Malambruno’s curse on the duennas

Malambruno’s curse on the duennas is a magical punishment that changes the faces of the women serving Queen Dona Maguncia’s court, leaving them all bearded after the queen’s death and the enchantment of Princess Antonomasia and Don Clavijo. As Countess Trifaldi tells it, the curse extends Malambruno’s revenge beyond the two lovers: the women’s altered appearance makes their suffering visible, burdens them with practical difficulties, and becomes the cause of their appeal to Don Quixote of La Mancha. His promise to remedy it revives the fainting countess and turns the curse into a prospective knightly undertaking.

Origins and Circumstances

The curse is part of Countess Trifaldi’s account of events following the death and burial of Queen Dona Maguncia. Malambruno, the dead queen’s cousin, arrives at the grave mounted on a wooden horse. He is described as both a giant and an enchanter, and his actions are attributed to revenge for his cousin’s death, punishment of Don Clavijo’s audacity, and anger at Princess Antonomasia’s defiance.

Malambruno first enchants the two lovers at the grave. Princess Antonomasia is transformed into a brass ape, while Don Clavijo becomes a crocodile made of an unspecified metal. A metal pillar stands between them, bearing an inscription that has passed through Syriac and Kandian before being rendered in Castilian. Its message makes the lovers’ restoration conditional: a valiant Manchegan must fight Malambruno in single combat. The inscription therefore connects their fate to the anticipated intervention of Don Quixote, while the curse on the duennas forms a separate punishment imposed during the same episode.

The Curse and Its Effects

After the lovers’ enchantment, Malambruno seizes Countess Trifaldi by the hair and threatens her with a large sword. She is terrified, but manages to plead with him, and he stops short of carrying out that threatened punishment. He then summons the palace’s duennas. Although he condemns the group for its supposed offenses and intrigues, Trifaldi says that he lays the collective blame on all of them for a fault she alone had committed. He declares that their punishment will not be immediate death but a slow penalty amounting to permanent civil death.

The curse takes effect at once. The women feel their facial pores prickling, and when they raise their veils, the assembled company sees that every face is covered with a beard. The beards vary in color: some are red, some black, some white, and some grizzled. The spectacle astonishes Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and the bystanders; The Duke and The Duchess also perform their surprise. Trifaldi describes the change as the covering of the softness of their faces with rough hair, a transformation that marks the women as a group and exposes them to public scrutiny.

Life Under the Curse

For the duennas, the curse is not simply an altered appearance. Trifaldi presents it as a threat to their prospects for pity, assistance, and affection. She argues that even a duenna with smooth skin and cosmetic care has difficulty winning anyone’s love; a face turned into a thicket of hair, she fears, will make that situation worse. Her lament frames the beard as a social burden, one that threatens to leave the women isolated as well as visibly changed.

The practical problem is immediate: the women say they cannot afford to have their beards shaved. One of the twelve explains that some have tried an economical remedy, using sticking plasters to pull away the hair and temporarily leave their faces smooth. Women in Kandy go from house to house to remove down, trim eyebrows, and prepare cosmetics, but the duennas have refused to admit them. The speaker gives their distrust of the visitors as the reason. Without a remedy, she fears the women will go to their graves still bearded. Their account makes clear that the enchantment persists beyond its initial transformation and that maintaining even temporary relief takes improvised measures.

Appeal and Narrative Function

Sancho responds to the countess’s distress with astonishment and comic indignation. He objects to the choice of punishment, suggesting that a lesser facial disfigurement would have been preferable, and observes that the women cannot afford shaving. The joke does not undo the plight: the duennas confirm the expense and describe the measures they have tried. Their predicament thus moves between the language of magical punishment and the ordinary constraints of money, grooming, and social acceptance.

Don Quixote promises to cure the women, pledging that he will pluck out his own beard in the land of the Moors if he fails. Countess Trifaldi hears the promise while recovering from her swoon; it restores her senses and leads her to ask him to turn his words into action. The episode binds the curse to the story’s larger pattern of proposed knightly intervention: the women’s affliction calls for a remedy, while the separate inscription concerning the lovers specifies a combat with Malambruno. In the evidence here, Don Quixote’s undertaking is a promise, not a completed cure. The curse remains a condition whose consequences are described in detail and whose resolution is left to the adventure still to come.