A perfect match? A semiotic analysis of the wife figure in four early picaresque novels

1 The picaresque between literature and history

With a long literary tradition dating back to the sixteenth century, the picaresque novel, also known as tale of roguery, recounts the tragicomic mock-autobiography of a petty criminal, a trickster, a confidence man, or all of the above. Through multiple variations, it merges unreliable auto-fiction and comic-satirical romance. The Italian novelist Cesare De Marchi describes it as a Misbildungsroman,^[1] a “failed coming of age novel.” The picaresque claims to be a literary genre and, as such, it is subject to changes depending on the socio-cultural and historical milieu it portrays. Undoubtedly, it is the expression of a material and moral crisis. Social immobility and religious impediments, for example, are at the centre of the early modern (1500s–1600s) picaro’s desperate attempts to seek affirmation. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly significantly epitomises the picaresque as the “epic of hunger” (Fitzmaurice-Kelly 1924, p. x), a definition that encapsulates both the wider scope of the stories and their main focus on humble individuals trying to survive in a hostile environment that keeps casting them back to their origins. Despite this sense of social defeat, Meeker (1997) praises the tale of roguery as the quintessence of what he defines the “comedy of survival.” He interprets the picaresque’s emphasis on coexistence and adaptation as an alternative life choice to our society’s tendency to glorify suffering and view tragedy as the necessary way to transcend human limitations. Most of these conflicts already emerge in the primary sources which form the basis of this article. They comprise four early-modern texts, three from Spain and one from England:^[2] respectively, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599–1604), Francisco de Quevedo’s El Buscón (published in 1626), and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). This apparent ‘imbalance’ in the choice of the main sources – three from Spain and one from Britain – is far from arbitrary. As will be highlighted below, each of the four novels presented here feature and complement a particular wife-type.

Figure 1:

Greimas’ semiotic square – Veridiction.

Figure 2:

Wives and their position in the veridiction square.

A brief reference to the controversial socio-historical context of these works will help clarify their relevance. Lazarillo, the earliest example of the genre, was intentionally left anonymous,^[3] since its author, most likely the diplomatic Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, may have felt the story was ‘beneath’ his institutional role. Most likely, the author also wanted to avoid upsetting the Inquisition, which in fact condemned the book to the Index in 1559 for its anti-Catholic, pro-Jewish, allusions, and only allowed an expurgated version in 1573 (Ruan 2011). Quevedo, the creator of El Buscón, reluctantly acknowledged his work, judging it as a divertissement that was not meant to add to his already consolidated fame as a court poet – it is, in fact, his most popular work to date. Alemán, on the contrary, was so engrossed in his Guzmán that he embarked on a sequel, to pay his debts, as he candidly admits. He was so jealous of his novel that he engaged in a literary quibble with another author who had dared publish a sequel to his own story, turning the plagiarist into a character and driving him to suicide. Thomas Nashe, in many respects a Renaissance man, proudly dedicates his Traveller’s “fantastical treatise” to the Earl of Southampton, and his stories are so crowded with historical celebrities of the time, from Thomas More to Erasmus of Rotterdam, along with members of the British squirearchy under Henry VIII, that it is not difficult to see it as an ambitious literary effort.

Despite their differences in scope, the four works result from a moment of deep social transformation. In Spain, the Golden Century (Siglo de oro) of geographic discoveries and colonial rule did not bring the expected long-lasting prosperity. The immense amounts of gold and silver from Mexico and Peru were not invested to develop the economy, but they ignited what the historians define as a “Price Revolution”, a moment of economic stagflation that bolstered the already static socio-economic feudal system. Likewise, late 16th-century Britain was at the start of a long and tormented political juncture, which culminated in the Bill of Rights (1689) and the recognition of a parliamentary monarchy. The Spanish crown, instead, reduced the power of the “Cortes” (the longest-existing Parliament in Europe) and pledged allegiance to the counter-reformed Catholic Church. It then introduced radical measures against practicing Jews (the Alhambra Decree, 1492) and Muslims. On the contrary, Henry VIII sanctioned the supremacy of the nation state over religious institutions and promoted an “Anti-clerical revolution that destroyed the medieval power and privilege of the Church” (Trevelyan, p. 204). The Pope had divided the New World between Portugal and Spain (p. 205), but soon Henry’s newly formed navy opened new prospects to British colonial expansion.

2 Female picaresque protagonists and secondary characters

All four picaresque novels illustrated here deal with the turn-of-the-16th-century cultural crisis and its consequences on everyday behaviour and social mores, not least on the status and consideration of women. In fact, though typically centred on male characters, early tales of roguery lend female characters a distinct voice that often stands against religious dogmatism and its social constraints. Women’s unconventional behaviour in these texts debunks the stereotype of the sublime, idealised creature of Petrarchan tradition. They also turn away from the clichéd role of women as sexual corruptors that lead virtuous men to ruin, a product of the classical tragedy. In a competitive society, female characters must fend for themselves and outwit their shrewd partners. Subsequent examples of female rogue protagonists like Mother Courage or Moll Flanders, despite being the fruit of a male author’s imagination, will problematise their own gender stereotypes even further, by contradicting and underplaying the expectations attached to their femininity.

Which aspects typify women in the picaresque? In his study on early modern Spanish literature, Pablo Ronquillo (1980) summarizes the pedigree of a typical picaresque female protagonist:

[1] la astucia, [2] la mundología, [3] la herencia genealógicoambiental, [4] los oficios y empleos, [5] el engaño, [6] la codicia, [7] el deseo de libertad y [8] la dualidad amorosa de erotismo y castidad. (p. 13)

[1] cunning, [2] worldliness, [3] genealogical-environmental inheritance, [4] trades and professions, [5] deception, [6] greed, [7] desire for liberty and [8] amorous duality of eroticism and chastity. (My translation)

Although Francisco Rico (1984) denies early Spanish pícaras the status of genuine protagonists of the genre, dismissing them as unsuccessful imitations of classic male ‘antiheroes’ like Guzmán and Lazarillo, a closer look at Ronquillo’s taxonomy may help in defining wives as supporting actors on the rogue’s stage.

Ronquillo’s categories describe the pícara as protagonist; therefore, some of her attributes, especially [2], [4], [5] and [6], are not compatible with all the non-protagonist wives. Still, they can be traced in some of the wives investigated here. For instance, the so-called ‘mundología’ (worldly wisdom, experience of the world) which identifies the pícara as a ‘courtesan,’ will feature in The Unfortunate Traveller. Another aspect, the ‘oficios y empleos’ (trades and professions) are, once again, not an essential quality of the wife because she is not always searching for social promotion through work or questionable trades. Yet, it appears in the character of Gracia in Guzmán. The theme of the ‘engaño’ (deception), is not an exclusive prerogative or aspiration of a wife but it is essential in the delineation of Lazarillo’s first wife. Significantly, ‘codicia’ (greed) is not a trait of any of the wives, since they act according to other motivations, either induced by the family or the environment. The other aspects ([1], [3], [7] and [8]) are more generalised and offer an effective ground for analysis with reference to our selection of works.

3 Greimas’ and Courtés’ narrative syntax applied to the picaresque wife character

In this section, I will draw from Greimas’ and Courtés’ theory on the folk tale, and critically apply their categories to explore the significance of marriage and the role of the picaresque wife. The two scholars define three coexisting levels of narrative: (a) superficial: language and style (referential meanings); (b) intermediate: personification of the deepest logical semantic structure of a story; (c) deeper: the elementary structure of sense. Point (c) is particularly relevant to our study.

A first common element between the picaresque and the folk tale is the contractual nature of the relationship between the actors. In his escape from a family circle that has none of the requirements to help the protagonists achieve their aspiration and become so-called hidalgos, hijos de algo, we would say a ‘somebody’, the pícaros of both sexes search for social recognition in marriage. Marriage becomes a steppingstone in their life’s progress, but none of the rogue protagonists investigated here attaches any ethical or religious value to it. In line with the view of marriage among members of the upper class, it is mostly a (commercial) deal facilitated by other social entities carrying out an irreversible function in the construction of meaning. It is the case of parents, tutors, masters, priests, authorities – Greimas & Courtés (1982) refer to them as ‘Destinators/Senders’.^[4] They relate their ‘grammar of narrative’ to at least two stories eventually merging together: the Subject-story, his/her quest for an Object (a person or a thing), and the Antagonist-story. Quest narrative usually entails a ‘Disjunction’ of the Subject from the Object, and a subsequent ‘Conjunction’ to the Subject after a trial or performance. This is the basic structure of the Cinderella-type story.

If the Antagonist deprives the Subject of his/her Object, we can observe a disjunction and a double conjunction, where the Object passes from Subject to Antagonist. The different transfer of an Object can take the form of a contract, a performance, a trial, and so forth. By applying this semiotic frame to the picaresque and trying to ‘reduce’ the marriage topos, the logical unfolding of the plot is reversed: the unworthy Subject (the pícaro) is joined to what he considers his exclusive Object (the wife) but, as a punishment for this misappropriation, gained through deception, he is disjoined from her.

Assigning a female character the function of Object seems quite belittling. Still, we need to look at this deeper structure question a bit closer. Who is the Object of a pícaro’s quest? Greimas distinguished between an Object with an objective (category of ‘having’) or a subjective value (category of ‘being’; Greimas 1987, p. 89). The bride figure is an entity attached to values: she brings the pícaro both wealth (‘having’ prosperity) and social relevance (‘being’ revered). In several descriptions of a candidate wife, metonyms of wealth and property stand for the human being – she ‘is’ insofar as she ‘has’ a conspicuous dowry. For instance, Guzmán’s first wife has no human traits, she is a stock character, a means to an end; her name is not even mentioned. From the very beginning, she is nothing more than a commodity listed in a contract. But the situation evolves, as he realises that the dowry his wife has provided is not at all conspicuous, and his expenses for her “Iewels, and other idle dressings” (“joyas y aderezos”) have become exorbitant. Guzmán concludes that his “Gentlewoman, […], was ill acquainted, and lesse exercised in miseries” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 3, p. 245) (“Estaba la señora mi mujer mal acostumbrada y poco prática en miserias;” Alemán 1975, II, iii, 3, p. 232).

Guzmán’s real goal is to obtain a pure Object of ‘having,’ the wife’s dowry, but he fails to consider that, ironically, the wife privileges the role of Object of ‘being.’ Exactly on behalf of what she thinks is her husband’s goal, ‘being’ respectable in society, she demands jewels and ornaments. Guzmán also has an Antagonist, his father-in-law, who makes him sign an agreement that the groom will by no means manage his wife’s substances. First, the father-in-law is a Destinator (he provides what seems like an ‘easy’ Object to manage, a daughter), then he becomes an Antagonist. The pícaro describes his state of slavery, confessing how “there is no burthen so heauy, as the insupportable waight of a froward wife” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 3, p. 264; “no hay carga que tanto pese come uno destos matrimonios;” Alemán 1975, II, iii, 3, p. 261). An opinion that the novelist, Mateo Alemán, would be ready to endorse. Indeed, biographers tell us of an unhappy marital life with his Doña Catalina: “Mateo and Mrs Catalina did not love each other, they only tolerated each other; still they had mutual trust” (Álvarez 1953, p. 58: “No se querían Mateo y Da. Catalina, sólo se soportaban; mas se tenían confianza”). Despite the hostilities, Alemán’s wife would eventually guarantee for his good conduct when he was imprisoned for financial irregularities in 1580: this time, the real wife acts as a Destinator and not as an Object.

Further on, Guzmán’s first wife becomes an Object of ‘not-having’, she turns into an unreliable Object, even more so when the hero proves unusually sincere about his dwindling resources. The wife ultimately ceases to be an Object because she becomes a co-contractor – or Antagonist – with her father. Yet, soon after their separation, Guzmán’s wife dies; in his eyes, she lacked the moral commitment of a virtuous companion. Therefore, his sense of relief for the end of the marriage falls back to a religious justification and a caustic comment on her eventual damnation: she did not confess and, if she did, she lied to her confessor. In his querulous tone, Guzmán thinks he is the real victim of circumstance: he has been a respectful husband; still he is left with nothing, as his deceased wife has issued no “acquittance of receipt under her hand” (“carta de pago”), not even a child, to justify his claim to her dowry. He concludes by finding the only consolation in his regained freedom: “the ynhappinesse of her death made my life happy” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 3, p. 264) (“en haberme faltado, la desdicha me hizo dichoso;” Alemán 1975, II, iii, 3, pp. 260–61). Guzmán is convinced of his good will in abiding by the laws that bind a husband to his wife. At the same time, these same laws consider wives as exchange goods rather than a party in the wedding agreement. In light of this ‘disposability’ of the bride, according to Spanish regulations, a widower had to return his late wife’s dowry if the couple had no children. Therefore, the bride, as an Object of ‘having’, even though deceased, metaphorically ‘returns’ to her former Destinator (the father). Having no children, the pícaro turns into a culprit of the patriarchal system he has attempted to exploit to his own benefit.

In another picaresque novel, Quevedo’s El Buscón, the narrator recounts his mishaps in the disastrous courting of an aristocrat of the ex-Jewish converso Coronel family. From the point of view of the unknowing aspiring bride, it all seems like a re-enactment of the Cinderella-type story. In truth, Pablos uses his power of seduction and persuasion to cozen his fiancée and her mother. He is at the same time a Subject in the quest for a dowry and an Object of misunderstanding for the Coronel family, who want to increase their wealth through the marriage. As in a mirror reflection, Don Diego Coronel, a childhood friend and often victim of the protagonist’s ruses, discovers El Buscón’s real identity. Concomitantly, to impress Doña Ana with a gesture of “galantería,” he poses as an experienced horseman. Yet a risky move causes the horse to “set a-running full speed” so that Pablos comes “clear over his head into a puddle” (Quevedo 1892, p. 202)^[5] (“da conmigo por las orejas en un charco;” Quevedo 1980, p. 296). The episode substantiates the fraud’s unmasking and his social ‘resizing’. The two connotations of the word caballero, ‘horseman’ and ‘gentleman’, degenerate then into ridicule. What is more, Don Diego, himself a real caballero, recurs to dissimulation to humiliate Pablos by his own means, thus revealing how the unworthy instinct of revenge does not spare respectable gentlemen. Significantly, the author does not hesitate to condemn both commoners and aristocrats for breaching their social duties, stripping gallantry of its courtly value.

A further picaresque novel, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, introduces another semiotic variation because this time the husband is compelled to accept a dishonourable marriage for the sake of social compromise. In the last pages of his autobiography, Lázaro is pleased with his improved living standards thanks to marriage (“alcanzar buena vida”, Lazarillo, 1988, p. 126) because, as he wryly admits, “mi boca era medida” (p. 126), “my mouth had then the measure” in an early English version (Hurtado de Mendoza 1586, unpaged). With respect to wealth, Maiorino (1996) pinpoints a crucial relationship between economics and aesthetics, arguing that purely material aspects like evaluation, profit and convenience become expressions of ‘beauty’ in Renaissance literature (he calls it ‘econopoetics’). Lázaro is defined by Maiorino as an ‘infrahombre’ (p. 5), a marginalized individual seeking to conform to society through an economically rewarding marriage. Generally, the pícaro keeps a distance from justice and its enforcers but, in his desire to fit in, Lázaro becomes a town crier, proclaiming criminal indictments and executions in the public square. A change of front in his career, and marriage is another step towards a cosy life. Yet:

malas lenguas, que nunca faltaron ni faltarán, no nos dejan vivir, diciendo no sé qué y sí sé qué de que veen a mi mujer irle a hacer la cama y guisalle de comer. Y mejor les ayude Dios que ellos dicen la verdad. ( Lazarillo 1988, p. 132)

euill tongues which neuer cease, woulde not suffer vs to liue in peace, they would say this and that, and that they did see my wife goe and make his bed, and dresse his meate. But God helpe them better than they say truthe. (Hurtado de Mendoza 1586, unpaged)

Evidently, Lázaro’s bride is the archpriest’s concubine. In the name of a feudal order which entitles the powerful to exert their natural rights on subordinates reduced to mere property, the wife become an Object of ‘having’ for an Antagonist that Lázaro considers too powerful to oppose, assuming he ever wanted to. The pícaro changes his role and is forced to become a willing Destinator, blinded by the distorted logic of honra (publicly displayed reputation).^[6] In the name of an ethic code based purely on appearance, the humble town crier’s allegations in front of the law surreptitiously provide a cover-up to the clergyman’s illegitimate love affair. Ironically, Lázaro compares his wife with the women of Toledo: “I dare sweare by the holy sacrament, that shee is as honest a woman as any that dwelleth within the foure gates of Toledo” (Hurtado de Mendoza 1586, unpaged) (“yo juraré sobre la hostia consagrada que es tan buen mujer como vive dentro de las puertas de Toledo;” Lazarillo 1988, pp. 134–35). It is clearly an assumption that forbids any final truth: all the women in Toledo are respectable; if they are all respectable, so must be his wife. Nevertheless, respectability is an unproven collective, as much as individual, virtue; Epimenides’ paradox of the Cretan liar – “All Cretans are liars”, including himself – finds here its grotesque version.

Returning to Guzmán de Alfarache, the protagonist adopts a disconcerting attitude to his second wife Gracia. At first, she is the Object of a seemingly truthful sentimental devotion. The rogue’s dreamy descriptions of his love sufferings clash with the mature narrator’s cut-and-dried invective against women that consent to getting married after hearing some tear-jerking poems or serenades. He even warns foolish girls against falling into the courtship trap (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 3, pp. 248–49). In the ensuing chapter, instead, the young pícaro recovers his basic survival instincts and disillusionment. He regrets having left his study as “Bachelor in Diuinity” (“bachiller en teología”) to embrace a career as “master of profane love” (“maestro de amor profano”) and “Licenciat” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 5, p. 287; “licenciado,”Alemán 1975, II, iii, 5, p. 51). Imitating Lázaro, here too Guzmán plays the role of a Destinator, persuading his second wife Gracia to ‘entertain’ some gentlemen to foster a sense of comradeship and forge a “great league of friendship” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 5, p. 300), “dímonos por amigos” in the original (Alemán 1975, II, iii, 5, p. 74). He encourages her to become the Object of ‘being’ of more than one Subject (Guzmán, the broker, the rich gentleman, etc.). Apparently, there is no Antagonist in sight, everything seems to proceed very smoothly. Guzmán dispenses with his wife as his sole Object by means of trickery, persuading her to give her favours purely for the sake of necessity. Yet, necessity is a lame excuse: he makes large profits out of it. The moral and sexual bond Guzmán and Gracia had before the setting up of their “shop” (“hacienda”) is replaced by a merely amoral, phoney conjunction/exploitation of his position as husband/Subject – reminiscent of Ronquillo’s conflict between “erotismo” and “castidad”. The hero’s comments on the embarrassing deal merges with his own musings, as if he reminisced some secret conversation with his spouse. He compares the wife to a “morsell for a King” (“pieza de rey”), “new fruit new, fresh ware, never seene nor handled before” (“fruta nueva, fresca y no sobajada”). Claiming his right to decide what price to put on his goods, he justifies any infraction to decency when committed for the sake of “friendship” (Alemán 1623, II, iii, 5, pp. 295–96; “Amistad,” Alemán 1975, II, iii, 5, pp. 66–67). Gracia is therefore an Object of ‘being’ because, although being the victim of a deplorable deal and the only breadwinner in the family, she ennobles the picaro’s shady business by hiding it under the cloak of friendship.

Predictably, Gracia initiates private transactions with all the other Subjects, and the narrator only much later realises the deception. Her situation, though filtered through the eyes of the cynical protagonist, must have clearly been unbearable, thus foreshadowing an unpleasant conclusion to the family feud. When business, the ultimate reason to maintain the wedlock, is hindered by the intrusive presence of the pícaro’s mother, Gracia leaves the household for good. Guzmán’s mother protests that marriage is sanctioned by God and reminds Guzmán that married life is a question of ‘being’, not of ‘having.’ Yet, in this sordid context of exploitation, her belated outcry dissolves in unsustainable paradox. In the protagonist’s chaotic moral order, now the mother has taken first place: to him, antagonising the mother is reproachable and appears “not to be so lawfull” (Alemán 1623, II, iii 6, p. 312; “no era lícito,” Alemán 1975, II, iii, 6, p. 96).

Suddenly, Guzmán’s mother becomes an Antagonist against her son: her real purpose is to make a profit out of her daughter-in-law. Gracia, on the other hand, breaks the family circle and elopes with a galley captain. The wife retaliates and becomes the Subject and master of her own actions, she follows a new Destinator (the captain) on equal terms and recollects her own Objects of ‘having’ (gold, jewellery, money). Finally, she proves that her role of Object of ‘being’ to Guzmán is irrelevant in the ‘econopoetics’ of the novel, and she rises above the obsession to accumulate things and properties. Her moral growth involves what Greimas defines as ‘modalization’ – her process of self-assertion shifts from the semiotic isotope of ‘not wanting’ to that of ‘wanting’. To her husband, this self-assertion is only an unjustified liberty: Gracia had all she wanted, he felt no other obligation but to please her in any way he could. In his conscience, he finds no fault in his conduct. Once again, the semiotic inner structure of the story denies the assumptions tentatively imposed on the reader by the superficial frame of language. In the end, both the moralizing narrator, and the unreliable character are contradicted by the course of the events.

Unlike the previous Spanish works, Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) is not the conventional autobiography of a scoundrel, but rather the memoir of a journey around France, Germany, and Italy. No mention is made of the pícaro’s mother; still, the wife-type and the significance of marriage in terms of narrative unfolding progress differently from the Spanish examples. While Spain was involved with the Counter-Reformation movement, sixteenth-century England had recently embraced the Anglican faith as a state-regulated religion. Protestantism strived to reject individual ‘predestination,’ claiming that everyone could equally aspire to social achievements thanks to their skills and talents, because God’s redemptive grace would reward their efforts. In Spanish post-Tridentine society, any attempt to breach or upset the order established by Providence was doomed to fail. In Renaissance England, nobility is no longer the paradigm of social respectability: rank and origin may still obsess public opinion, yet the emergence of the middle class in political and cultural matters elevates social interaction to become a central literary topic.^[7] ‘Wit’, meant as a humorously sophisticated, insightful attitude to life, becomes as significant a personal quality as wealth, or the vindication of an aristocratic lineage. Jack Wilton, the lower-class narrator of The Unfortunate Traveller, cannot escape this urge of witticism through the display of a wide range of Latin citations – more than seventy, throughout about 150 pages, especially from Ovid and Cicero – puns, maxims, proverbs of new and old coinage. He creates a sort of semantic symbiosis between wit and knavery: “Here let me triumph awhile and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit;^[8] but I will not breathe neither till I have disfraughted all my knavery” (Nashe 1972, p. 270). Subsequently, Jack praises the sharp-tongued Italian writer Pietro Aretino (1492–1554) as “one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made” (p. 309). Such scathing mottos, far from being clichéd expressions for that time, are meant to convey a kind of condensed wisdom. Miller (1967) argues that “Jack the narrator keeps reality at a distance with his wit, stylistic brilliance, and drink, because reality is simply too horrible to contemplate seriously” (p. 104). Gohlke (1976) sees wit as a means of damnation rather than redemption through ingenuity (p. 407); only towards the end of his adventures does Jack realise that the only way to reconcile wit and wisdom is through the acceptance of his role of passive observer of events.

Along with witticism, the narrative artifice of disguise creates a confusion of roles between the ‘commoner’ and the ‘gentleman’. As Holbrook (1994) explains, “[w]e may regard the convention of disguise as attractive to the dramatist precisely because it allows a certain social heterogeneity to be realized” (p. 14). For the same reason, in El Buscón don Diego asks Pablos to wear his cape, with the purpose of concealing his identity and make him an easy target of the bandits. In this case, disguise leads to the final crushing of the pícaro’s ambitions. In the unhorsing accident, Quevedo’s pícaro pretends to be an aristocrat by appropriating someone else’s status qualifications, but he incurs a severe punishment. In The Unfortunate Traveller, on the other hand, the protagonist trades places with his master, the historical “Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,”^[9] but continues to act like him undisturbed for some time during his trip around Italy. When his master discovers the identity theft, he does not even reproach Jack because he concedes that this act of mockery against social hierarchy was a really well-plotted trick. The rogue’s excuses are ingenious:

Sir, you are welcome. Your name which I borrowed I have not abused. Some large sums of money this my sweet mistress Diamante hath made me master of, which I knew not how better to employ for the honour of my country than by spending it munificently under your name. (Nashe 1972, p. 313)

The Earl seems to be amused at being aped by his servant, but he cannot tolerate the fact that he travels around with a courtesan (Diamante): another unusual candidate for a wife. She is a Venetian “wench” married to a rich “magnifico” who had her jailed because he suspected her of cheating on him. After his death she has acquired a rich inheritance and, worst of all, she is expecting a baby from Jack: this is too much for someone who passes for Lord Howard. Therefore, Jack must renounce his fake nobility in order to preserve his finances. Once again, wealth and descent only partially overlap with the concept of social respectability: “I told him [the earl] that a king could do nothing without his treasury; this courtesan was my purse-bearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldom I would sooner resign than part with such a special benefactor” (Nashe 1972, p. 314).

In Greimas’ terms, Jack is a Subject giving up his Object of ‘being’ noble in order to attain a much more desirable Object of ‘having’ (the courtesan’s favours and riches). The courtesan, though, is not the Object of a marriage contract, she is a real contractor, she is the Destinator of Jack’s Object of ‘having’: the pícaro calls her “my purse-bearer”, “my supporter”, “my redeemer”, “my benefactor”, “my jailor” – Guzmán never said that about his wives. According to Jack, being a gentleman means giving up not only money, but also freedom and enjoyment in life. In fact, on another occasion his master decides to take on the page’s role in order “to take more liberty of behaviour” (Nashe 1972, p. 298). Jack and Diamante leave the Earl and set off merrily on a new journey around Italy pretending to be husband and wife (another kind of ‘disguise’), but suddenly disaster befalls them: Diamante is kidnapped by a robber, while Jack is unjustly accused of raping the Roman matron Heraclide, who kills herself out of shame. Both characters experience the humiliation of being relegated to the roles of Objects of violence and retaliation. Diamante, who manages to escape the robbers, is abducted again, and sold to Zadoch, a Jewish merchant, as a bondwoman, while her sweetheart is sent to Doctor Zacharia, a fellow of Zadoch, to be dissected for experiments. Both the picaro and Diamante, then, lose their human traits and turn into mere material Objects without will.

Eventually, the woman’s reawakened actantial role of Subject restores order in the overall semiotic syntax. Diamante’s master Zadoch wants to take a revenge on Lady Juliana, the wife of the Marquis of Mantua, and the Pope’s concubine, because she had persuaded the Pope to persecute all the Jews in Rome. Zadoch elects Diamante as his Destinator by instructing her to poison Lady Juliana. Nevertheless, Zadoch has underestimated female solidarity: Diamante becomes a Destinator on behalf of Lady Juliana and her own Object, revenge against the Jew. Once Lady Juliana has attained her purpose, she intends to subjugate Jack to obtain sexual favours, and blackmail Diamante, to ensure her loyalty as a servant. But finally Diamante succeeds in flattering and robbing her new mistress and escapes with her lover. Here is a very striking difference between this and other ill-assorted picaresque couples: they join forces in order to regain freedom on equal footing. They both fulfil their “deseo de libertad”: both protagonists succeed in re-claiming their subjectivity and social relevance. Their behaviour, far from reproachable in their eyes, is sealed with a piece of witticism:

He mistook himself that invented the proverb, Dimicandum est pro aris et focis, for it should have been pro auro et fama: not ‘for altars and fires we must contend’, but for ‘gold and fame’. (Nashe 1972, p. 361)

The female character regains her dignity by using her beauty and seductive arts to deceive her mistress. The happy ending rewards the regained free will of the actants in this complicated story of misplaced trust. Jack and Diamante finally marry, setting out on a journey of purification through “alms-deeds” and the departure from Rome, “the Sodom of Italy.” Their odyssey ends after forty days (the number of Lent, or of quarantine), when they reach “the King of England’s camp” (Nashe 1972, p. 370). Marriage puts a socially acceptable seal to the story. Jack’s wife is clearly not an Object, she has confirmed her stature of Subject.

The following table summarizes the four main actantial roles in the novels (Subject, Object, Destinator and Antagonist) and their personifications (Table 1).

The bold terms indicate the wife figures; the grey squares highlight the different actantial roles of the wife in the four novels. While Lázaro and Pablos exert their short-lived supremacy as Subjects, Guzmán loses his self-command with the second marriage, when his wife’s role is unavoidably reversed – the beginning of his path towards humiliation and atonement – and she becomes a Subject, capable of taking her own decisions, however despicable they might appear to society. Another Subject is Diamante, who acts multiple roles: she is not only the Object of Jack’s courting, but also a Destinator, a helper of the pícaro’s determination to conquer social standing. She provides the wealth and dignity of social recognition, even though she has obtained her fortunes by illicit means. Prominence in society has no truck with lineage and nobility; in fact, they both limit one’s freedom of action. Conversely, Pablos’ and Lázaro’s stories are quite similar when it comes to their Antagonists: both pícaros have to face either a highly reputable aristocratic family (the Coronels) or a member of the church (the archpriest). At the same time, these two authorities are the target of both authors’ sarcasm in revealing their hypocrisy and injustice. Nevertheless, the pícaro is doomed to succumb to these two emblems of the abuse of power. Moreover, if we consider the women playing the role of Objects within the economy of the narrative, three out of five wife characters prove to be irredeemable Objects of ‘being’ or ‘having,’ but not to the benefit of the male rogue. With Diamante, on the contrary, social distinction proceeds from her active role of willing Destinator for the pícaro; for Gracia, it is the willing acceptance of a new Destinator, the captain. Both wives attain self-affirmation as Subjects of ‘having’ (Lady Juliana’s stolen gold and Gracia’s recovered wealth). Diamante is ultimately dignified as a Destinator to the pícaro, who attains social recognition and relevance, the same relevance that Lazarillo fails to reach by marrying the archpriest’s protégée. Finally, the male Destinators and Lady Juliana are deceiving actors: they lure the pícaro into a seemingly profitable ‘hacienda’ (Guzmán’s father-in-law, the Coronels, the archpriest, or Lady Juliana), or they are a counterpart that discloses the pícaro’s inability to maintain a relationship (the captain). Lazarillo is the only Destinator among the four pícaros because he acquiesces to the archpriest’s power with a view to providing a social front for an illicit ménage that safeguards the prelate’s respectability.

4 The semiotic square: wife figures in search of affirmation

Greimas’ ‘semiotic square’ (1987) can help summarise the narrative relevance of the wife. The ‘square’ represents the “immanent level” of narrative (Greimas, p. 64), the pre-existing structure which produces meaningful discourse. It visualises different relations between elementary units of signification. We can define three types of relations: ‘relation between contraries’ (white vs black), ‘relation between contradictories’ (white vs non-white), ‘relation of implication.’ (white vs non-black) The narrative syntax of veridiction is based on the isotopes ‘being’ – ‘seeming’ and their negative counterparts (Figure 1):

There is a relationship not only of contrary oppositions between ‘being’ and ‘seeming,’ but also a relationship of implication between ‘seeming’ and ‘nonbeing’ – transcoded in narrative discourse by those characters who pretend to be someone they are not – and a consequent relationship of contradiction ensues in the diagonal connections between ‘seeming’ and ‘nonseeming,’ for example, two modal predicates which cannot coexist. A set of ‘values’ can be then identified: ‘truth’ is the realm where ‘being’ and ‘seeming’ are reconciled; ‘lie’ implies deception, appearance that does not coincide with ‘being’; ‘secret’, instead, reveals an essence (a ‘being’) behind a mask, the lack of a genuine appearance. Finally, ‘falsehood’ combines the concealment of both essence and appearance; it is an ingrained quality that determines the character’s inner nature.

The following graph illustrates how wives position themselves in the veridiction square (Figure 2):

Lázaro’s wife enacts her predicate of knowing as the result of the two descriptive utterances of ‘nonseeming’ and ‘nonbeing’ (falsehood). She appears to be a virtuous wife although everyone knows she is cheating on her husband, while the archpriest is not even called upon to justify the plot behind the marriage. His social standing gives him the right not to provide any explanation. Only Lázaro pretends not to see the truth: satisfied with his sense of honour, meant as a public display of virtue, he can accept untold truths as a way of reaching the good position he craved.

Guzmán’s first wife seems to be wealthy, she is the daughter of a respected merchant, but she cannot access her own dowry (neither can Guzmán). She belongs to the semiotic sphere of the ‘lie’ because the marriage itself is built upon a false promise of prosperity. When she realizes that Guzmán belongs to the same semiotic syntax (‘seeming-nonbeing’), the couple use their deceitful means against each other (the wife squanders his money, he embarks on financially obscure business). Finally, the wife goes back home. Her family regain their wealth, but the daughter dies shortly afterwards, maybe as a cruel sign of her inappropriate position as a divorced woman in a tradesmen’s world, where the logical isotope should be that of secrecy, ‘nonseeming-being’ (modesty and hard work).

Gracia, the second wife, looks like the perfect match for Guzmán: she shares, though reluctantly, the same ‘lying’ position on the square, based on the dichotomy ‘seeming-nonbeing,’ because her dishonourable state of ‘entertainer’ is cloaked under the pretence of friendship. Still, she transcodes her actantial role not into a descriptive, but into a modal utterance of self-affirmation when she cannot tolerate being exploited any longer and claims a religious predicament to remind Guzmán of his marital duty. To make it worse, her mother-in-law intrudes in their conjugal ‘hacienda,’ causing Gracia to leave. The rebellious wife seems to reject social respectability and she runs away with a captain – once again, the leitmotif of the “deseo de libertad” – and, by renouncing her previous slavery, she moves from ‘seeming’ to ‘nonseeming’ (she reveals her social inadequacy), but she maintains her inner disreputableness (her ‘being’ anticonventional), though shifting to a more self-confident role as ‘manager’ of her own assets.

Pablos’ would-be wife can be placed between the semiotic isotopes of ‘seeming-nonbeing’ (lie), because, regardless of her noble origin, her own family wants to make a profit out of her marriage (the Jewish conversos Coronels were in search of social recognition). This propensity to ‘lie’ makes Don Diego aware of Pablos’ hidden tricks: the gentleman can prevent Pablos’ intentions because, in the end, the nobility’s code of values is not much different from that of the pícaro.

Finally, Diamante, Jack’s courtesan, belongs to the category of ‘being-seeming’. It is because of this honesty of behaviour that the Earl of Surrey reproaches Jack for hanging around with a mistress while using his identity. Diamante is faithful to her position: she is the typical courtesan – unreliable, cunning, charming – but this comes so naturally to her that we can ascribe it to a kind of truthfulness, loyalty to her role. Here, Ronquillo’s category of “herencia” is not a pretext for gender discrimination or sexual bias, but a cause for greater awareness of her personal achievements as an outsider. Diamante never pretends to be honest or righteous, and in Jack’s own words this attitude leads her to become a “redeemer.” Overall, her true-to-one’s-self behaviour resembles that of Guzmán who, in the last scenes of the novel, experiences a final overnight conversion, but Diamante embodies her personal values in a more subtle, credible way. Although Jack and his lover deceive Lady Juliana by snatching her jewellery, theirs is a morally justifiable stance because they openly, “courageously” perform their revenge for the sake of freedom. They finally evade from their condition of slaves, Objects of ‘having.’

5 Conclusions

The following remarks may help summarise the main issues concerning both the significance of the wives and their influence on the hero’s progress to self-affirmation or, most likely, crushing disillusionment:

1. Wives are clear evidence of the pícaro’s incapacity to maintain a love relationship on equal terms.

2. They are considered by the rogue as mere providers of wealth, but hardly ever accept to be reduced to simple ‘commodities’ on the market.

3. They use their apparent social immobility (their “herencia genealógicoambiental”) to antagonise the pícaro’s protean nature.

4. They prove to be an illusory means of social elevation for the hero.

5. They consider marriage as a social and moral constraint (only Diamante accepts it, but on a very equitable basis with her husband).

6. They do not cultivate the same social ambitions as the pícaros, but they largely follow instincts and emotions rather than convenience.

7. They learn a lesson from the pícaro by using the same tricks and wiles to cozen their husbands and take their revenge.

8. The wives’ behaviour within the “immanent” level of the narrative collides with the surface level of the utterance and the use of language clichés about women’s roles adopted by the narrator and the characters.

It becomes evident, then, that wives are not only gregarious characters; they achieve substantial narrative dignity. In narrative semiotic terms, they fulfil an essential function in the development of the plot, motivating the pícaro’s actions, propelling the course of the events and, above all, demystifying any moralising effort of the narrator. Early modern society may have relegated women to an insignificant place in a patriarchal world, but, from a strictly narrative point of view, they really stand their ground to the pícaro.

To conclude, this paper attempts to step into previously uncharted territory in scholarly research about secondary women characters in the picaresque. Another significant female actor deserving of attention in the narrative syntax of early picaresque fiction is certainly the mother figure, who will be the topic of a subsequent study.