Avoiding the Appearance of Rape: Mary Smirke’s Revised and Corrected Fernando in her 1818 Translation of <i>Don Quixote</i>

This study examines how Mary Smirke, in her 1818 English version of Don Quixote, blends her own translation with those of Motteux, Smollett, and especially Jarvis. Her version, published at least 34 times in the nineteenth century and most often presented as the work of Jarvis, makes substantial cuts to the interpolated novels. In one of Smirke’s most prominent interventions, she diminishes the threat of violence in the bedroom encounter between Dorotea and Fernando (1.28). This portrayal of Fernando as deceptively disarming—later enhanced by the illustrations of Tony Johannot—still reveals how trapped Dorotea is by his intrusion.