The Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity
What Lotario, Anselmo, and Camila from Don Quixote have to teach us about our own actions
There are many stories-within-a-story in Don Quixote. Some are the tales of the people Don Quixote and his squire Sancho run across on their adventures. Some are knight stories read and enjoyed by them. Some are elaborate hoaxes played upon them. These stories may at first seem to be superfluous, perhaps even tempting to skip over, but reading them is one of the delights of the book.
One such inner story in the novel is entitled The Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity. It is a humorous, and somewhat ridiculous one. It tells the story of two best friends, Lotario and Anselmo. Anselmo falls in love with a beautiful and virtuous woman, Camila, and the two of them get married. All seems perfect, as if they have won for themselves the much coveted happily ever after. However, Anselmo becomes morbidly and ridiculously curious to see how far his wife’s faithfulness will stretch, and he begs Lotario to try to seduce his wife to see if she will remain faithful to him under temptation. Lotario, an upright man, is rightly horrified at this suggestion. He argues strongly against it, pointing out how wrong it is to ask this of him and how utterly useless and foolish it is. He eloquently reminds Anselmo that he already knows his wife to be virtuous, prudent, and modest; indeed, by succeeding at this test she can be no better and he can think no more highly of her than he already does. And if she does prove to fall to such a sinister scheme, Anselmo will simply have lost the very good thing he already has. “It’s inappropriate to go performing experiments on truth itself, because it can’t have a greater value afterwards than it had in the first place,” Lotario argues, and “what you’re asking me, as far as I can see, is to do all I can to deprive you of your honor and your life, and to deprive myself of them at the same time.”
Anselmo has become a great fool, however, and will not accept no as an answer. He forces Lotario to do this, and leaves the country for a time, insisting to his wife and his friend that Lotario is to stay at his house for the entirety of his absence. However, both Lotario and Camila remain distant and show great propriety. Anselmo discovers that Lotario did not attempt to seduce his wife, is furious to hear it, and, once more leaving town, enforces him to truly do it. At this point the reader, having heard the many just and wise arguments of Lotario that this can only lead to disaster, is unsurprised to find Lotario, when forced to woo Camila, falling in love with her, and Camila, when faced with the expression of his love, falling for him as well. The tale continues as the two of them pull the wool over Anselmo’s eyes, continuing their courtship right under his nose, all while he is convinced that Camila is the most steadfast woman in the world.
No one, while reading this tale, is likely to feel bad for Anselmo. He has everything he wanted in life, and idiotically loses it by his own pride. And while this story is an amusing anecdote that at first glance seems simply silly, it has a few things to teach us about the connection between our actions and our feelings.
The modern world, straying back towards gnosticism, likes to erase all connection between spirit, mind, and body. The Romantics have helped push us in this direction, and now it is not simply common to think that we cannot control who we love, it is also common to think that we cannot really control most of our emotions. If we are sad, it’s because our brain is wired that way. If we are worried, it’s because of Anxiety. If we are happy, it’s because we’ve simply collected enough Serotonin to be so. But what this worldview overlooks is the very real connection between our actions and our feelings. We do have power over our actions (that which is called willpower), and while we cannot specifically change our emotions, by changing our actions, our emotions are likely to follow.
This is an incredibly important point. At the beginning of the tale, Lotario is not at all romantically interested in Camila. He strongly argues against putting her to the test, and indeed the two of them spend multiple days in each other’s company without any incorrect or inappropriate feelings or behavior. But when Lotario does obey his friend and begin acting like he is in love with her (staring after her and admiring her and finally professing his love to her), and as Camila is forced to listen to these advances since her husband requires her to entertain Lotario as she would her own husband, the feelings of love quickly follow.
From this, we can learn a few valuable lessons. First, that we can encourage ourselves to love those we should by our actions. If we act as if we love our spouses, parents, siblings, and friends, even when we don’t feel it, we will likely begin to feel that love again. We can also encourage other good emotions by our actions as well: if we want to be happy, we can act as if we are. We can do those things that make us happy, and go through the actions of smiling, laughing, or dancing and increase our feelings of happiness simply by those actions.
Secondly, we can limit the chances of letting our emotions run away from us in inappropriate or harmful ways by keeping away even from the opportunity of acting upon those feelings. The tale has much to say on this topic. “Love has no better minister to carry out his desires than opportunity: he makes use of opportunity in all his actions, particularly in the beginning.” Indeed, the author goes so far as to say that “the man to whom heaven had granted a beautiful wife should be as careful over what friends of his he invited home as over supervising what friends of hers she talked to,” and “a man shouldn’t haunt his friends’ houses once they’re married as he used to do in their bachelor days.” This sounds ridiculous at first glance, but as the story progresses the point becomes clear: this is not because all women are faithless and untrustworthy (Camila was, in fact, both virtuous and prudent). It’s not because all men are base and passionate (Lotario was, in fact, a wise and vigilant friend). Rather, it is because of the power of our own actions over our hearts. If we welcome the opportunity to flirt, to woo, to impress, to entice those who are not ours, we also open ourselves up to the onslaught of feelings that those can bring with them, which can lead to much more disastrous things than innocent and playful interaction. Simply being wise about what actions we give ourselves opportunity for, and which ones we don’t, can go a long way in encouraging our own right emotions and our own future happiness.
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