the landlady

Also known as: hostess / landlady · Family: the inn · Role: innkeeper's wife · First appears: Part 1, Ch. 16.1

In Part 1, Ch. 16.1, the landlady is married to the innkeeper and is described as kind-hearted toward those who suffer. She tends Don Quixote when he is her guest, with help from her daughter, and later lends a petticoat and hood to the curate and the barber for their plan. She and the innkeeper also identify Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the curate as guests connected with the madman and his balsam.

By Ch. 32.1, she receives back the borrowed tail from the barber, while the curate has fare prepared at the inn and the innkeeper serves it. After the damage caused by Don Quixote, however, her feelings turn sharply against him: “At an evil moment and in an unlucky hour he came into my house,” and she wishes to see his blood spilled. She delivers her complaints with irritation, supported by Maritornes, but becomes cheerful when Cardenio and the curate promise payment for the losses.

In Ch. 38, she helps arrange Don Quixote’s garret for the women, alongside her daughter and Maritornes. By Ch. 42.1, she and the innkeeper offer their own room to accommodate Juan Perez de Viedma if he comes with the Judge.

Relationship record

Part 1, Ch. 16.1

• protégé: Don Quixote (The innkeeper's wife shelters and tends Don Quixote as her guest.) “The innkeeper had a wife whose disposition was not such as those of her calling commonly have, for she was by nature kind-hearted and felt for the sufferings of her neighbours, so she at once set about tending Don Quixote, and made her young daughter, a very comely girl, help her in taking care of her guest.”
• married with the innkeeper “The innkeeper had a wife whose disposition was not such as those of her calling commonly have, for she was by nature kind-hearted and felt for the sufferings of her neighbours, so she at once set about tending Don Quixote, and made her young daughter, a very comely girl, help her in taking care of her guest.”