Transgenderism in Don Quixote
Part II
Another Joke on Don Quixote
(Part 2, Chapters XXXVI-XLI)
By Hebe Dotson
Subscribers can catch up with Part One | Part Three
f one elaborate crossdressing joke on poor old gullible Don Quixote was amusing, why not try another? Within a day or two of the mysterious Dulcinea adventure, another enchanted lady and her retinue arrived at the castle of the duke and dutchess, seeking help from the renowned knight.
The Countess Trifaldi, who wore a black dress that fell in three trains, each carried by a page, was allegedly known far and wide as the Afflicted Waiting-woman (a term that I interpret to mean a Lady-in-Waiting, an aristocratic lady who served another lady of higher rank). She was accompanied by twelve waiting-women of her own, all dressed in nuns’ habits. The faces of the countess and her ladies were so heavily veiled that nothing could be seen of their features.
With very little prodding, the Afflicted Waiting-woman related her sad story, speaking in a voice that was strangely rough and coarse. She had been the chief waiting-woman to Queen Maguncia of Candaya, and she had allowed a sweet-talking young knight access to the chambers of the lovely young princess Antonomasia, whose virtue she was supposed to protect. When it eventually became apparent that the princess was in a family way, the waiting-woman persuaded a vicar to join the princess and her knight in lawful matrimony. All of this became known to the queen, who was so annoyed that she died.
No sooner was the queen buried than her cousin, the giant Malambruno, appeared on top of her grave. Malambruno, who had arrived on a magical wooden horse, was an enchanter, and his first order of business was to turn the princess into a brass monkey and her lover into a metal crocodile. Next, he prepared to decapitate the waiting-woman, but when she fearfully confessed her guilt, he relented. He would instead inflict a social death upon her and all of Maguncia’s other waiting-women. They immediately felt the pores of their faces open, followed by the sensation of being pricked by thousands of needles.
At this point in the Afflicted Waiting-woman’s tale, she and the other ladies threw back their veils to reveal heavily-bearded faces to their awe-struck audience.
Don Quixote was aghast. How could he help these unfortunates? The Afflicted Waiting-woman had a ready answer. He must go to Candaya and defeat the evil Malambruno in combat. When this was accomplished, the ladies would lose their beards and the princess and her husband would be restored to their human shapes (in Antonomasia’s case, the shape would be, as before, slightly bulging).
Candaya was fifteen thousand miles away by land and the journey there would be difficult, but there was a solution. Malambruno had told Countess Trifaldi that when she found a champion to fight for her, he would send his flying wooden horse to bring the hero swiftly to Candaya.
Don Quixote immediately agreed to do all that was necessary to end the Afflicted Waiting-woman’s enchantment. A short while later, four savages arrived at the duke’s palace, carrying a wooden horse. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza mounted the creature. Their eyes were blindfolded -- Malambruno had insisted on this, lest the height at which they were to fly were to make them giddy and cause them to fall -- and the duke and duchess and the grateful Countess Trifaldi wished them godspeed and success. "You are rising into the air now," they were told, "but the enchanted horse flies so smoothly that you won’t have any sensation of movement."
A few minutes later, when the two riders were convinced that they were high among the clouds and racing toward Candaya, someone set fire to the horse’s tail. The cargo of firecrackers in the horse’s belly exploded, sending the knight and his squire flying. They tumbled to the ground, picked themselves up, and tore off their blindfolds to see an astounding sight. They were back at the duke’s palace, but the waiting-women had vanished and the others who had seen them off were lying on the grass, as if in an enchanted slumber. A lance impaled in the ground nearby bore a parchment, a message from Malambruno. Don Quixote’s great courage in attempting this valiant deed had been sufficient to break the enchantment. Princess Antonomasia and her husband had been restored to life and the waiting-women were no longer afflicted.
When the duke and duchess awoke, they assured Don Quixote that the waiting-women’s beards had disappeared and the women themselves had then vanished at the moment that the blazing wooden horse and its riders had hurtled back into their garden from the sky.
Sancho Panza and the Crossdressed Siblings
(Part 2, Chapter XLIX)
The duke and duchess, still seeking amusement from their guests, decided that the time had come to reward Sancho Panza’s faithful service by making him the governor of an island. His escort to his new dominion was led by the duke’s steward, whose bearded face and rough voice seemed to him to bear a most remarkable resemblance to the Countess Trifaldi. Don Quixote agreed with him that the countess’s face was just like the steward’s. Nevertheless, the steward was not the Afflicted Waiting-woman, for "that would imply a very palpable contradiction."
The governorship was Sancho Panza’s adventure; Don Quixote stayed behind at the duke’s palace for further adventures of his own. The "island" was a walled village of about a thousand inhabitants -- Sancho was assured that its name was the Isle Barataria. His escort -- and many of his "subjects" as well -- were primed to play more tricks on the governor and relay the resulting humorous stories to the duke and duchess.
After a series of staged events, something unplanned occurred one night while the governor and his retinue of assistants and advisors were patrolling the town, dispensing justice and advice to those who seemed to be in need of these commodities. Two constables appeared with a well-dressed young man in custody. Their prisoner, they explained, looked like a man but was really a woman.
She was, in fact, a beautiful young girl of sixteen. Under questioning about why she was out so late dressed as a man, she told several stories but finally admitted that she was the daughter of a wealthy gentleman who lived in the village. Her father had confined her to her home since her mother’s death ten years before. She had naturally developed an overwhelming desire to see at least a little of the world around her, and she had reveled in the tales of village life told to her by her brother. He was her junior by a year, but he was free to roam around the Isle Barataria at his pleasure.
She had often begged her brother to disguise her in his clothing and take her out to see the village. That night he had yielded to her pleas. After their father went to bed, he gave her one of his suits to wear and dressed himself in some of her clothing. In these guises, they had gone out and wandered about the town as they fancied for an hour or so. Then, as they saw a large group of people approaching, her brother said, "It must be the watch! Fly like the wind, and follow me!" He dashed off and she tried to follow, but after a few steps she tripped and fell, and two of the watchmen seized her.
Her story was quickly confirmed when two constables arrived with a prisoner who appeared to be a lovely young lady. She wore a rich skirt and a blue damask cloak with fine gold lacings; her head had no adornment or covering except for her hair, "as red and curly as rings of gold." Under questioning, she admitted that she was the first prisoner’s brother and that they had disguised themselves just to see the town while their father slept.
Governor Panza lectured the two on their foolishness, both in embarking on their escapade and in giving a variety of reasons for doing so before telling the truth. If they had simply admitted from the beginning that they had disguised themselves solely to amuse themselves, they would have avoided a great deal of difficulty. As it was, he and his associates would take them home, and if all went well (and all did), they’d be able to get back in their house without their father learning what they’d done.
A Note
The tale of the disguised siblings is the only one of the six crossdressing stories in Don Quixote in which the characters dressed up for their own pleasure. In this case, the sister had a purpose other than crossdressing for its own sake: she needed to disguise herself so she could move safely about the town. Perhaps she feared recognition, though this was unlikely since she’d been confined to her home since early childhood. More likely, it was simply not proper for a refined young woman to be away from her home at night. If so, it would have been more logical for her brother to accompany her as a young man rather than in feminine disguise, for two men would surely have drawn less attention than a young man and a young woman.
Cervantes doesn’t go into the brother’s motivation. Perhaps he had greater reason to fear recognition, since he was in the habit of wandering about the town, but he would have been far more likely to draw scrutiny as a young woman. It seems probable, then, that he had defied logic and crossdressed simply for the pleasure of doing so, making him the one truly transgendered person in the entire novel.
It is also noteworthy that neither Sancho Panza nor any of his party expressed any criticism of the brother and sister for their acts of crossdressing. They were admonished only for failing to explain themselves truthfully from the outset. Sancho even entertained the thought of making a match between his daughter (socially elevated by her father’s "governorship") and the young man. Was rural Spain really that liberal 400 years ago, or was Cervantes spinning a crossdresser’s fantasy?
To Be Concluded
Hebe Dotson would love to have your comments and criticisms -- you can e-mail her at hebedotson@tgforum.com.
|