Maritornes

Also known as: the Asturian / the Asturian lass / the lass / the wench · Family: the inn · Role: servant · First appears: Part 1, Ch. 16.1

At the inn, Maritornes serves as a servant to the innkeeper. She is described as “an Asturian lass with a broad face, flat poll, and snub nose, blind of one eye and not very sound in the other.” In Part 1, Ch. 16, she holds the light while the hostess and her daughter treat Don Quixote’s injuries, then attends to Sancho Panza. That night, she promises the muleteer a private meeting after the guests and household have gone to sleep, but Don Quixote, mistaking the inn for a castle, imagines that the innkeeper’s daughter has fallen in love with him and refuses Maritornes in the name of Dulcinea del Toboso.

The refusal leads to a struggle: the muleteer attacks Don Quixote, while Sancho Panza grapples with Maritornes. In the darkness, the muleteer, Sancho Panza, Maritornes, and the innkeeper strike at one another, until the innkeeper rushes in to chastise her. The next day, she brings Sancho Panza wine and pays for it herself after he rejects water. Later she helps serve a meal ordered by the curate, backs up the landlady during an angry complaint, and helps prepare the garret where the women are to sleep.

In Part 1, Chs. 43–44, Maritornes and the landlady’s daughter decide to amuse themselves by tricking Don Quixote as he guards the inn. Maritornes ties his wrist to the straw-loft door bolt, leaving him suspended and unable to free himself, but later returns unseen and unties him. She is also present within the innkeeper’s household while the innkeeper undergoes what the household is experiencing.