From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
15.2 (1995): 58-74.
Copyright © 1995, The Cervantes Society of America
Leandra and That Nagging Question
on Quijote has been enchanted
and is headed homeward in an ox cart. He is accompanied by two clerics —the
canon of Toledo and the parish priest Pero Pérez— and two
lugareños —Sancho Panza and the village barber Maese
Nicolás—, for all of whom he believes he has proven the worth
of the libros de caballerías by his impromptu creation of a
minilibro, the tale of that courageously adventuresome Caballero del
Lago. Supping on provisions brought from the Canon's mule train, these five
men and assorted servants “a deshora oyeron un recio estruendo y un
son de esquila, que por entre unas zarzas y espesas matas que allí
junto sonaba, y al mesmo instante vieron salir de entre aquellas malezas
una hermosa cabra, toda la piel manchada de negro, blanco y pardo. Tras ella
venía un cabrero dándole voces, y diciéndole palabras
a su uso, para que se detuviese, o al rebaño volviese” (I,
50).1 Thus begins the brief intercalated tale
of the newly-become pastores Eugenio and Anselmo, and of the beautiful
aldeana Leandra and the fanfarrón Vicente de la Roca
who carried her off, leaving scores of suitors grieving for the love now
denied them.
1 John
Jay Allen's edition is the source of citations; all not identified by part
and chapter as here, are from I, 51 (bracketed all-Spanish texts within
quotations are Allen's; see pp. 37-38).
58
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Clemencín stated that the sole apparent
reason for its inclusion is structural: “El cuento del pastor Eugenio
no tuvo al parecer otro objeto que preparar la escena de los mogicones de
Don Quijote, y su batalla con los disciplinantes que se refieren en el
capítulo LII, y reanimar de esta suerte la relación del viaje,
que entorpecida con los diálogos y discursos que preceden, había
perdido la rapidez y movimiento que le convenía al concluirse”
(1489a, n. 35 to I, 50). This may well be, but another structure cannot be
overlooked, that of the seven intercalated stories within Part One, the
symmetrical placement and interconnections of which have been explored by
Immerwahr.2 I hope to show that the pattern
of this last of the seven bears its strongest relationships to the first
with the devotees of Marcela, and the third with Dorotea's autobiography;
I shall then address myself to That Nagging Question perennially on every
reader's mind when Leandra's name is mentioned: did she or didn't
she?3
* * *
The herdsman catches the goat which had come
to the group of diners and he speaks to her “como si fuera capaz de
discurso y entendimiento” (I, 50). He knows he is being overheard but
speaks “a su uso,” to his own circumstance, as it were, seemingly
oblivious to the fact (seemingly . . . ) that his words will
provoke a request for explanation. So curious is it all that Don Quijote
prompts clarification because, he says, “‘tiene este caso un no
sé qué de sombra de aventura de caballería’”
(I, 50); he thus leads the way to the following chapter fifty-one which is
devoted entirely to Eugenio's cuento (much
2 Williamson
agrees with Immerwahr and Herrero that this story comes very close to overt
parody: “It would appear that for this final tale in Part I Cervantes
has assembled most of the conventional elements which exist in different
permutations in the other tales and fashioned them into a composite story
which verges on open parody and which is again likened to the romances of
chivalry” (58) —avant la lettre and by Don Quijote, we must
remember. Casalduero earlier found structural links to other intercalated
tales and calls it “la reprise de las historias de amor”
(198); Murillo modifies this characterization: “It is a reprise of the
pastoral narrative on the low-brow level” (131). Perhaps our hero's
mention of echoes of the libros de caballerías —so faint
as to be difficult if not impossible to hear— is an initial clue to
Cervantes' parodic intention.
3 A brief
Spanish-language version of this article was read at the Cervantes conference
at the University of Texas—Pan American in Edinburg on 16 April 1994:
“Leandra y aquella pregunta palpitante.” I thank my friend and
colleague David Gitlitz for prompting me to address this topic.
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as chapter twenty-eight is to Dorotea's).4
In chapter fifty-two we come to the raucously comic denouement, the
rough-and-tumble fight between Eugenio and Don Quijote who had been freed
to attend to his personal hygiene and to eat, the same fight Clemencín
cited as the principal reason for this narrated interruption.
The presentation therefore is composed of three
parts: 1) a personal declaration which whets curiosity and begs explanation;
2) a narrative of a past event; and 3) an ending which brings one back to
“the present.”5 Following the hints
given above, the reader may have already found a link to Dorotea, for her
tale is presented in similar fashion: 1) words spoken in desperation, believing
herself alone, but which pique the curiosity of the hidden listeners; 2)
the explicatory narrative which gives some cause for doubt: is each woman
involved as innocent as she depicts herself (Dorotea) or is depicted (Leandra)?;
and 3) the return to the “present,” Dorotea's plea for advice a
segue which functions in the same manner as Don Quijote's offer to liberate
Leandra. Of course Eugenio speaks in company but he appears to be ignoring
it, and in exasperation instead, a strong emotion though not as devastating
as Dorotea's desperation. The instances in phase three are neither parallel
nor similar except as the structural bridge to the “history” itself;
the two variations do not, however, invalidate the strong comparisons.
When Dorotea reveals her true sex, first by
referring to herself as desdichada, then by revealing her feet and
hair, the three men listening and looking —Pero Pérez, Cardenio,
Maese Nicolás— wonder and
marvel.6 It is the priest who voices their
curiosity: “‘Lo que vuestro traje, señora, nos niega, vuestros
cabellos nos descubren: señales claras que no deben de ser de poco
momento las causas que han disfrazado vuestra belleza en hábito tan
indigno, y traídola a tanta soledad como es ésta’”
(I, 28). No such altering disguise is initially obvious for Eugenio; he is
identified as a cabrero because of his dress and actions. A disclaimer
of sorts follows when he announces “‘Rústico soy; pero no
tanto que no entienda cómo se ha de tratar con los hombres y con las
bestias’” (I, 50). Only later, in his tale, does
4 Francisco
Márquez Villanueva (139-40) and Stanislav Zimic (67-71) discuss sources,
but these are not germane to this study, only the text which Cervantes left
and which raises that Question.
5 Weiger perceives
a tripartite structure to the tale itself: “the story of Leandra has
a discernible beginning (her life is concisely narrated from birth to the
age of sixteen), a middle (the conflict of the plot) and an end (her removal
to the convent)” (268).
6 Fajardo has
rightfully pointed out the voyeurism involved
(1984, 91-96).
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he fully reveal that the goatherd's guise is adopted: he has remade his life
in imitation of literature like so many characters in the
Quiijote.7
Eugenio's initial words must be examined closely:
“¡Ah, cerrera, cerrera, Manchada, Manchada, y cómo andáis
vos estos días de pie cojo! ¿Qué lobos os espantan, hija?
¿No me diréis qué es esto, hermosa? Mas ¡qué
puede ser sino que sois hembra y no podéis estar sosegada; que mal
haya vuestra condición, y la de todas aquellas a quien imitáis!
Volved, volved, amiga; que si no tan contenta, a lo menos, estaréis
más segura en vuestro aprisco, o con vuestras compañeras; que
si vos que las habéis de guardar y encaminar andáis tan sin
guía y tan descaminada, ¿en qué podrán parar
ellas?” (I, 50).
The canon comments that the goat, because she is female, “‘ha de
seguir su natural distinto’” or instinto (I, 50), a remark
which for the moment appears to exist solely as a criticism of the sex in
general for its flightiness.8
7 Immerwahr
links this tale with Cervantes' distrust of the pastoral: “Eugenio's
denunciation of the female gender in his nanny goat is no less a burlesque
descent from the posthumous love poems of Grisóstomo than his brawl
with Quijote is a descent from Grisóstomo's dignified funeral. If
the second pastoral thus appears to be a parody of the first, it may be that
Cervantes is pointing to the inadequacy of this vehicle, with its endless
stylized laments of unrequited love, for the portrayal of a vital human love
capable and worthy of fulfillment” (134-35). The idea of
“descent” is, I believe, outmoded: Grisóstomo suffered from
an obsession as destructive as Anselmo's in El curioso impertinente
and his suicide is a more serious criticism of pastoral literature's pernicious
influence on life than is Eugenio's semi-comic frustration. Héctor
Márquez states that this seventh tale “parece terminar con la
desesperación de la protagonista pero queda sin resolver el problema
de los pastores enamorados” (105), but the text does not give any evidence
of desperation in Leandra; if her adherents continue grieving, that's their
problem, the text seems to suggest. Williamson points out that Leandra's
“reclusion does not prevent the local swains from getting themselves
up as goatherds to roam about the countryside (like those others in the
Marcela story) weeping for her love” (57, emphasis added on their
role-playing). In their get-up they are to be categorized with Grisóstomo,
although they are of course less passionate. Eugenio recognizes the aberrant
nature of so much weeping and wailing in a passage which also prompts the
reader to recall Grisóstomo: “‘de todos se estiende la locura,
que hay quien se queje de desdén sin haberla jamás hablado,
y aun quien se lamente y sienta la rabiosa enfermedad de los celos, que ella
jamás dio a nadie [. . .].’”
8 Edmund Gayton
had a mid-seventeenth-century sensibility and, though English, may assist
us in perceiving the comic underside of this tale: “The Goatherd, having
laid his Goat from skipping, / Under that Embleme tels of maidens
[p. 62] tripping: / And would insinuate into
our brests, / That there are farre more women-straies, then Beasts. / If
the toy take them, like the speckled Goat, / They care not for the spoile
of petticoat” (279).
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But once the reader has heard Eugenio's tale
and has learned that the only woman involved, the beautiful object of the
adoration of Eugenio, Anselmo, and myriad others, was carried off by the
braggart soldier Vicente, he of the Joseph's-coat wardrobe, on subsequent
reflection the texts here cited acquire wider meaning. As we approach our
Question we must recall how Leandra became so taken with Vicente:
“‘Enamoróla el oropel de sus vistosos trajes; encantáronla
sus romances, que de cada uno que componía daba veinte traslados
[comparable to his manner of dress]; llegaron a sus oídos las
hazañas que él de sí mismo había referido, y,
finalmente, que así el diablo lo debía de tener ordenado, ella
se vino a enamorar dél, antes que en él naciese presunción
de solicitarla.’”9 What the Dueña
Dolorida says of herself in Part Two could easily be spoken by Leandra by
changing only a name: “‘no me rindieron los versos; sino mi
simplicidad; no me ablandaron las músicas, sino mi liviandad; mi mucha
ignorancia y mi poco advertimiento abrieron el camino y desembarazaron la
senda a los pasos de [Vicente instead of Don Clavijo]’” (II, 38).
This young woman, so impressed by the superficial and lacking motherly counsel
to seek more substance, keeps her sudden infatuation secret from her father
(and, naturally, from all the adoring swains) as the two plan their flight.
I use the word “flight” meaningfully even though the text nowhere
specifically refers to their departure as such: the goat and Leandra are
one and the same, the animal in imitation of the woman, each fleeing the
fold (flock / family protection) for no good reason but the impulse to seek
contentment (expressed elliptically in the phrase “‘si no tan contenta
[. . .] estaréis más
segura’”).10 Not, as Casalduero
states,
9 Fajardo
links Leandra's skin-deep beauty to Vicente's “superficial charms and
glittering clothes —a counterpart of her own seductiveness” (1986,
244); it is ironically fitting that he should successfully lure her with
promises of enjoying the glitter and gaudery of Naples. Márquez Villanueva
states that Leandra was “arrastrada de un capricho sensual
[. . .] con pésimo juicio” (137). Compare Gayton:
“Leandra, not so wise as faire, / Was taken with this pedlars ware:
/ His fabulous stories she adores, / As Desdemona did the Moors”
(280).
10 Doña
Lorenza in El viejo celoso felt the same yearnings which are implied
for Leandra, but in her case it was the vecina Ortigosa who promised
a cure by “spiriting” a young galán into her chamber
(and arms): “‘Quizá con esta [vida] que ahora se
comenzará, se le quitará toda esa mala gana y le vendrá
otra más saludable y que más la contente’”
(Entremeses 223). The Cañizares-Carrizales complex of zealous
protection-preservation is an undercurrent in Eugenio's tale as well.
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the goat symbolizing all women (198), not “‘todas aquellas
a quien imitáis’”: Leandra is the sole point of reference
for Eugenio's words and it is she who, given her social standing and beauty,
might well have been expected to guardar y encaminar as “‘una
hija de tan estremada hermosura, rara discreción, donaire y
virtud,’” one who might for her excellence —prima inter
pares— wear a metaphorical esquila of exemplarity.
As in Dorotea's tale, the initial portion of
the text sets a beautiful young woman within a socioeconomic context: wealth
and virtues, products of heaven and earth. She is not only loved but even
venerated, the one by her parents, “‘cristianos viejos
ranciosos’” for whom she was “‘mayordoma y
señora’” (I, 28), the other by those enthralled by her beauty,
“‘que como a cosa rara, o como a imagen de milagros, de todas partes
a verla venían’”11 And yet
each took as truth the words of her raptor:
DOROTEA [in her own words]: “sobre todo, me comenzaron
a hacer fuerza y a inclinarme a lo que fue, sin yo pensarlo, mi [perdición]
los juramentos de don Fernando, los testigos que ponía, las lágrimas
que derramaba y, finalmente, su disposición y gentileza, que
acompañada con tantas muestras de verdadero amor, pudieran rendir
a otro tan libre y recatado corazón como el mío” (I, 28).
LEANDRA [according to Eugenio]: “preguntáronla
su desgracia; confesó sin apremio que Vicente de la Rosa la había
engañado, y debajo de su palabra de ser su esposo la persuadió
que dejase la casa de su padre; que él la llevaría a la más
rica y más viciosa ciudad que había en todo el universo mundo,
que era Nápoles, y que ella, mal advertida y peor engañada,
le había creído [. . .].”
Riches and pleasures: for one the prospect of social elevation in marriage
to a segundón, for the other the lure of Neopolitan flings
and fancies.
11
“Imagen de milagros está dicho por imagen notoriamente milagrosa,
a la cual van a visitar devotamente desde tierras lejanas”
(Rodríguez-Marín 244, n. 12). Were one as socarrón
as Sancho, the only miracle attributable might be the preservation of her
own virginity, but of course we have yet to answer the Question. And isn't
it curious that never, to my immediate knowledge, has Leonisa in El amante
liberal prompted the same query, she who spent a week in a cave with
seven Turks who, like her, had survived a shipwreck, yet she says she emerged
inviolate? But of course that preservation is central to Cervantes' purpose:
“La pareja Ricardo-Leonisa se destaca idealmente dentro del marco
de lascivias y desatadas pasiones que despierta, pero cuya violencia no mancha
ni el puro amor del héroe ni la virtud de su amada”
(Rodríguez-Luis 23, emphasis added).
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Did she or didn't she? Dorotea did, equally
mal advertida (despite her deliberations and rationalizations) y peor
engañada (seduced and quickly abandoned), but she had the wit
and the gumption to set out to make things right. And Leandra?:
“la llevó [Vicente] a un áspero monte, y la encerró
en aquella cueva donde la habían hallado. Contó también
cómo el soldado, sin quitalle su honor, le robó cuanto tenía,
y la dejó en aquella cueva, y se fue: suceso que de nuevo puso en
admiración a todos.
“[Duro se nos] hizo de creer la continencia
del mozo, pero ella lo afirmó con tantas veras, que fueron parte para
que el desconsolado padre se consolase, no haciendo cuenta de las riquezas
que le llevaban, pues le habían dejado a su hija con la joya que,
si una vez se pierde, no deja esperanza de que jamás se cobre. El
mismo día que pareció Leandra la despareció su padre
a nuestros ojos, y la llevó a encerrar en un monesterio de una villa
que está aquí cerca, esperando que el tiempo gaste alguna parte
de la mala opinión en que su hija se puso.”
Certainly it is hard to believe the continency; as Héctor Márquez
says, “Los mismos pensamientos pasan por la mente del lector” (105).
Irony of ironies: we still ponder the Question of her honor centuries
later.12
Clemencín was right to comment on that
cave:
No se concibe fácilmente cómo se encierra a una persona en
una cueva, ni cómo pasó en ella Leandra tres días desnuda
en camisa; ni cómo dejó de hacer alguna diligencia para salir
de aquel estado de soledad y abandono; ni cómo dejó de pasar
el Vicente más adelante, según observó el mismo Eugenio:
Difícil, señor, se hizo de creer la continencia del mozo.
Palabras que Eugenio dirigió exclusivamente al Canónigo [the
señor of the text], prescindiendo de los demás
circunstantes, o porque consideró que era la persona más autorizada
de su auditorio, o porque, como estómago agradecido,
12 Ullman
imputes a motive which the text does not seem to substantiate: “Leandra
swears about a past non-performance of a man in order to save herself,
and it is the spectators within the novel who doubt it. The reader, though,
must come to his own conclusion” (318, emphasis added); in a footnote
he adds: “We might compare Leandra with Zoraida, whose virginity is
likewise dubious, depending on what we know about pirates. The captive's
statement is really de rigueur.” Might not Eugenio's also be
such, albeit perhaps with less conviction? Márquez Villanueva would
disagree, for he states of the two despojadas, “ambas conservan
su honor [note!] por encima de toda consideración de verosimilitud”
(137). (Gayton meets the exigency of rhyme in stating motive: “For to
a Cave he brought the damzell, / Pretending there to rest her hams well”!
[281].)
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se acordaba de los lomos del conejo fiambre y del trago a que sirvieron de
agradable cimiento (1491a, n. 11 on I, 51).
If one continues looking at Leandra through
the lens of Dorotea, one might be inclined to agree that she did. In each
case we have a tale being told directly to an ecclesiastic and in each case
a best face is being put on the protagonist in an exculpatory
mode.13 Dorotea must not only explain why
she is alone in the wilds and dressed as a man, she must also relate her
experience to the priest, the one member of the trio before her who she might
well feel promises succor, advice, and comfort, if not immediate forgiveness.
Her tale is not a spur-of-the-moment creation but a narrative artfully crafted
to play upon men's sympathies, weaving innocence and ignorance into a tapestry
which, despite her skill, betrays its artifice and, yes, the cunning by which
she seduced Don Fernando —or let herself be seduced.
Likewise Eugenio's cuento is not
extemporaneous: “El estilo conceptuoso, sutil y alambicado de Eugenio
no se ajusta bien con la llaneza y rusticidad del que gastan los de su
profesión y oficio” (Clemencín 1489b, n. 3 to I, 51; see
also 1492b, n. 16); as Márquez Villanueva puts it, the “mayor
afán de este pastor de libro de texto no es sino demostrar ante aquellos
forasteros que él no es ningún rústico simple «que
no entienda cómo se ha de tratar con los hombres y con las
bestias»” (79, citing from I, 50, as seen
above).14 In his own artful manner Eugenio
must not only explain why he spoke as he did to a goat, of all things, he
must also relate Leandra's experience to the canon, the one member of the
group before him who could well heap more opprobrium on the aldeana,
hence he will not confirm a reality —that she did— which would
put an immediate end to Leandra's honor, yet he is sufficiently “bitter
and disconsolate” (Fajardo 1986, 244) to allow a doubt to stand as he
takes pains to show the impact of her wishes and her father's.
And in the process readers cannot forget —I
believe that Cervantes wished us to recall vividly— the thwarted lovers
of Marcela:
13 This
was my argument in “Dorotea, or the
Narrators' Arts” and I apply it here as well.
14 He is not,
strictly speaking, a “surprisingly cultivated goatherd” (Williamson
58), but a surprisingly cultivated aldeano playing at goatherd, a
subtle difference but meaningful. Casalduero drew a comparison to Garcilaso's
Égloga I: “Anselmo y Eugenio, el uno con sus ovejas, el otro
con sus cabras —nuevos Nemorosos y Salicios—, dejan la aldea para
el valle, donde pasan la vida cantando alabanzas o vituperios de la amada”
(200).
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“‘No hay hueco de peña, ni margen de arroyo, ni sombra de
árbol que no esté ocupada de algún pastor que sus
desventuras a los aires cuente; el eco repite el nombre de Leandra dondequiera
que pueda formarse: Leandra resuenan los montes, Leandra murmuran
los arroyos, y Leandra nos tiene a todos suspensos y encantados, esperando
sin esperanza y temiendo sin saber de qué
tememos.’”15 If Eugenio can be
called a “pastor de libro de texto,” so also Grisóstomo,
and his story really was a tragedy whereas the reader should indeed be skeptical
about Eugenio's reference to “esta
tragedia.”16
If it seems so difficult to believe Vicente's
forbearance, why are so many suitors hopelessly hoping and unpurposively
fearing? Do they believe and await without hope for the end of her incarceration?
Do they fear that she did? Why does Eugenio still fix his passion on Leandra?
Is he tepidly defending her honor —which he has clearly placed in
doubt— when he says that “‘los que conocían su
discreción y mucho entendimiento, no atribuyeron a ignorancia su pecado,
sino a su desenvoltura y a la natural inclinación de las mujeres,
que por la mayor parte suele ser desatinada y mal compuesta’”?
One cannot escape the misogynism of his remarks, such that one may well deduce,
as has Márquez Villanueva,17 that
the whole episode is merely his chosen point of departure for a self-indulgent
literary exercise on a time-honored theme and the concomitant pleasurable
otium of playing at goatherd.
Does Don Quijote help us to answer the Question?
Were he able, he states, he would assist Eugenio, but how does one rightly
interpret
15 Ambrosio
speaks: “‘No está muy lejos de aquí un sitio donde
hay casi dos docenas de altas hayas, y no hay ninguna que en su lisa corteza
no tenga grabado y escrito el nombre de Marcela, y encima de alguna, una
corona grabada en el mesmo árbol, como si más claramente dijera
su amante que Marcela la lleva y la merece de toda la hermosura humana.
Aquí suspira un pastor, allí se queja otro; acullá se
oyen amorosas canciones, acá desesperadas endechas’” (I,
12); he continues the list of dejected and self-pitying poses.
16 Vicente Gaos
cautions us: “La historia que se cuenta no autoriza ciertamente a llamarla
tragedia, pero el punto de vista del enamorado Eugenio no tiene por
qué coincidir con el del lector” (944, n. 40a); one does have
to wonder, however, just how enamorado he is. Márquez Villanueva
sees Eugenio typically putting on airs: “es exageración graciosamente
acorde con las ínfulas literarias del joven” (79, n. 2). Weiger
perceives the impetus within the narrator himself: “What Eugenio terms
‘esta tragedia’ is really his own story, whose unrequited love
has presented him with an unhappy love affair quite removed from any true
sense of tragedy” (Weiger 268).
17 “La
escandalosa conducta de [Leandra] no ha traído consigo más
secuela que la de dar a sus galanes el pretexto que necesitan para hacer
y vivir un poco de literatura” (138).
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his offer?: “‘que yo sacara del monesterio (donde, sin duda alguna,
debe de estar contra su voluntad) a Leandra, a pesar de la abadesa y de cuantos
quisieran estorbarlo, y os la pusiera en vuestras manos, para que
hiciérades della a toda vuestra voluntad y talante [at this point
one wonders what to infer18], guardando,
pero, las leyes de caballería, que mandan que a ninguna doncella se
le sea fecho desaguisado alguno’” (I, 52) —but this injunction
is made moments after specifically calling Eugenio “‘hermano
cabrero.’” Gentlemanly compañerismo, perhaps, but
Don Quijote is projecting courtly or noble gentility into what he mistakenly
believes is a chivalrous history.
Can a comparison of Leandra and the
cabra shed some light? Márquez Villanueva (91) links Leandra's
choice of consort to the possibility expressed by Don Quijote that if a daughter
were to choose her husband without parental advice and consent, “‘tal
habría que escogiese al criado de su padre, y tal al que vio pasar
por la calle, a su parecer bizarro y entonado, aunque fuese un desbaratado
espadachín’” (II, 19, emphasis added to the accurate
description of Vicente); he goes on to state that “No es otro
[. . .] el sentido del acercamiento simbólico de Leandra
a una cabra, animal proverbialmente lujurioso y falto de mollera.” The
adjective manchada may literally refer to a multicolor-spotted animal,
but the association with mancha in its definition of an affront to
one's honor cannot be overlooked in an age when the comedias made
much of that word so central to the pundonor. Is Dorotea's tale a
clue in the sense that a labradora manchada and a
Leandra-as-cabra parallel may be accepted in the priest's phrases
“‘Lo que vuestro traje, señora, nos niega, vuestros
cabellos [or piel] nos descubren’” and
“‘traídola a tanta soledad’” (I, 28, emphases
added)?
Flighty Leandra is capricious. Cervantes may
or may not have been aware of the etymological link to capra of which
Márquez Villanueva reminds us (91, n. 17). As for cerrera,
which Riquer explains as “Que gusta de andar por los cerros” (503),
Clemencín is more expansive: “Amiga de andar por cerros,
de andar vagando por parajes ásperos y escabrosos como son los cerros
y barrancos. Aquí está usada esta palabra en sentido recto;
Fr. Luis de Granada la usó en
18 One
proffered explanation: “The story of her flight with Vicente de la Roca
and the near loss of her virginity [note!] has excited our hero and caused
him to fantasize her at the mercy of a man” (Johnson 132). Another rather
ignores the erotic element in his offer: “it is simple to relate this
response to the typical reaction of Don Quijote when faced with any possibility
for an interpretation along the lines of chivalric tales” (Weiger
265).
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Cervantes |
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metafórico, cuando dijo (capítulo XXVIII, de la Escala
espiritual): mas si lo dejares (al pensamiento) andar cerrero
y suelto por donde quisiere, nunca to podrás tener contigo”
(1488a, n. 31 to I, 50). One could claim that Cervantes had this same
metaphorical meaning in mind, and that his sly insinuation of the goat as
parallel to the sheep which left the Biblical fold is our clue that she did.
Even more untenable would be to link cerro and descaminado
and introduce ir por los cerros de Ubeda: “se dize del que no
lleva camino en lo que dize y procede por términos remotos y
desproporcionados” (Covarrubias 411a, emphasis added), intending
the last adjective to refer in the present case to the level of social
expectations.
Did she or didn't she? Leandra believed that
Vicente would marry her, told no one, and went off in secret. Here there
is a difference, perhaps significant, as compared to Dorotea who had her
conniving maid as witness to Don Fernando's promise to wed, his oath given
to be her legitimate husband: “‘“aquí te doy la mano
de serlo tuyo, y sean testigos desta verdad los cielos, y a quien ninguna
cosa se asconde, y esta imagen de nuestra Señora que aquí
tienes”’” (I, 28). Leandra had no such witness (we must assume)
and thus a clandestine betrothal could not be claimed. Such betrothals were
forbidden by the Council of Trent which “con su decreto Tametsi
(publicaciones de tres amonestaciones, presencia personal del párroco
y de dos o tres testigos, etc.), puso fin a las grandes injusticias y tragedias
que surgieron del matrimonio clandestino” (Piluso
67).19
Leandra's father rushes her off to a convent,
evidence of a caring and responsible nature which one might expect from a
man whom Eugenio has characterized as “‘un labrador muy honrado,
y tanto, que aunque es anexo al ser rico el ser honrado, más lo era
por la virtud que tenía que por la riqueza que alcanzaba.’”
This description is remarkably similar to that which Dorotea provides of
her parents who, besides being Old Christians, are “‘tan ricos,
que su riqueza y magnífico trato les va poco a poco adquiriendo el
nombre de hidalgos,
19 Piluso
notes that “Cervantes sigue y cree en los decretos del Concilio tridentino.
Pero eso no quiere decir que no presente casos de matrimonios clandestinos
en su obra. Sí, lo hace y lo hace por motivos dramáticos. Cervantes
presenta el problema unido al conflicto entre padres e hijos respecto a la
elección de cónyuges” (69). He does not include the
Leandra-Vicente liaison in the list of those women whom Cervantes portrayed
as possessed through promise of marriage: Teodosia by Marco Antonio in Las
dos doncellas, and in the Quijote Dorotea by Don Fernando, and
the daughter of Doña Rodríguez by the unnamed son of a friend
of the Duke (73-80). The rape of Leocadia and her ensuing adventures in La
fuerza de la sangre do not seem to help us to answer our Question.
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Leandra and That Nagging Question |
69 |
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y aun de caballeros’” (I, 28), a mark of the esteem accorded them
by their peers. Leandra's father clearly had the protection of the family
reputation as good and sufficient reason for his precipitous removal of his
daughter, but certainly he has done nothing to deserve the harsh criticism
of Eugenio and Anselmo: “‘abominábamos del poco recato del
padre de Leandra.’” He is, after all, the one who decided that
his daughter, too young at present for marriage, should choose her husband-to-be;
he effectively eliminated (he thought) all rivals but these two who now so
demean him: “‘nos entretuvo a entrambos con la poca edad de su
hija y con palabras generales, que ni le obligaban, ni nos desobligaban
tampoco.’” The father's reaction provides no clue to answering
our Question except as one hypothesizes his real feelings about the mala
opinión which, Eugenio tells us, he (the father) hopes will fade
in time.
One thorny problem is yet to be confronted.
We know that Dorotea self-servingly colored her story with —for one
example— the claim that her infrequent spare time was spent reading
books of devotion, yet she later states that she knows well how to play
Micomicona according to the chivalresque stereotype of a damsel in distress
as so often depicted in the libros de caballerías. What about
Eugenio? Is it possible that the references to the father's mismanagement
of the situation are only an indirect expression of his own bitterness?
“‘Los pocos años de Leandra sirvieron de disculpa de su
culpa’” seems to intimate forgiveness, but a partial disclaimer
follows immediately: “‘a lo menos con aquellos que no les iba
algún interés en que ella fuese mala o buena,’” and
he makes the poorly veiled reference to himself cited above: “‘pero
los que conocían su discreción y mucho entendimiento no atribuyeron
a ignorancia su pecado, sino a su desenvoltura y a la natural inclinación
de las mujeres, que, por la mayor parte, suele ser desatinada y mal
compuesta.’” In a very few lines, then, he has gone from general
to partial exculpation and then to her sinfulness as one of her sex; the
misogynism could not be made more apparent.
And perhaps Anselmo seemed to Leandra as
distasteful a choice for lifelong partner as Eugenio “con el típico
narcisismo de la adolescencia,” this “dechado en su
opinión” (Márquez Villanueva 79) who raises Leandra to
uniqueness in womanly perfection and the extended fame of a Miss Universo.
He sounds rather a prig in some ways,20 and
so very self-satisfied with being a bright light in his dull
20 I
refer principally to his reaction to Vicente's familiarity in speech:
“‘con una no vista arrogancia, llamaba de vos a sus iguales
y a los mismos que le conocían.’” Rodríguez-Marín
explains the root of such prickly umbrage: “Para hacerlo bien a los
iguales, en no habiendo muy estrecha amistad con ellos había tratarse
de vuestra merced, y no de vos, tratamiento que sólo
se daba a los inferiores, o a los iguales con quienes se tenía grande
familiaridad” (298, n. 2); one can imagine Eugenio's feeling needful
of being treated as superior.
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Cervantes |
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town. No wonder, as Márquez Villanueva puts it, that “Vicente
destaca como un pájaro tropical sobre el fondo grisáceo de
la vida pueblerina” (78), particularly if Eugenio or Anselmo are the
romantic alternatives. Zimic properly poses this question: “¿No
son quizás Eugenio, Anselmo y los otros pretendientes una de las causas
más cruciales de la desastrosa experiencia de Leandra?” (73).
Perhaps all this was indeed nothing more than
a sophomoric exercise in literary ostentation, and therefore the reason for
Eugenio's anger is that Don Quijote breaks the spell he is sure he has cast
over his listeners and interrupts the flow of encomia, principally from the
canon.21 Clemencín properly underscored
his authorial self-consciousness: “en el discurso de Eugenio había
más sutileza y atildadura de la que convenía al estado y
profesión del orador” (1493b, n. 3 to I, 52), this in reference
to Cervantes' phrase regarding the Canon's praise: “dijo que había
dicho bien el cura en decir que los montes criaban
letrados.”22 I stated above that Dorotea's
“is not a spur-of-the-moment creation but a narrative artfully crafted
to play on the sympathies”; Eugenio's tale may well be of the same mold,
though seeking more praise than
sympathy.23 In the process “traza
21 “If
it appears obvious that within the framework of the Quijote the Leandra
story is history, we need to recall that the curate and canon comment upon
it as though it were literature, a reaction echoed by their subsequent
entertainment by the physical conflict between Don Quijote and Eugenio”
(Weiger 271).
22 Zimic draws
our attention to the irony of the canon's remarks (72-73).
23 Weiger calls
our attention to the fact of “the absence of any comment upon the
plausibility of the tale. We may infer from this that the canon —and,
presumably, the curate as well— finds no lack of verisimilitude in this
story, despite the preservation of Leandra's virginity [she didn't] in the
face of the escapade with Vicente [. . .]. If we in our day have
difficulty accepting the likelihood of this situation [maybe she did], the
canon and curate find no objection therein, despite the ploy of the palabra
de esposo which most often led precisely to the surrender of virginity
[she could have] in so many a literary work of the day. (That the two
ecclesiastics reflect a post-Tridentine disapproval of this device does not,
of course, detract from their comprehension of it as a means of deceiving
innocent maidens.)” (266). Weiger later states that Vicente “does
not afford [Leandra] any gratification” (267-68) and that he “found
her family jewels more enticing than the jewel of her virginity. In short,
Vicente's attitude, as represented by Eugenio, is that of the misogynist.
It will be recalled that Eugenio's expressed difficulty with the probability
of Leandra's preserved virginity did not revolve around his opinion —good
or bad— of Leandra under such circumstances, but was limited to his
doubts about the young soldier's restraint” (278-79).
[p. 71] Murillo's explanation is facile: Vicente
forbore “perhaps because his braggardness concealed impotence”
(131). Zimic sees his attitude formed in his childhood lack of peer esteem,
leading now to an almost vicious contempt for his fellow townspeople:
“Vicente abandona a Leandra en la cueva, sin quitarle la «joya»,
con ademán de grandiosa, diabólica perversidad, desdeñosa
precisamente de lo que todos sus antiguos menospreciadores más desean
en la vida, sin esperanza alguna de poderlo jamás lograr” (76).
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Leandra and That Nagging Question |
71 |
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de la propia Leandra un contorno hiperbólico, en que su fama llega
a las antesalas de los reyes, y tan convencional también como para
encarecer, contra todo el peso de los hechos, la «rara discreción,
donaire y virtud» de la fugada” (Márquez Villanueva
79-80).
One who seeks the most faithful picture of
Leandra can only return to Eugenio's opening remarks wherein, the reader
must suppose, he might very well have been the least self-serving.
Leandra-as-cabra hermosa is manchada as well as cerrera.
Neither of these words offers firm evidence on the base of which to answer
the Question with any certitude. Plumbing the critical ambivalence of
manchada and entertaining a retrospect interpretation of
cerrera are exegetical exercises of suspicious validity. She walks
de pie cojo, another sign of malaise or injury, but how much can one
appropriately read into the phrase? She is hembra and not
sosegada, subject to the condición of her sex. Héctor
Márquez would have us believe that Cervantes has created this interlude
only to repeat his thoughts about the choice of marriage
partners,24 but had Cervantes planned to
use Leandra's example in order to moralize, why stress flightiness without
clearly showing the tragic outcome that might obtain? Dorotea's case
is aggravated by Don Fernando's duplicity but great authorial pains are taken
to lead her to success.25 Marcela's self-defense
is praised by
24 “El
autor aprovecha la oportunidad para hacer algunos comentarios directos sobre
la condición de la mujer y para dar ejemplos con el sentido de moraleja:
la selección de marido debe ser base de la voluntad de las hijas,
los rasgos favorables que las hijas deben considerar; las promesas falsas,
los casamientos secretos, la ligereza de las mujeres y otros temas
semejantes” (104).
25 Nowhere in
her study does Wiltrout treat Leandra, but one might mentally compare her
while reading these words about Marcela and Dorotea: “Ambas son ricas,
más nobles en acciones que en linaje, razón por la cual están
en mayor libertad para forjar su propio destino, y también se marcharon
de su casa en busca de una solución radical a un problema amoroso.
En ambos casos la nobleza en las acciones de las mujeres excede la de los
hombres que las siguen o las abandonan” (170). Leandra is a somewhat
of a reverse image: she shares the basic characteristics, but her action
is hardly noble; in fact she dragged herself down to Vicente's level. There
is a faint resemblance to Zoraida, another woman whose goal is escape rather
than sexual satisfaction. While these three receive Cervantes' approbation
(Zoraida only implicitly), Leandra does not, rather seems to be left in
limbo.
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ROBERT L. HATHAWAY |
Cervantes |
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none other than Don Quijote. The childlike Doña Clara will be wed
as will Luscinda and also Zoraida (the reader presumes), the latter to be
remembered, Casalduero reminds us (200), as another who lost all jewels but
that which is most precious and irreplaceable. The adulteress Camila is of
course duly punished.
Leandra is the only female protagonist in the
seven intercalated stories whose future is left unresolved. According to
Immerwahr's scheme (12728) one should compare her with
Marcela,26 tales one and seven being
complementary, but we hear the one directly and only hear of and about the
other —and it seems perfectly appropriate to suspect the objectivity
of the latter narrative told by yet another of Cervantes' untrustworthy
narrators.27 If one deduces that Marcela's
defensive self-determination is repeated in Leandra, she didn't. But if,
according to the scheme of “fascinating symmetry of antitheses”
(Immerwahr 121, citing Friedrich Schlegel), her character must provide a
contrast in weakness, she did.
Did she or didn't she? Cervantes in the prologue
to the 1605 Quijote gave the reader the choice: “puedes decir
de la historia todo aquello que to pareciese, sin temor que te calunien por
el mal ni te premien por el bien que dijeres della.”
26 So
also Ullman: “Marcela and Leandra each obtain a drove of admirers who
behave in the same way, thus bringing about similar situations. Yet the two
heroines are totally different. The first left home alone and, though surrounded
by men, appears utterly devoid of erotic interest in the opposite sex and
manages to maintain her freedom and honor; the second left home with a man,
and as a result has lost her freedom, her honor, and the company of men”
(313), honor here, I presume, in the sense of fama.
Comparing Eugenio to Grisóstomo is
inconclusive except as an indication of the degree of “lovingness,”
the latter's all-encompassing and obsessive, the other's rather more tepid,
if not detached (cf. Zimic: “El suicidio de Grisóstomo responde
a parecidos caprichos y resentimiento de la vanidad herida” [72]). Was
each “enamorment” less romance and more an intellectual exercise
prompted by pastoral literature? If so, is one to believe that Marcela existed
solely as object of stylized amatory declamation, and Leandra merely as an
unwitting target for misogynist clichés, each would-be
“pastoralized” lover doomed to frustration from the very beginning
but ignorant thereof because of egotistical tunnel vision?
27 I translate
Avalle-Arce's apt phrase. He has pointed out that “[q]ue los hablantes
mienten es experiencia diaria, pero que lo haga el relator de la obra es
inconcebible. [. . .] Pero la mentira como urdimbre de la técnica
literaria esto fue maravilloso invento cervantino” (172).
Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista. “Cervantes y el narrador infidente.”
Dicenda, 7 (1987), 163-72.
Casalduero, Joaquin. Sentido y forma del Quijote (1605-1615). Madrid:
Insula,1967.
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Entremeses. Ed. Miguel Herrero
García. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1962.
——. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, IV. Ed.
Francisco Rodríguez-Marín. 9th ed. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1975.
——. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. John
Jay Allen. 2 vols. 10th ed. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988.
——. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Edición
IV Centenario. “Enteramente comentada por [Diego] Clemencín.”
Valencia: Alfredo Ortells, 1991.
——. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, I. Ed.
Vicente Gaos. Madrid: Gredos, 1987.
Covarrubias Horozco, Sebastián de. Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana
o Española [1611]. Adiciones de Benito Remigio Noydens [1674].
Ed. Martín de Riquer, rep. Barcelona: Alta Fulla, 1987.
Fajardo, Salvador J. “Unveiling Dorotea
or the Reader as Voyeur.” Cervantes, 4
(1984), 89-108.
——. “The Enchanted Return: On the Conclusion to Don
Quixote I.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
16 (1986), 233-51.
Gayton, Edmund. Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot [referred to as
Festivous Notes in the headings of the verso pages and the book
divisions]. London, 1654.
Hathaway, Robert L. “Dorotea, or
the Narrators' Arts.” Cervantes, 13
(1993),109-26.
73
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Cervantes |
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Herrero, Javier. “Arcadia's Inferno: Cervantes' Attack on Pastoral.”
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 55 (1978), 289-99.
Immerwahr, Raymond S. “Structural Symmetry in the Episodic Narratives
of Don Quijote, Part One.” Comparative Literature, 10
(1958), 121-35.
Johnson, Carroll B. Madness or Lust. A Psychoanalytical Approach to Don
Quixote. Berkeley: U California P, 1983.
Márquez Villanueva, Francisco. Personajes y temas del Quijote.
Madrid: Taurus, 1975.
Murillo, Luis A. A Critical Introduction to Don Quixote. New York:
Peter Lang, 1988.
Rodríguez-Luis, Julio. Novedad y ejemplo de las novelas de
Cervantes, I. Madrid: Porrúa Turanzas, 1980.
Unman, Pierre L. “The Surrogates of Baroque Marcela and Mannerist
Leandra.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 5 (1971), 307-19.
Weiger, John G. “The Curious Pertinence of Eugenio's Tale in Don
Quijote.” MLN, 96 (1981), 261-85.
Wiltrout, Ann E. “Las mujeres del Quijote.” Anales
Cervantinos, 12 (1973), 167-72.
Zimic, Stanislav. “Sobre los amores de Leandra y Vicente de la Roca
(Don Quijote, I caps. 50-52).” Anales Cervantinos, 30
(1992), 67-76.
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Digitized with
the help of Kendall Sydnor |
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