{"id":57,"date":"2012-01-25T06:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T06:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/2012\/01\/25\/a-shepherdess-in-don-quixote-beauty-virtue-and-independence\/"},"modified":"2012-01-25T06:35:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T06:35:00","slug":"a-shepherdess-in-don-quixote-beauty-virtue-and-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/a-shepherdess-in-don-quixote-beauty-virtue-and-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shepherdess in Don Quixote: Beauty, Virtue, and Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am reading Don Quixote in my Comparative Literature Class, and I came across this wonderful part about a shepherdess named Marcela. \u00a0Marcela is the most beautiful woman any man has ever seen, and men leave their careers to pursue her. \u00a0One of her suitors dies in his grief, and the people begin blame her for his death. She comes to his funeral to defend herself. \u00a0She beautifully preaches that a truly beautiful woman is one who is chaste and pure, not one who flaunts her external beauty. \u00a0She asserts her independence as a\u00a0shepherdess\u00a0— this is who she wants to be, and her male suitors will not change her mind. \u00a0I love this random incident in Don Quixote, because it contradicts a common societal thought at the time: a woman’s value is in her beauty. \u00a0Marcela preaches the true virtuous woman; the true value of a virtuous woman.\u00a0Marcela is virtuous, chaste, beautiful, intelligent, and\u00a0independent<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 (I rejoice when I find this stuff in literature. It’s my favorite :)) <\/p>\n

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This is what Marcela says:<\/p>\n

You all say that heaven made me beautiful, so much so that this beauty of mine, with a force you can\u2019t resist, makes you love me; and you say and even demand that, in return for the love you show me, I must love you. \u00a0By the natural understanding which God has granted me I know that whatever is beautiful is lovable; but I<\/span> can\u2019t conceive why, for this reason alone, a woman who\u2019s loved for her beauty should be obliged to love whoever loves her.<\/span> \u00a0What\u2019s more, it could happen that the lover of beauty is ugly, and since that which is ugly is loathsome, it isn\u2019t very fitting for him to say: \u201cI love you because you\u2019re beautiful; you must love me even though I\u2019m ugly.\u201d \u00a0And even if they are well-matched as far as beauty goes, that doesn\u2019t mean that the attraction\u2019s going to be mutual, because not all beauty inspires love. \u00a0Some beauties delight the eye but don\u2019t captivate the heart; just as well, because if all beauty did inspire love and conquer hearts, people\u2019s affections would be forever wandering this way and that without knowing where to come to rest \u2013 there\u2019s an infinite number of beautiful people, so the affections would be infinite, too. \u00a0And, according to what I\u2019ve heard, true love can\u2019t be divided, and must be voluntary, not forced on you. \u00a0If this is so, as I believe it is, why do you think I should be obliged to give in to you, just because you say you love me dearly?<\/span> \u00a0Or else tell me this: of heaven had made me ugly instead of beautiful, would I have been right to complain about you for not loving me? \u00a0What\u2019s more, you must remember that I didn\u2019t choose this beauty of mine \u2013 heaven gave it to me, exactly as you see it, quite freely, without my asking for it or picking it. And just as the viper doesn\u2019t deserve to be blamed for her poison, even though she kills with it, because nature gave it to her, so I don\u2019t deserve to be blamed for being beautiful; because beauty in a \u00a0virtuous woman is like a distant fire or sharp sword, which don\u2019t burn or cut anyone who doesn\u2019t come too close. \u00a0Honor and virtue are ornaments of the soul, and without them the body, even if it is beautiful, shouldn\u2019t seem beautiful.<\/span> \u00a0Well then, if chastity is one of the virtues that most embellish the soul and the body, why should the woman who\u2019s loved for her beauty lose her chastity by responding to the advances of the man who, merely for his own pleasure, employs all his strength and cunning to make her lose it?
<\/span>I was born free<\/span>, and to live free I chose the solitude of the countryside\u2026.I am the distant fire and the far-off sword\u2026.If I\u2019d encouraged him, I should have been false; if I\u2019d gratified him, I should have been acting against my own intentions, better than his\u2026Because a woman who doesn\u2019t love any man can\u2019t make any man jealous, and disabuse must not be confused with disdain. \u00a0He who calls me fierce and a basilisk can leave me alone, as something evil and dangerous; he who calls me an ingrate can stop courting me; he who calls me distant can keep his distance; he who calls me cruel can stop following me: because this fierce basilisk, this ingrate, this cruel and distant woman is most certainly not going to seek, court, approach or follow any of them.<\/p>\n

I love this \ud83d\ude42 I should have used it in my Senior Thesis.<\/p>\n

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I am reading Don Quixote in my Comparative Literature Class, and I came across this wonderful part about a shepherdess named Marcela. \u00a0Marcela is the most beautiful woman any man has ever seen, and men leave their careers to pursue her. \u00a0One of her suitors dies in his grief, and the people begin blame her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmaletters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}