Character Analysis
Donna Julia
Donna Julia is a young woman of twenty-three who is married to a man of fifty. The personality of her husband is neither attractive nor repulsive; it is neutral. He is incapable of giving his wife the affection and comradeship that she needs. These she finds in Don Juan and therefore is powerfully attracted to him. She is not basically hypocritical but she is desperately in need of love. She does not know herself well, and when she begins to find in Don Juan what is lacking in her life, nature takes over and cooperates with her frustrations. She falls in love with Juan as she had not been able to fall in love with her husband. Her eyes are gradually opened to what is happening in her, but by this time love is so firmly rooted in her that she becomes a hypocrite both in regard to herself and in regard to her husband. She knows she should avoid Juan and she tries to resolve the conflict in herself by rationalizing. She tries to persuade herself that her love is only friendship. Her conscience becomes warped in the process. Once she falls, her conscience ceases to bother her, and it is Donna Julia the hardened sinner who tries to turn the tables on her husband in her brilliant invective when he bursts into her room in search of her lover.