Haggard’sMontezuma’s Daughter(1893) as Memoir of the Spanish Conquest

Abstract

In this critique of Haggard’s Montezuma’s Daughter (1893), the author analyzes Thomas Wingfield’s life in Mexico from about 1517 to the 1530s, and his (fictional) memoir of the Spanish conquest. During his New World escapades, Wingfield is cast ashore in the Yucatan, taken in by the Maya, introduced to the Mexican slave Malinche, and ultimately received in Anahuac as the Mexican deity, Tezcat. The complication of plot involves Wingfield’s divided loyalties. He is born of a Spanish mother and English father, and after Cortés invades Mexico, Wingfield joins the Aztec resistance to the Spanish invasion. He later marries Otomie, Montezuma’s daughter, fathering four mixed-race children who, like himself, are ‘caught between’ opposing cultures. As such, Wingfield can be read as Haggard’s ingenious double for the historical figure Malinche – who used her knowledge of different cultures in her role as Cortés’s interpreter. As Malinche is often associated with treachery in Mexico, so, too, is Wingfield labelled a traitor by the Spanish. This essay also argues that Wingfield’s difficult position has much in common with Gonzalo Guerrero, a historically real Spanish castaway upon Mexican shores in 1511. After being taken in by a Maya tribe, Guerrero faced the grim fate of sacrifice, yet the Spanish mariner escaped to a rival clan and he assimilated to their ways, ultimately marrying and having children with a Maya princess. Yet unlike Guererro who died fighting for the Maya, Wingfield returns home to England, devasted by the loss of his family during the Spanish conquest, yet enriched with a few spoils from the Aztec empire.