“I was attracted to Penelope as an image because I had always believed her situation as the wife of Ulysses to be one of the most challenging of Greek mythology.” This statement by Naomi E. S. Griffiths elucidates the source of the title of her work Penelope's Web: Some Perceptions of Women in European and Canadian Society. She further explains her use of Penelope as a symbol of woman by stating that, she “was a woman trying desperately to achieve a balance between what she wanted, what she could obtain, and what the immediate circumstances permitted her to obtain.”¹

In this study I would like to elaborate on this dilemma of role demands versus personal desires as it relates to two twentieth-century Spanish dramas.² While both of these dramas are based on the mythic stories of legendary heroes, Ulysses and the Cid, the focus is nevertheless not on the heroes themselves, but rather on their wives, Penelope and Jimena. Both women have come to be prototype figures who represent the loyal, faithful, passive but supportive wife whose love for her husband is exemplary and unquestioned.

In La tejedora de sueños (The Weaver of Dreams) (1952), Antonio Buero Vallejo asks what life might have been like for Penelope during Ulysses' twenty-year absence, whereas Antonio Gala in Anillos para una dama (Rings for a Lady) (1973) speculates on Jimena's life after the Cid's death.³ Buero and Gala, while not altering the epic and mythic content, delve into a neglected inner component of the stories, and show how each woman might have suffered and dreamed, and how each might have sought fulfillment in love. The women are thus presented in a human dimension which is in conflict with their stereotyped obeisant roles, and as a result they become victims of their particular status as “the wife of a hero.” They experience the dual conflict of coping with both the external demands of their roles and the personal needs for self-identity, freedom, and self-fulfillment as human beings and as women.

Both dramas humanize and at the same time demythologize the legends, since Buero Vallejo and Gala call into question the totality of the truth of the myths. The Homeric myth of Ulysses, the epic poem of the Cid, and the subsequent re-creations of both works are products of the artistic mind and belong to the realm of mythic thinking. As is typical of such products of a patriarchal mode, the masculine aspect is glorified at the expense of the feminine—a device termed by Freud, with reference to the manifest content of dreams, “displacement of the accent.”⁴ Commenting on this emphasis on the masculine, Joseph Campbell has noted that throughout all patriarchal mythologies:

The function of the female has been systematically devalued, not only in a symbolical cosmological sense, but also in a personal, psychological. Just as her role is cut down, or even out, in myths of the origin of the universe, so also in hero legends. It is, in fact, amazing to what extent the female figures of epic, drama, and romance have been reduced to the status of mere objects; or, when functioning as subjects, initiating action of their own, have been depicted either as incarnate demons or as mere allies of the masculine will.⁵

Buero Vallejo and Gala effectively unmask the hidden face of the myths by penetrating beyond the exterior, official version of History which supports the patriarchal traditions and maintains mythic thinking. Both demythologize what is accepted as “historical” by offering a new point of view and pursuing it to its very logical and human conclusion. Reminiscent of Unamuno and his intrahistoria, the dramatists present official History as incomplete, inaccurate, and lacking in a human dimension. Jimena captures this discrepancy between truth and History when she notes that the actors who represent a story (historia) without costumes, props or the appropriate dialogue which corresponds to the story may be perceived as crazy. But they are madder who believe that they are acting out true History (la Historia). Jimena has always felt lost in her role in History, which has submerged her on all sides.⁶

Yet it is this official version of History (with its capital H) which sets the standards of behavior and thus becomes the basis of role definition in society, as much in the past as in the present. Through tradition and repetition it determines what is expected of a woman: what limits are placed on the woman in assuming the role; how the roles are determined by political, economic, and social motives; and to what extent a woman may deviate from the assigned role. Eva Figes notes that women's roles, standards, and images have been designed by men with the result that:

for the great majority of women the obvious course of events is to subside meekly or gracefully into the tradition role assigned to them, whilst for the really determined woman, for whom that role is inadequate, unsatisfactory or simply unavailable, there is an uphill struggle to compete in a game where all the rules have been laid down by the other party without her having been consulted, and where all the vital moves were probably made before she arrived on the scene.⁷

When a woman attempts to reject her given role, such as that of Penelope or Jimena, she discovers that her way is fraught with pain, suffering, and ultimate defeat.⁸ The role of the wife of a hero comprises total loyalty, respect, purity and high morality, obedience, undaunting support, admiration, service, passivity, and the security of his honor and his image as a loving husband, a responsible father, and a heroic warrior and just ruler.⁹ Should the wife not adjust her personal needs to this role, and should she refuse to lose her self-identity in assuming this role, she condemns herself to a futile struggle for self-fulfillment.

In La tejedora de sueños Penelope is depicted first and foremost as a woman and a multidimensional human being who is not without flaws or imperfections. She suffers from pride and jealousy when Ulysses abandons her to fight for Helen of Troy; her initial reaction is to compete with Helen and to avenge the hurt she has suffered by attracting her own retinue of suitors. As the years pass, however, she discovers true love for Anfino, the one suitor who, while lacking position, wealth, and armies, offers her love which is without demands, sincere love in which she will be ever beautiful. Penelope's weaving and unweaving of Laertes' shroud as a stratagem to postpone the selection of a husband thus acquires a new dimension. Believing Ulysses dead, she designs this delaying tactic to exhaust the kingdom of its wealth and thereby the suitors' interest in her, until Anfino remains her only choice. Thus, her weaving is a silent and secret expression of the dreams of her impossible love for him, not for Ulysses.

Penelope indeed fights to create a situation in which she can, without fear of reprisal, obtain self-fulfillment in ultimate marriage with Anfino. It is a struggle which resides completely within her, and she does not dare admit her objectives publicly. Anfino represents hope for a future when the world would be governed by superior men of ideals and love, rather than by the cold reasoners, such as Ulysses, who depend on violence, pride and cowardly acts to assert and maintain power. Needless to say, Penelope's dreams are shattered by the return of her husband. Disguised as a beggar, he learns the truth and quickly regains control of his kingdom by slaying all the suitors, including Anfino. Penelope condemns his disguise as cowardly, since it means that Ulysses knows he has aged and has feared his wife's rejection. It is not his wrinkles and gray hair, however, but his fear and cowardice which cause Penelope's negative reaction. As a result she now detests her husband, blaming him for everything, and praises Anfino's death as a superior heroic act, since even in death he never was afraid.

In truth, Penelope has won an internal victory, for she has only to await her reunion with Anfino in the world beyond. But in spite of this symbolic victory, outwardly Penelope has been defeated. The drama concludes with Ulysses insisting that, “Our name must remain clean and resplendent for the future. No one will know anything about this. … We must save face!”¹⁰, and he commands the chorus to intone the rhapsody he himself has composed:

Penelope was alone and surrounded
by dangers and fears.
But only for Ulysses does she live.
She embroidered her dreams on the cloth.
Her desires and dreams are: Ulysses!
Glory smiled on the prudent queen
who never loved a man other than her husband.
Penelope is the name of the queen.
She is an everlasting example of a wife.(11)

Thus the traditional version of the myth is reaffirmed, and the life remaining to Penelope is filled with barren silence and devoid of love, allowing only a faint hope of eternal union with Anfino in her dreams.

In Gala's drama Anillos para una dama, Jimena, after having spent two years in mourning for her hero husband, the Cid, now desires her freedom to remarry, this time out of love and to the man of her choosing. She longs for the true expression of love and personal fulfillment which had been denied her in her previous marriage; not unreasonably, she wishes to satisfy her own needs as a human being and a woman. King Alfonso is willing to arrange a politically sound marriage for her, but refuses “the Cid's widow” a publicly sanctioned marriage based on love, for such a marriage would be a betrayal of the Cid's memory, as well as politically disadvantageous to Alfonso. He points out that for the people the Cid is irreplaceable: no one can ever occupy his place, least of all with Jimena. The king clearly understands the value of myths, and how they must be carefully maintained and even embellished.

Jimena, however, staunchly refuses to continue her role and declares her desire to marry Minaya, the Cid's faithful companion and the man whom she has always loved. She points out that she lost her life when she married the Cid, whom she never loved, and refuses now to be “sold” again in marriage.¹² All she wants is to be a woman and to escape from her predestined historical role. She yearns to escape from History, and asks only to be left alone and given an opportunity to be herself. Jimena is tired of her role as a model for the other women of the kingdom.¹³

Minaya, in spite of his own personal feelings and mutual love for Jimena, is quick to point out the impossibility of their relationship. He knows only too well that Jimena, even now as a widow, is still the Cid's wife, and that their love can never be fulfilled. They have been like two parallel wheels, always close but never coinciding, while the Cid has been the axle which both unites and separates them. For Minaya and Jimena to realize their love would mean the undoing of everything, since without an axle there would be no wheels, no Jimena nor Minaya. He accepts that their destiny is the Cid and that destiny can not be changed.

A resigned Minaya therefore withdraws and is subsequently sent off to battle by Alfonso, while Jimena is left no choice but to accept the defeat of her dreams to remarry on her own terms. Attendant upon this defeat is the threat that Valencia, the supreme conquest of the Cid, is on the verge of attack by the Moors. When Alfonso, aware that he can not save the city, decides to destroy it by fire upon his departure, Jimena is again caught in a dilemma. She realizes that without her support, the Cid's dream of Valencia will cease to exist in History, and without the Cid's reputation as conqueror and hero, she too will perish. She therefore agrees to accompany the Cid's coffin to a monastery, to remain there for the rest of her life, and thus to perpetuate the unblemished legend of the Cid's greatness. Tearfully, Jimena admits that she has become a heroine, since she now must go on so that the Cid can survive. Without Jimena there is no Cid: she is his proof that all was true, and she is fated to preserve that which remains—“his rotting corpse and the wedding bands” which she now will wear forever.¹⁴

The worlds of Penelope and Jimena are thus totally dominated and defined by the traditional forces of society (the Church, the State, and the family), and maintained by History.¹⁵ The individual who does not support the system and willingly accept his assigned role is quickly victimized and sacrificed. Any outward expression of interior desires meets with defeat and a curtailment of personal freedom. To suggest that truth is something other than the official version is equivalent to treachery and betrayal. Consequently, to imply that Ulysses was a coward, or that the Cid was a timorous hero and an unwilling lover, is to shatter the image of that hero, an image which must be maintained at all costs.

What is left to the victims of History, such as Penelope and Jimena, is merely the freedom to dream of the realization of their desires for love in the world beyond. As Minaya tells Jimena: “When you truly awaken, we will be together. … you will see me again … From then on, forever.”¹⁶ But Penelope is able to sustain her internal struggle only through the weaving of her dreams of Anfino, and after his death her survival depends on the dream of future happiness in the hereafter. To dream is the only recourse, and it is a tragic note that only in death can the dreams be realized, as indeed Anfino makes explicit: “Death is our great dream. To die in life is worse.”¹⁷

Thus the dreamers, the truth-seekers, are suppressed, and the official lies of History remain intact. Both women learn that Historical figures are not real people, since History strips the individual of his emotions and personal identity. Jimena observes that the world is divided into two basic groups, the heroes and the resigned. For the heroes everything is great, bloody, dangerous, but happy, for their experience has to do with the war which they invented and where they blindly lead us, totally unaware of the price to be paid. In contrast, the resigned, while good, know their places and obey. Like cowards, they resign themselves to renounce beforehand that which is useless to desire.¹⁸

Although Minaya and Anfino represent a higher standard and a better world, the marriage of a hero's wife is nevertheless an impossible dream for them. The resigned can not effectively take charge of their own destinies, and in the end Penelope and Jimena are forced to join this group of the resigned. Katharine M. Rogers quite astutely has observed: “Finally, the patriarchal tradition has always maintained—has had to maintain, in order to justify itself—that woman is a creature weak in mind and morals who must be kept in check if society is to survive and man to progress.”¹⁹

Machiavellian politics, designed to benefit the powerful and those seeking power, is what governs the resolution of the dramatic action in both plays, just as it does in real life. The slave Dione, jealous of Anfino's love for Penelope, orchestrates the discovery of Penelope's secret and causes her downfall. She originally had hoped to gain Anfino's love and then rule through him, once he had married Penelope. Equally motivated by policy, Jimena's daughter María dismisses love as nonessential and bases her life on this premise. She chastises her mother for allowing love to take precedence over matters of state, and maintains that it is much easier to administer a household, be a wife and mother, and raise an heir when love is absent. It is only when Jimena in defeat accepts her role as the grievous widow that María embraces her. King Alfonso, continually motivated by political designs, denies Jimena remarriage, since it would not be practical to destroy the image of the Cid: the hero must live on in the person of his widow. The priest Jerónimo as the representative of the Church completes the composite picture of society's value system by supporting Alfonso and denying Jimena any modicum of Christian charity or understanding. Ulysses too places a higher value on his political image and power than on the value of human emotions. With the exception of the defeated and resigned, Anfino and Minaya, all are incapable of a vision beyond the practical needs of power; all are incapable of dreams. In both dramas order and authority must be reestablished and maintained. The appearance of truth is more important than truth itself.

In essence, the two women are alone is trying to solve their problems. By virtue of their different sets of values and their refusals to continue to bear false images, they are isolated individuals. Penelope alone has to stave off the advances of the suitors, and locks herself up in order to weave her dreams. Alfonso places Jimena under house arrest until she recants her wish to remarry for love.

In the end the wives become victims who are successfully silenced and made to conform to their assigned roles. The symbol of the rings effectively reinforces the permanence of their positions.²⁰ As a widow, Jimena now wears both her wedding band and that of the Cid, binding them together not only in life but also in death to an eternal commitment which is inescapable. Her only recourse is to await the arrival of death and an explanation from God for her suffering. Resignation and pointless suffering, tempered by a needed dream of love, are all that remain for the futures of the wives.

For reasons of the State, both women must remain as their husbands' wives until their deaths, and even beyond, in the account of History. They are victims of a role and society's obligation to that role, and ultimately both are psychologically and emotionally destroyed. The individual continues to be defeated by History, for not even in History is the individual's suffering recorded. Instead, the truth is obscured, and the myth is retained and reinforced through its repetition. Penelope and Jimena will live on as the faithful wives who loved and served their husbands as an example to all women. Their human qualities and emotional sufferings are passed over to sustain the image of the glorious ideal hero who must be eternally admired. At the end of the drama Jimena observes that History will record the beautiful scene: “the sobbing widow, the king who recognizes the power of a vassal, the bishop who blesses and offers good advice, and the daughter who kisses her mother's hand.”²¹ But she quickly adds in confidence that someday someone will tell her painful little story (historia), of how Jimena, stripped of everything, accompanied the coffin of the Cid and cried for her own death.

Buero Vallejo and Gala transform Penelope and Jimena, women of the past, into universal and contemporary figures through a humanization process. The women's roles have been assigned them by virtue of their marriages, and these roles have become permanent and inescapable. While their social positions set them apart from the ordinary woman and their prominence is legendary, they nonetheless—as perceived by the dramatists—share the human dilemma of all women. They reach a point when they wish to be individuals: breaking from the molds society has designed for them; having a say in their futures; fulfilling their inner desires and goals; in short—finding personal happiness.

Both dramatists have created new figures out of the fabric of the traditional epic narratives by investigating the inner reality of the human psyche. Each points up a universal element common to humanity, regardless of the historical context, and in doing so each designs a modern work applicable to the problems of the twentieth century.²² Perhaps both Buero Vallejo and Gala look forward to a time when men, and more especially women, will not be forced to compromise their dreams and individualities, and when society will not be so structured as to sacrifice the individual to the dictates of prescribed roles, societal norms, and the achievement and maintenance of political power.

Notes

1. Naomi E. S. Griffiths, Penelope's Web: Some Perceptions of Women in European and Canadian Society (Toronto, 1976), p. 8.

2. The presentation of the social problems confronting women is not new to twentieth-century Spanish theatre. One has only to remember Federico García Lorca's dramatic works (e.g., Yerma, La casa de Bernarda Alba) which focus on the multifaceted and tragic consequences facing women in traditional Spanish society.

3. Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916-) is Spain's most celebrated and prolific living dramatist. His first work, Historia de una escalera (1949), signifies the turning point for contemporary Spanish theatre and represents the shift to a more realistic, artistic, and intellectual focus. Antonio Gala (1936-) produced his first dramatic work, Los verdes campos del Edén, in 1963, and has since become a well-established and respected playwright in the Spanish theatre. Both of these prize-winning dramatists treat the problems of contemporary man, his need for both love and awareness of self.

4. Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psycho-analysis (New York, 1935), p. 125.

5. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology (New York, 1964), p. 158.

6. Antonio Gala, Anillos para una dama, in Teatro español, 1973-1974 (Madrid, 1975), pp. 176-177.

7. Eva Figes, Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in Society (London, 1970), p. 19. The inferior status of women and their entrapment by male-created roles have been perceptively discussed by Lynda M. Glennon, Women and Dualism (New York, 1979), p. 39. She explains how sociologists have helped to maintain dualism by applying sexual labels: “Sociological pronouncements about the ‘universality’ of, and ‘necessity’ for, sexual dualism have legitimated the status quo. Such pronouncements have established a ‘social scientific’ rationale for a linkage existing in the modern world between gender and behavior orientations. Thus, as females have begun to behave more instrumentally by becoming more assertive or independent, their behavior can be labeled an act of defiance against nature, society, and True Masculinity.” See also Sheila Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, 1973).

8. Elizabeth Janeway, Man's World, Woman's Place: A Study in Social Mythology (New York, 1971), discusses the effects of the mythic (not rational) thinking which maintains that woman's place is in the home.

9. Jimena in the Cantar de Mio Cid is portrayed as the ideal of womanhood: she is always obedient and humble; views the Cid as her lord; defers to his opinions and judgments; inspires his masculine pride; and basks in his reflected honor and glory. María del Pilar Oñate, El feminismo en la literatura española (Madrid, 1938), pp. 7-8, describes Jimena as “the self-denying wife, faithful administrator of the domestic household and titular guardian of the home. Busy with the overseeing of the household chores, the singular mission of the woman at that time, she does not sense the humiliation of her situation, which on the other hand her love for her husband and affection for her children ease.” Lucy A. Sponsler, Women in the Medieval Spanish Epic & Lyric Traditions (Lexington, Ky., 1975), p. 8, notes how the Spanish epic stresses the role women and family play in creating and maintaining a man's honor and masculinity. She states, “there can be no doubt that the main aim of the poem is the glorification of a masculine hero, and in achieving this, woman, from a modern standpoint, is viewed in a subordinate and submissive role.” Carolyn Bluestine, “The Role of Women in the Poema de Mío Cid,” Romance Notes, 18 (Spring 1978), 409, demonstrates how the passive resignation of the woman accents the valor and virility of the hero: “What is clear, however, is that the women were depicted as the pale incarnations of virtue, submission and martyrdom by a skilled craftsman who deliberately chose to represent them in that way.”

10. Antonio Buero Vallejo, in La tejedora de sueños; Llegada de los dioses, ed. Luis Iglesias Feijoo (Madrid, 1976), p. 204. Moses I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, 2nd rev. ed. (New York, 1978), p. 28, referring to Homeric heroes states: “For the latter everything pivoted on a single element of honour and virtue: strength, bravery, physical courage, prowess. Conversely, there was no weakness. no unheroic trait, but one, and that was cowardice and the consequent failure to pursue heroic goals.”

11. Buero Vallejo, pp. 205-207.

12. Sponsler, p. 3, points out that this was a time of prearranged marriages and absentee husbands: “Rarely did a woman have a choice of mate, for marriages were arranged primarily with political, social, or economic considerations in mind.” It is not surprising that love might be absent in such marriages and that marriage itself did not inherently offer a picture of nuptial bliss. See Sponsler, and also Health Dillard, “Women in Reconquest Castile,” in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 71-94, for a discussion of the rights of and legal restrictions on women in Spain during the Middle Ages.

13. I disagree with Angel Fernández Santos, Rev. of Anillos para una dama by Antonio Gala, Insula, No. 325 (December 1973), p. 15, when he faults Jimena for desiring remarriage on her own terms and concludes that she does not really love Minaya. He feels that her actions are caused by her awareness of aging, and that she simply uses Minaya as a protest and as a means to gain freedom.

14. Gala, pp. 207, 210.

15. Winston Weathers, The Archetype and the Psyche (Tulsa, 1968), p. 17, sees the Odyssey “as a handbook on … morals and manners” in which the ethical and moral system of a society is articulated. Finley, pp. 128-129, observes that in this context woman was the second sex in an unequal partnership, and man should receive more affection than he gives: “And that is precisely what we find in Homer. While Odysseus was absent the loss to Penelope, emotionally, psychologically, affectively, was incomparably greater than the loss to her husband.”

16. Gala, p. 209.

17. Buero Vallejo, p. 194.

18. Gala, pp. 180-181.

19. Katharine M. Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle, 1966), p. 276. Victoria Ocampo, La mujer y su expresión (Buenos Aires, 1936), p. 13, reinforces this idea when she comments: “For centuries, having wisely realized that the right of the strong is always the best (though it ought not to be so), woman has resigned herself to repeat, in general, the scraps of the masculine monologue, hiding at times among those scraps something of her own harvest. But in spite of her qualities as a faithful dog who seeks refuge at the feet of the master who punishes it, woman has ended up by discovering that the task is tiring and useless.”

20. Janeway, p. 73, in discussing the conflict between public and private roles, states that, “any society … is capable of forcing private, feeling individuals to play public roles that are grindingly unsympathetic, overdemanding and dehumanizing.”

21. Gala, p. 211.

22. There is no doubt that each of these dramas, written during the time of the Franco regime, can be given a political reading. The conflicts of Spain are buried in the web of public pronouncements and censorship. Penelope and Jimena may well symbolize Spain, its tragic hope and tentative dreams for a better future when the individual will be allowed to achieve dignity and self-identity. See Joelyn Ruple, Antonio Buero Vallejo (The First Fifteen Years) (New York, 1971), pp. 36-37, and Hazel Cazorla, “Antonio Gala y la desmitificación de España: Los valores alegóricos de Anillos para una dama,” Estreno, 4 (Fall 1978), 13-15.

All translations from the Spanish are mine.