The gypsy and the dragoon

Speranza

Carmen, a Spanish Gypsy, overtly woos and seduces her arrestor: the captain of the guard, Don José Bengolea.

Don José allows her to escape her prison punishment, foolishly believing in her promises of love.

Instead Don Jose is punished for his actions by his superiors and loses his job, honour, dignity, and pride.

In the end, Don José, a broken man, pitifully pleads for Carmen's love, which she has intermittently promised to a rich bullfighter.

In his despair and anger, Don José murders her.

Although he commits a heinous crime, some of the audience apparently continues to sympathize with him and identifies him as a victim of Gypsy shrewdness.



The exotic and mysterious Carmen was juxtaposed with the proper code of female behavior and morality of 19th-century Europe.

Carmen is strong and confident and she unleashes her sexuality in order to gain favors and attain impunity.

She craves status and recognition and does so at the cost of Don José, a man to whom she has promised her love.

Don Jose, unable to control his sexual urges towards Carmen, is punished for his weakness.

Don Jose loses everything he has worked for, and through him one senses that no good can come from reveling in sexual pleasure.

Don Jose is a broken man because he gives in to temptation.

Don Jose sacrifices his purity and masculine pride through his involvement with a Gypsy, portrayed as an unfaithful conniving prostitute.

The dragoon Don José's transformation and Carmen's murder embodied a strong message to the 19th-century middle-class audience.

Carmen's deviant, immoral actions would not be tolerated and any contact with her would lead to pain and eventual social, spiritual, and moral ruin.

Hancock, Ian: The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution) Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1985)

Lucassen, Leo: Gypsies and Other Itinerant Groups: A Socio-Historical Approach (New York: St. Martin's, 1998)

Mosse, George: Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)

Tong, Diane, ed.: Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Study (New York: Garland, 1985)