This reading leaves us right upon the chapter where Don Quixote descends into the Cave of Montesinos, which is one of the most important chapters in the whole novel. So we are excited to find out what happens while Don Quixote is down there.
As for the last few chapters that we have read, there is nothing short of excitement. There is a marriage and an adventure with lions. Yes, real, hungry, and very large lions, and Don Quixote does battle with them, in a sense.
As far as the adventure of the lions is concerned, what Don Quixote really does is tell the gate keeper to open the cage to let the lion out, then the lion exits the cage barely peeking out and turns around in his cage. Essentially, the lion looks at Don Quixote with his sword unsheathed and thinks fighting the scrawny knight is a waste of energy. We all laughed at the disrespect the lion gave to Don Quixote. It was funny to us to see a mad act completed so sanely. No one was hurt. No one was eaten. And Don Quixote asks to be called the Knight of the Lions instead of the Knight with the Sorrowful face! All in all, this type of action isn’t new to us and isn’t all that surprising to us veteran readers of Don Quixote!!
As for this post, it will be very short. I’m sure I could go into the theatrics of the wedding, the layered nuisances of acting and love and courtship and feminism, but it isn’t anything that particularly strikes me to write and analyze. Nothing that really got my fire going so there is really no point for me to go into it other than simple review.
As stated above there was the adventure with the lions, then a young student invited Don Quixote and Sancho to a wedding where there was a lonely farmer who claimed love and ownership of the bride. He essentially stabs himself and asks for the brides hand in marriage before he dies so that he may confess. If this doesn’t happen the man would go to hell for his sin.
The bride agrees to marry him until his death, and he jumps up, takes out the sword, and takes his wife in hand back to his village. The groom didn’t really care at all.
The one thing I will point out is a contradiction in Quixote’s ethics. It has to do with arranged marriage. On page 78 Don Quixote explains the importance of arranged marriage, he says, “If all people who love each other were to marry, it would deprive parents of the right and privilege to marry their children to the person and at the time they ought to marry,” and he goes on to say that the daughter would choose a servant or something. Literally a couple of paragraphs above, the student lists Basilio’s (the youth who pretends to kill himself) gifts and talents. Among the talents is the ability to fence very well. With that Don Quixote says, “For that one accomplishment, the youth deserved not only to marry fair Quiteria but Queen Guinevere herself.”
However, it is possible that Don Quixote doesn’t contradict himself. The reason lies in Basilio’s last request before death to marry Quiteria and repent his sin. Upon Don Quixote hearing Basilio’s request says, “in a loud voice that Basilio was asking for something very fair and reasonable and, moreover, very easy to do, and that Senor Camacho would be just as honored receiving Senora Quiteria as the widow…” (593). Quiteria consents and gives her hand, and Basilio jumps up. Since Don Quixote supported the marriage, he acts in a way as parent and approval to the union and therefore doesn’t contradict himself at all and is completely sound in his judgement and moral code.
After the wedding, Don Quixote and Sancho spend three days with the newlyweds and head for the Cave…