Dueñas and Doncellas

Conchita Herdman Marianella's book develops the words Dueña and Doncella in their Cervantine context. The book offers the two sides of this character type in pre-Cervantine usage from the tendency of the dueña or doncella to appear as a lady-in-waiting damsel in distress or other high-level intermediary and to behave in patterns commensurate with that socio-cultural status to the stereotyped irate scheming gossiping chaperone. While Cervantes often uses this second type in other prose works the relationship between the two semantic fields becomes much more complex in the <i>Quijote</i> so explicitly constructed as a satire of the earlier style. It is this tangle of character type and history that Marianella unwinds. This analysis newly illuminates the episode of Doña Rodríguez one of the pinnacles of the creative craft of the <i>Quijote.</i>