41
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.
42
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).
43
«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).
44
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).
45
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.
46
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.
47
«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).
48
Zimic draws our attention to the irony of the canon's remarks (72-73).
49
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). 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).
50
«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).