Queen Jaramilla, would die before him, and that a giant, Pandafilando of the Gloomy Gaze, would pass over the kingdom; he sent her to Spain, where she would find the remedy in a famous knight-errant, who would be called Don Azote or Don Gigote. She forgets the name the priest had given her, and the priest whispers it to her; and when Sancho corrects the gentleman's name, it is Don Quixote or the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. The priest rushes in with the correction when the gentleman notes that Osuna is not a port. When Sancho, enraged at his master's refusal to marry, offends Dulcinea, and Don Quixote knocks him down with blows of his lance, it is Dorothea who prevents a third blow, and who orders Sancho to kiss his master's hand and ask for pardon.
In ch. XXXVI of Part One, when Don Fernando arrives at the inn with Luscinda veiled, and she recognizes him and faints into the barber's arms, Luscinda speaks first. Dorothea, who has come to her senses and heard everything, kneels at his feet and tells him that she is the farm girl whom he tried to raise to the height of calling her his:
Tú no puedes ser de la hermosa Luscinda, porque eres mío, ni ella puede ser tuya, porque es de Cardenio; y más fácil te será, si en ello miras, reducir tu voluntad a querer a quien te adora, que no encaminar la que te aborrece a que bien te quiera, you cannot be the beautiful Luscinda's, because you are mine, nor can she be yours, because she belongs to Cardenio; and it will be easier for you, if you look into it, to bring your will to love the one who adores you, than to direct her who abhors you to love you well.
Dorothea turns against him the reckoning he cannot deny: it was he who solicited, who pleaded, who knew her station. The symmetry is her best argument: he cannot be Luscinda's because he is hers, nor Luscinda his because she is Cardenio's. She speaks of honor and nobility, not of love, because that is what can persuade him, and ends by saying that, if all else fails, his conscience will cry out in silence. She says that, if he does not want her as a lawful wife, he should accept her at least as a slave; that he should not give such a bad old age to his parents, who serve his own; that true nobility lies in virtue. She weeps so much that those who accompany Don Fernando weep with her. He hears her without answering, and then opens his arms and lets go of Luscinda:
Venciste, hermosa Dorotea, venciste; porque no es posible tener ánimo para negar tantas verdades juntas, you have won, beautiful Dorothea, you have won; for it is not possible to have the spirit to deny so many truths together.
Don Fernando yields to an argument and not to a feeling: to the truth he cannot deny, and the text says so in these words. Surrounded by those who defend Dorothea, with her at his feet, defeat costs him less than obstinacy before everyone. It may be repentance, and it may be the honorable exit that the group opens for him. The novella of The Curious Impertinent ends with three dead; the inn ends with two couples restored and the wineskins still to be paid for, and the difference lies in who listens, for Lothario's reason does not save Anselmo, and Dorothea's saves Don Fernando from himself (ch. XXXVII of Part One).
In the same ch. XXXVII of Part One, Cardenio offers to continue the fiction with Luscinda in the role of Micomicona, and Don Fernando prefers that Dorothea continue. When the gentleman tells her that Sancho informed him her grandeur has been annihilated, she answers, with grace and gravity, that whoever told him she had changed did not tell the truth, for the one who was yesterday is the one of today, and the fiction goes on; the gentleman then turns against Sancho, whom he calls the greatest rogue in Spain. In ch. XLIII of Part One, he wakes Doña Clara so that she does not lose the musician's voice, and, hearing from the girl her confession of love for a muleteer who is a disguised gentleman, promises to see to her affairs at dawn:
No es sino señor de lugares -respondió Clara-, y el que le tiene en mi alma con tanta seguridad que si él no quiere dejalle, no le será quitado eternamente, not at all, he is a lord of villages, answered Clara, and the one who holds him in my soul holds him with such security that, if he does not wish to leave her, he will never be taken from her, for eternity.
In ch. XLIV of Part One, she tells Cardenio the story of the musician and Clara. In ch. XLVI of Part One, the gentleman, kneeling before her, wants to finish the adventure he was called to, and she makes him rise before hearing him; when Sancho says that the queen is not a queen, because she is carrying on with someone, she blushes and does not answer:
sino que yo tengo por cierto y por averiguado que esta señora que se dice ser reina del gran reino Micomicón no lo es más que mi madre; porque, a ser lo que ella dice, no se anduviera hocicando con alguno de los que están en la rueda, a vuelta de cabeza y a cada traspuesta, but I hold it certain and established that this lady who says she is queen of the great kingdom of Micomicón is no more so than my mother; for, if she were what she says, she would not be nuzzling with any of those in the wheel, at every turn of the head and at every lapse.
Dorothea is the one who tempers the gentleman's anger against Sancho, saying that the squire perhaps does not speak without reason, and that, if in that castle everything happens by enchantment, he may have seen by that diabolical route what he says he saw. In ch. XLVII of Part One, the priest and the barber take their leave of her and of Luscinda, and agree to give each other news.
Themes Embodied
Dorothea is Love that survives betrayal. Two stories of love betrayed, hers and Cardenio's, show the price of a word given and broken, and hers has the ending that Anselmo and Camila's does not have: in ch. XXXVI of Part One, she defeats the man who betrayed her with the only argument he cannot deny, the symmetry of who belongs to whom. The book gives her the word before the audience that gathers the betrayed, and that is why the inn ends in two restored couples.
Her Honor and Reputation is that of one who knows herself equal: a rich farm girl, a pure Old Christian, she does not accept the vocabulary of Don Fernando, but accepts what remains to her, honor before God (ch. XXVIII of Part One). When his word is broken, it is she who goes to the town, who faces the servant, who flees her master, who names what she lost, and it is she who asks Don Fernando for what the priest gives him in other words (ch. XXXVI of Part One). The speech in which she says she is vassal and not slave is a position of honor, and the book leaves it in view without correcting it.
In Appearance and Reality, Dorothea makes of Princess Micomicona what the gentleman makes of his lady: she puts on a role that reading gave her and sustains it through style. The fiction works because he recognizes it (ch. XXIX of Part One, ch. XXX of Part One), and she abandons it when it no longer serves (ch. XXXVII of Part One), unlike him, who does not abandon his. Dorothea shows that one can speak the language of books without being mad, and the priest and Cardenio notice with astonishment that the gentleman reasons well, with sound arguments, outside the chivalries (ch. XXX of Part One).
Divergent Readings
The book sets two readings of Dorothea's consent in the chamber, and neither is denied. She herself says that his tears and his gentleness persuaded her, and that she kept what remained to her, honor before God (ch. XXVIII of Part One). It may be calculation, it may be love.
Erich Auerbach's observation that the courtly romance reserves serious things for knights and ladies of the courtly class is put to the test by Dorothea: a peasant, she speaks with coherence, conducts the fiction of Princess Micomicona, and decides the outcome of a story that has two ladies, a duke, and a friend. Two readings of what that says about the book: Cervantes gives her the place the courtly romance denied, or he leaves her in view as a contrast, without correcting the genre. Against the first, it is worth recalling that she receives from the priest and Cardenio the help she needs for her role; against the second, that the final embrace is owed to her reason (ch. XXXVI of Part One).
Relationships
- Cardenio: the young man who sees her for the first time and takes her for Luscinda (ch. XXVIII of Part One), whom she makes swear not to abandon her (ch. XXIX of Part One), and with whom she shares the story of a broken word (ch. XXXVI of Part One).
- Don Quixote: the knight to whom she asks a boon on her knees (ch. XXIX of Part One), whose anger toward Sancho she tempers (ch. XLVI of Part One), and who does not know who she is.
- The Priest and the Barber: the accomplices of the Micomicona fiction, who whisper her name and help her in her role (ch. XXX of Part One).
- Sancho Panza: the squire who takes her for a queen and then for Dorothea, and who takes the title out of her mouth (ch. XXXVII of Part One, ch. XLVI of Part One).
- Marcela: the other woman in the book who claims to be treated as an equal, by different paths (ch. XIV of Part One).