Before taking SPAN 236: Cervantes with Professor Armstrong-Roche, my view of the Middle Ages was characterized by an understanding of the social repression of organized religion, the restrictions on the rights of women, and the lack of social mobility between the rich and the poor. Before Professor Roche voiced criticism of the term “dark ages” during one of our class sessions, I hadn’t considered how the term might skew perceptions of history and erase the ideological diversity of the time with respect to these social issues. As I read Don Quijote over the course of the semester, I was struck by the ways in which Cervantes writes in a way that challenges social norms with respect to gender, religion, nationality, and social class. Cervantes portrays a period where the emerging mercantile class was challenging traditional views of the social order established by the peasantry, the clergy, and the nobility. In modern American culture, often when we describe a book or movie as ‘mainstream’ there is an implication that it “plays it safe” by including themes and perspectives that are not polarizing, so that it can appeal to as many people as possible. As a result, I was surprised that Cervantes was able to include the amount of dissent against the social order of his time, and for his novel to reach the contemporary popularity that it did given these themes. Furthermore, his representation of female characters demonstrates a juxtaposition of the performance of gender roles and progressive characteristics. The portrayal of the wealthy laborer Dorothea was particularly interesting, in that it juxtaposed characteristics normally associated with masculinity and nobility with her status as a common woman who managed her parents’ significant estate. Furthermore, Cervantes wrote Dorothea to be a christian woman, but also made space for her to express her sexuality with her husband, which was taboo in Spain at that time. I felt inspired to examine my experience in the course through an intercultural lens, because I was learning about a society in a different country, but also in the context of a period centuries removed from my own.
I think there’s a tendency within modern society to view ourselves as more enlightened and progressive than societies in the past. While I still recognize that a lot has improved in terms of gender equality and social issues between the time of Cervantes and the modern day, I think that this perspective can sometimes blind us to the heterogeneity of the past, and neglect to acknowledge the agency of the people who lived in these times. Additionally, as in contemporary American society, some views that we consider “backwards” might not always be motivated by blind belief, but rather perpetuated as a means of social control. In a supplementary reading by Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, I learned that women of common birth were punished more harshly for illegitimate children, whereas men of noble birth were not socially ostracized in the same way. This was because noble men could claim their illegitimate sons, whereas women of common birth were seen as a burden on society when they had children out of wedlock. As a result, the marginalization of women in cities like Seville in medieval Spain was part of an intentional practice of social control by clerical authorities. Rather than excuse this prejudice, an understanding of the intent behind these policies makes them more worthy of criticism. In addition to condemning prejudice, I think it is imperative to examine the ways in which privileged people benefit from maintaining the oppression of marginalized groups in society.
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton University Press,
1990. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15r5dpz.
