51
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.
52
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?
53
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).
54
John Loftis, «English Renaissance Plays from the Spanish Comedia», English Literary Renaissance 14 (2) (1984): 230-248.
55
Rita Gnutzmann, «Don Quixote in England de Henry Fielding con relación al Don Quijote de Cervantes», Anales Cervantinos XXII (1984): 77-101.
56
Francis Beaumont y John Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. J. W. Lever (London: Longmans, 1962): VIII.
57
Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Andrew Gurr (University of California Press, 1968).
58
Steven H. Gale, «The Relationship between Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Cervantes' Don Quijote», Anales Cervantinos XI (1972): 87-96.
59
Francis Beaumont (y John Fletcher?), The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. M. L. Wine, (New York: Modern Library, Random House Inc. 1969): 301, 35-36 y 44.
60
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. John J. Allen, (Madrid: Cátedra, Letras Hispánicas, 1986).