The niece expresses the universal social realities: A man must stay home and keep his responsibilities confined to his domestic life. Narrow domestication is the basis, not only for family stability, but for mediocrity, and men who wish for glory and immortality creativity and freedom, that is must oppose themselves to these restrictions and profess some form of knight-errantry. Perhaps the niece's voice is an echo of Cervantes' personal troubles, for he tried for long, frustrated years to provide for his own household of women, who doubtless never understood his own quixotic temperament as he labored at unsuccessful manuscripts and never achieved reward for his brave sacrifices for Spain.
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