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 HispaniaVolume 71, Number 1, March 1988
[Indicaciones de paginación en nota1.] —[2]→
The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc.
Hispania, the official journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc., is published in the months of March, May, September, and December. Known office of publication: AATSP, Mississippi State University, P.O. Box 6349, Mississippi State, MS 39762-6349. Second-class postage paid at Mississippi State, MS and at additional mailing offices. Publication number 246360. Postmaster: Send address changes to Hispania, AATSP, Mississippi State University, P.O. Box 6349, Mississippi State, MS 39762-6349. Subscription to Hispania is part of the membership in the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc., $25.00 a year for individuals, $37.50 for husband-wife, and $12.50 for students for a maximum of three years. Membership is open to all persons interested in Spanish or Portuguese or their respective literatures and cultures. Library and institutional subscriptions, $25.00 a year. All subscriptions are due and payable in advance. Requests for sample copies should be addressed to the Executive Director of the Association, James R. Chatham, Mississippi State University, Lee Hall 218, P.O. Box 6349, Mississippi State, MS 39762-6349. Editorial communications and manuscripts for publication should be addressed to the Editor, Professor Theodore A. Sackett, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0358. See the Editorial Board page for our policy. Books for review should be addressed to the Book Review Editor, Professor Janet Pérez, Associate Dean, Graduate School, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409. All communications regarding advertising are to be addressed to the Advertising Manager, Professor Ronald R. Young, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182. Instructions for preparation of camera-ready art and advertising rates may be acquired by writing Prof. Young. The Executive Director should be notified promptly of all changes of address. —[3]→
Hispania
Editorial Policy Hispania (ISSN 0018-2133) publishes critical studies and occasional annotated bibliographies on the literatures and languages of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America as well as papers concerned with the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese. Interdisciplinary and comparative papers will also be considered. Papers in literature and linguistics may employ a traditional approach or a more recent critical methodology. We do not publish such material as poetry, short stories, general essays, travel accounts and translations. Articles, notes for the several Departments and book reviews (solicited by the book review editor) may be written in English, Spanish or Portuguese and should be of interest and value to the readers of Hispania. The first page of each Department provides information on the kinds of materials included therein and the name and address of the person in charge. Only members of the Association may submit papers. In all cases, manuscripts must follow the MLA Style Manual (1985). Manuscripts submitted for consideration in the section on Language & Literature should be at least 12 pages long, excluding notes, and not more than 30 pages, including notes. Bibliographies must not exceed 80 double-spaced manuscript pages. Send the original together with a photocopy. Authors must include return postage in loose stamps or international reply coupons, in the case of papers sent from abroad, and provide a self-addressed return envelope. All submissions will be reviewed by the Editorial Board with names of authors removed from the manuscripts. —[4-6]→ —[7]→
Articles Forthcoming in May 1988
Section 1 Emilia Pardo Bazán and La Tentation de Saint Antoine, Or the Countess and the Chimera Francisca González Arias Literary Re-creation, the Creation of Readership and Valle -Inclán's La lámpara maravillosa Carol S. Maier Valle-Inclán's «La Generala»: Woman as Birdbrain Catherine Nickel Voice and Performance in the Civil War Poetry of León Felipe: «El hacha» Salvador J. Fajardo Desconstrucción paródica en Paisajes después de la batalla de Juan Goytisolo Genaro J. Pérez Vargas Llosa's Kathie y el hipopótamo: The Theatre as a Self-Conscious Deception Jacqueline Eyring Bixler La realidad desfamiliarizada en la poesía de Ramón López Velarde Stella T. Clark A Bibliographic Approach to the Study of Latin American Women Poets Catherine R. Perricone Section 3 An Interpretation of the Synchronic Status and Evolution of g in Spanish salgo, valgo, etc. Mark J. Elson Clitic Usage in New York and the Caribbean Diane Ringer Uber The Distribution and Use of Present Perfect and Past Perfect Forms in American Spanish: An Analysis of Recent Scholarship Maurice Westmoreland Attitude Toward Use of Spanish on the South Texas Border Hugo A. Mejías and Pamela L. Anderson Sciencepoetry and Language/Culture Teaching James V. Romano The Folk Music of Costa Rica: A Teaching Perspective Robert J. Griffin —[8]→ Raymond Conlon Saint Peter's College, New Jersey «Every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization» (Freud 6). The inherent antagonism between biological man and organized society, to which Freud refers here, is an important and pervasive theme in El vergonzoso en palacio. The play demonstrates that the sexual impulse is a powerful and entropic force, by its very nature hostile to a social structure based on hierarchy and defined obligations. Without direction or control it drives men and women to ignore their roles and places in society. Men cease to be responsible to their peers, to their masters, even to their king, frequently they surrender their dominance over women. Women, in turn, refuse to be passive or virginal, often becoming aggressive and controlling suitors, sometimes ending up deflowered outcasts. After dramatizing the chaotic potential of sexual passion and showing why, in Freud's terms, «civilization has to be defended against the individual» through its «regulations [and] institutions» (6), Tirso's play demonstrates how society, through the particular institution of marriage, prevails over this force. To appreciate the achievement of El vergonzoso en palacio, we must first realize that it is not just another rendering of the theme of the dangers of sexual passion, a motif that dates back to the Iliad and reoccurs in works as different as Phaedra and Antony and Cleopatra. Rather, it is an exposition of how the sexual impulse presents an especially grievous peril to a specific type of social structure, an aristocratic, patriarchal one. El vergonzoso en palacio is also unusual for its frank treatment of marriage, presenting it as a selfpreserving instrument of the aristocracy. Marriage triumphs over unlicensed sexuality, moreover, not because of its sacramental character or moral superiority, but because it exploits the desire for economic well-being and a privileged place in the existing social order2. The natural indifference of sexual desire to social expectations, including those of gentlemanly comportment, make it a particularly mischievous force in the noble society of El vergonzoso en palacio. The actions of Don Antonio, Conde de Penela, dramatize how the sexual appeal of a woman can drive even aristocratic men to indecorous, insubordinate, and even humiliating behavior. Don Antonio's passion for Serafina, the younger daughter of the Duke of Avero, prompts him to commit one deception after another, to abdicate one social responsibility after another. He comes to Avero to determine «a costa de algún rodeo... si miente la fama / que ofrece el lugar primero / de la hermosura de España / a las hijas del de Avero» (1. 802-06). After seeing Serafina just once from a distance, he decides to disobey the command of his monarch to return to him. He prefers to «caer en falta recelo con el rey ... que [lo] ama / y hace merced» (1. 814, 800-01) than leave Avero and be away from Serafina. His desire for her has supplanted all previous loyalties:
His passionate need to be close to Serafina not only compels him to violate the bond between subject and king but also the tie between nobles, by his hoodwinking of the Duke of Avero. Don Antonio sends the Duke a fraudulent letter introducing the bearer, himself, as his own secretary. Through this sham he succeeds in abasing himself socially, becoming Serafina's secretary. The degrading —9→ character of this stratagem is pointed out to him by his cousin, Juana, who observes that «la traza es ... indecente, / primo, a tu calidad» (2. 400-01). He even sinks to the level of a Peeping Tom, hiding in Serafina's garden to spy on her. The reward for his self-degradation is Serafina's contempt. After learning of his passion-impelled chicanery, she reacts with understandable disgust: «Yo os aborrezco ... la mayor pena / que me puede afligir es vuestra vista» (3. 757-59). Even his sexual attainment of Serafina is really a humiliation. It, too, is achieved through an impersonation: she believes she is sleeping with someone else. Abdications of responsibility and social improprieties are not peculiar to Don Antonio's amorous pursuit. In fact, El vergonzoso en palacio demonstrates repeatedly that sexual adventures sooner or later always entail violations of the social order. Even an apparently simple seduction, like Don Duarte's of Leonela, can tear the social fabric, rending it in as many places as Don Antonio's devious and elaborate sexual scheming. Both men employ deception to attain their sexual ends. Don Duarte's insincere offer to marry Leonela is a more serious threat to social cohesion than Don Antonio's simple bed trick, however, because it represents an assault on marriage itself. Passion also drives Don Duarte -as it did Don Antonio- to violate the bonds between social equals by his deception of the Duke of Avero, to whom he feigns ignorance of the plot against his, Don Duarte's, life. If passion causes Don Antonio to slide socially from nobleman to secretary, it provokes Don Duarte to fall so precipitously and dramatically that his behavior begins to resemble that of a peasant, Tarso, the lacayo of Mireno. The course of the two men with their mistresses is the same: sexual enjoyment (before the play begins), abandonment, and, at the end of the play, marriage. Both are completely insensitive to their women. There is just a small step between Don Duarte's «engañé la hermosura de Leonela ... y, alcanzada, despreciéla» (1. 117-18) and Tarso's taunting «Melisa ... cuanto más por mí llora, / más me muero yo de risa» (1. 319, 321-22). Instead of feeling compassion for the women they have shunned, Don Duarte and Tarso harbor a dread that Leonela and Melisa may hatch some scheme to avenge their humiliations. Don Duarte's anxiety about «la mujeril venganza de Leonela» (1. 172) finds an echo in Tarso's fear of «alguna burla» (1. 312) of Melisa. Finally, it should be observed that both men inflict this suffering without any apparent, certainly legitimate, motive. They simply leave Leonela and Melisa because they have got from them what they wanted. The threat to aristocratic society the resemblance between Don Duarte and Tarso implies cannot be exaggerated. It suggests that class differences are not intrinsic and, therefore, not fixed. If given the particular stimulus of sexual passion, nobles can behave as peasants, why, it asks, given some other stimulus, could not peasants behave as nobles? Seductions like Don Duarte's also prove perilous to social order because they produce a ripple effect involving other people, who are two, three, even four steps removed from the actual sexual experience. Leonela's seduction, for example, stirs her brother, the otherwise loyal and honorable Ruy Lorenzo to hatch a scheme involving forgery, attempted murder, and the near death of his master, the Duke of Avero. To murder Don Duarte, Ruy Lorenzo hires a youth who, in turn, betrays their agreement. Significantly, the would-be assassin reveals the plot not because of money or fear but sexual passion:
El vergonzoso en palacio seems to suggest that sexual passion -at least outside of marriage- is often corrupting and sometimes even degrading. Degradation can take various forms. It may make a man duplicitous and treacherous, as with Don Duarte and Don Antonio, or, as in the case of Mireno, it may erode his dignity and virility. Passion metamorphosizes this character from an adventurous youth into a near figure of fun3. At the start of the play he is a paragon of courage, daring, and self-confidence. Sensing that he is above the humble pastoral life he has grown up in, he sets out to find «lo que [su] estrella destina, / que a cosas grandes [lo] inclina» (1. 396-97). His courage in protecting Ruy Lorenzo by exchanging clothing with him prompts the fugitive to declare, «¡Oh, noble —10→ pecho, que entre paños bastos / descubre el valor mayor que he visto!» (1. 539-40). When Mireno fearlessly refuses to betray Ruy Lorenzo to the Duke, Madalena exclaims in an aside:
From the moment that Madalena shows some interest in this daring fellow, however, he flounders in a state of amorous humiliation, perpetually bemused and frustrated. Passion so discomfits him that at one point he repudiates his lofty ambitions:
The paradoxical consequence of his sexual desire for Madalena is that he is unmanned. Waiting for the bolder, stronger partner to proffer love, to initiate sexuality, Mireno assumes the traditional female role in courtship. The reversal of gender roles is so obvious that Tarso must ask his master: «¿Esperas que la mujer / haga el oficio de hombre?» (3. 295-96) and reminds him that in every «especie de animales ... es la hembra festejada, / perseguida y paseada / con amorosas señales» (3. 297-300). Mireno's reversal of sexual roles -a man behaving as a woman- like Don Duarte's reversal of social roles -a noble behaving as a peasant- represents a fundamental challenge to the society. It demonstrates that sexual roles -like social ones- are contingent upon circumstance and thus alterable. Ultimately, it articulates an unspeakable truth in a society which holds that there is a divinely ordained «orden sabio ... que puso natureleza» (3. 303-04) -that either sex can behave in a «masculine» or «feminine» fashion, either one be aggressive or passive, the pursuer or the pursued. The male characters of El vergonzoso en palacio are by no means the only victims of sexual passion. As the emotional evolution of Madalena and Serafina demonstrates, the need for sexual expression consumes the female spirit with as searing and as uncontrollable a flame as the male4. At first Madalena is so immune to passion's sting that she is quite content to let her father select a husband for her. In fact, her only concern in the enterprise is that the man please her parent. Though also inexperienced in passion, Serafina has a more complex attitude toward the impulse, ranging from near hostility («No me ha dado ... ese accidente» [2. 949-50]) to supercilious detachment («¿Es posible que sujetos / a tan rabiosos efetos / estén los pobres amantes?» [3. 799-801]). When erotic passion strikes, however, the two sisters feel it as strongly as Don Antonio. Like the Conde de Penela, Madalena is overwhelmed by passion after only one meeting with her future lover. She views love as a form of insanity:
This alien force which has taken over her spirit so alarms her that she must resort to casuistry to continue enjoying it:
Serafina also falls in love at first sight. The object of her passion is not a man, however, but a figure in a portrait, which she takes to be Don Dionís but is really herself in male dress. The condescending pity for «los pobres amantes» she evinces immediately before looking at the portrait changes, eighty lines later, after looking at it, to a burning desire to know the identity of the figure: «Diera / cualquier precio de interés,» she cries out, «por sólo saber quién es» (3. 878-80). When she thinks she knows, she tries to seek him out and invite him to sleep with her. Because Serafina's love object is merely an image and a misleading one at that -her instantaneous transformation from passion's master to its servant suggests that the erotic impulse is not only a powerful force but an utterly irrational one which can drive the lover to dangerous and humiliating actions. Passion, the experience of Madalena and Serafina demonstrates, touches some basic vulnerability in a woman. Though she may be as outwardly hard as a diamond, there runs through her body and spirit a vein of feeling which, if tapped, splinters her shell, leaving her core exposed. How vulnerable women are —11→ becomes clear when we see just how slight a tap can crumble their resistance. Two scenes particularly illustrate how apparently innocuous stimuli can rouse the sleeping giant of sexual passion in women. Once awakened, its power grows greater and greater as it feeds on long-repressed unconscious impulses, finally consuming the body and spirit that had housed it. In one scene Serafina is rehearsing before her lady-in-waiting a particularly passionate portion of a play for Carnestolendas. Acting the role of a jealous man, and dressed for the part, she loses control of herself and attacks Juana, both sexually, kissing her, and violently, hitting her. Clearly, enacted sexual passion has triggered real sexual passion. Just as unconscious sexuality rushes to the surface and dominates Serafina's actions, so, in an especially revealing scene, it will dominate Madalena's speech. At a point of intense frustration with Mireno's diffidence, she loses control over her speech, and it assumes a transparently phallic character. Ostensibly demanding a sharpened quill, she screeches, «¡Qué amigo que sois de corto! / Largos los pido ... ¡Siempre me la dais con pelo!» (3. 1142-43; 1152)5. The sisters themselves perceive the threat such powerful emotions represent. Both realize that passion has made them vulnerable. Madalena, we may recall, identifies this feeling as «locura»; and Serafina chides herself for this «flaqueza». Almost as soon as they discover this debility within them they know it will put an end to their lives of respectability and virginity. Both bid adieu to their honor, as Madalena cries, «honor, huir» (2. 246), and Serafina, «nota de mi fama doy» (3. 1239) ... «no sois la que solía» (3. 1054). When erotic passion seizes control of women's spirits, their ties to men and to society are fundamentally altered. They become both more aggressive and more autonomous. As we have seen, before Madalena meets Mireno she has only one criterion for a prospective husband: He must please her father. In the choice of her husband, and thus her whole sexual life, she considers her father to be her master. She announces her servility in these words:
After meeting Mireno, however, and deciding that she must have him near her, she begins deceiving her father, claiming to need the young man for a tutor. Eventually passion emboldens both sisters to view the husbands their father has selected for them in a negative light. Madalena begins to struggle with «el sí ... a mi padre di» (2. 17, 16)6, and Serafina wonders if her father's choice, Don Duarte, «podrá caber ... en [su] voluntad» (3. 1049, 1048). The sisters effectively nullify their father's selections of husbands by their sexual invitations to «Don Dionís». Serafina explicitly states that she has asked Don Dionís to sleep with her to avoid marrying Don Duarte: «mas si lo dilato hoy / me casa el duque mañana» (3. 1240-41). She is also explicit about the triumph of passion over obligations to parent and society. At the moment «Don Dionís» enters her apartment to carry out their assignation, she exclaims:
The fact that the sisters actively seek out and invite the men to whom they grant -not surrender- their virginity signals a basic change in their relationships with all men and to the rules of male-dominated society. They have become sexual aggressors who claim their right -and by extension, woman's right- to seek sexual satisfaction from men. While erotic passion drives women to reverse the conventional dominant-passive relationship between men and women, its illicit expression can also make them more socially vulnerable, as in the case of Leonela and Melisa. The anguish and anger such women feel is articulated by Melisa's uncomprehending ejaculation at Tarso's rejection of her, «en efeto / hombre, que es decir olvido» (1. 21920). The humiliation of disenfranchised and dishonored women and their families inevitably creates serious social frictions. These frictions can flame into violence, as we can see from the behavior of Ruy Lorenzo and the anxieties of Don Duarte and Tarso about «mujeriles venganzas» and «burlas». The behavior of Madalena, Serafina and Leonela makes clear that women are basically biological creatures, sexual ones. In effect, this means that there is an organic tension between women as they are and women as they are supposed to be. The tension between —12→ the conflicting claims of nature and society is forcefully expressed by the gracioso Vasco. In a speech which denies the claim that Leonela was raped, he likens female sexuality to a succulent fruit:
Despite her capacity to have and provide sexual pleasure, however, a woman must not allow a man to eat of this fruit; instead she must «guardar sus pertenencias de peligros nocturnos» (1. 481-82). The legal metaphors describing her role as sexual restrainer remind us of the unstated assumption behind the expectation of woman's virginity. A woman's capacity for sexual expression is an internal property belonging not to the woman but, because of society's need to control sexuality, to the community, and she merely its caretaker. The problem for society, as we have seen, is that men find irresistible the «uvas» of the female «viña» and women are poor caretakers of the property entrusted them. Society cannot tolerate the pursuit of the individual woman or man seeking momentary pleasure, unconcerned with the immediate or future ramifications of his or her actions. Unless social order is to surrender to anarchic impulse, sexual desire must be controlled and channeled. Since men cannot resist women and women refuse to guard their honor, there is only one solution: marriage. Marriage is the paradoxical condition where sexuality is expressed and controlled at the same time. Its stability is a function of the conversion of women's virtue into man's «pertenencia». The marriages at the end of El vergonzoso en palacio signal the triumph of social stability over personal desire. The victory of society over the passions of its individual members is symbolized by the irrelevant role of sexual desire in these couplings. Don Duarte, Serafina, Madalena, Don Antonio, Tarso and Melisa must marry their sexual partners, regardless of their feelings toward them. That Madalena loves Mireno, Serafina loathes Don Antonio, and Don Duarte has ignored Leonela throughout the play, is irrelevant. If all loved their spouses to be or none did there would be no difference, for the function of marriage is not to make people happy but to integrate into a controlled social context the chaos -producing power of sexuality. Why the social must triumph over the sexual, why characters marry other characters for whom they have no desire is implied by the final parallel between Don Duarte and his secret sharer, Tarso. Both agree to marry the women they have rejected, fled, and ignored. For the final time, Tarso's behavior conditions our view of the Count's. Don Duarte's conscience-stricken impulse to «cumplir / la palabra que le he dado ... a Leonela» (3. 1618, 1617) is put into perspective by Tarso's motives for marrying Melisa. He is moved out of fear (the Duke's command) and self-interest (the Duke's bribe of three thousand ducats and a post). Just as Tarso must marry to find a better place for himself in the social order, so Don Duarte-Serafina, Madalena and all the other nobles -must marry to maintain the places they already have and, ultimately, to perpetuate a social system which grants them privileged places7. Clearly, then, a major focus of El vergonzoso en palacio is the process by which society prevails over a powerful tension within it by absorbing it, and, in doing so, neutralizing it. This process exists not because it is morally right but because it is necessary. It is necessary because men's sexual passion is unstable: men desire then fear women; men desire then hate women. It is necessary because man's sexual need for woman makes him undependable and unpredictable, turning brave men like Mireno into meek ones, noble men like Don Antonio into petty ones, cruel but reliable ones like the hired killer into sentimental and unreliable ones. It is necessary because passion makes nobles behave as secretaries and peasants, men as women, and women as men, revealing the fact that such behavior is learned and not intrinsic to a particular class or sex. The message of El vergonzoso en palacio is that society can continue in its present form only if the sexually inspired impulses and feelings of men and women can be circumscribed. Marriage, as we see at the finale of the play, retrospectively achieves this end by making these changes appear to be merely part of a stage in a social process. Marriage trivializes the feelings associated with sexual desire —13→ -anger, lust, even love- by making them merely a small part of a larger, more important social structure.
WORKS CITED Ayala, Francisco. «Erotismo y juego teatral en Tirso». Ínsula 214 (Sept. 1964): 1, 7. Casalduero, Joaquín. «Sentido y forma de El vergonzoso en palacio». Estudios sobre el teatro español. 3rd ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1971. 96-121. Cordon, Raymond. «Female Psychosexuality in Tirso's El vergonzoso en palacio». Bulletin of the Comediantes 37.1 (1985): 55-69. Darst, David. The Comic Art of Tirso de Molina. Estudios de Hispanófila 28. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina, 1974. Fornoff, Frederick H. «Symbolic Action in Tirso's El vergonzoso en palacio». Revista Hispánica Moderna 39 (1976-77): 39-48. Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1961. Vol. 21 of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 23 vols. 1927-31. Ruiz Ramón, Francisco. Historia del teatro español. Madrid: Gredos. 1966. Sullivan, Henry W. «Love, Matrimony and Desire in the Theatre of Tirso de Molina». Bulletin of the Comediantes 37.1 (1985): 83-9. Tirso de Molina. El vergonzoso en palacio. Ed. Everett W. Hesse. Madrid: Cátedra, 1976. ter Horst, Robert. «Experienced Innocence in Tirso's El vergonzoso en palacio». Kentucky Romance Quarterly 25 (1978): 129-43.
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