I differ in this respect from Benito A. Brancaforte's premise that Anselmo's proposed experiment «camouflages the unconscious desire to destroy her [Camila]» (49), and that it displaces «Anselmo's unconscious revulsion toward her» (51). Instead, I posit that it is difference that Anselmo wants to obliterate, not the person of Camila, in his attempt to return to pristine wholeness.

On the literal level, Anselmo of course is flattering Lotario as the person most worthy to seduce Camila. On the subliminal level, and within the context of an honor-code society, Lotario's failure would demonstrate his lack of virility, that he is «de menos valer».

I posit the same slippages here as I did in note 22 between the literal and subliminal levels in the interchange. Although overtly warning Anselmo of the danger of the experiment, Lotario is covertly responding to Anselmo's bait. Girard (44-52) and Bandera (chapters 4 and 8) focus on the rivalry they see implicit in the challenge posited by Anselmo's request. Morón-Arroyo, following Freud, sees their relationship as a rivalry that actually requires a ménage-à-trois for its satisfaction (323). Brancaforte suggests the opposite, namely, that the «sharing of the testing» forges the homoerotic bond that already exists between the two men (54). It is interesting to note that, one of the earliest allusions to Herodotus's Candaules in Spain (the acknowledged prototype of El curioso) is to be found in Las Coplas de Mingo Revulgo. Glossed by Fernando del Pulgar, the line «Candaulo... ándase tras los zagales» is interpreted by Pulgar as «[el] rey anda tras los mozos», thereby suggesting that for the Middle Ages Candaules may have symbolized homosexuality (Arriola 40-41). Francisco Ayala, like Brancaforte, suggests homosexual motives in Anselmo's challenge to Lotario and also attributes to Candaules, Anselmo's supposed prototype, «un deseo sexualmente perverso» (304). Without dismissing the merits of any of these suggestions, and averring the homoerotic discourse liberated in the text, I am emphasizing, instead, the fragility of the bonding between the two men which the introduction of sexual difference highlights.

José Deleito y Piñuela comments on the shock travellers experienced at the way Spanish women were treated: «Los maridos que quieren que sus mujeres vivan bien, se hacen tan absolutos que las tratan casi como esclavas, temerosos de que una honesta libertad las emancipe de las leyes del pudor, poco conocidas y mal observadas en el bello sexo» (cited in Anne Cruz 218, n. 12).

I use hom(m)o-sexuality in Luce Irigaray's sense. «Reigning everywhere, although prohibited in practice», Irigaray explains, «hom(m)o-sexuality is played out through the bodies of women, matter, or sign, and heterosexuality has been up to now just an alibi for the smooth workings of man's relations with himself, of relations among men» (172: emphasis mine).

See Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. Ed. J. G. Peristiany, esp. 29, 42-47, 70-71.

Both Anselmo and Lotario position Camila as exhibitionist. The narrator reiterates Lotario's voyeuristic fascination with her: «mirábala Lotario» (417)], «el contento que le llevaba a mirar a Camila» (417), «el gusto que hallaba en mirarla» (417). For woman as erotic prop, see Mulvey and Kaplan.

Anselmo, «alegre sobremanera» (419)], receives Camila's letter informing him of Lotario's sexual overtures (299). It is important to note that at the moment Anselmo believes Lotario's lie (after the adultery) that she is indeed chaste, and is convinced that Camila has resisted seduction, he nevertheless insists that Lotario intensify his efforts to seduce her: «contentísimo quedó Anselmo de las razones de Lotario, y así se las creyó como si fueran dichas por algún oráculo. Pero, con todo eso, le rogó que no dejase la empresa, aunque no fuese más de por curiosidad y entretenimiento» (401: emphasis mine).

For Machiavellian virtù and its alliance to prudence, see Garver, Machiavelli and the History of Prudence.

In her discussion of perversion, Kaplan posits that such perverse gender types as Camila here performs are «intimately related to the social and economic structures of our westernized industrial societies» (523). It is, after all, a culturally-constructed desire that has produced Anselmo's scenario in the first place, one that, unlike Rinaldo's caveat in the Orlando Furioso on the weakness of human nature, tests chastity exclusively in women.