Province of Vandalia is a homeland associated with Felismena, but also a point of departure from which she carries her history into other parts of the novel. It is invoked both as the place from which she has been exiled and as the province whose events she is asked to recount, giving it significance as a narrative point of origin as well as a location.

Identity and Geographical Definition

The novel does not provide a map or a sustained physical description of Province of Vandalia. Its clearest identification comes through Felismena: when she encounters two shepherdesses in a foreign land, she asks where she is, explaining that her language identifies her as belonging to Province of Vandalia. She also says she has been driven from her own land. The province is thus established through a character’s speech and displacement, rather than through fixed borders or a detailed account of its terrain.

The text distinguishes this origin from other territories it describes. In a separate account, Selvagia locates her life in the Kingdom of the Lusitanos, between two great rivers, and recalls a village beside the Douro River and a festival at the Temple of Minerva. That explicit Lusitanian setting should not be conflated with Province of Vandalia: the novel moves among different pastoral and regional settings, while giving Vandalia its strongest definition through Felismena’s identity and exile.

Felismena’s Homeland and Exile

Felismena remembers Soldina as her homeland and associates her banishment with Don Félix, who brought her away from it. When she meets the Portuguese shepherdesses, she cannot readily answer their questions about where she has come from; instead, she asks them to identify the country around her. Her tears and their consoling response make the distance from home a present condition, not merely a detail of her earlier history.

The province’s importance therefore lies partly in what Felismena has lost. She has arrived elsewhere without a secure place in the surrounding community, and the shepherdesses’ welcome offers temporary companionship rather than a return to her former home. Her story connects geographical movement with the emotional consequences of exile, while leaving the precise circumstances and boundaries of Province of Vandalia largely undescribed.

A Setting for Recounted Events

At the house of Wise Felicia, after supper in a garden beneath vine arbors, Felismena is invited to tell a story or recount an event that took place in Province of Vandalia. She begins the tale of Rodrigo de Narváez, introducing his reputation for courage and generosity and his role in the campaigns associated with the taking of Antequera. She then recounts the military world around Álora and the deeds of Narváez and his men. The province is thereby named as the source of a story whose action is anchored by specific places and historical circumstances.

Within that account, the narrative turns to Abindarráez and Jarifa. Abindarráez describes their love and their impending separation when the ruler of Granada orders the governor of Cártama to leave for Coín, while Jarifa is to remain behind. Their story continues through Abindarráez’s journey to Coín, their reunion, and their mutual acceptance of marriage. These named locations give the inset narrative a more particular geography than the novel supplies for Province of Vandalia itself; the province chiefly frames Felismena’s act of telling.

Narrative Role and Significance

Province of Vandalia connects separate layers of the novel’s narration. Felismena is both a displaced figure whose language and memories identify her origin and a storyteller asked to bring regional events into the company gathered at Wise Felicia’s house. Her movement away from home makes possible her encounter with the Portuguese shepherdesses, while her account carries another story into the novel’s larger sequence of interwoven experiences.

The work also makes place legible through speech, memory, and storytelling. Felismena’s language identifies where she comes from; her recollection names Soldina; and her narrated history opens onto events associated with Antequera, Álora, Cártama, and Coín. Province of Vandalia is consequently less a fully charted landscape than a recurring narrative reference point: a homeland made present by the person who has been forced to leave it.