5 - Now you see it, now you … see it again? The Dynamics of Doubling in La española inglesa

Summary

La española inglesa (The English Spanish Girl) is, on the surface, an engaging tale of loss and recuperation, separation and reconciliation, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. The surface text, however, is but a beguiling pretext carefully constructed by Cervantes to draw his readers into an often ambiguous and paradoxical interpretative space. Cervantes's more receptive contemporary readers, caught up in the complexities of an ever-changing plot, see their reality distorted and filtered through a utopian imaginary which challenges their relationship with their world and the value systems which inform it. We shall see, in this glimpse into the structural workings of the tale, how La española inglesa is skilfully crafted in terms of binary systems and oppositional rhythms, so that its readers are offered a double vision of events within the fictional world, which has uneasy ramifications for the one-dimensional perspectives which (perhaps ironically) constitute early Baroque reality. What might seem to be a confirmation of conservative systems of belief is converted, through an awareness of contrapuntal argument and multiperspectivism, into a challenging of a collectively complacent and persistently static world-view. Despite the familiar trappings of the romance genre, engagement with La española inglesa is no easy ride. The reader is pushed and pulled towards a false dénouement, an anticlimactic moment, which makes the final resolution uncomfortably satisfying and takes the overtly utopian sting out of the traditional romance ending. Cervantes toys with his readers (contemporary and modern), frustrates at every turn their preconceived notions of the complicated intrigue of romance (and, therein, the liminal potentialities offered by the inevitable twists and turns of fate), until the closure which, when it comes, is at once satisfying and disturbing.

Before looking more closely at the text itself, we should broach a question, framed in broader terms, which has had significant implications for critical reception of La española inglesa in the twentieth century. In stark terms the question is the following: if the author of La española inglesa had not also written Don Quijote (Don Quixote), would we consider the tale worthy of critical attention in its own right?