«A los que he enamorado con la vista he desengañado con las palabras. Y si los deseos se sustentan con esperanzas, no habiendo yo dado alguna a Grisóstomo ni a otro alguno, en fin, de ninguno dellos, bien se puede decir que antes le mató su porfía que mi crueldad». D. Quijote, I, p. 131. «Those who fell in love with my looks I have rejected with my words. And if hopes sustain desires, since I have given none to Grisóstomo nor to anybody else, it can well be said that his stubbornness killed him and not my cruelty». Translation and underlining are my own. (N. from the A.)

Stallybrass, «Patriarchal Territories», p. 126. (N. from the A.)

Chapter XVI of La perfecta casada is dedicated to this topic. Fray Luis' indictment of women's speech is based on the authority of nature: «Porque, así como la naturaleza, como dijimos y diremos, hizo a las mujeres para que encerradas guardasen la casa, así las obligó a que cerrasen la boca; y como las desobligó de los negocios y contrataciones de fuera, así las libertó de lo que se consigue a la contratación, que son las muchas pláticas y palabras. Porque el hablar nace del entender, y las palabras no son sino como imágenes o señales de lo que el ánimo concibe en sí mismo; por dónde como a la mujer buena y honesta la naturaleza no la hizo para el estudio de las ciencias ni para los negocios de dificultades, sino para un solo oficio simple y doméstico, así les limitó el entender, y por consiguiente les tasó las palabras y las razones», p. 124. «As I have said and will repeat, nature made women to guard the home, locked in it, and obliged them to shut their mouths; and as nature dispensed them from outside business and contracts, it freed them from what is inherent to such business, which is much talk and many words. Talk is born of understanding, and words are but images or signs of what the mind conceives in itself; therefore, since nature did not make the good and honest woman for the study of science nor for difficult affairs, but for a single, simple, and domestic occupation, thus it [nature] limited women's intelligence, and consequently their words and reasonings as well». My own translation and underlining. (N. from the A.)

Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, pp. 79-85. (N. from the A.)

Stallybrass cites Barbaro: «It is proper... that not only arms but indeed also the speech of women never be made public; for the speech of a noble woman can be no less dangerous than the nakedness of her limbs», and Alciati's Emblematum liber: «Women should remain at home and be wary of speech»; «Patriarchal Territories», p. 127. For a bibliography of conduct books which encompasses the several European nations, see Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, pp. 326-424. (N. from the A.)

Marcela responds to Ambrosio: «No vengo,... , sino a volver por mí misma, y a dar a entender cuan fuera de razón van todos aquellos que de sus penas y de la muerte de Grisóstomo me culpan», p. 130. «I come to return by myself, and to make it understood how without reason are all of those who accuse me of causing their suffering and the death of Grisóstomo». My own translation. (N. from the A.)

The question of women's discourses, and women's silences, is an important one in Cervantes production; see Wilson's Allegories of Love, pp. 109-29. (N. from the A.)

On the ending of the Marcela/Grisóstomo episode see Jehenson, «The Pastoral Episode», pp. 27-31. (N. from the A.)

Claudio Guillén, Literature as System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 128. (N. from the A.)

See Gérard Genette, Figures II (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969), «Vraissemblance et Motivation», pp. 71-99, and Nancy K. Miller, Subject to Change. Reading Feminist Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), «Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fictions», pp. 25-46, and especially pp. 25-26. (N. from the A.)