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Reading the Body Imperiled: Violence against Women in María de Zayas

Lisa Vollendorf

University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: María de Zayas's Novelas amorosas (1637) and Desengaños amorosos (1647) portray myriad acts of violence against women. Zayas's employ of the female body as the focal point of the texts coincides with Foucault's interpretation of the use of the body in the seventeenth century as the «site for the reproduction of truth». Additionally, contemporary theories on violence against women highlight parallels between the dynamics of domestic violence and Zayas's representation of violence against women. Two of the novellas of the Desengaños amorosos, «Mal presagio casar lejos» and «El verdugo de su esposa», are particularly scathing in their critique of the patriarchy.

Key Words: 17th century, Zayas y Sotomayor (María de), Spanish literature, women's writing, narrative, feminism, violence against women, Foucault (Michel), Novelas amorosas, Desengaños amorosos

     In María de Zayas's two framed novella collections, at least thirty women are physically victimized by male-authored violence which includes abuse, rape, torture, and murder. In fact, many of the actions mentioned by Margaret Atwood in the above quote are performed on the female body in the Novelas amorosas y exemplares (1637) and in the Desengaños amorosos (1647), all of this in an effort, as Atwood says, to settle the woman's body down «so it can never get away». At every turn, women are persecuted by their male lovers, husbands, and brothers, and through these violations the hypocrisy and misogyny of the Spanish patriarchy are exposed and exploited. In an oft-quoted statement, Laura, the protagonist of the fifth novella in the Novelas amorosas, gives testimony to Zayas's indictment of the oppressive treatment of women:

Pleading to men, who are, after all, relegated authority over domestic, social, and political affairs in patriarchy, Zayas's character protests the oppression of women. As suggested by the frustrated tone of this passage, the violence and suffering depicted in Zayas's novellas illustrate the injustices and double standards of the patriarchy, understood here in its most basic sense as the form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in domestic, social, and political affairs, as the primary culprits in the plight of women.

     While Laura is beaten by her husband and consults with a witch to win him back, she eventually enters the convent rather than return to her adulterous marriage. Many protagonists do not fare as well as this convent-bound character, however. By the time we reach the Desengaños amorosos, six of the ten tales are resolved through femicide, that is, through the misogynist killing of women by men (Radford and [273] Russell xiv). Oppressed and violated by husbands, brothers, and other men entrusted with their care, Zayas's female characters struggle to survive in a fictional world which fills the psychic distance separating the sexes with a river of feminine blood.

     A perennial problem facing readers of these violent texts is the question of veracity. Critics have explained Zayasian violence by taking her graphic depictions of abuse and murder at face value (e.g. Amezúa) or by rejecting it as an expression of «militant feminism» (Chevalier 31). In this same vein, others have reacted to the violence of the Desengaños as an «exaggerated commentary on the situation of women in seventeenth-century Spain» (Clamurro 44). These observations betray a concern with knowing at what point, if any, the violence in the novellas coincides with the realities of women at the time the texts were written. While different generations of critics have grappled with this issue, their approaches have inevitably lacked the socio-historical information which in the last decade or so has begun to emerge about women in Golden Age Spain⁽²⁸⁾. Only recently have historians and literary critics made a concerted effort to recover the archeology of the feminine. With the rise of feminist criticism, the critical eye has turned to the recovery of women's history, with scholars such as Sheila Fisher and Janet Halley calling for a critique of

Such social, historical, and literary contextualizations can facilitate an understanding of Zayas's position as a woman writing during times of severe cultural control in Counter-Reformation Spain. While an examination of violence in seventeenth-century Spanish society highlights Zayas's use of the female body as the site of power struggles, a reading of two novellas in light of late twentieth-century theories of domestic violence reveals remarkable parallels between Zayas's representation of violence and what we now know to be characteristics of violence against women in many societies.

     The violent ambience of seventeenth-century Spain validates and expands upon Zayas's employ of the female body as the battleground in the war between the sexes. And, keeping in tune with the specifically feminist project of educating both sexes about the victimization of women, Zayas's depiction of masculine violence pointedly overlaps with theories of violence against women. Zayas's attack on the patriarchy reaches to the very core of this social system: the fundamental definition of patriarchy as a cultural system which deems the father head of family and state is criticized and its weaknesses exposed.

I. The Body as Truth

     Recent inquiry into the connection between the preponderance of violence in Baroque literature, especially in the comedia where wife-murder abounds, and contemporaneous cultural phenomena generally has concluded that there exists little or no correlation between real and literary violence (McKendrick and Stroud). Zayas capitalizes on the popularity of such fictional violence by choosing the female body as the primary site on which to inscribe the oppressiveness of the patriarchy. Although this concentration on the body has been interpreted as «the inscription of obsessive desire» (Gartner 189), Zayas's texts point to a highly politicized agenda which reaches far beyond the realm of desire: hers is a feminist exercise concerned with defining and challenging the body politic.

     In both the Novelas amorosas and the Desengaños amorosos, several references to facts and figures are made which help to firmly ground the novellas in their historical context. As H. Patsy Boyer has noted, «The multifarious effects of Spain's militarism on society in general hold a prominent place in Zayas's works» («Historical Background» [274] xxxiii). The expulsion of the Moors in 1609 and the Catalan revolt of 1640 are both specifically mentioned in the Desengaños amorosos, for example, and serve as signs of ethnic and political unrest that characterized much of the seventeenth century in Spain. The poem dedicated to Philip IV, which appears on the third night of the Novelas amorosas, also provides a clear temporal setting for the novellas. With these references, Zayas locates her novellas in their time, place, and culture. Coinciding with this historical grounding offered by the texts, the narrative reflects the practices surrounding criminal justice (particularly as they were implemented by the Inquisition), complete with excesses of punishment, the presumption of guilt upon accusation, and the injustices that accompany such practices.

     In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault compares the pre-eighteenth century criminal justice system of western Europe with our modern one, signaling the use of «the body and the spectacle for the reproduction of truth» as a defining philosophy in the seventeenth century (97). In other words, the accepted fashion of arriving at truth heavily depended on the manipulation of the body: torture, often carried out publicly, was used to extract (what was considered to be) true confession. Foucault's assertion captures the thinking of the Inquisition, whose autos de fe punished those who violated Catholic ideology: bodies were routinely quartered, strangled, garroted, and burned under the public gaze. The crucial role played by these highly dramatic public executions as a mechanism of control exemplifies Foucault's description of the (re)production of truth through the body and the spectacle: through the body the justice system produced truth, forcing people to confess and deterring heretic behavior through the spectacle of the auto de fe⁽²⁹⁾.

     Zayas's texts transpose this ideology of physical violation to the world of fiction and, more specifically, to the woman's body. For while some men also suffer, the texts repeatedly refer back to the female body as the primary site of violation. Firmly grounded in the post-Tridentine requirement that literature be instructional, the Desengaños amorosos appropriate and adapt the cultural code of violence to fit Zayas's pro-woman purposes and to demonstrate women's truth through the display of the violated female body. Lisis, the frame-tale protagonist whose soirees provide the setting for the telling of the tales in both volumes, demands that only women narrate, and that they tell true tales of masculine deceit. Thus the frame characters are charged with «disenchanting» their audience, a task that entails «un-deceiving» (desengañar) and educating both men and women about masculine treachery and violence. This exclusion of the male narrative voice has the explicit purpose of restoring women's good name and of recovering the lost feminine voice:

Based on this statement, Amy Williamsen observes that the soiree is based on «women's usurpation of a previously male dominated sphere» (643). With this purposeful exclusion of men from the narrative act, in other words, a certain liberation takes place and the imperiled female body becomes the focus of the tales. So that while men are occasionally victimized in the novellas, the insistence on women's perspective and masculine deceit emphasizes the totality of feminine suffering as it is endured on both physical and emotional levels. Complying with the mandate to tell true tales of female disenchantment, the ten female narrators release in graphic detail the terrors experienced by women which, more often than not, result in the death of the protagonists. Regardless of their varying degrees of innocence and guilt, female characters perish simply because their male protectors consciously decide to end the women's lives, for different, yet ultimately proprietary, reasons. [275]

     Unleashed by the exclusion of the male narrative voice, violence against women reaches epidemic proportions in the Desengaños amorosos. Although the historical record provides minimal information on the situation of women with regard to violence in the home at this time, María Helena Sánchez Ortega's research on sorcery has revealed similarities among spells used by women on the Iberian Peninsula in an effort to influence men in matters of the heart. Based on the records of the 1655 Valencian sorcery trials, Sánchez Ortega concludes: «No doubt the women of the Habsburg regime feared their companion's violent tempers, proof of which is frequently documented in the declarations» (67). She details accounts of different women who resorted to magic because they were either persecuted or feared persecution by their husbands:

These statements recall several incidents of violence in the Desengaños amorosos.

     Two of Zayas's characters are enclosed by their husbands and fathers, for example. As punishment for being entranced and raped nightly for over a month, Inés, in «La inocencia castigada», is trapped in a small makeshift torture chamber for over six years. Upon being rescued, the emaciated, blind Inés's worm-eaten flesh speaks for her suffering:

This character's sexual impurity, caused by the repeated violation of her body by a man, plays out Prudencia Grillo's fears of being «locked in a castle» as described in her testimony to the tribunal. Other female characters who are perceived by men to be sexually impure, such as Laurela in «Amar sólo por vencer», Elena in «Tarde llega el desengaño», and Beatriz in «La perseguida triunfante», are either enclosed in or physically removed from their domestic spaces. And, as Amy Williamsen has so poetically stated, when Laurela dies by having a wall pushed onto her, the patriarchal structure, as figured by the walls themselves, comes tumbling down, proving the social consequences of imposing the honor code to its greatest degree (646).

     Another character whose victimization disturbs the patriarchal order is Camila in «La más infame venganza»: used as a pawn in a cycle of masculine betrayal and vengeance, she is raped by another man then fed poison by her suddenly hateful husband who perceives her as sexually contaminated after the rape. The poison does not immediately kill her, however, and as her body grows to monstrous proportions, male power over her physical self is secured: « (H)inchóse toda con tanta monstruosidad, que sus brazos y piernas parecían unas gordísimas columnas, y el vientre se apartaba una gran vara de la cintura» (398). Made grotesque by male jealousy and rage, Camila transcends her physical state and remains in good spirits throughout the six-month period that precedes her death. Once again the texts coincide with the fears expressed by a woman quoted by Sánchez Ortega: while the woman at the tribunal was fed ground glass, Camila was poisoned and made to suffer for her victimization.

     Such is the collective power of so many characters suffering, in fact, that Lisis decides to withdraw from her planned marriage and enter a convent. Significantly, this unusual outcome to the frame tale is explained using the language of the body, thereby securing the connection between the novellas proper (which focus on the feminine body) and the frame tale. Lisis describes her decision to retreat to the female realm of the convent as evidence that she herself will be the greatest disenchantment of all. Before telling her tale, she hints [276] at her refusal to marry:

Later, after narrating a bloody tale and citing the grave predicaments of the novella protagonists, Lisis calls husbands the archenemies of women and leaves the soiree holding two women's hands, the three of them off to the convent to later be joined by Lisis's and Isabel's mothers (669). Elizabeth Ordóñez's observation that Zayas «inscribes power into the plots of women, making women agents and subjects, even if only temporarily or surreptitiously» (6) is evidenced in the frame tale by Lisis's final empowered move as she withdraws from her marriage promise.

     The offering of Lisis's body as «el mayor desengaño» is significant, since from the outset of the Novelas amorosas and particularly in the Desengaños amorosos her health and happiness are woven into the tapestry of the texts. The first soiree, constituted by the Novelas amorosas, is held at Christmas to entertain the ailing Lisis, who suffers from a fever caused by Juan's lack of affection. The guests are placed at the whim of Lisis's health from the beginning, then, with the sole purpose of the narration being to divert her attention from her sickness. From the turbulent relationship between herself and Juan, who leaves her for another lover, to her new-found unsatisfactory love with Diego, Lisis is plagued by amorous woes which ultimately cause her to plunge into a year-long illness during the space that falls between the Novelas amorosas and the Desengaños amorosos. Instability in love causes physical harm, as the main narrator confirms: «Bien sentía el ingrato don Juan ser él la causa de la enfermedad de Lisis, pues el frío de sus tibiezas eran la mayor calentura de la dama» (331). The discourse of illness is thus carried over into the second collection, with the presentation of Lisis's body as the text upon which the difficulties of love are written. The recovered, obedient daughter complies with her mother's wish that she become engaged to Diego, and the second soiree is convened to celebrate the upcoming wedding.

     Lisis's friendship with Isabel clearly supports the emphasis on the body as text. Disguised as a slave with a brand on her face, Isabel is given to Lisis as a gift and eventually cures her mistress/friend, succeeding where medical science and her suitor's attentions failed. It is no coincidence, then, that Isabel also offers herself as a bodily text, choosing to be a slave in order, as Lou Charnon-Deutsch has stated, to become in the physical world what her lover made her in metaphysical terms (17). There is no doubt that her autobiographical story depends on the language of the body, for Manuel's rape of her while she is unconscious and her subsequent travels as a slave repeatedly figure her body as the text of violation and suffering. Finding release as she finds her voice and recovers her true identity, Isabel removes the physical manifestations of her emotional pain, explaining: «(E)stos hierros que veis en mi rostro no son sino sombras de los que ha puesto en mi claridad y fama la ingratitud de un hombre; y para que me deis más crédito, veislos aquí quitados» (339). Like Lisis when she deems herself «el mayor desengaño», Isabel reveals an acute understanding of the language of the body and actively assimilates and adopts it in an act of defiance against the sexual economy, rejecting marriage and opting for the sanctity of the all-woman environment of the convent. These key characters, whose turns at narration introduce and close the second soiree, exemplify the detrimental effects of heterosexual relationships on the female body while simultaneously epitomizing the possibility for escaping the worse fates of the tortured, terrorized, and violated women of the novellas proper.

     Nancy Miller has noted, «To reread as a woman is at least to imagine the lady's place; to imagine while reading the place of a woman's body; to read reminded that her identity is also re-membered in stories of the body» (355). Sustaining the damaging [277] effects of love on the female body, Lisis's illnesses prefigure and, in the Desengaños amorosos, mirror the perils of heterosexual relationships as seen from the female perspective. Zayas's Desengaños, with their inclusion of physical and emotional violation including everything from rape to decapitation, encourage readers to imagine the place of the woman's body. From the brand placed on Isabel's cheek as a sign of slavery to the swollen, poisoned body of Camila to the wife strangled by her own hair to the decapitated Ana, the female body throughout the novellas is dismembered and displayed so that female suffering may be remembered. The victimized female body in these novellas signifies the power of men over women, just as bodies mutilated and punished by the Inquisition served as «gruesome reminders of the power of the city and royal governments to carry out violence against those who challenged their authority» (Perry, Crime and Society 143). The female body in Zayas becomes the site of truth speaking through its bruises and bloodied flesh for the injustices of a cultural system which sanctions the acting out of men's fears, suspicions, and aggressions onto women.

II. Reading the Body

     Zayas's representation of female victimization encompasses an entire range of suffering which reaches from depression and frustration to physical pain and torture. Through this representation of oppression, fear, and danger, Zayas layers her commentary on the patriarchy to include such issues as psychological wife abuse and various aspects of conjugal violence which, until recently, have not even figured in discussions of violence against women. As Ruth Nadelhaft has observed, treating the subject of domestic violence pointedly raises questions about woman's status, placing the reader in the position of identifying his or her position on the issue (247). Considering that domestic violence as a topic of study and public discussion did not arise in the United States until the 1970s, Zayas's systematic representation of this phenomenon is extraordinary⁽³⁰⁾. Commenting on both the long history of violence against women and the dearth of public discussion and written record on the subject, Jan Horsfall writes, «Patriarchies have no doubt produced a long and mostly unwritten history of wife battering» (18). Yet Zayas provides us with a multi-faceted literary treatment of violence against women which takes into account psychological as well as physical impacts of violence and of its threatening presence.

     The violence of the Desengaños fixes the reader's attention on the violated female body as a testimony of misogyny. Frustrated in their attempts at self-protection, speech, and even survival, the female characters in the Desengaños are, as a whole, denied the empowerment achieved by their counterparts in the Novelas amorosas. As opposed to the popular marriage ending of the previous collection, matrimony here is shown as «inimical to female values and survival» (Boyer, «The Ravages» 4). Resolution is found either in femicide (in six of the novellas) or in the convent (in the remaining four). Heterosexual relationships are portrayed as oppressive, unjust, and, above all, dangerous to women's physical safety. The characters's retreats to the convent repeatedly figure the convent as the only possibility for escape from masculine brutalities which plague women.

     The femicide of the Desengaños centers around a pervasive masculine paranoia of female freedom, especially sexual freedom. Camila, Roseleta, Ana, Magdalena, and six other wives die at the hands of their husbands, while the unwed Laurela and Mencía fall victim to their father and brother, respectively. All of these deaths occur due to the men's proprietary views toward women: their anger, jealousy, greed, or misogyny out of control, Zayas's male characters view women as their property and therefore feel justified in their use of the female body as the repository for masculine aggression. These male characters, in other words, justify the practice of killing women. This attitude coincides with sociologists Margo [278] Wilson and Martin Daly's assessment of male proprietariness as a primary motive for wife-killing. They state:

The authors conclude that «the motives in wife-killing exhibit a dreary consistency across cultures and across centuries» (96). Zayas's texts, like the wife-murder comedias, also exhibit a «dreary consistency» in their portrayal of femicide: viewed as chattel by men, the women are treated as property rather than as human beings.

     A closer look at the dynamics of violence as they relate to male proprietariness exposes a misaligned masculine logic which threatens a veritable snuffing out of the feminine. Indeed, if it weren't for the option of the convent, chosen by several as their safehouse, the female characters would have no place of their own in which to seek refuge from the violence. The violence against women proliferated in the Desengaños incorporates many of the characteristics of violent relationships laid out by Lenore Walker in The Battered Woman, including the elements of initial surprise, unpredictability of battering incidents, overwhelming jealousy, unusual male sexuality, concealment, extreme psychological abuse, family threats, extraordinary terror, perceived omnipotence of the batterer, and the victim's awareness of death potential (73-75). The first researcher to discover and explain the cycle of violence in battering relationships, Walker also identifies the three phases in the abuse cycle. The Tension Building Phase, constituted by minor incidents of battering and general psychological abuse, is followed by the Acute Battering Phase in which an uncontrollable discharge of the residual tensions occurs in the form of violence. Finally, the third phase, that of Kindness and Contrite Behavior, involves a kind attitude on the part of the batterer in an attempt to gain back the favor of the woman he abused (55-70). Zayas's portrayal of many of these dynamics of violence against women throughout the Desengaños underscores for the late-twentieth-century reader the patterns among all types of violence against women and the consistency of such violence over time.

     With their proprietary motivations for femicide, the seventh and eighth novellas of the Desengaños particularly exemplify, through their underlying critique of patriarchy, many characteristics of male violence as identified by Walker⁽³¹⁾. «Mal presagio casar lejos» and «El verdugo de su esposa» attack this cultural system in its strictest definition: the tales exploit the absolute power of the father figure so as to criticize the very basis of the social structure which relegates women to the underclass in order to assure the continuation of male rule. The sons in these two novellas blindly follow their fathers's orders, attempting to please the paternal at the expense of women's lives. The father's law is firmly ingrained here, as are misogynist and proprietary attitudes towards women which result in a violent erasure of the feminine from the texts, thereby exemplifying the dangers of allowing paternal law to go unchecked. Implicit, then, in these juxtaposed tales, is a wake-up call for the frame tale listeners and the reader: Zayas's claims for political and attitudinal reform are manifested through the deaths of these female characters.

     Coinciding to a tee with Walker's three-phase cycle of violence, «Mal presagio» embeds the misogynist subtext in the politics of Philip II's reign. The annihilation of Blanca and her sisters by foreign royalty presumably posits a safe distance between the reader and the atrocities by locating the violence in other countries, attributing such brutality to political tensions in the Spanish Empire. Yet the perverse creativity and precise execution of the femicides of the women in the novella transcend the political framework, particularly since the murder of a Flemish woman by her father leaves no doubt as to the blatant misogyny behind the violence. While the Portuguese husband goes to great lengths to fake a love [279] letter in his wife's handwriting in order to justifiably stab her to death, an Italian husband actually uses his wife's body against her, using her hair to strangle her because she praised a Spanish man. Significantly, both of these uxoricides are framed in terms of falsified sexual impropriety, with the blatantly misogynist husbands seeking out this culturally sanctioned excuse to kill their wives. After all, the legal justification for uxoricide appears in the Spanish law code of the time: the Nueva Recopilación recognizes the husband's right to kill his wife and her lover if they are caught in the act of adultery⁽³²⁾. Implicit in the murders of these wives, then, is an attack on the freedom given to men with regard to control of female sexuality and subjectivity.

     Furthermore, in «Mal presagio» the protagonist's marriage is framed in terms of paternal control. Agreeing to marry «(p)or conveniencias a la real corona y gusto de su hermano» (521), the orphaned Blanca demands that her Flemish suitor court her in Spain. The Flemish prince agrees and departs for Spain «si bien a descontento de su padre» (521). Thus cast in terms of the empire and the father, this matrimony is conceived, contracted, and conceded to with the paternal lurking as a major force. With the ire of the father-in-law directed toward her, Blanca receives a vicious anti-Spanish tongue lashing upon her arrival in Flanders, and here begins the psychological abuse and tension-building that characterizes the first phase of the cycle of violence. In spite of her initial resistance to her new husband, Blanca is surprised by the treatment she encounters.

     The acute battering of the second phase of violence occurs when the prince and his father interrupt Blanca's lament. An argument ensues, with the prince «maltratándola tanto, que fue milagro salir de sus manos con vida» (536). In spite of the painful memory of the beating that surges every time she sees him, Blanca, like many modern-day victims of wife-abuse, is said to still love her husband. Shortly thereafter, the sister-in-law is garroted by her own husband and father. Blanca's husband enters the phase of kindness now, for when Blanca asks him about his father's malevolence, the prince distances himself from his father, justifying his father's actions by saying that he must have had reason to kill Marieta.

     Terrorized and helpless, Blanca hereafter is aware of the possibility of her own death and makes the proper arrangements. Blanca's practical behavior here indicates that she perceives the danger of living in a house where the father's wish is the sons command. Meanwhile, she discovers her husband having sex with his (male) page, which, as an act considered aberrant and evil in seventeenth-century Spain, definitely falls under Walker's category of «unusual male sexuality»⁽³³⁾. Phase One begins again as the tensions build, with Blanca ordering that the bed be burned. This time, however, Blanca will not survive: she is bled to death under the watchful eye of the father-in-law, with the husband morbidly pleading for her salvation only when the blood flows from her veins. Ultimately the father has the last word, sending the son out of the room and triumphantly crying, «Así tuviera a todas las de su nación como tengo a ésta» (542). So ends the life of this protagonist, whose marriage and victimization are motivated by the desire to please the paternal. Masked in international political tensions, the abuse and femicide of this novella transcend national concerns and demonstrate a deep-rooted misogyny that knows no borders of time or place.

     The juxtaposed eighth novella, «El verdugo de su esposa», builds on the father-pleasing femicide of «Mal presagio casar lejos» by re-casting the plot in terms of a son's quest to please his father at the cost of two women's lives. Here the feminine perspective is diminished and the phases of violence and the characteristics of abusive relationships no longer play a significant role. Instead, the novella concerns the blatant misogyny of a father and his son which leaves two women's cadavers as evidence of their proprietary attitudes. Perceiving his daughter as a financial liability akin to a bad investment, avarice motivates Pedro to wish for her a religious life, potentially enabling [280] him to leave his entire fortune to his only son, Alonso⁽³⁴⁾. In an effort to escape her father's control, Mencía marries her suitor; yet her defiance results in her death and the attempted murder of her lover at the hands her brother. Importantly, the act of vengeance occurs with the father's consent and assistance. Another father enters into this femicide as well: Alonso informs a priest, appropriately addressing him as Padre, of his murderous intentions. Such is the priest's fear that he merely hears Mencía's confession and leaves, not daring to tell anyone about the femicide until it is made public.

     Proceeding to Naples with his father's financial backing, Alonso defies his father's wishes by marrying a woman of modest station. Eventually disowned for his actions, he blames his resultant poverty on his wife and turns against her in hatred when his father expresses displeasure with the match. In an effort to regain his father's favor, Alonso enlists a male friend to assist him in decapitating his wife, an action accomplished in a dinner table scene similar to the murder of Marieta in the previous tale. Alonso and his friend are ultimately executed for their crimes, but when the news reaches Pedro in Spain he is filled with pride, proclaiming, «Más quiero tener un hijo degollado que mal casado» (572). With these words, the father yet again condones femicide, applauding his son's efforts to please him.

     In these two novellas, Zayas exploits the dangers that paternal rule poses for women. The paternally-imposed mindset which facilitates the annihilation of the feminine serves as a metaphor for the patriarchy and its abuses of women which occur in the other eight novellas of the Desengaños and in five of the Novelas amorosas. These male characters, killing to please their fathers and to thereby sustain the male line of power, exhibit dehumanized, proprietary attitudes toward their female relatives, and freely abuse the female body whenever the rule of the father is violated or threatened. «Mal presagio casar lejos», which involves psychological and physical abuse as well as many other characteristics of wife abuse, demonstrates the parallels between Walker's observations on violent relationships and Zayas's representation of this phenomenon. The portrayal of the fathers in these Zayasian novellas as causing and condoning abusive behavior in their sons also coincides with theories on the intergenerational effects of violent behavior: as Bonnie Yegidis has pointed out, many researchers now perceive modeling or imitative behavior as the number one factor contributing to family violence (26). With aggressive fathers who encourage and applaud violence against women, the sons in these novellas obediently respond by carrying out the violent acts, seeking to please their fathers and maintain male power by shedding female blood.

III. Resistance to Violence

     Zayas's literary representation of violence as it is inscribed on the female body registers vehement protest against the treatment of women. In Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, Jill Radford states, «The very act of speaking out against femicide is itself an act of resistance» (303). Zayas's texts register the voice of resistance to the tolerated oppression and abuse of women under patriarchal rule. The abundance of violence against women which comes as a result of Lisis's insistence on true narrative and all-female narration in the Desengaños proves that women's stories need to be told by women themselves: for women's side of the story and their tale of abuse emerges with force only with exclusion of the masculine narrative voice. Through these stories of violence and victimization the frame characters turn the personal into the political: the repeated abuse of the female body attacks the flawed social system which propagates and sanctions violence against women.

     Ranging in scope and severity, the violence proliferated throughout Zayas's novellas exposes the culturally configured attitudes toward the female body as the receptacle for masculine aggression and fear. The similarities between Zayas's representation [281] of violence and the cultural use of violence and between the dynamics of violent relationships and contemporary theories on wife abuse/murder suggest a strong connection between the texts and their socio-historical context. These parallels indicate that Zayas wrote with a knowledge of the dynamics of violence against women and an understanding of the oppressive patriarchal value system. As Zayas transfers to the female body the Foucauldian cultural paradigm of the body as truth and spectacle, female blood speaks for the imperiled state of women under patriarchal rule. Through this appropriation of cultural authority by which the body is manipulated for truth-seeking purposes, the Desengaños amorosos give voice to women's suffering by privileging the feminine perspective and displaying the dismembered body in order to remember it again.

     Lisis's final speech confirms the political agenda of the Desengaños and encourages women to mobilize if men do not change their ways. Her words harken back to the beginning when she helped women carve out a space for their stories to be heard in the feminine voice. Yet now the tone has become threatening. After enumerating the long list of female suffering as told in the ten novellas, Lisis announces her decision to enter a convent. She demands that women stop deceiving themselves about men's behavior, and that men improve their treatment of women or face the consequences,

Calling for nothing less than a social revolution, Lisis's words summarize the intended effect of the Desengaños amorosos, while her move to the convent indicates that she is unwilling to compromise her future safety in a society that devalues and dismembers women.

     Promised to be the greatest disenchantment of all, Lisis's retreat to the safety of the convent figures her self as resistance par excellence: with the above farewell, she entreats other women to follow her example as she exits the soiree holding two women's hands, leaving her would-be husband thunderstruck. Through the violent inscription of the father's law on the woman's body, Lisis has read women's truth, seeing the powerlessness of women. Having heard about women being caught, put in a chamber, a house, a room, being leashed and locked and chained, she decides that, rather than let someone else settle her down, she will take charge of her body by removing it to the sanctity of the convent. [282]

WORKS CITED

     Amezúa, Agustín G. de, ed. «Prólogo». Desengaños amorosos. Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimiento honesto. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1950. vii-xxiv.

     Atwood, Margaret. «The Female Body». Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 1990): 490-93.

     Boyer, H. Patsy, trans. «Historical Background». The Enchantments of Love. By María de Zayas. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. xxxii-xxxv.

     _____. «The Ravages of Vice and the Vice of Telling Stories». Voces a ti debidas. In Honor of Ruth El Saffar. Eds. Marie Cort Daniels et al. Colorado Springs, CO: Colorado College Studies, 1993. 29-34.

     Charnon-Deutsch, Lou. «The Sexual Economy in the Narrative of María de Zayas». Letras Femeninas 17.1-2 (Spring-Fall 1991): 15-28.

     Chevalier, Maxime. «Un cuento, una comedia, cuatro novelas (Lope de Rueda, Juan Timoneda, Cristóbal de Tamariz, Lope de Vega, María de Zayas). «Essays on Narrative Fiction in the Iberian Peninsula in Honour of Frank Pierce. Ed. R. B. Tate. Oxford: Dolphin, 1982. 26-38.

     Clamurro, William H. «Ideological Contradiction and Imperial Decline: Towards a Reading of Zayas's Desengaños amorosos». South Central Review 5.2 (1988): 43-50.

     Cobbe, Frances Power. «Wife Torture in England». Contemporary Review 32 (April 1878): 55-87.

     Dobash, R. Emerson, and Russell Dobash. Violence against Wives. A Case against the Patriarchy. NY: The Free Press, 1979.

     Fisher, Sheila, and Janet E. Halley, eds. «Introduction». The Lady Vanishes. The Problem of Women's Absence by Late Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1989. 1-17.

     Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. NY: Pantheon, 1977.

     Flynn, Maureen. «Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish auto de fe». Sixteenth Century Journal 22.2 (1990): 281-97.

     Gartner, Bruce. «María de Zayas y Sotomayor: The Poetics of Subversion». Diss. Emory University, 1989.

     Horsfall, Jan. The Presence of the Past. Male Violence in the Family. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1991.

     Kamen, Henry. The Inquisition and Society and Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.

     King, Margaret. Women in the Renaissance. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.

     McKendrick, Melveena. Women and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the Mujer varonil. London: Cambridge UP, 1974.

     Miller, Nancy K. «Rereading as a Woman: The Body in Practice». The Female Body in Western Culture. Ed. Susan Suleiman. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986.354-62.

     Nadelhaft, Ruth. «Domestic Violence in Literature: A Preliminary Study». Mosaic 17.2 (Spring 1984): 242-59.

     Ordóñez, Elizabeth. «Woman and Her Text in the Works of María de Zayas and Ana Caro». Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 19.1 (January 1985): 3-15.

     Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1980.

     _____. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.

     _____. «The 'Nefarious Sin' in Early Modern Seville». Journal of Homosexuality 16.1-2 (1988): 67-90.

     Radford, Jill. «Introduction». Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Ed. Jill Radford and Diana E. H. Russell. NY: Twayne, 1992. 3-12.

     Radford, Jill, and Diana E. H. Russell, eds. «Preface». Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. NY: Twayne, 1992. xi-xv.

     Sánchez Ortega, María Helena. «Sorcery and Eroticism in Love and Magic». Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World. Ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. 58-92.

     Sigler, Robert. Domestic Violence in Context: An Assessment of Community Attitudes. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989.

     Stroud, Matthew D. Fatal Union. A Pluralistic Approach to the Wife-Murder Comedias. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1990.

     Vigil, Mariló. La vida de las mujeres en los siglos XVI y XVII. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1986.

     Walker, Lenore. The Battered Woman. NY: Harper& Row, 1980.

     Williamsen, Amy. «Engendering Interpretation: Irony as Comic Challenge in María de Zayas». Romance Language Annual 3. (1991): 642-48.

     Wilson, Margo, and Martin Daly. «Till Death Do Us Part». Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Ed. Jill Radford and Diana E. H. Russell. NY: Twayne, 1992. 83-98.

     Yegidis, Bonnie. «Speaking the Unspeakable: Family Violence in America in the 1990s». The Aching Hearth. Family Violence in Life and Literature. Ed. Sara Munson Deats and Lagretta Tallent Lenker. NY: Plenum Press, 1990. 23-32.

     Zayas y Sotomayor, María de. Novelas completas. Ed. María Martínez del Portal. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1973. [283]

Book Reviews

Janet Pérez

EDITORIAL POLICY. Hispania publishes reviews of selected books in the following categories: academic books (Peninsular and Latin American), linguistics, pedagogy (textbooks), and new fiction. We do not review journal numbers or publish book notices. Publishers and authors should submit books for possible selection to the Book Review Editor, Dr. Janet Pérez, Assoc. Dean, Graduate School, Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, TX 79409-1033. Hispania cannot accept unsolicited reviews nor honor requests to review specific books. Members of AATSP who wish to be considered as reviewers should send copies of curricula vitae. Those assigned books for review will receive a stylesheet and a statement of editorial policy.

Peninsular

     Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes defrauda al estudioso de la ya abundante producción literaria del gran escritor vallisoletano a la vez que nos recuerda un antiguo adagio español que aconseja que cada cual se ocupe de lo que le corresponde. Es decir, se trata de una obra de periodismo que no añade prácticamente nada al estudio y comprensión de la obra de Delibes en nivel académico

     En Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, Alonso de los Ríos utiliza por segunda vez el título de un libro suyo publicado en 1971 (Madrid: Editorial Magisterio Español). Las conversaciones entre Delibes y Alonso de los Ríos de 1970 son incluidas en el nuevo tomo junto con otras de 1992. En su nueva versión, Conversaciones está constituido por una nueva y poco esclarecedora introducción de quince páginas, texto de naturaleza muy amplia donde se documentan de pasada los intereses ecológicos de Delibes, su situación familiar actual, lo que Castilla y Valladolid representan para él, la presencia de lo autobiográfico en algunos de sus relatos, etc., todo ya bastante conocido por los estudiosos de la ficción narrativa de Delibes.

     Como ya se indicó, la segunda sección de este libro es una fiel reproducción del contenido de las primeras Conversaciones (ciento treinta y una páginas). Lo que entonces se nos reveló de, por ejemplo, Cinco horas con Mario y Parábola del náufrago, o de la importancia que Delibes le asignaba a James Joyce, sigue siendo, por supuesto, vigente aunque dicha información ahora nos resulte muy conocida.

     El tercer apartado está constituido por las conversaciones de 1992 en treinta y nueve páginas. Se discute cómo la caída del gobierno de Dubcek en Checoslovaquia inspiró a Delibes a redactar su Parábola o en qué consiste su posición ante los problemas ecológicos del mundo. Abundan comentarios anecdóticos sobre el origen de varias de sus novelas, lo que piensa Delibes de ellas y sobre la atención que han recibido a manos de sus lectores. Hay momentos en los cuales verdaderas oportunidades son desperdiciadas, como cuando Delibes afirma que no hay «misterio» en El loco, novela donde aborda «el tema de la supervivencia» (183). Lamentablemente, Alonso de los Ríos no aprovecha la ocasión para discutir con Delibes profundamente una de sus creaciones más sugerentes y complicadas.

     Concluye el volumen con bibliografías sobre Delibes y de Delibes. En la primera, sólo se incluyen textos críticos publicados antes de 1970 y se nos da la misma bibliografía crítica incluida con las Conversaciones de 1971, que pasa por alto todo lo escrito -libros y artículos- desde 1969. Por su parte, la segunda bibliografía, la de las obras de Delibes, si bien resulta más amplia, demuestra hasta cierto punto un desconocimiento de los escritos de nuestro escritor. Ello es evidente cuando son incluidas fichas de Siestas con viento sur y El loco. Es decir, si bien el primero es un libro más amplio, El loco es incluido allí también ya que este relato ha sido publicado dentro de Siestas y por separado. Por tanto, no era necesario asignarle una ficha independiente en la bibliografía.

     En vista de la fertilidad imaginativa de la obra de Delibes y la complejidad que ha caracterizado muchos de los comentarios críticos de sus creaciones, hay que concluir que un autor tan complicado e importante como Miguel Delibes se merece «crítica cultural» más perspicaz e informada.

     The Reichenberger series of critical editions of Spanish Golden Age plays has recently added two new titles, both offering plays that have received little critical attention in the past. Lola Luna's fine edition of El Conde Partinuplés, by Ana Caro, the best known woman playwright of the period, and Ángel Martínez Blasco's carefully prepared study of Quien mal anda en mal acaba, by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, facilitate research on works that until now have been relatively obscure.

     Luna's well documented volume on El Conde Partinuplés includes an introduction, a bibliography, and the text itself. The first section deals with Ana Caro, analyzing her place among the writers of her time and presenting the information known about her life. There follow a history of the play, and an analysis of its plot and the roles of the characters, including two semiotic schemata. A comparative study of the work and its sources details the influence of the chivalric novel Historia del Conde Partinuplés, que después fue emperador de Constantinopla and of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. This section also compares the play with other Golden Age dramas and situates it in the context of the theater of its day. The beauty of poetic expression and the spectacle created by the use of magic throughout the play in dealing with the «dama invisible», along with excellent character delineation, especially of the gracioso Gaulín, set this play apart from its contemporaries and make it well worth reading.

     In discussing «Acción y representación», Luna assesses the tripartite structure of the comedia in general, positing that the actions of the characters prevail over the unities of time and place. She applies this thesis to the play in question, showing how its action takes place in contemporary Spain, although that of the fable is supposedly situated in a mythic time and place. Furthermore, the course of events takes the hero on a path that alternates between an open and dangerous exterior space and a closed and amorous interior one, once again demonstrating the primacy of action over the unities of time and space. The last sections of the introduction comprise a study of the versification of the text illustrating the relationship between verse form and dramatic material, as well as an explanation of the criteria used in preparing the edition. A bibliography lists the editions of the works attributed to Caro, studies and references relating to her work, and a select general bibliography of the comedia.

     The text itself is well presented, carefully footnoted, and followed by a listing of variants. The format is attractive and easy to read, particularly because the spelling has been modernized. This volume is impressive in the amount of documentation that accompanies both the introductory material and the text. It is gratifying to see that this heretofore unjustly ignored work by an outstanding woman playwright of the Golden Age is receiving the critical attention that it so well deserves.

     Martínez Blasco's edition of Alarcón's Quien mal anda en mal acaba, accompanied by his preliminary study, is an excellent addition to the corpus of scholarly work on Alarcón. In the introduction the editor points out that this play has been universally attributed to Alarcón, in spite of the fact that it did not appear in either of the two Partes of his work. Although it has received a great deal of praise and is considered by many critics to be one of Alarcón's best, this is the first critical edition based on its earliest text, an undated suelta published by Francisco de Leefdael in Seville.

     In addition to biographical material about Alarcón, the introductory matter includes a thorough study entitled «Inquisición y teatro», which treats the Inquisition in the comedia in general and the historical event on which this play is based. The basis for the plot is the trial by the Inquisition in Cuenca of the morisco Román Ramírez, citizen of Deza, who died in 1599 and whose bones were subsequently exhumed and burned in order to comply with the sentence handed down against him by the Inquisition after his death from natural causes. Martínez even includes a facsimile of the Latin text of the sentence from the Inquisition trial. He relates in great detail the genealogy of Román Ramírez, the situation of the moriscos in Deza (located in Castile) and the charges of witchcraft brought against Román. The editor also includes information not found in the comedia regarding Román's intellectual formation and his knowledge of medicine.

     The next section is devoted to a study of the play itself. A carefully elaborated plot summary is followed by an analysis of the versification and a comparison between it and other works of Alarcón, as well as an effort to establish the date of composition. Also included here is a bibliography of this particular play. There is no bibliography of other works of Alarcón nor of scholarly criticism about him. The text of the play, [285] modernized slightly when necessary, is presented in a very legible format, with notes that indicate the variations from the Hartzenbusch edition and the two subsequent editions, both of which were based on the Hartzenbusch version, which was published in Volume XX of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles.

     These two plays are presented in handsome volumes and provide easy access to texts that previously were difficult to find in scholarly editions. They are excellent contributions to the growing number of well edited Golden Age comedias.

     In her excellent introduction, Susan Kirkpatrick says that Rosa Chacel presents, a la James Joyce, a portrait of artists as young women. In the formation of one of the creative young girls, Chacel combines three representations of Ariadne, Elena's mother, the opera written by Ariadne's father, and a statue of that mythic figure. Thus, for the young adolescent, «the eroticism of mother-daughter love, the shaping power of the artistic idea, and the sexual mystery of her own origin are all profoundly intermingled in the figure of Ariadne» (x). In fact, Chacel believes that all artistic impulse originates in the erotic (xi). Later, Kirkpatrick shows that, while women's activity (e. g., knitting) is interconnective, creating non-rigid structures in Chacel's work, Chacel omits men's activity from the text by the use of ellipsis. Similarly, her own text is a knitting together of narrative voices, of the concrete and the abstract, of the «irreducibly personal and the expansively interpersonal» (xx-xxi).

     Démers has done an outstanding translation, especially considering Chacel's «dense and labyrinthine» style, to use Kirkpatrick's words. My major point of difference with Démers is my interpretation of the tone of the conversations between the young girls. While Démers chooses to include slang in their discussions, I rarely found occasions when such informal language was appropriate. «But Ariadne-wow!» (7) is not equivalent to «pero esta otra, ¡vamos!» The translator prefers expressions such as «she's got» rather than «she has» (71) and «this guy» for «éste» (217). Similarly, «I also got the devil from my mother» is a slang rendering of «mi madre me riñe» (72) in the wrong tense.

     On a few occasions, the translation changes the meaning considerably. For example, Isabel's mother did not admonish her to «do a good job» (2) when she went to visit Elena. The reader infers incorrectly that Isabel expected to work for Elena's grandmother: instead, Isabel was told to behave properly. Perhaps a cultural difference accounts for the rendering of merienda as «lunch» (79). «Tea» would have been more appropriate, as the expedition clearly occurs in the late afternoon. While Chacel's style uses long sentences with multiple parts, Démers often breaks the sentences into two shorter sentences. On at least one occasion (67), this confuses the reader: Is Juan Morano the scribe of the Ministry of Public Education or the person walking to meet that ministry employee? In another example, Isabel uses the metaphor of a revolving door to explain art's overwhelming effect: «hay que echarse a ella, entregarse a tiempo...» Démers expresses this as «You just have to push it and move fast», thus making the action active rather than passive (27). At times grammar errors are included: «And me like an idiot» (6), and «No one but him can know that» (217). The most glaring error of interpretation is that of Manuel's repeated shout «¡Me ha matado!» as «They've killed me!» (216). Manuel blames only his wife (or rather her death) for his own spiritual demise.

     Such errors are rare, however. The translator often adds welcome clarifications, identifying authors alluded to: for example, Quevedo and Maeterlinck. She even manages to retain the same rhyme scheme (ABABCC) in the poem by Morenas de Tejada (240). I agree with Kirkpatrick that Chacel's writing is «labyrinthine, but at the same time open-ended and dynamic» (xxii). Démers' translation captures both the complexity and the energy, while aptly expressing Chacel's ideas.

     Every adaptation of a literary text offers both a reading of the text and a dialectics of sorts between the original context and the time and place of the rewriting. Borges makes this point in «Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote», when [286] he argues that even an exact re-creation of Cervantes's novel will bear the inflection of different circumstances, as well as of different writing selves. When the adapter chooses a new medium of expression, the distance from the original and the intervention of a second hand become even more apparent. In this study, Barbara P. Esquival-Heinemann looks at opera libretti based on Don Quixote and written between 1680 and 1976. Her work shows the episodes and the modes that the librettists chose to emphasize, along with the interplay of imitation and invention that marks the creative process. Esquival-Heinemann opens with a brief consideration of opera as genre and then surveys the operatic adaptations of Don Quixote in Italy, Germany and Austria, France, England, and the Hispanic world. Three appendices provide a chronology of the Don Quixote operas, a chart of frequency in the use of specific episodes, and illustrations and pages from selected texts.

     Perhaps the major theme of «Don Quijote in Italy» is the relation of the novel to the development of the opera buffa, which derived in large part from the intermezzo (an interesting fact given Cervantes's cultivation of the entremés). German librettists produce the Singspiel, considered to be a counterpart of the opera buffa. Esquival-Heinemann notes that in the eighteenth century German critics saw Don Quixote as satire, while viewing Don Quixote himself in a somewhat more personal and serious vein. The symbolic view of the protagonist led to the transformation wrought by nineteenth-century Romanticism, as chronicled by Anthony Close and others. Opera composition in Germany reflects the movement toward a tragic vision of Don Quixote, but librettists also find room for comic treatment of the text.

     In contrast to the German libretti, interpretations of Don Quixote in France remain much the same in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, according to Esquival-Heinemann. French compositions during this period, which on occasion combine opera and ballet, tend to focus on the grotesque and the ridiculous qualities of the novel. An exception -significant for its place in the contemporary repertoire- is Massenet's Don Quichotte, which Esquival-Heinemann believes to be based on a poem by Henri Cain and a play by Jacques Le Lorrain (the librettist) rather than on Cervantes's novel. This opera attributes to Don Quixote the noble character that other French versions forsake in favor of humor. In England, as well, librettists generally emphasize the comic aspects of Don Quixote, and, fittingly, the role of Sancho Panza. Esquival sees in the operatic productions of the four centuries a mirror of the stages elaborated by Edwin B. Knowles: surface farce, serious satire, exploration of the spiritual implications of the text, and a balance of comic and serious elements, respectively. As in the case of other European countries, Don Quixote serves to inspire a new form of opera, namely, the ballad opera.

     Ironically, but understandably, Spain has produced few operatic versions of Don Quixote, due most likely to the reverence in which Cervantes's masterpiece is held in the Hispanic world. The premiere of the first and only Spanish opera based on the novel, Teodoro San José's comic opera Don Quijote y Sancho Panza, with libretto by Eduardo Barriobero y Herrán, took place in 1905.

     This particular sally should be of interest to Quixote scholars, notably with regard to generic diversity and to writing as rewriting. Questions of tone and frequency -the most popular episodes are Camacho's wedding, Sancho's governorship, and the stay at the ducal palace- affect not only the domain of opera but reception of the novel in comprehensive terms. One could argue a bit about balance, about missed opportunities to deal with theories of genre, or about the exclusion of the United States (and its own unique form, the musical comedy, which gave us perhaps the most commercially successful of all adaptations of the Quixote). Nonetheless, it is important to recognize the tremendous amount of research that went into this project and the usefulness of the data collected. The commentary is clearly written, well organized, and enjoyable to read. E. C. Riley's contention that Don Quixote as icon often supersedes Don Quixote as literary figure helps to explain the multiple variations on quixotic themes that enrich and expand upon Cervantes's novel.

Edward H. Friedman

Indiana University