Courtesy, Altruism, and Honor:
A New Reading of Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna
Paper delivered at NEMLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, March, 1984.
Fuenteovejuna may well be the most frequently studied and least understood of Lope de Vega's comedias. The vast diversity of criticism it has engendered attests to the complexity of the work ‹ and also to its subtle ambiguities. While honor has long been recognized as a principle theme of the play, the way in which questions of honor are defined, developed, and resolved in Fuenteovejuna has yet to be analysed in detail. Social class conflicts in the play are so sharply delineated that they tend to obscure a more general and universalized preoccupation with honor which influences all of the play's action; emphasis on the communal protagonist in Fuenteovejuna can also be misleading, since questions of honor in the comedia are experienced primarily by the individual; finally, the fact that audience (or reader) sympathy would seem to rest so clearly with the peasants makes it difficult to recognize in a villano a trait he shares with the tyrannical Comendador.The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that honor in Fuenteovejuna cuts across class lines and motivates all characters in much the same way; that Lope uses the themes of courtesy and altruism ironically in his development of the honor theme; and that Fuenteovejuna may in fact end on a far more negative note than is generally supposed.
While spectators in the corrales needed no introduction to the meaning of honor, it might be worthwhile, before examining honor in Fuenteovejuna, to remind the contemporary reader that honor in the comedia referred exclusively to reputation ‹the way in which an individual was perceived by others. It will further be recalled that honor was considered el bien más alto (1), the highest goal a man could attain. As Donald R. Larson has noted, honor of this sort produced certain types of behavior designed to establish, maintain, or protect an individual's reputation. Such behavior had an active component: "... honor depends on the ability to impress one's will on others..."; (2) but much honor-related behavior also tended to be reactive: "... if anything is clear in Golden Age discussions of honor, it is that a man simply must... avenge an insult to his reputation." (3) Thus a comedia character would be caught up in an endless struggle to simultaneously manipulate others and protect himself from their opinions of him.
It is also worth recalling that honor in the comedia was pursued at all social levels: that a peasant and a nobleman were both susceptible to the threat of dishonor ‹ and that both were bound to defend themselves from such a threat. Moreover, theresponsibility for maintaining honor and avoiding dishonor would have to rest on each individual. Comedia characters may claim to be acting in the name of a group ‹a nation, a military order, a political institution, or a community‹, but when the underlying concern is honor, personal motives are of far greater importance than group loyalties.
The way in which Lope introduces the honor theme in Fuenteovejuna is itself ironic, since it appears in a variety of disguises and is rarely discussed openly. In the play's opening scenes, for example, courtesy is the primary focus of discussion. Courtesy is a mode of behavior through which one individual acknowledges the worth of another, a "Demostración o acto con que se manifiesta la atención, respeto o afecto que tiene una persona a otra." (4) The motives behind courtesy, however, may vary considerably, reflecting one or more of several possible situations. These include: (1) a genuine feeling of admiration, respect, or affection for another person; (2) a social obligation based on class differences; (3) a desire to curry favor with an individual in order to improve one's own status or circumstances; and (4) an attempt to eliminate a potential obstacle to the fulfillment of one's own objectives.
The correlation between courtesy and honor in the comedia should be fairly obvious, since honor based on reputation could best be ascertained throught the actions and evaluations of others:
In the opening lines of Fuenteovejuna the Comendador is offended by an apparent lack of courtesy on the part of the young Maestre of Calatrava ‹his social and military superior‹ who has not yet arrived to greet him:
¿no le sobra el que me dan
According to the Comendador, courtesy is a tool, a way to win the support of cooperation of others, while discourtesy can only produce conflict. But the Comendador is not concerned with courtesy as an abstract principle: he fears for his own reputation. A victim of what he sees as the Maestre's discourtesy, the Comendador responds with even greater discourtesy in order to force the Maestre to respect him:
que he puesto por vos la vida
Having thus "avenged" an apparent insult to his reputation, the Comendador actively seeks to impose his will on the Marestre by usingthe young man's sense of honor to involve him ‹and through him the Order of Calatrava‹ in a war of succession for the throune of Castile:
Of particular interest in this scene is the way in which the Comendador cleverly undermines the Maestre's valor (and thus his honor) in convincing him to take up arms against the Reyes Católicos:
When the Maestre decides to follow the Comendador's advice, it is his own reputation ‹and not the monarchy of Castile‹ which he intends to protect:
Thus the Maestre reacts to the challenge implicit in the Comendador's words: he will have to prove that he is worthy of his rank in the face of public opinion which, according to the Comendador, views him as an inexperienced child.
By the time this scene is over, the Comendador has been doubly successful in handling his superior. He has won the Maestre's support fo his campaign against Ciudad Real and ‹at least equally important‹ he has firmly established his own control over the Maestre. And he has accomplished both objectives by questioning the Maestre's reputation so that the Maestre will henceforth engage in activities which will earn him the favorable opinion of others.
Moreover, a careful reading of the scene reveals a basic irony whose significance will be felt throughout the play. The Comendador may define courtesy as a "llave para abrir la voluntad," but his treatment of the Maestre clearly demonstrates tha discourtesy is far mor effictive in the honor-obsessed society portrayed in the comedia. Courtesy may be accepted passively, but discourtesy demands a response, a reaffirmation of one's own sense of honor.
Albert S. Gérard has described courtesy in Fuenteovejuna as "the formalities of polite behavior in aristocratic society." (7) Discussions of courtesy, however, are not limited to the nobility, and the villanos of Fuenteovejuna provide humorous but astute insight into the nature of both courtesy and discourtesy. When Laurencia questions Frondoso's reference to the peasant women as "hermosas damas," he responds with an ingenioius catalogue of courteous language which, as his examples demonstrate, enhances reputations by making things seem better than they are:
Laurencia, after applying the term cortesía to this flattering style of speech, reverses the procedure with a catalogue of discourteous language, which transforms virtues into defects:
While some critics consider this dialogue a simple matter of menosprecio de corte, (8) Laurencia's analysis of discourtesy serves as a timely reminder of what has just occurred between the Comendador and the Maestre. The Comendador undermines the Maestre's opinión by referring to his "blanca espada" in such a way as to transform the image of a shining sword into one of a blade unblemished by battle. What was once a symbol of the Maestre's authority and valor thus becomes a mark of his youthful inexperience and effectively brings him under the control of the scheming Comendador.
The peasants of Fuenteovejuna use and react to such calculated language in much the same way. Fittingly, it is Laurencia herself who expertly manipulates the villanos of her community in what is probably the play's best known scene. Having just escaped from captivity at the hands of the Comendador, she addresses the town's elders, who have gathered to discuss possible responses to the Comendador's continued abuses. After accusing Esteban of failing to fulfill the obligations of a father by protecting her honor, she launches into a diabribe whose primary purpose is to offend her audience. Honor is at stake here, not justice, and if thethought of her own dishonor is not sufficient to rouse the men to action, they might consider how this affair ‹and their disinclination to resolve it‹ has compromised their own reputations. Her speech is, in fact, a string of insults, designed to stir the heart of any man concerned with his opinión:
Laurencia does not plead for the dignity of the peasantry, nor for a justicified revolt against tyranny, nor even for the honor of the town as a communal entity. Instead, she directs her attack toward each elder as an individual who must protect and defend his own honor as a man. She chooses just those insults which threaten their hombría, their claim to honor within their social group, their ability to protect their women ‹ and, through the women, the honor of their line. Like the Comendador, Laurencia is an expert in her use of denigrating language, and just as the Comendador gives new meaning to the brilliance of the Maestre's sword, she uses the very name of her town to shame each of its elders: "Ovejas sois, bien lo dice / de Fuente Ovejuna el nombre (ll. 1758-1796).Esteban's reaction to his daughter's speech makes it absolutely clear that his own honor (rather than the more generalized honor of Fuenteovejuna) impels him to act as a result of Laurencia's publicly insulting language:
Thus Lope once again makes the point that honor is more effectively served by outright discourtesy than it is by formally courteous behavior. Moreover, he creates a parallel between the Comendador's manipulation of the Maestre and Laurencia's appeal to the men of her village. One must, it would seem, arrive at the conclusion that characters at all levels of the social hierarchy in Fuenteovejuna deal with their peers ‹and respond to identical threats‹ in identical ways. If one is to condemn the Comendador as an unprincipled knight who forces his Maestre to commit an act of treason against the Monarchy, one must also consider the fact that Laurencia, seeing her own honor threatened, incites the leaders of Fuenteovejuna into an open rebellion against its rightful figure of authority.
An obvious argument to the above analysis would bethat the peasants of Fuenteovejuna possess moral qualities which are in direct contrast to the immoral selfishness of the Comendador. Gérard, for example, claims that "...through sacrifice and self-denial, the peasants succeed in obliterating the disorder created by the Commendador's (sic) unbridled self-assertion."(9) Are such "sacrifice and self denial" possible in the honor-oriented world of Fuenteovejuna? While some passages might seem to suggest thatthey are, an analysis of their relation to the play as a whole does not bear out this view.
The whole question of order vs. disorder, harmony vs. disharmony, and altruism vs. selfishness has been investigated at length with regard to Fuenteovejuna. (10) Critics espousing this view of the play often cite the famous debate over Platonic idealism vs. self-love which appears in Act I. The dramatic context in which this debate appears, however, and the ambiguity with which it is resolved, suggest that Lope's intention was not, as many believe, to argue for altruism and against self-love ‹ or even to demonstrate the moral superiority of the peasants over the Comendador.
The debate is carried on by the peasants Barrildo and Mengo. Barrildo asserts that life is all harmony and that "Armonía es puro amor / porque el amor es concierto (ll. 381-382)." His views, he says, are based on the local priest's explanation of Plato, "que este amaba el alma sola / y la virtud de lo amado (ll. 425-426)." Mengo, on the other hand, bases his arguments on the eternal discord of the elements (ll. 373-374). He insists that because the objective of love is the possession of the beloved, all love is necessarily a form of self-love: "...que nadie tiene amor / más que a su misma persona (ll. 401 402)." Although the debate is never resolved, it does come to a fitting conclusion when Mengo asks Laurencia "¿Amas tú (l. 435)?" and she replies, "Mi propio honor(l. 435)." Laurencia's answer ingeniously unites love and honor as concerns of the individual, and the theme of self-love comes into play ‹through honor‹ as a primary motivation in Fuenteovejuna. (11)
Each character in Fuenteovejuna, as in every comedia, must be vigilant of his or her own honor; and honor, as noted earlier, may be sought on both active and reactive levels. While discourtesy is an effective means of imposing one's will on others, a very different type of interaction comes into play when characters must react to situations in which their good name might be threatened. Altruism is not possible under such circumstances, and characters in Fuenteovejuna often engage in a peculiar form of rationalization by means of which each individual defines events in terms which, often inappropriately, redirect the threat of dishonor from the speaker and place it onto some other character.
The way such rationalizations operate may be illustrated by tracing a single motif ‹responsibility for Laurencia's honor‹ throughout the play's action. As father of the unmarried Laurencia, Esteban is responsible for the protection of his daughter's honor until she marries. The importance ofthis responsibility to his own honor is revealed when Frondoso asks Esteban for permission to marry Laurencia. The aldalde's first reaction is one of overwhelming relief:
Esteban is glad that Frondoso loves his daughter, but he is far more thankful that Laurencia's reputation ‹made all the more burdensome by the Comendador's pursuit of her‹ will no longer be a reflection of his own honor. That Esteban can freely express this gratitude to Frondoso demonstrates how important such technicalities of honor could be to all concerned, and how universally accepted they were.
When the Comendador disrupts the wedding of Laurencia and Frondoso, Esteban tries to defend Frondoso by referring to his resistance to the Comendador in terms of Laurencia's honor (and Frondoso's obligation):
This all sounds perfectly reasonable, but on closer consideration Esteban's defense of Frondoso in these terms is wholly inappropriate, since the incident which prompts Frondoso's arrest occurred before Laurencia had even agreed to accept him as her suitor. Also curious is the fact that Esteban refers to himself in terms of his new relationship with Frondoso but does not acknowledge his personal involvement as Laurencia's father.
Even the Comendador is able to see through Esteban's argument, as he replies, "Nunca yo quise quitarle / su mujer, pues no lo era (ll. 1617-1618)." Thus the Comendador seeks to justify his arrest of Frondoso on the grounds that Frondoso had no right to defend Laurencia's honor. But the Comendador does not publicly recognize the fact that Laurencia was in need of protection ‹ from his own advances.
Only Laurencia describes the situation from the point of view of her own honor, and she firmly places the responsibility for her protection on her father:
Thus each character seeks to implicate others in order to bear no personal responsibility for Laurencia's fate.
In a similar fashion, the Comendador arrests Frondoso because the latter had threatened his life. To publicize this fact, however, would mean thatthe Comendador's own honor had been undermined by a peasant. For this reason the Comendador describes Frondoso's action as an unforgivable affront to an even more noble personage:
According to the Comendador, then, Frondoso has, by threatening him, offended both the honor of the Maestre and that of the whole Order of Calatrava; and it is of particular interest that, while the Comendador does not deny that the original offense was against himself, he does avoid the use of the first person and instead refers to Frondoso's victim as the "Comendador mayor."
This type of rationalization reaches its height in the final act of Fuenteovejuna. Moved by Laurencia's exhortations (which stir the fear of dishonor in the heart of each villager) the pesaants arrive at a plan of action:
The peasants will not attack the Comendador in the name of their own lost honor, but will rather unite under political slogans: "Mueran tiranos traidores (l. 1813)" and "¡Los reyes, nuestros señores, / vivan (ll. 1811-1812)!" From this point on, the rallying cry of the peasants will be one which obscures their legitimate grievances against the Comendador and suggests instead that a greater wrong has been done to the Monarchy: "Vivan Fernando y Isabel, y mueran / los traidores (ll. 1865-1866)!" Larson has aptly called the peasants' newly acquired opposition to tyranny their "legal defense." (12) Until their honor is called into question, the townspeople have no objection to the Comendador's opposition to the Reyes Católicos. Support of the Monarchs, however, does provide them with a political pretext which will both soften the Monarchs' anger over their deed and protect their reputations from any suggestion of personal dishonor suffered at the hands of the Comendador.
The case of the Maestre is also of interest in this regard. While he readily commits the Order of Calahtrava to war in order to protect his image of authority, he undergoes a decisive change of heart once his forces have been defeated by the Reyes Católicos. Appearing humbly before them, he now makes no reference to his valor and leadership, but instead shifts all blame onto the (already dead) Comendador for his act of treason:
There is no denying the truth of the Maestre's words, but it should be realizedthat this is yet another instance in which a character defends his name by placing elsewhere the responsibility for his own actions. The Maestre, who in the first act vowed to prove his worthiness in spite of his youth, now admits his lack of experience in order to return to the Monarchs' good graces ‹ and avoid the greater dishonor of being labelled a traitor.
Nor are Fernando and Isabel immune to a threat to their own honor as Sovereigns. In a society in which all honor ultimately rests on a King who is considered supreme justiciero, the Reyes Católicos find themselves in an unenviable predicament. The peasants, by resisting all attempts to identify individual culprits, have made it impossible for the King to administer justice following the Comendador's assassination. The peasants' solidarity threatens the honor of the Monarchy in whose name, ironically enough, they have acted. The only way the royal reputation can be salvaged is through the proclamation of a general pardon:
The seriousness of the crime is Lope's addition to his source.(13) He could have had his King pardon thepeasants in the name of justice, but instead he chose to show his Monarchs responding to the same need which motivates the other characters in the play: to avoid through rationalization any threat to their honor.
The only character in Fuenteovejuna who makes direct reference to his own suffering an humiliation is Mengo ‹the peasant whose idea that all love is self-love aroused such passionate debate in the first act. Mengo openly admits that self-involvement is the primary motivation for all action. He attacks Flores (the Comendador's servant) during the rebelliion with the words "¡Dale a ese bellaco! / Que ese fue el que me dio dos mil azotes (ll. 1866-1867)!" And when the peasants present their case to the Monarchs, only Mengorefers to the direct affront to his person:
How inappropriate these words seem in a scene in which all the other characters are so intent of saving face! None ofthe other could have expressed such sentiments, but Mengo, the play's gracioso, serves as a timely ‹and comic‹ reminder of what has really occurred in Fuenteovejuna ‹ and how different are the facts from the way in which they are being reported.
Gérard has argued that Mengo denies his own words with his protection of Jacinta (the cause of his beating), but it is honor, not altruism, which moves him to act when Pascuala suggests that Jacinta needs a man to defend her: "Jacinta, yo no soy hombre / que te puedo defender (ll. 1197-1198)." Mengo, upon hearing these words, is forced to defend his hombría: "Yo sí lo tengo de ser, / porque tengo el ser y el nombre (ll. 1199-1200)." (14)
In a later scene, just after Frondoso and Laurencia have been led off-stage and the Comendador has beaten Esteban with his own staff, Barrildo asks of his companions: "¿No hay aquí un hombre que hable (l. 1643)?" But if the altruistic Barrildo will nothimself take action, what more could be expected from the self-loving Mengo, who now knows the consequences of helping a friend in need:
In Fuenteovejuna Lope presents a world of ideals turned upside-down. It is a world in which courtesy and altruism can only have dangerous consequences, a world in which nobles and peasants alike, ever wary of potential dishonor, must disregard such values as virtue and disinterested obligation in facor of the single-minded principle of self-protection. The notion that Fuenteovejuna ends with a jubilant restoration of order and harmony (15) does not really take into account much of what is said and done in this play. None of the characters at the end has secured any real or lasting advantage. The Comendador loses his life at the hands of an irate peasantry. The Maestre suffers a loss of power and honor and is forced to submit his fate to his former adversaries. The King has seen his honor as justiciero blatantly undermined by a mob of villanos and is forced to issue a general pardon for a crime he refuses to condone. (16)
And what of the peasants? To be sure, they have successfully eliminated the abusive Comendador, but they have also suffered irretrievable losses. As G.W. Ribbans notes, "They are provoked beyond all control of reason to a 'furor maldito y rabioso,' and show all the blind and undisciplined symptoms of a popular rising." (17) They may have re-established, through their rebellion, some semblance of order, but it will now be a very different order from the one to which they have been accustomed. The villagers are, in fact, left in a sort of administrative Limbo in which the King will hold temporary control of their affairs until he can find a successor to the Comendador.
C.A. Soons has written: "One cannot conclude that it is a matter of thetownspeople being right and the Comendador wrong. There are many hints thatthe two contending parties have quite a few characteristics in common...." (18) What all parties in Fuenteovejuna have in common is a conviction that the honor of each individual must be served at all costs. Honor, more than a mechanism for the avoidance of conflict and the establishment of order, becomes in Fuenteovejuna the basis for all conflict and a virtual guarantor of permanent instability. In the honor-horiented world of the comedia, the single-minded vigilance of each character over his or her own reputation must necessarily produce discord; and theconsequence is not the well-ordered and contented society that honor is assumed to insure, but rather the chaos and disruption in the name of honor which occurs in Fuenteovejuna ‹and is not satisfactorily resolved at the end of the play.
NOTES
1. "...la honra , la opinión, es sin duda el bien más alto a que el hombre puede aspirar; la vida, el amor, la hacienda, son a su lado valores de menor calidad...." Américo Castro, "Algunas observaciones acerca del concepto del honor en los siglos XVI y XVII," RFE, 3(1916); rpt. in Semblanzas y estudios españoles (Princeton, 1956), pp. 337-38.
2. The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 10.
4. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, 19th ed. (Madrid, 1970), p. 370).
5. Lope de Vega, Los Comendadores de Córdoba, Acad. XI, 290b-291a.
6. Ed. Francisco López Estrada, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1973), ll. 7-17. All subsequent citations from Fuenteovejuna are from this edition, and will be indicated parenthetically in the text.
7. "Self-love in Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna and CorneilleÕs Tite et Bérénice," AJFS, 4(1967), 177.
8. See, for example, Joaquín Casalduero, "Fuenteovejuna," RFH, 5(1943), 25-26, 32. Jill Booty's translation of the passage in Lope de Vega: Five Plays (N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 64, reflects a similar view, but I see no evidence for this conclusion in Lope's text.
10. Leo Spitzer, "A Central Theme and its Structural Equivalent in LopeÕs Fuenteovejuna," HR, 23(1955), 274-92; and William C. McCrary, "Fuenteovejuna: Its Platonic Vision and Execution," SP, 58(1961), 179-92.
11. Larson is the only critic who acknowledges the importance of self-love in the actions of the peasants in Fuenteovejuna. See The Honor Plays, pp. 97-99.
13. See Larson, p. 83; Claude E. Aníbal, "The Historical Elements of Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna," PMLA, 49, no. 3 (Sept., 1934), p. 662; and G.W. Ribbans, "The Meaningand Structure of Lope's Fuenteovejuna," BHS, 31(1954), 169.
14. FrondosoÕs "altruistic" defense of Laurencia may be seen in a similar light Ñ as a man's protection of the reputation of a woman he hopes to marry.
15. This has been expressed by a number of critics, including McCrary, p. 179; Gérard, p. 178; and Larson, with specific reference to honor, p. 109.
16. I do not agree with Larson when he states (p. 109) that the pardon "is an implicit acknowledgement of the King's respect for the villagers and an explicit call for public recognition," and that the peasants "thus leave the court with their honor notably confirmed."
18. "Two Historical Comedias and the Question of Manierismo," RF, 73(1961), 340.
Alix Ingber
Sweet Briar College