Acceso usuarios
Helena Percas de Ponseti
On the traditional theme of the jealous old husband and his adolescent wife, Cervantes builds a gripping story of universal scope. Leonora, the wife, entrapped in a bedroom with a youth, struggles to overcome her sexual impulses and free herself from the evil forces that surround her. The seemingly omniscient narrator who confidently offers abundant detail about the unfolding of events, becomes involved in the characters' emotions, morally confused about Carrizales' reactions, and baffled by Leonora's failure to exculpate herself before her grief-stricken, dying husband. Cervantes's narrative technique of turning his omniscient narrator into an unreliable character forces the reader to reconsider words and facts, and to reflect on the underlying motivations of the main characters' decisions as each struggles with self-justification and guilt. The present article addresses the legitimate but conflicting ways of reading the same clear data owing to the narrator's built-in contradictions
