The Cid's Women

The verse epic The Poem of the Cid is not a historical account. At best, it is a recounting of actual events filtered through a romantic lens and embellished by nationalism and a desire to let nothing get in the way of a good story. Nevertheless, the story can still provide an insight into the cultural context in which it was told. Storytellers and audiences have a common foundation of beliefs and expectations to which any story must conform. So even if we know that the details are fabricated, we can still glean information about the cultural landscape.

One such interesting set of details is the role of women in the world of The Cid. Although they mark each of the story's plot points - the Cid's banishment by saying goodbye to his wife and daughters, the Cid's redemption by his daughters' marriage, and his personal triumph over his longtime foe by the dissolution of the marriages - the women play at best a tertiary role behind the gallant men and even behind the often dehumanized foes the men vanquish. The women are passive and cannot make their own decisions; their inability to comprehend or participate in battle means that they must be provided for, relegating them to an almost parasitic status.

Women are rarely seen in the The Cid, which belies their lack of involvement in their own affairs; their station is defined by passivity, which contrasts starkly with the restless, striving nature of the men in the Cid's retinue. The Cid's wife and daughter are first introduced when he leaves them at San Pedro with Don Sancho while he goes off to seek his fortune. "I shall go to see my beloved wife," says the Cid, "and I must tell those of my household how to behave" (35). Even at his nadir, the Cid feels justified in exercising his absolute control over his family and ordering their actions by fiat. The next time we hear of the pent women is when the Cid appeals to King Alfonso to free them so that he can marry them off.

The Cid has regained his power and standing in the eyes of his king, yet this climb in standing does not imply greater independence or autonomy for his women. Instead, the Cid gives Alfonso the authority to choose husbands for his daughters. He is "content to place them in [Alfonso's] hands to dispose of them as [he] choose[s]" (131). Meanwhile, the Cid has ordered

that the gates of the fortress which housed his wife and daughters, and their ladies in waiting, should be kept closed night and day. In this way he ensured that none of them could leave the fortress until he returned. (127)

While this could be interpreted as a means of protecting the vulnerable women, their complete separation from the selection of their future husbands is telling. The choice has devolved from the daughters themselves to the Cid and finally to Alfonso, who has likely never met the women whose fates he is deciding. The women, bereft of any decision-making power, are left passive commodities back at the castle to be traded and bartered.

Unable to make decisions or act on their own wishes and desires, the women are left without a means of self-support. Consequently, their economic place in society is one comparable to leeches, dependent on their host for survival. The pressing need for the Cid to support his wife and daughters, in fact, brings him to his least noble actions in the course of the story. In order to get money for their stay at San Pedro (in addition, it should be noted, to paying his own men) he cons a pair of money lenders into loaning him a large amount of gold in return for holding onto a "treasure chest" filled with sand.

Thereafter, the Cid's conquests are predicated on his need to secure fortune and wealth for his wife and children. "If I survive," he boasts, "they will be wealthy ladies" (65). It is only after he has won a great fortune that he feels worthy to have his wife and daughters brought to Valencia. He tells them,

Come Doña Jimena, my beloved and honored wife, and you my two daughters, so dear to my heart, come into the town of Valencia and with me take possession of the inheritance that I have won for you. (107)

In what is a reflection of social institutions, the marriages to Diego and Fernando were not only unions of families but also a economic drain on the estate of the Cid. In order for him to be respected for making this arrangement, he had to support his daughters and their new husbands even after the marriage to ensure his prestige in the greater community. "Let it be noised abroad in Galicia, Castile and León," instructs the Cid, "that I am endowing my sons-in-law richly" (157). Even though the Cid does not begrudge his obligations, it is still another instance where he must use his hard-won loot to support his daughters and exemplifies the expense of women in the world of The Cid.

The women are unproductive in this world because they are not part of the only economic activity we see in the story: battle. At the start of the story, when the Cid goes from one sacking to another, his wife and daughters are tucked away in a monastery. Later, the women are confined within the Cid's castle in Valencia while the business of warfare is conducted. When King Yusuf of Morocco comes to besiege the fortress of the Cid with a massive army, his wife is understandably frightened. He, however, dismissively casts aside her concerns "Noble wife," he instructs, "do not be alarmed. This is great and wonderful wealth ... Your daughters are of marriageable age and they come with a dowry for them" (109). This statement is interesting for several reasons. First, it reflects their passivity; they will sit inside the tower while great deeds unfold outside; second, they are named as the reason for fighting the invaders, i.e. the loot from the battle will furnish them with dowries; and finally, the Cid's attitude toward the wife shows her ignorance of the way the world works. Despite being connected to the most powerful man in the region, she is completely disconnected from the battles which define the politics of the age. Her ignorance of battles and the actual goings on in the outside world present a sort of undisturbed purity, but at the same time a powerlessness to interact in the larger world. Instead, the women are shown "feats of arms" that demonstrate the demolition of wooden towers in a mockery of what true combat actually entails.

This asymmetry seems to go both ways, however. When the Cid is told about the mistreatment of his daughters, he takes it in stride and proclaims, "Thanks be to God for this honor the Infantes of Carrión have done me ... for I shall make much better marriages" (171). Even though he has a history of turning everything into a gift from God (as with the above example of facing the vast army), his thoughts turn to the marriage before that of the safety of his daughters. This betrays how he thinks about his daughters. While his sons-in-law have betrayed the Cid, he is angry because they have betrayed the marriage rather than because they hurt his daughters. It then seems a natural conclusion that if it is the marriages that is so valuable, the worth of a woman is essentially nil outside of marriage.

In fact, a statement at the King's court reveals the assumed ordering of the world. "They are women, and you are a man," Pedro Bermúdez tells the traitors, "but they are your superiors in every way" (195). The obvious corollary being that women are naturally inferior in the absence of gross treachery. This does not imply that women are despised, only that they are without power in a patriarichal society. The women are only defined in relation to their male relatives (either through marriage or birth) and are without power otherwise; they are - it goes without saying - naturally the inferior and subordinate in any relationship with a man. As an example of what we have discussed thus far, it might be useful to examine an episode from the poem that best highlights how women are treated in the poem.

When Diego and Fernando pretended to take their wives back to Carrión, they took with them money from the Cid in order to finance the journey and to establish themselves once they reached Carrión. The Cid gave them "as a dowry the sum of three thousand silver marks ... sturdy mules and palfreys, strong swift chargers and a good supply of garments made of silver and gold" (157), which further shows the one-way economic relationship between the Cid and his daughters. Lumped into this fine assortment of property and wealth is another parcel that the Cid has given Diego and Fernando: his two daughters.

The son-in-laws, however, breach that relationship with the Cid by planning to abandon his daughters in the forest. Before they do, however, they camped in the middle of nowhere and "on this spot they spent the night with all their company, and with their wives, to whom they showed signs of tender love" (163). This is the only instance where we have an explicit reference to offering tenderness or any sort of romantic attraction within the relationship; the reader is therefore left with a lingering association between treachery and passionate romantic relationships. This further emphasizes the schism between real affection and the economic motivations that actually dictate marriages.

In one of the most dramatic scenes in the work, the two son-in-laws molest and leave the Cid's daughters to die in the wilderness. "There and then the young men took of their wives' cloaks and fur tunics of cloth of gold. These wicked traitors put on their spurs and took hold of their strong, hard straps" (165). The scene itself is already dramatic enough, but it is unlike the descriptions of events in the preceding cantars. There, the action was confined to the battlefield, and personal drama was spurned in favor of sweeping campaigns. The poem breaks further from the established pattern by presenting the women as passive at the hands of their tormentors. Even the heathen Muslims at least had the decency to fight against their foes. In contrast, the women sit idly by while Diego and Fernando humiliate them. Their only action is to beg to be made martyrs and to warn them "not ill-treat [them] like this, for if [they] are beaten you will be disgraced" (165).

Instead of fleeing, the women can only warn of the impending opprobrium the men will face at the hands of the Cid. The poem itself highlights that their rescue cannot be achieved through Doña Elvira and Doña Sol's own means by stating that "they were pierced to the heart with shame. If only it had pleased God to send the Cid Campeador at this moment" (165) and then reiterating "how fortunate it would be if the Cid Campeador were to appear at this moment" (167). Even faced with such cowards, the women remain passive and await the men responsible for their protection to set everything back in the right.

When the women are eventually avenged by the Cid, the wrongs are framed in economic terms. The Cid asks for the return of his swords and for the restoration of the generous dowries he has endowed for his daughters. It is only after he has gotten his money back that the question of his daughter's honor is raised. Of course, an economic solution to what was essentially an economic problem only makes sense. This is not to impugn the Cid's sense of honor, for he is most certainly outraged, but despite the anger evoked by this dishonor, it does not reflect the order in which the affairs are redressed. Even if his deepest concern were for the honor of his daughters, he chose to pursue the issue first in terms of economic transgressions on the part of his sons-in-law for some reason; even if it does not reflect the Cid's own value system, it does demonstrate how the court expected him to address the wrongs he suffered at the hands of his ungrateful in-laws.

In the world of The Cid, women are not the big movers and shakers. They do not participate in the big battles, nor do they participate in the court intrigues. Instead, they are depicted as idle, passive tokens that are traded and bartered to secure economic and political ends while the men around them support them. Yet the role played by women is not insignificant; the men's relationship with women drive the story forward and shape the most exciting parts. The women are, nevertheless, not the same masters their destinies as are the men, and even though this is a fictionalized story, the women of 11th century Spain were almost certainly unable to lead the life of impetuous adventure exemplified by the Cid.