DON QUIXOTE'S WOMEN (Kobiety Don Kichota)

The purpose of this essay is to present the most important female protagonists in their interaction with Don Quixote. The vision of Golden Age introduces significant ambiguity into the woman's image: she is essentially related to fertile Mother Nature and, at the same time, is to fulfill the ascetic ideal unceasingly menaced by bodily passions. Both the ideal and Don Quixote are put to the test by particular female protagonists using their body, literary conventions and social relations. Marcela chooses the pastoral romance to gain the autonomy but at once needs to leave the society, Dorothea gets identity inside the social order through the chivalric romance, while Duchess takes her power from the social status. The Death's figure connected with Duchess shows that the real opposition organizing the novel might not be idealism/materialism or mind/body but both these elements put against the social order.