The Idea of Feminine Beauty in The Happy Marriages by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra

The Liberal Lover by Cervantes

Cervantes frequently wrote “novelas idealistas” and “The Liberal Lover” ranks among them in which characters strive to attain to ideals of perfection. Novels can be grouped in two categories the realist or idealist. A common characteristic of Cervantes works is that the protagonists usually enter a hitherto unknown world where they may appreciate a new environment, culture and society. One must understand the Cervantine audience to probe the reasons why these Exemplary Novels gained such popularity. The fact remains that the public of the sixteenth century believed that I every novel “the good end happily and the bad unhappily, and that is what Fiction means. Which raises the question, Does Renaissance novelists seek the truth or verisimilitude or is the concentration solely on enjoyment, admiration and surprise? There are two antitheses, the possibilities portrayed versus the realities represented. The setting of events in the real world versus ideal characters.

Cervantes, similar to Shakespeare, features a number of stock characters to portray exemplarity in his Exemplary Novels. Among the usual stock characters is the female protagonist, or maiden of honour, endowed with the highest qualities of the Renaissance woman such as her beauty, high social class, good reputation, wealthy and equally fair suitor(s). She maintains and secures her purity and is famed to be an upright and Christian woman. Then the playwright introduces us to the ideal “damsel in distress” - held captive against her will and rejects the hand of the principal male protagonist. On the other hand, the chief male protagonist is of noble blood/lineage, wealthy, Christian and espouses its tenets and values. He is enamoured by the female protagonist, is both a man of arms and a man of letters, shows himself to be an exemplary and gallant “caballero”. This love story ends in the happy marriage of the main personages, the establishment of a new family, freedom and reconciliation of “The Other” as a proselyte to the Catholic Church.

The prevailing motifs of The Liberal Lover include but are not limited to love, generosity, freedom versus captivity, redemption, religion, marginality, economy, justice/law and corruption. There are realist aspects in this novel though because the story is situated in a tumultuous time in Spanish history where relations between ethnic groups were strained. One observes Moorish capture, Warfare, and Commerce. Muslims, Jews, Greek and Christian reside in Spain. The mention of the “converse” implies that the Mandate for “the other” to accept Spanish imperialism and religious hegemony had already passed. Cervantes however displays the other side where lust, infidelity and treachery reside solely in the domain of the Other.

Quite surprisingly, the most complex characters are the males because they seek out and pursue love and are subjected to a more challenging process to win the love of their lives had to overcome other obstacles to personal happiness. During the course of the novel, the character of the males undergoes drastic reform. The male protagonists must learn to control themselves as they attempt to show themselves worthy to their beloved, they are both tales of courtship, rationality and wedded love, and their characters undergo a change from tyrannical, selfish love, impulse and desperate jealousy to a subdued will rationalized and governed and a sublime altruistic love. During Golden Age Spain, one sees that there was the socioeconomic crisis which arises among the ethnic groups and tensions. The Church wielded its power by compelling conversion and expanding her domains in both the Old World and the New World. Yet a critical question needs to be asked: Does Cervantes use subversive strategy to convey some as yet unaccepted ideas, considered taboo or blasphemy in his times?

Indeed, upon close scrutiny Cervantes does emply tactics to circumvent the restrictions applied in his day against authors and artists. He commonly speaks through characters which represent the class “La Otredad’ or “The Other” such as Preciosa, Mahamut and others where these heroes exemplify model Christian virtues although they do not subscribe to the popular Christianity of the time. They display goodwill, kindness and maintain a high level of integrity. Thus these characters become a skilful medium through which Cervantes conveys his unaccepted ideas.

Another poignant question reveals: What are the Cervantine ideals of beauty? By comparing the appearance and characters of Leonisa and Preciosa, one retrieves an answer. It was the popular thought of the day that beauty reflected the inner soul of man therefore to portray an exemplary , model and ideal character it was of necessity that Cervantes endow beauty extraordinary and unsurpassed to portray an exemplary personage/ ideal. I deduce from the comparison that both Preciosa and Leonisa are two distinct embodied concepts of feminine beauty which give us a hint of the aesthetic taste of the average European.