AP Spanish Literature 💃🏽
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Conde Lucanor: “Exemplo XXXV, Lo que aconteció a un mozo que casó con una mujer muy fuerte y muy brava”: Summary ✊
El Conde Lucanor (1335) 📖 by Don Juan Manuel is an anthology of various didactic stories, meaning that each story aims to teach 👨🏫 a lesson. In each "Exemplo"—note that modern Spanish spelling hadn't yet formed—the fictional Count Lucanor asks advice of his wise and worldly right-hand man, 🤼♂️ Patronio makes references to both Muslim ☪️ and Christian ✝️ stories that help Count Lucanor make good decisions and provide good advice to other nobles.
Excerpt from El Conde Lucanor, anonymous manuscript reproduced in the 15th or 16th century. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
In “Exemplo XXXV (3️⃣5️⃣),” often known by the title of the entire book, El Conde Lucanor, Conde Lucanor starts a conversation with Patronio in which he explains that a man he knows wants to marry a very strong woman, but he doesn't know if it's the right decision. Patronio, like all the chapters of El Conde Lucanor, shares the fable💡 of a young man without much money who found that if he married 💑 a woman from a wealthy 🤑 family, he could earn her dowry and get rich 💰
The only problem was that this woman was very strong-willed ✊ and seemed "untameable," to the point that her father was desperate for someone who "might take her out of my house" 🏠
When the man gets married 👰 to the woman, both his family and the woman's family anticipate that they will find the man dead the next morning because of how aggressive and strong-willed his new wife is. However, on the night of the wedding when the couple is finally alone, the man orders his dog 🐕 to bring water to wash his hands, a Muslim 🕋 practice at the time.
When the dog doesn't, the man kills him in a bloody 🅱️ scene. The man also orders that the cat 🐱and the horse bring water 🌊 for his hands. These, of course, do not do it either. In a rage, the man takes the cat, "threw it against the wall and tore him to pieces," and then decapitated his only horse 🐴 and "tore it to pieces."
When the man finally addresses his new wife, ordering her to bring water for his hands 👐 , she does it immediately, totally submissive and the opposite of her bold character from before marriage 🤯 By establishing his dominance 🙇♀️ over her, the man manages to earn the dowry 💸 and have a submissive wife.
Later in the story, the couple's relatives visit the house to find out how the first night as a married couple went, which was Muslim ☪️ tradition—instead of finding the groom killed by his new wife, the family finds the woman at the door 🚪 fearfully begging them not to wake 😴 the man.
The newly submissive woman's father 👴 is inspired by how she was tamed, but when he tries to do the same to his wife—the strong woman's mother 👵—his wife rejects ❌ him because she has known him for too long. In the end, the parallel between the two couples points to the moral at the end of the story:
"If you don't show who you are at the beginning, you will never be able to later when you want.” 🧩
Conde Lucanor: Connections 🔗 to the Course Themes, Literary Devices, and Selected Quotes
Connections to the Themes
- 🔀Sociedades en contacto / Societies in Contact: El Conde Lucanor is comprised of different "Exemplos" narrated by Patronio, who only knows of them given his connections to Muslim ☪️culture Conde Lucanor himself is Christian ✝️, so the work demonstrates how much Christians learned from Muslims during the period of Convivencia.
- 💕Las relaciones interpersonales y el manejo del poder / Interpersonal Relationships and the Balance of Power: The work highlights the concept of power 🦸♂️ in the era: violence, machismo, something to gain or lose. The peoples of Spain 🇪🇸 lived under a set hierarchy 🔺 of power.
- 👨El machismo: Patronio advises Conde Lucanor to share the story 📒 of the strong-willed woman ✊ with his friend because it reinforced the expectations of the age that noble and educated 👨🎓 men were to make women be submissive to them as though they were property. The purpose of including this "Exemplo," therefore, is to serve as a teaching 👩🏫 tool for young men.
Literary Devices
- 💡 The story is didactic because its purpose is to teach—its moral at the end highlights the importance of first impressions.
- 🎁 The story exemplifies the metafiction in the sense that it is one story within another—Don Juan Manuel narrates the situation of Count Lucanor and Patronio, at the same time that Patronio is narrating the situation of the young man and the strong-willed woman. Some describe this phenomenon as the "frame narrative" or the "Chinese box" 📦
- ‼️ The use of hyperbole increases the tension in the story leading up to its climax: “ensangrentando toda la casa 🤯,” “si hubiera en casa más caballos, hombres o mujeres que lo desobedecieran, los mataría a todos.”
- 💬 The waiter also personifies the animals 🐎🐕🐈at home by addressing them: "Don falso traidor" (to the cat), "Don caballo" (to the horse).
“¡Ah, cómo agradezco a Dios que hayas hecho lo que te mandé!” The young man highlights that he would have torn the brave woman to pieces as he did to the animals if she did not obey‼️ Maybe he wouldn't have, but he didn't want her to believe 🤔 that.
“Si al comienzo no muestras quién eres, nunca podrás después cuando quisieres.” The lesson of the story, revealing that Patronio's greatest advice to Count Lucanor's friend is to consider first impressions 🤝
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