Which inn servant appears in the nighttime confusion with Don Quixote?

The story behind the answer

Which inn servant appears in the nighttime confusion with Don Quixote? Maritornes is the inn servant involved.

Maritornes is an Asturian maid working at the inn that Don Quixote mistakes for a castle. In the first part of Cervantes’s novel, she visits a muleteer at night, but Don Quixote—lost in his chivalric fantasies—imagines that an enchanted lady has come to his bed.

The scene becomes a chain of misunderstandings in the dark. The muleteer attacks Don Quixote, Sancho Panza becomes involved, and Maritornes hides in Sancho’s bed. The innkeeper and a law officer then join the uproar, turning the supposed romantic encounter into broad physical comedy.

Maritornes is not a noblewoman or a supernatural figure, despite Don Quixote’s interpretation. She is a practical working woman whose ordinary life exposes the gap between reality and the knight’s imagination. The episode appears in Part One, especially chapters 16 and 17.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

Add question to a list

Choose a list to keep this question in: