Celestina and the Ends of Desire (review)

E. Michael Gerli's study examines desire as both the driving and destructive force within Celestina, as well as a major reason for its immediate and sustained popularity among readers. His analysis focuses on the more subtle shades of desire within the work, making a compelling argument that the ultimate meaning and importance of the work emerges in the veiled language of desire. Early on, he makes a clear distinction between desire and subjectivity, arguing that it is desire that constitutes the character and not the other way around. While some, namely Celestina, wield desire with much more skill and authority than other characters, none can escape the immanent destructiveness of it. Chapter 1 focuses on the material link between language and longing (e.g., Melibea's cordon, Calisto's golden chain) and how the object of fancy, once possessed, leads to certain death. While their identities differ significantly, Gerli explains that each character is first and foremost a desiring subject in an economy of want. It is human desire, and not religion or courtly love that "animates, creates, and shapes the human subject from within" in Rojas's work (33).

Gerli's excellent analysis in chapter 2 enthrones Celestina within the kingdom of desire at the same time that it highlights her own subjection to it. She knows who she is, even when the other characters in the work and the reader vacillate at the sight of her scar, beard, and other ambiguous markers of identity. Knowing who everyone else is and, more importantly, what they want enables Celestina to monopolize the economy of desire. In chapter 3, Gerli traces the chase imagery in Celestina—particularly as it applies to Calisto and Melibea—linking the hunt with the pursuit of carnal knowledge. As Gerli argues, the absence of such knowledge gives life to the chase, whereas the acquisition (presence) of such knowledge anticipates the death that follows. Gerli takes on another form of desire in chapter 4 as he examines the gaze and the ways in which seeing incites action within the work. The insatiable desire to see and know (especially when prohibited) defines the actions and downfall of Calisto, Melibea, Sosia, Tristán, Areúsa, and Lucrecia.

While Gerli centers his work on the overarching theme of desire, his own critical gaze focuses on its less conspicuous manifestations, including laughter, the focus of chapter 5. Gerli projects onto the various instances of laughter a measure of complicity and a covert expression of desire. While laughter can certainly signify in the ways Gerli describes, his argument lacks the due diligence necessary to convince this reader. The context of Alisa's laughter in act 4, for example, does not necessarily prove her complicity, especially when considering the fact that Gerli does not consider other possibilities for the outburst. That does not mean that the conclusions of chapter 5 are false, only that they are generally underdeveloped. Chapter 6, on the other hand, provides a thorough examination of Melibea as a speaking subject capable of articulating her own desire. Celestina's superior handling of words and tropes allows her to manipulate Melibea's desire, as Gerli points out, but in her interactions with Calisto and her eventual suicide, she calls the shots. Despite the wide array of desiring female subjects that Rojas offers his readers, all of whom use language as a means to a desired end, "none of the women in Celestina actually ever attain what they say they need or want" (161).

Unlike the more character-driven chapters that occupy most of the book, chapters 7 and 8 seek to situate desire within physical and ideological spaces in Celestina. The primary locus of desire in the work is Celestina's house. Gerli suggests that within these contentious walls readers can detect a degree of social and psychological independence despite the characters' economic dependence on Calisto and Melibea. Whether Celestina's house or Pleberio's mansion, all spaces consumed by desire end in ruin...