48 pages • 1 hour read
Fernando de RojasCelestina
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1499A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Melibea’s Girdle
When Melibea agrees to give Celestina her girdle, she does so innocently, trusting Celestina’s claim that the garment will help her to heal Calisto’s toothache, a thoroughly chaste proposition. That the girdle has touched all of the relics of Rome and Jerusalem is a rather baffling claim, but it gives the girdle a sense of religious power and holiness. Because Celestina asks both for the girdle and for a personalized prayer, the act seems sacred and pure. But when Celestina delivers the girdle to Calisto, it becomes a symbol of Melibea’s body and Calisto’s desire. Calisto fondles the girdle, worshipping it as if it is Melibea, connecting the undergarment to Melibea’s nakedness. He sexualizes and corrupts her innocent offering.
Additionally, the girdle puts in question Melibea’s well-known beauty. Elicia and Areúsa accuse Melibea of fabricating her beauty through cosmetics, arguing that Melibea’s wealth gives her the resources to make herself attractive. Their own beauty is better because it is natural, achieved without such money and resources. Although Elicia and Areúsa’s tirades stem from jealousy, the girdle that reshapes Melibea’s body does suggest that her beauty has a fabricated aspect. Melibea sends Lucrecia to retrieve the girdle shortly after lending it, implying that Melibea needs the garment in order to present herself in society.
Gold Chain
Calisto gives Celestina a gold chain as payment for her effort to win Melibea on his behalf. The valuable chain represents the gap in perception between the wealthy and the poor. Sempronio and Pármeno speculate that Calisto is so wealthy that he has no idea just how valuable the chain is. For Calisto, it is a reasonable reward and an item that he will not miss. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of his fortune. For his servants, it represents the potential for a large sum of money.
As jewelry, the chain functions differently than it does as currency. Celestina has given Sempronio and Pármeno a vague promise to share the rewards she receives from Calisto. But since Calisto pays with a chain rather than money, it is complicated to divide it among co-conspirators, and a chain split in three is worth less than a whole one.
The story suggests that greed will undo any alliance between people barely surviving poverty—and conversely, that having wealth is often not worth the trouble. Celestina is willing to betray her co-conspirators to keep the chain. Sempronio and Pármeno are willing to murder an old woman to claim it as their own. Just as Celestina explains earlier, the rich are targets of those who want to take their wealth—even their children. Celestina’s surrogate children are not willing to wait for her to die so they kill her. Ironically, in the end, no one gets the chain.
The Ladder
In order to visit Melibea, Calisto uses a ladder to climb into her family’s garden, which makes the garden a sort of forbidden paradise, or a Garden of Eden. For a while, Calisto uses this ladder to have forbidden sex with his mistress without accidentally alerting her father and face his wrath for defiling the virgin Melibea. Nevertheless, coincidences resulting indirectly from the indiscretions of others make the ladder the instrument of his death, not just the tool of his transgressions.
Metaphorically, the ladder allows Calisto to reach Melibea socially elevated standing. While Calisto might have had easy access to a woman like Areúsa or Elicia, neither he nor any other man is supposed to be able to get to Melibea until her parents choose an appropriate match. Through the ladder, Calisto brings Melibea down to his level: By taking her virginity, he lowers her figurative value and lofty stature, and when he dies, Melibea throws herself from the highest point of the house to the lowest, putting herself and Calisto on an equal footing in death.
Finally, the ladder also represents reaching for something one is not meant to have and falling—a situation many characters in the novel experience. Calisto’s longing for the seemingly unattainable Melibea sets the story in motion. Sempronio sees Calisto’s love as an opportunity for wealth, involving Celestina and a reluctant Pármeno. When Sempronio kills Celestina, he and Pármeno find themselves stranded in the high place that they’ve reached, and they choose to fall to their deaths.
