Inés and Brígida: Sexual Presence and Absence in Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio

Citation

Davies A (1999) Inés and Brígida: Sexual Presence and Absence in Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 76 (3), pp. 327-336. https://doi.org/10.3828/bhs.76.3.327

Abstract
First paragraph: This article takes as a focus concepts of female sexuality in José Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio. More specifically, it argues that the overt sexual relationship between Don Juan and Dona Inés does not exhaust the play's sexual meaning: the emphasis given by Zorrilla to Inés as the heroine draws our attention away from other aspects of female sexuality latent in the play, and on the whole these go unacknowledged. It is this question of unacknowledged sexuality that I wish to explore and particularly its implications for our perception of Brigida, Inés' duena and Don Juan's go-between. While Zorrilla assigns Brigida no overt sexual role of her own, she is deeply involved in the play's dialectic of desire: her significance, however, goes unremarked by the other characters and, I believe, by Zorrilla himself. I wish to propose Brigida as an example of what I call sexual 'absence' and to explore what this might mean for our interpretation of the character.

Journal
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies: Volume 76, Issue 3