Doña Rodríguez’s Appeal to Don Quixote turns a private request for help into a test of the knight’s public claims: whether his promise to redress wrongs can matter where rank and money protect the person accused. The appeal begins in a secluded bedroom, is broken off by retaliation from the castle’s rulers, and returns before the household in mourning. Doña Rodríguez’s daughter remains at the center of the dispute, while Don Quixote’s readiness to intervene collides with the Duke’s influence over the case.

The midnight audience

Wounded and disheartened after the cat incident, Don Quixote has spent six days out of public view. Awake one night, he hears a key at his door and assumes that Altisidora has come to test his fidelity to Dulcinea del Toboso. He declares his devotion, believing that even a change in Dulcinea’s appearance or her captivity cannot lessen it. When the door opens, however, the visitor is the household duenna Doña Rodríguez, not Altisidora.

The contrast between his expectation and the visitor’s actual purpose shapes the scene. Wrapped completely in a yellow satin coverlet, with his face bandaged and his moustaches tied up, Don Quixote rises to meet her. Rodríguez enters veiled, carrying a small lighted candle and wearing large spectacles. He asks what she wants and seeks assurance against danger; she gives him her hand, which he takes, and the two settle into a formal, carefully guarded conversation. Once he is in bed and she is seated at a distance, he invites her to explain her sorrow and promises a compassionate hearing. The episode moves from imagined romantic temptation to an appeal for practical aid.

The grievance and its history

Rodríguez explains that she comes from Asturias and once worked as a seamstress in a noble household in Madrid. She presents her skill at sewing as the means by which she earned her living after her parents, reduced to poverty, left her in service. She married an older household esquire with the approval of her employer; after her husband died, she was left a widow responsible for their daughter. The account gives the petition a family history: Rodríguez’s vulnerability is not only her daughter’s present predicament but also the outcome of a life shaped by service, loss, and limited resources.

Her daughter, she says, is sixteen years, five months, and three days old, and has grown up in the Duke and Duchess’s household. Rodríguez describes her accomplishments and praises her appearance, then states the central grievance: a wealthy farmer’s son from one of the Duke’s villages became involved with the girl after promising to marry her, but now refuses to keep his word. Rodríguez has already asked the Duke repeatedly to intervene. She says he will scarcely hear her because the young man’s father is rich, lends him money, and guarantees his debts. Her account therefore identifies both the alleged wrong and the obstacle to remedy: the family’s wealth gives it influence over the very authority on which she had relied.

The audience is interrupted

Rodríguez asks Don Quixote to secure justice by persuasion or by arms, appealing to his reputation as a defender of the unfortunate. Don Quixote accepts the request as consistent with his calling. Yet before the audience can proceed, the conversation turns to the Duchess and Altisidora. Rodríguez makes disparaging remarks about them, including a disclosure about the Duchess’s health. The women have been listening at the door: a duenna who followed Rodríguez reported the visit to the Duchess, who then brought Altisidora to hear what was said.

The Duchess and Altisidora burst into the room and retaliate against Rodríguez and Don Quixote. The account describes the assault without giving the pair a chance to answer their attackers; Don Quixote stays in bed, fearing that he too will be targeted, and the silent assailants leave after tormenting both visitors. Rodríguez departs without resuming the conversation, while Don Quixote remains bewildered. The later explanation makes the interruption part of the castle’s practical joke-making: the Duchess and Altisidora act out of anger at Rodríguez’s remarks, and the Duke is amused by what has happened. The interruption does not settle the daughter’s case; it silences the first appeal instead.

A public appeal and a promised hearing

Some days later, Don Quixote is cured of his scratches and plans to ask permission to leave for Zaragoza, where he hopes to compete for a suit of armour at the approaching festival. At dinner, two women dressed in mourning enter the hall. One throws herself at his feet and weeps until he raises her and asks her to uncover her face. The mourner is Doña Rodríguez; the second woman is her daughter. Their appearance astonishes the household, including the Duke and Duchess, who had not expected Rodríguez to make such a dramatic appeal.

Rodríguez reminds Don Quixote that she has already told him about the farmer’s son and that he promised to right the wrong. Because she does not expect the Duke to do justice, she asks Don Quixote to challenge the young man before leaving the castle and compel him to fulfill his promise. Don Quixote renews his commitment, saying he will seek the man out and challenge him if he refuses to honor it. The Duke then takes control of the procedure: he says the young man need not be sought elsewhere, declares him challenged, and promises to have him informed and brought to the castle, where the combatants will receive a fair field under the customary conditions. The episode ends with a challenge arranged, not with a verdict or a reported marriage; the outcome of the daughter’s case is not established here.

The episode’s stakes

The appeal places Don Quixote’s ideal of chivalric justice beside the unequal power of a household governed by patronage. Rodríguez has already petitioned the Duke without success, and she turns to a wandering knight because she believes his vocation obliges him to defend the weak. Her request is concrete: the young man must answer for a promise of marriage, and the Duke’s influence has so far favored the interests of the wealthier family. The Duke’s offer to arrange a formal challenge gives the complaint a public hearing, but also makes the resolution dependent on the same authority Rodríguez had accused of neglecting it.

The repeated appeal also changes the shape of the castle episode. At night, Rodríguez tells her story in confidence and the audience ends in punishment; later, she brings her daughter before the Duke and Duchess and asks Don Quixote to act openly. Don Quixote’s departure plans are postponed by an obligation he has accepted, while the Duke transforms a plea for redress into a staged contest with rules and a designated place. The sequence sustains the tension between the knight’s declared mission and the social power that determines whether his intervention can produce justice.