Don Q

After the Marxist presentation, who's argument of Don Quixote I found convincing, I began to think of Don Quixote differently. His naivete became less endearing, more harmful since Sancho Panza did pay for all of DQ's dismissals of the rules.
But then, because of my English Renaissance Drama capstone class, I began to wonder if Don Quixote isn't more about self-fashioning and less about the glass ceiling. Despite the "warning" at the end of the book, it seems that Don Quixote advocates for social mobility...though this assertion is complicated by the fact that everyone notices DQ's costume, no one is fooled by his knight errantry, and most think he's crazy.
Does this reinforce the glass ceiling? It appears so, but I don't like to believe that. Sancho Panza's social climbing does allow for self-fashioning and the possibility of upward mobility in the classes. Since this book was written on the tail end of the humanism movement, by a non-nobleman, it makes sense that this topic would be complicated, but perhaps hopeful. Afterall, Cervantes has been imortalized...I couldn't tell you who the king of spain was at this time