>Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:59:19 -0400
>From: Alberto Rodriguez <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: re: Was Cervantes a Feminist?
>To: "A. Robert Lauer" <[log in to unmask]>
>Cc: [log in to unmask]
>X-Mailer: Office-Logic InterChange 3.26
>Original-recipient: rfc822;[log in to unmask]
>
>Feminism seems to me to be an anachronical concept with which to judge 
>Cervantes.  We can say that he had a particular inclination to view women 
>as individuals that are capable of action and independent 
>thought.  Dorotea is a wonderful example.  Cervantes also could understand 
>women and feel great sympathy for their human situation.  With few 
>comments, he gives a full portrait of Maritornes's circumstances at the 
>inn.  There are some authors (Flaubert, for example), who capture the 
>condition of being a woman with great clarity, and Cervantes is such an author.
>I have always hesitated to attribute an author that lived four centuries 
>ago the political implications of modern or contemporary 
>terminology.  Cervantes could have traces of feminism, but that does not 
>make him a feminist.  I would summarize it with rather simple words:  he 
>liked women, and he understood them quite well.  That is all.
>Alberto Rodriguez
>Dickinson College

Prof. A. Robert Lauer
The University of Oklahoma
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