Who She Is
Dulcinea del Toboso is the lady of Don Quixote and the only central figure of the book who never appears on stage as herself. She is born in ch. I of Part One as Aldonza Lorenzo, a farm girl from a neighboring village who may not even have known of the passion, and to whom the gentleman gives a name that sounds like romance, as he had done with his horse and with himself. Everything that exists of her is said by others: what he says (princess, queen, superhuman beauty, ch. XIII of Part One), what Sancho Panza says (her strength, her voice that carries half a league, ch. XXV of Part One), what the margin of the Arabic manuscript says (the best hand for salting pigs in La Mancha, ch. IX of Part One), and what the academicians say in the epitaph (ch. LII of Part One). In Part Two this manufactured lady takes on faces that are not hers: a village woman on the road to Toboso (ch. X of Part Two), a maiden who asks for a loan in the cave (ch. XXIII of Part Two), a silver nymph in the dukes' carriage (ch. XXXV of Part Two). The gentleman says in Part One that in twelve years of love he has not seen her four times (ch. XXV of Part One), and in Part Two that he has never seen her (ch. IX of Part Two), so that Dulcinea is an idea: what she wants, fears, and knows cannot be read in her, but in the way each one uses her.
Trajectory
In ch. I of Part One, before setting out, the gentleman gives the lady what she lacks, a name:
Llamábase Aldonza Lorenzo, y a ésta le pareció ser bien darle título de señora de sus pensamientos; y, buscándole nombre que no desdijese mucho del suyo, y que tirase y se encaminase al de princesa y gran señora, vino a llamarla Dulcinea del Toboso, porque era natural del Toboso, her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed right to him to give her the title of lady of his thoughts; and, seeking a name that would not clash too much with his own, one that tended toward that of princess and great lady, he came to call her Dulcinea del Toboso, because she was a native of Toboso.
What he wants is not the woman but the piece missing to complete the set, and so he imagines her more than he knows her. In ch. IV of Part One, when the Toledan merchants ask him for a portrait of her, even one the size of a grain of wheat, he refuses even the proof that would favor him, because what he demands is faith, not verifiable truth:
La importancia está en que sin verla lo habéis de creer, confesar, afirmar, jurar y defender; donde no, conmigo sois en batalla, gente descomunal y soberbia, the important thing is that without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it; otherwise, you are at battle with me, a monstrous and proud people.
He attacks only when the merchant speaks of a physical defect, and he attacks for an offense to the lady, not for lack of belief. The merchant's request is, moreover, what he could not grant: the lady is a farm woman who never knew of the passion, and there is no portrait of her to show. In ch. IX of Part One, the narrator finds the Arabic manuscript, and the Moor who reads it begins to laugh when he opens it at random:
Está, como he dicho, aquí en el margen escrito esto: "Esta Dulcinea del Toboso, tantas veces en esta historia referida, dicen que tuvo la mejor mano para salar puercos que otra mujer de toda la Mancha, it is written here, as I have said, in the margin: "This Dulcinea del Toboso, so often mentioned in this history, they say had the best hand for salting pigs of any woman in all La Mancha."
The Moor's laughter and the narrator's bewilderment are the same discovery seen from two sides: in the Arabic chronicle, Dulcinea is the village girl the first chapter already named, and the commentator repeats what is said of her. In ch. XIII of Part One, asked by Vivaldo about the name, homeland, rank, and beauty of his lady, the gentleman sighs and answers:
su nombre es Dulcinea; su patria, el Toboso, un lugar de la Mancha; su calidad, por lo menos, ha de ser de princesa, pues es reina y señora mía; su hermosura, sobrehumana, pues en ella se vienen a hacer verdaderos todos los imposibles y quiméricos atributos de belleza que los poetas dan a sus damas, her name is Dulcinea; her homeland, Toboso, a place in La Mancha; her rank, at the very least, must be that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady; her beauty, superhuman, for in her all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty that poets give their ladies come true.
Two readings: he believes the idea has become flesh, or he knows that the knight's lady is an idea and sustains her as a duty of his office. In ch. XXV of Part One, in the Sierra Morena, Sancho asks whether the Dulcinea of the books is the daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo, called by another name Aldonza Lorenzo, and the gentleman confirms it without being disturbed:
¡Ta, ta! -dijo Sancho-. ¿Que la hija de Lorenzo Corchuelo es la señora Dulcinea del Toboso, llamada por otro nombre Aldonza Lorenzo?, well, well, said Sancho: the daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo is the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, called by another name Aldonza Lorenzo?
Sancho praises her with what he knows of her, and his master, without refuting it, takes the lady to another measure: the Amaryllises, the Phyllises, and the Galateas of the books and the theaters were almost never ladies of flesh and blood; the poets feign them to give the verses a subject, and it is enough for him to believe that the good Aldonza is beautiful and honest.
Así que, Sancho, por lo que yo quiero a Dulcinea del Toboso, tanto vale como la más alta princesa de la tierra [...] píntola en mi imaginación como la deseo, así en la belleza como en la principalidad, so, Sancho, by how much I love Dulcinea del Toboso, she is worth as much as the highest princess on earth [...] I paint her in my imagination as I desire her, in beauty as in rank.
The gentleman is aware that the lady is his own work, and the text leaves open whether this makes him less mad or more. In the same chapter he says the letter may go by another's hand, for Dulcinea cannot read or write, has never seen his handwriting, and their love has always been platonic. In ch. XXVI of Part One he refuses the madness of Orlando out of respect for her, because to suppose her unfaithful would wound her, and the fiction he has built imposes on him loyalty to the lady he himself imagined. In ch. XXX of Part One, when Sancho places Princess Micomicona above his lady, the offense strikes the gentleman in his deepest place, because he says that in her he has life and being:
Ella pelea en mí, y vence en mí, y yo vivo y respiro en ella, y tengo vida y ser, she fights in me, and conquers in me, and I live and breathe in her, and I have life and being.
The thesis is that love is the cause of deeds, and the insult to Dulcinea is an attack on the cause. In ch. XXXI of Part One, Sancho invents the visit he never made and puts the lady to the work he knows, that of a village girl:
No la hallé -respondió Sancho- sino ahechando dos hanegas de trigo en un corral de su casa, I did not find her, answered Sancho, only sifting two bushels of wheat in a yard of her house.
The gentleman gives him back a tale from a book: the grains were pearls, and the bread comes out as fine white wheat. The same scene has two readings, that of the one who imagines it and that of the one who invents it, and neither of them asks whether it happened. In ch. XLVI of Part One, the barber composes the prophecy of the cage in the style of the books the gentleman has read, and chooses the prize that holds him: the marriage of the spotted lion with the Tobosan dove:
la cual se acabará cuando el furibundo león manchado con la blanca paloma tobosina yoguieren en uno, ya después de humilladas las altas cervices al blando yugo matrimoñesco; de cuyo inaudito consorcio saldrán a la luz del orbe los bravos cachorros, que imitarán las rumpantes garras del valeroso padre, which will be fulfilled when the furious spotted lion and the white Tobosan dove lie together, once the high necks have been humbled under the gentle matrimonial yoke; from whose unheard-of union the brave whelps will come into the light of the world, to imitate the rending claws of their valiant father.
The gentleman reads the dove at once as his lady, with children for the glory of La Mancha. In ch. LII of Part One, the book of 1605 has her enter already dead, by the hand of the academicians of Argamasilla:
Reposa aquí Dulcinea; / y, aunque de carnes rolliza, / la volvió en polvo y ceniza / la muerte espantable y fea, here rests Dulcinea; / and, though full of flesh, / death, frightful and ugly, / turned her into dust and ashes.
The epitaph paints her with the features of the Aldonza that Sancho described and with those of the gentleman's lady, and it is the epitaph of a woman whom the book never showed on stage.
In Part Two the lady begins to be manufactured by others. In ch. IX of Part Two, looking for her palace in Toboso at night, the gentleman says to Sancho:
¿no te he dicho mil veces que en todos los días de mi vida no he visto a la sin par Dulcinea, ni jamás atravesé los umbrales de su palacio, y que sólo estoy enamorado de oídas y de la gran fama que tiene de hermosa y discreta?, have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my life I have not seen the peerless Dulcinea, nor ever crossed the threshold of her palace, and that I am in love only by hearsay and by the great fame she has of being beautiful and discreet?
Don Quixote sees nothing contradictory in searching at midnight for the address of a woman he has never seen: what he is seeking is the address of the idea, and the idea is enough for him. In ch. X of Part Two, Sancho, who does not know where she lives, presents the first farm girl who appears as the lady and begins to sustain the illusion that before he had only seen from outside. The gentleman chooses between two hypotheses, that Sancho lied or that an enchanter changed what he sees, and keeps the second, which he extends to himself:
ya que el maligno encantador me persigue, y ha puesto nubes y cataratas en mis ojos, y para sólo ellos y no para otros ha mudado y transformado tu sin igual hermosura y rostro en el de una labradora pobre, si ya también el mío no le ha cambiado en el de algún vestiglo, para hacerle aborrecible a tus ojos, since the malignant enchanter pursues me, and has put clouds and cataracts in my eyes, and only for them and not for others has changed and transformed your peerless beauty and face into those of a poor farm woman, if mine has not also been changed into that of some monster, to make me loathsome in your eyes.
The hypothesis prevents the lady from being a village woman. The smell of raw garlic is the only datum of the senses he registers against the illusion, and he dismisses it at once:
Y has también de advertir, Sancho, que no se contentaron estos traidores de haber vuelto y transformado a mi Dulcinea, sino que la transformaron y volvieron en una figura tan baja y tan fea como la de aquella aldeana, y juntamente le quitaron lo que es tan suyo de las principales señoras, que es el buen olor, por andar siempre entre ámbares y entre flores. Porque te hago saber, Sancho, que cuando llegé a subir a Dulcinea sobre su hacanea, según tú dices, que a mí me pareció borrica, me dio un olor de ajos crudos, que me encalabrinó y atosigó el alma, and you must also note, Sancho, that these traitors were not content with having changed and transformed my Dulcinea, but transformed her into a figure as low and as ugly as that of that village woman, and at the same time took from her what is so proper to principal ladies, namely good smell, for they always move among ambers and flowers. Because I let you know, Sancho, that when I came to lift Dulcinea onto her hackney, as you say, which seemed to me a jenny ass, she gave me a smell of raw garlic that stunned and poisoned my soul.
Two readings: his nose says what his eye says and he chooses not to hear it, or the nose comes in as the last witness he can still explain in his own favor. In ch. XXIII of Part Two, in the cave of Montesinos, the gentleman tells that he saw three farm girls leaping across the fields like goats, recognized Dulcinea in one, and the lady turned her back on him without answering:
Habléla, pero no me respondió palabra; antes, me volvió las espaldas, y se fue huyendo con tanta priesa, que no la alcanzara una jara, I spoke to her, but she did not answer me a word; rather, she turned her back on me and fled with such haste that not even an arrow could have caught her.
What hurts him most comes afterward, when a companion asks him on the lady's behalf for a loan on a petticoat:
Mi señora Dulcinea del Toboso besa a vuestra merced las manos [...] sea servido de prestarle sobre este faldellín que aquí traigo, de cotonía, nuevo, media docena de reales, my lady Dulcinea del Toboso kisses your grace's hands [...] be pleased to lend her, on this petticoat I bring here, of cotton, new, half a dozen reales.
The enchantment slips once more into the domestic, a petticoat and a caper in place of reverence, and the gentleman hands the enchanted lady the money from the alms without suspecting anything. Sancho, who knows where the enchantment comes from, hears the scene as a mirror of his own blow. In ch. XXXII of Part Two, to the duchess, who asks him about the lady, the gentleman answers without saying whether she exists:
Dios sabe si hay Dulcinea o no en el mundo, o si es fantástica o no es fantástica; y éstas no son de las cosas cuya averiguación se ha de llevar hasta el cabo. Ni yo engendré ni parí a mi señora, puesto que la contemplo como conviene que sea una dama que contenga en sí las partes que puedan hacerla famosa en todas las del mundo, God knows whether there is a Dulcinea in the world or not, or whether she is fantastic or not; and these are not among the things whose investigation must be carried to the end. Nor did I beget or bear my lady, though I contemplate her as it is fitting that a lady should be, one who contains within herself the parts that may make her famous in all the parts of the world.
The phrase serves those who bet on her existence and those who bet on her invention, and that is why the duchess, instead of insisting, decides to believe and to make others believe. In ch. XXXIII of Part Two, the duchess tells Sancho that his lie was the work of enchanters and that the facts, yes, were true, and so the farce Sancho was directing passes into her hands. In ch. XXXV of Part Two, in Merlin's carriage, a page of the dukes makes the silver nymph rise, remove her veil, and implore Sancho for lashes:
Pon, ¡oh miserable y endurecido animal!, pon, digo, esos tus ojos de machuelo espantadizo en las niñas destos míos [...] Muévate, socarrón y malintencionado monstro, que la edad tan florida mía, que aún se está todavía en el diez y... de los años, pues tengo diez y nueve y no llego a veinte, se consume y marchita debajo de la corteza de una rústica labradora, set, O miserable and hardened animal, set, I say, those eyes of yours, like a startled mule's, upon the pupils of these of mine [...] be moved, mocking and malicious monster, for my so flourishing age, which is still in the tens and... of years, since I am nineteen and not yet twenty, withers and wastes away beneath the bark of a rustic farm girl.
This Dulcinea speaks as the village woman of Toboso does not speak: she has rhetoric, she has years, she has an order of arguments that runs from insult to threat and from threat to supplication. For Sancho, who knows the village woman of Toboso was a village woman, the change of voice is only one more device of the dukes; for Don Quixote, whose soul is stuck in his throat, it is real grief. In ch. LIX of Part Two, hearing through the partition a guest say that the apocryphal book depicts the gentleman already fallen out of love, he raises his voice:
Quienquiera que dijere que don Quijote de la Mancha ha olvidado, ni puede olvidar, a Dulcinea del Toboso, yo le haré entender con armas iguales que va muy lejos de la verdad; porque la sin par Dulcinea del Toboso ni puede ser olvidada, ni en don Quijote puede caber olvido: su blasón es la firmeza, y su profesión, el guardarla con suavidad y sin hacerse fuerza alguna, whoever says that Don Quixote de la Mancha has forgotten, or can forget, Dulcinea del Toboso, I will make him understand with equal arms that he is very far from the truth; for the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso can neither be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness find room in Don Quixote: his blazon is firmness, and his profession is to keep her with gentleness and without any force at all.
In ch. LXIV of Part Two, fallen on the beach of Barcelona before the Knight of the White Moon, he confesses the lady's beauty as if speaking from inside a tomb:
Dulcinea del Toboso es la más hermosa mujer del mundo, y yo el más desdichado caballero de la tierra, y no es bien que mi flaqueza defraude esta verdad. Aprieta, caballero, la lanza, y quítame la vida, pues me has quitado la honra, Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I the most unfortunate knight on earth, and it is not right that my weakness defraud this truth. Press the lance, knight, and take my life, since you have taken my honor.
The confession repeats the thesis he held before the clash and does not disavow it: the beauty of Dulcinea is the truth that his weakness cannot defraud, and it is his honor that is lost in the fall. Two readings: the fidelity of someone who separates the truth of the lady from the outcome of arms, or the survival of madness, which uses the word of defeat to keep itself standing. In ch. LXXIII of Part Two, at the entrance to the village, the omen he draws from a hare chased by greyhounds links the loss to the fact that the lady does not appear:
Malum signum! Malum signum! Liebre huye, galgos la siguen: ¡Dulcinea no parece! [...] Presupongamos que esta liebre es Dulcinea del Toboso y estos galgos que la persiguen son los malandrines encantadores que la transformaron en labradora: ella huye, yo la cojo y la pongo en poder de vuesa merced, que la tiene en sus brazos y la regala: ¿qué mala señal es ésta, ni qué mal agüero se puede tomar de aquí, malum signum! Malum signum! The hare flees, greyhounds pursue her: Dulcinea does not appear! [...] Let us suppose this hare is Dulcinea del Toboso, and these greyhounds that pursue her are the scoundrel enchanters who transformed her into a farm girl: she flees, I catch her and place her in the power of your grace, who holds her in your arms and pampers her. What bad sign is this, or what bad omen can be drawn from it?
Sancho turns the sign inside out with his master's own pieces, the enchanters and the farm girl, and the squire who had invented the enchantment in Toboso gives it back to him now as a remedy.
Themes Embodied
Dulcinea is Love made into a rule of the trade. The knight-errant needs a lady as the sky needs stars (ch. XIII of Part One), and the gentleman makes her from a farm girl and then loves her from hearsay (ch. IX of Part Two). The fidelity the book measures in him is fidelity to a figure he himself made: he refuses the madness of Orlando so as not to wound her (ch. XXVI of Part One), he is offended by what is said of her (ch. XXX of Part One), and he upholds her beauty while fallen, without raising his visor (ch. LXIV of Part Two).
In Appearance and Reality she is the limit case, because the book never shows her. Each denial comes from someone else: the Aldonza that Sancho describes, the village woman whom Sancho puts before his master, the maiden of the cave, the page of the carriage. The theory of the enchanters, which the gentleman extends from Toboso, closes only because the lady was never seen up close: in ch. XXIX of Part Two he invokes it to explain even the watermills on the river, and the squire who invented her stays caught in what he invented.
The theme of Language and Narration passes through her in two senses. The lady exists only in what is said of her, the Arabic margin, the letter she cannot read, the epitaph that describes her, and the book of 1615 takes advantage of this: the lady is the point where Sancho, the dukes, and the gentleman himself write on the same page (ch. IX of Part One, ch. XXV of Part One, ch. LII of Part One, ch. XXXIII of Part Two).
Her relation to Honor and Reputation passes through her as the honor he cannot prove. He defends her by trade against merchants, against Sancho, against the apocryphal book, and what he defends is his own firmness more than the lady (ch. IV of Part One, ch. XXX of Part One, ch. LIX of Part Two).
Divergent Readings
The book puts in the mouths of those who describe her two opposing readings. The gentleman says that his lady is of princess' rank, and the Moor notes that she salted pigs; the two readings coexist in the book, and the answer to the duchess leaves the question unanswered (ch. XXXII of Part Two).
Erich Auerbach, in Mimesis - ch. 14 - Dulcinea Enchanted, rejects the depth usually read into the Toboso scene: read in Cervantes's text, it is a joke, and looking there for anything serious or a deeper, hidden meaning requires that she be violated by interpretation.
On the scene of Dulcinea itself, Auerbach rejects any hidden depth: if she seems sad or tragic, it is because she was presented that way on purpose by whoever summarizes her; read in Cervantes's text, it is a joke.But if we simply read Cervantes's text, we read a joke, and it is irresistibly comic.
And he rejects any hidden meaning in the scene in its most direct formulation: looking for depth there is an imposition by the interpreter, not a reading of the book.in this scene, if there were something serious or a deeper, hidden meaning, she would have to be violated by interpretation.
Auerbach's reading holds for Toboso, which has an irresistible comedy, and it is put to the test by the scenes in which the book does not take away the gentleman's pain: the cave, in which he takes the poor people's money out of his purse (ch. XXIII of Part Two), and Merlin's carriage, in which his soul is stuck in his throat (ch. XXXV of Part Two). Whoever reads as Auerbach sees the same comedy in these scenes; whoever reads through the pain sees comedy taking a price. The text holds both, and the ambiguity, comic for the reader and painful for the gentleman, is what the critic's formula leaves out.
Relationships
- Don Quixote: the knight who invents her (ch. I of Part One), defends her (ch. XXX of Part One), seeks her (ch. IX of Part Two), sees her enchanted (ch. X of Part Two), and confesses her while fallen (ch. LXIV of Part Two).
- Sancho Panza: the squire who knows the girl by sight (ch. XXV of Part One), invents the visit (ch. XXXI of Part One), and puts a village woman in her place (ch. X of Part Two).
- The Duke and Duchess: the readers of Part One who turn Dulcinea into a character of farce, in Merlin's carriage (ch. XXXV of Part Two), and tie her to Sancho's lashes.
- Altisidora: the damsel who, in the dukes' farce, is the other pole of love: she courts the gentleman, who defends himself with fidelity to Dulcinea (ch. XLIV of Part Two).
- The Priest and the Barber: the barber who includes the Tobosan dove in the prophecy of the cage (ch. XLVI of Part One).
- Sansón Carrasco: the bachelor who, on the beach of Barcelona, makes him confess her beauty (ch. LXIV of Part Two), and who, on his deathbed, speaks of Dulcinea disenchanted (ch. LXXIV of Part Two).