The Dueña Dolorida: Policing Gender, Desire, and Entertainment

TLDR: In this article, the authors examine visual representations of the Duena Dolorida plot in illustrations and film: Covarrubias's Emblemas morales, illustrated by Antonio Albarran, Arturo Marin as Trifaldi in Rafael Gil's 1947 film Don Quijote de la Mancha, and Juan Diego Botto as the enchanted Dulcinea in Manuel Gutierrez Aragon's 2002 film El caballero don Quíote.

Abstract: The image of a bearded lady in the Duena Dolorida plot in the second part of Don Quijote reveals certain strategies for policing gender behavior that impact traditional notions of desire for the characters who participate in and/or observe the episode as well as for the readers of Cervantes’s novel. This article questions what the figure of the cross-dressed, bearded Condesa Trifaldi and the enchanted Dulcinea (played by the transvestite page) mean for the spectators in the palace as well as for readers. To help understand the significance of the gender-bending plot, this essay examines visual representations of the episode in illustrations and film: Covarrubias’s Emblemas morales , a children’s book version of the Duena Dolorida illustrated by Antonio Albarran, Arturo Marin as Trifaldi in Rafael Gil’s 1947 film Don Quijote de la Mancha , and Juan Diego Botto as the enchanted Dulcinea in Manuel Gutierrez Aragon’s 2002 film El caballero don Quijote .