Meanwhile, Don Quixote stands guard outside the inn. The
innkeeper’s daughter and her maid, Maritornes, fool him into giving them
his hand through a window. They tie his hand to a door and leave
him standing in his stirrups on Rocinante’s back for the night. Four
horsemen arrive and mock Don Quixote as they try to enter the inn.
Chapter XLIV
Don Quixote makes such a racket that the innkeeper comes
out to see what is going on. The horsemen are servants to the father
of Don Louis, the young lord in love with Clara. The four horsemen
find Don Louis and order him to come home with them, but he refuses. The
judge takes Don Louis aside and asks him why he refuses to return
home. Meanwhile, two guests attempt to leave the inn without paying,
and the innkeeper fights them. Don Quixote refuses to assist the
innkeeper because he has sworn not to engage in any new adventures
until he has slain the giant who captured Dorothea’s kingdom.
Cervantes returns to the conversation between Don Louis
and the judge. Don Louis tells the judge of his love for Clara and
begs for her hand in marriage. The judge says he will consider the
proposal. Meanwhile, Don Quixote, through words alone, has successfully persuaded
the two guests to quit beating the innkeeper. A barber—the same
one from whom Don Quixote earlier steals the basin that he believes
is Mambrino’s helmet—arrives at the inn. The barber accuses Don
Qui-xote and Sancho of theft, but Sancho defends them by claiming
that Don Quixote vanquished the barber and took the items as spoils
of war.
Chapter XLV
The people at the inn play along with Don Quixote’s insistence
that the basin is actually Mambrino’s helmet. A huge fight breaks
out, but Don Quixote finally ends the brawl by asking the priest
and the judge to calm everyone. The judge decides to bring Don Louis
to Andalusia along with him and Clara, and he tells the servants
about his plan. A member of the Holy Brotherhood, attracted to the
scene by the outbreak of violence, realizes that he has a warrant
for Don Quixote’s arrest for freeing the galley slaves. Don Quixote
laughs at the man and rails about the stupidity of trying to arrest
a knight-errant.
Analysis: XXXVIII–XLV
The captive’s tale and the story of Clara and Don Louis
demonstrate that at least several of Don Quixote’s contemporaries
share one of his most insane features—unfailing romantic idealization
of women they do not even know. With the exception of Dorothea,
the women in the First Part of Don Quixote are
weak-willed, subservient creatures who rely on their husbands as
masters. In the novel, men revere women for their beauty and their
chastity, but women remain mere objects over whom men fight or drive
themselves insane. Even Dorothea ingratiates and humiliates herself
in order to win back Ferdinand’s affection, which seems to be little
more than lust. In order to rebel, the women must dress as men and
run away from home, but even then they remain frightened young maidens stranded
in situations largely beyond their control. Zoraida stands out as
the one seeming exception to this model, since she has the will to
steal from her father in order to run away from home with the captive.
As a Moor, she can step outside the bounds of the conventional roles
governing the lives of Cervantes’s women, just as the character
Anna Felix is able to do late in the Second Part. Nonetheless, we
never hear Zoraida speak, and this muteness symbolizes her lack
of power. Therefore, even though her ethnicity and religious passion
make her unusual and suggest that she might serve as the model for
a new kind of woman in the narrative, she remains an object and
a marginalized figure.
With the story of the captive and Zoraida, Cervantes
provides a largely autobiographical account of his life in captivity.
Cervantes tried to escape captivity in Algiers three times before
he was finally ransomed. The fanciful escape of the captive may,
then, represent one of Cervantes’s fantasies. The detailed account
of the war in which the captive fought is merely a soldier’s account
of important historical events, nothing more. It bears no relation
to the actual characters or events of the novel and therefore stands
out as material related more to Cervantes’s life than to the story
in progress.
