Don Juan

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Recommended: Development of baroque art

After the praise and accomplishments brought about during the Renaissance era of Spain, the Baroque era had a lot to live up to. Many people, however, such as the author of The Playboy of Seville, Tirso de Molina, felt that this time period did not live up to these standards. Baroque Spain was riddled with social, religious, and political norms to which Molina clearly had some strong opinions about. In this story, he uses the main character, Don Juan, along with several other side characters to interrogate the social and cultural conventions of honor, religion, and love. Out of all of the values in this story, there is one that plays a more important role than any. The honor code is something that all nobles should live by, and it should guide …show more content…

Honor is supposed to be one of the most important aspects of society, and therefore should be portrayed by men as they are perceived as the dominant gender of this time. However, when men such as the king of Naples try to be honorable, it usually is not a very pure representation of honor. After the Isabella and Juan incident, the king should have remained at the scene of the act to find out what really happened, but he was too concerned with his honor and reputation so he turned the whole case over to Don Pedro. Since the men cannot prove their honor, Tirso puts a spin on common gender roles and makes the women the gender that best guard their honor. This is shown in how Tisbea conserves her honor by not letting the “sting” of love affect her. Isabella and Ana also do the best they can to protect themselves from losing their honor to Don Juan. Not only this, but when these two ladies find out who they are arranged to be married to, they actually stand up for themselves and set out to complain to the king about these arrangements. This not only provides a backwards look at society, but also makes it very clear that the author is very critical of the way that honor is treated during this time in

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