Who She Is
Teresa Panza is the wife of Sancho Panza, a farmer's wife from a village in La Mancha, mother of Mari Sancha, also called Sanchica, and of a son whom Teresa wants to send with his father so that he learns to govern from the start (chapter V of Part Two). In Part One she is already at home, anonymous: when the squire returns from the master's second sally, in chapter LII of Part One, it is his wife who asks him what good he got from the stables, what skirt he brings her, what little shoes for the children, and the text calls her Juana Panza, the same woman who in Part Two will be Teresa (in La Mancha women take their husbands' surnames). Only in Part Two does she gain a voice. She wants the life she knows; she fears the neighbors' gaze more than poverty; she knows from proverbs how the village watches whoever rises; and she is mistaken, or rather deceived, when the duchess sends her a letter with a coral necklace, in chapter L of Part Two, and she believes in her husband's government for the first time. The book makes her the counterweight to the squire: Sancho dreams of the insula, and she measures the dream by the price the neighborhood would charge for it.
Trajectory
In chapter LII of Part One, when Sancho arrives from the master's second sally, his wife asks him what he has brought, and he answers with a proverb, that she will see it in time, and promises her that she will be amazed to hear herself called Ladyship by all her vassals:
No es la miel para la boca del asno -respondió Sancho-; a su tiempo lo verás, mujer, y aun te admirarás de oírte llamar Señoría de todos tus vasallos, Honey is not for the donkey's mouth, replied Sancho; you will see it in time, wife, and you will even be amazed to hear yourself called Ladyship by all your vassals.
Sancho treats his wife as an interlocutor who lacks the vocabulary of the enterprise, and instead of explaining, he returns the promise: the insula, the county, and the lordship. She answers with what she knows, the clothes and the little shoes of the children. The two speak of two economies, that of household things and that of titles, and the proverb is the short bridge between them.
In chapter V of Part Two the book gives her the whole chapter. The translator of the manuscript opens the chapter with a warning: he finds it apocryphal, because Sancho speaks in it with style and says things too subtle for his small wit. Sancho arrives home so cheerful that Teresa sees his joy from a crossbow shot away, and tells him that since he became a member of knight-errantry he speaks in such a roundabout way that no one understands him. When he orders the donkey's ration doubled and the packsaddle checked, and says they are going to deal with giants, she answers that errant squires do not eat bread for free. When he speaks of marrying Mari Sancha so high up that only those who call her Ladyship will reach her, and of making her Doña Teresa Panza, she answers with the thing that most defines her:
Siempre, hermano, fui amiga de la igualdad, y no puedo ver entonos sin fundamentos. Teresa me pusieron en el bautismo, nombre mondo y escueto, sin añadiduras ni cortapisas, ni arrequives de dones ni donas, I have always been a friend of equality, brother, and I cannot stand airs without foundation. I was given the name Teresa at my baptism, a plain and bare name, without additions or restrictions, without the frills of dons or donas.
Teresa refuses the title out of fear of her neighbors' laughter (look at the stuck-up one!) and because a plain name is the only one she knows how to carry. She calls equality a taste, not a principle, and prefers the life she knows. Her father was called Cascajo, and only because she is Sancho's wife do they call her Panza, when by rights she would be Teresa Cascajo; she asks, too, who put the "don" in Don Quixote, which his parents and grandparents never had. The same outside gaze she fears is the one Sancho wants to defeat. Sancho says she must have a familiar spirit in her body and mixes Cascajo, brooches, and proverbs without rhyme or reason. Then Teresa gives the reason on which the chapter turns:
por el refrán que dice: "¡Quien te cubre, te descubre!" Por el pobre todos pasan los ojos como de corrida, y en el rico los detienen; y si el tal rico fue un tiempo pobre, allí es el murmurar y el maldecir, y el peor perseverar de los maldicientes, que los hay por esas calles a montones, como enjambres de abejas, by the proverb that says: "Whoever covers you uncovers you!" Everyone glances past the poor man as if in passing, but they stop at the rich one; and if such a rich man was once poor, there is gossip and cursing, and the worst is the persistence of the slanderers, who swarm in those streets by the dozens, like swarms of bees.
Teresa describes in two sentences how the neighborhood watches over whoever climbs: the poor man goes unnoticed, the rich man is looked at, and the rich man who was once poor is persecuted. She does not argue against the government; she argues against the gaze of others, which is what Sancho does not take into account. The proverb says that disguise gives you away. Sancho's reply is the counterweight: repeating maxims from last Lent's preacher, he says that the present erases the past, provided the promoted man is well bred, generous, and courteous, and that no one will remember what he was, except the envious. The translator intervenes once more, saying that these are the second arguments, which exceed Sancho's capacity. Teresa does not understand him and asks him not to break her head with harangues and rhetoric; if he is set on having a government, let him take his son to learn his father's trade. They agree that their daughter will be a countess, and Teresa begins to weep as if she already saw her dead: the day she sees her a countess, she will pretend to bury her.
In chapter VII of Part Two, Sancho's account with his master passes through her: when the master offers to dismiss him and look for another squire, he swears loyalty and attributes the accounts to his wish to please Teresa, who tightens him like a mallet on the hoops of a barrel. In chapter XXXVI of Part Two he writes to her from the dukes' house, and the letter puts into one sentence what he says to his master and what he says about him:
Don Quijote, mi amo, según he oído decir en esta tierra, es un loco cuerdo y un mentecato gracioso, y que yo no le voy en zaga. Hemos estado en la cueva de Montesinos, y el sabio Merlín ha echado mano de mí para el desencanto de Dulcinea del Toboso, que por allá se llama Aldonza Lorenzo: con tres mil y trecientos azotes, menos cinco, que me he de dar, quedará desencantada como la madre que la parió, Don Quixote, my master, as I have heard said in this land, is a sane madman and a witty fool, and I am no less than he. We have been in the cave of Montesinos, and the wise Merlin has laid hands on me for the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Toboso, who over there is called Aldonza Lorenzo: with three thousand three hundred lashes, minus five, which I am to give myself, she will be disenchanted like the mother who bore her.
Instead of telling his wife about the cave where his master went down while he stayed at the mouth, holding the rope, he writes "we have been," and on the same line he gives Dulcinea her old name, Aldonza Lorenzo. The letter ends by saying that he goes to the government with a very great desire to make money, and that he will feel out the situation and let her know whether she should come and live with him.
In chapter L of Part Two, the duchess dispatches to the village the page who had made the figure of Dulcinea, with her husband's letter, another of her own, and a large coral necklace. The page asks some washerwomen for Teresa's house, and a girl of about fourteen, barefoot and disheveled, answers that she is the daughter. Teresa comes out of the house spinning a skein of tow, in a dun skirt, thin and sinewy; the page kneels at her feet and addresses her as Doña Teresa Panza, wife of Sir Don Sancho Panza, governor in person of the insula Barataria, and she answers that she is a poor farmer, the daughter of a clodhopper and the wife of an errant squire. She cannot read, nor can Sanchica; the page reads Sancho's letter and then the duchess's, which calls her friend, says that her husband governs like a gerfalcon, asks for two dozen acorns, and promises to marry Sanchica into a high station. Teresa says:
¡Ay -dijo Teresa en oyendo la carta-, y qué buena y qué llana y qué humilde señora! Con estas tales señoras me entierren a mí, y no las hidalgas que en este pueblo se usan, que piensan que por ser hidalgas no las ha de tocar el viento, Oh, said Teresa on hearing the letter, what a good, plain, and humble lady! Let them bury me with such ladies, and not with the gentlewomen who are the custom in this town, who think that because they are gentlewomen the wind must not touch them.
Teresa measures the duchess by her neighbors: the letter calls her friend, and the gentlewomen of the village consider it a disgrace to look at a farm woman. She already thinks of sending a bushel of acorns and of telling all the neighbors. There are two readings: simple gratitude toward someone who treats her as an equal, or the pleasure of having, against the gentlewomen, a duchess on her side, which is also the bait of the hoax. Teresa goes through the streets waving the letters like a tambourine, with the necklace around her neck, and runs into the priest and the bachelor, who do not believe it. Sansón, who has already disguised himself as a knight to cure the neighbor, applies the gentleman's rule to the page and wants to touch him to see whether he is a fantastic ambassador or a man of flesh and bone. Teresa does not want the bachelor to write her answers, since she takes him for a trickster, and she pays a cake and two eggs to a sexton who knows how to write.
In chapter LII of Part Two, the page takes the two letters to the duchess and to her husband. In the duchess's letter, Teresa thanks her for the corals and the hunting dress, says that the village does not believe in Sancho's government, nor does the priest, nor the barber, nor Sansón Carrasco, and that she herself, if the corals and the dress had not come, would not believe either. She wants to go to court in a coach, to make a thousand envious people's eyes pop, and asks for a little money. In the letter to her husband, she is amazed:
¿quién podía pensar que un pastor de cabras había de venir a ser gobernador de ínsulas?, who could have thought that a goatherd would come to be governor of insulas?
Teresa measures the government by the distance from what her husband was, and she measures it with amazement, not contempt. Right after, she wishes to see him a tax farmer or an excise collector, offices that always have and handle money, and the reader has just read the letter in which Sancho says he has not touched anything rightly nor taken a bribe. There are two readings: the contentment of a woman who does not believe what she sees, or the practical ambition of someone who understands power as income. In chapter LVII of Part Two, Sancho, at his farewell to the dukes, weeps as he reads her letters, thinking of how great the hopes were that the news of the government had placed in Teresa's heart, and how all of them came to a halt when he returned to his master's slow adventures. In chapter LXXIII of Part Two, on learning that her husband has arrived, she rushes out disheveled and half-naked, with her daughter by the hand, and on seeing him on foot with worn-out feet, looking more like a good-for-nothing than a governor, she hears from him that he brings money, earned by his industry and without harm to anyone. Teresa tells him to bring the money, and to have earned it here or there, for however he earned it, he will not have set a new custom in the world.
Themes Embodied
Teresa carries Honor and Reputation through the neighborhood: what she fears is the gaze of others, the laughter, the gossip, more than the little she has (chapter V of Part Two). The question of who put the "don" in Don Quixote, which his parents and grandparents never had, measures the name the gentleman gave himself by the yardstick of the village. Her refusal of the title, the question, and the neighborhood proverb form a village sociology that the book leaves in view without correcting it.
In Appearance and Reality, Teresa is the other skeptic about the government: the village does not believe, and she herself would not believe if the corals and the dress had not come (chapter LII of Part Two). The difference is that she needs proof on her body to believe, the necklace, while Sancho needs a promise in his ear. The mechanism is the same as the gentleman's, with the opposite sign: concrete proof is enough for her to pass from skeptic to eager to go to court in a coach.
The theme of Love passes through her in a way the book rarely shows, that of a marriage that lasts: the husband says he loves her more than the lashes of his eyes (chapter LXX of Part Two), and Teresa receives him back by calling him a good-for-nothing (chapter LXXIII of Part Two). The tenderness of both is made of teasing, proverbs, and household accounts.
Divergent Readings
The book places in the letters the divergence over what Teresa wants. In one, she wants to go to court in a coach, to make a thousand envious people's eyes pop; in the other, she is amazed that a goatherd has come to be a governor (chapter LII of Part Two). Whoever reads her by the first letter sees an ambition the duchess fosters; whoever reads her by the second sees a disbelief that the proof of the necklace defeats. The text sustains both.
Readings also differ on what the contrast between Sancho and Teresa says about the book. Whoever reads her refusal of the title as class lucidity sees in it the voice the novel grants to the world the gentleman ignores; whoever reads it as village fear sees a woman who prefers the laughter of her neighbors to any fortune. Against the first reading, it is worth remembering that she, on receiving the corals, already thinks of sending acorns, of telling the neighbors, and of riding about in a coach; against the second, that the final sentence of chapter V, the day she sees her daughter a countess she will pretend to bury her, shows that what she fears is losing her daughter, and not the laughter.
Relationships
- Sancho Panza: the husband who promises her the insula (chapter LII of Part One), who argues with her about the countess (chapter V of Part Two), to whom he writes from the dukes' castle (chapter XXXVI of Part Two), and who returns to her without a government and says he brings money earned without harm to anyone (chapter LXXIII of Part Two).
- The Duke and Duchess: the duchess who sends her the letter and the necklace, and the page who represents the fiction in the village (chapter L of Part Two).
- Sansón Carrasco: the bachelor who does not believe the news and whom she takes for a trickster (chapter L of Part Two).
- The Priest and the Barber: the priest who remarks that all the Panzas were born with a sack of proverbs in their bodies (chapter L of Part Two).
- Don Quixote: the gentleman whose "don" she questions (chapter V of Part Two).