NARRATING THE NATIONAL IDENTITY: MYTH, POWER, AND DISSIDENCE

While an overwhelming amount of critical commentary has been published on the role of the male figure (father, husband or brother) as purveyor of female chastity in early modern Spanish society and texts, to my knowledge no study has documented the role women play in this endeavor. Zayas’s play, La traición en la amistad,^[1] is illuminating in this regard, for it centers on the conversation of the female protagonists as the medium for the governance of amorous desires and conflict. In place of the cloistering of the female within the patriarchal dwelling, the prototypical scenario of Golden Age theater, in La traición en la amistad, we have the absence of the male figure and of the parents in general. The authority figure appears instead in the guise of the female friend.

In what follows, I would like to explore the notion of female friendship in Zayas’s play as a reflection of a socio-historical entity, that of female community, and its function as an exertion of influence both in the moral instruction of women and in the vigilance of female honor. I will be suggesting that the female community was an entity of social control that worked to bring young women’s conduct into alignment with social and moral norms, and to negotiate women’s social position and agency within a variety of gender conflicts and social contexts. First, then, and before analyzing Zayas’s work, a review of the documentation on the presence and influence of peer organizations within the early modern European context.

The studies of historians and cultural critics, based on the perusal of legal documents of the time, such as Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti’s “Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction,” Natalie Zemon Davis’s “The Reasons of Misrule” and “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion,” S. T. Freeman’s “Neighbors: The Social Contract in a Castilian Hamlet,” and E. L. Peters’s “Aspects of the Control of Moral Ambiguities: A Comparative Analysis of Two Culturally Disparate Modes of Social Control” point to a pervasive presence of youth groups in early Modern Europe.^[2]These groups were divided by gender and functioned in a variety of social situations, the most notable being that of conflict in marital and pre-marital relationships. Cavallo and Cerutti conclude in their path-finding study that while the male guardian or both parents exerted influence over a young couple in the formalized stage of the relationship, in the premarital phases, parents were notably absent. This was particularly true for couples pertaining to the upper and middle classes. In this phase, the family did not actively exercise a protective function towards the couple’s honor, but instead delegated to other individuals the responsibility for following the relationship’s evolution. Peers ostensibly provided the milieu in which relationships began. Female youth groups, with less geographical mobility than males, would often meet within each other’s houses or in neighborhood meeting areas, such as parks or plazas (83-84).

According to Cavallo and Cerutti’s documentation, peers were present in the meetings of young lovers, witnesses to their expressions of affection, and often responsible for carrying gifts and messages (84-85). In the case of broken promises made to a young woman, female peers provided legal testimony in support of her allegations. United in their varying and sometimes simultaneous roles as neighbors, relatives and friends, women were effective in their exertion of peer control due to their continuous proximity. The female peer community performed both a preventive and a protective function, assessing conduct and transmitting messages of rebuke when faced with the deviance of the male suitor or husband. The form of control was of various types. Less frequent was the verbal exchange of information, categorized as “gossip” or bad-mouthing, which could often put immoral conduct into the public domain. More common among female peers, however, were the secret forms of solidarity: counsel, advice, encouragement, and emotional or moral support. These exchanges were internal and contained to the group, but had a decisive impact on the individual woman’s experiences (87-89).

The operation of female youth groups is clearly visible in Zayas’s play. While functioning secretly in the various amorous conflicts of the play, the peer group is ultimately instrumental in bringing conflict to resolution in a manner that has significant effects on the female protagonists’ position within the public domain. The play opens with two central conflicts involving female rivalry. In the central conflict, the protagonists Fenisa, Marcia, and Laura compete for Liseo. Two conflicts arise as offshoots of this one, again involving Fenisa and Marcia. Marcia creates a rivalry between Liseo, to whom she becomes attracted at the opening of the play, and Gerardo, a gentleman who has courted her for seven years. For her part, Fenisa is attracted simultaneously to Gerardo, and causes a potential rivalry with Marcia when the latter ultimately decides to return to him. The secondary amorous triangle that develops is constituted by Belisa, Marcia’s cousin, and Fenisa, who both compete for the affections of Don Juan. Varying degrees of constancy and fickleness are reflected by the young women, ranging from Belisa’s steadfastness to Fenisa’s unrestrained venting of desire, as evidenced by her simultaneous participation in the three amorous conflicts. From the outset, the plot action obliges the spectator to view as problematic and open to exploration the female’s position vis-a-vis the social code. The plot action asks the spectator to ponder if a woman should act on or repress her desires in order to conform to societal norms governing female virtue, and to consider what negative consequences might result when a woman engages freely and openly with her desires, both for herself and for other women.^[3]

Through a series of conversations that develop around amorous conflict involving the four leading women who are linked by family ties or friendship, Zayas leads the spectator to identify morally and emotionally with Laura, Marcia and Belisa and to reject Fenisa by engaging the spectator with the process of peer support represented by the first group, and by disengaging with Fenisa, the false peer adviser. The first act opens with Marcia’s confession to her friend Fenisa that she no longer wishes to maintain her relationship with Gerardo. She is drawn to Liseo, a man whom she encountered for the first time at the Prado the day before. When he set his eyes on her, he infused her soul with love:

Puso los ojos en mí

y en ellos mismos me invía

aquel veneno que dicen

que se bebe por la vista. (277)

Fenisa responds by counseling her to suppress her passion and return to Gerardo, not with the aim of protecting her honor, but of insuring her own preeminance as rival for Liseo. Her falsity is evidenced in the following response which begins with an apart:

Yo le vi, por mi desdicha,

pues he visto con mirarle

el fin de mi triste vida.

Digo, Marcia, que es galán;

más cuando pensé que habías

hecho a Gerardo tu dueño...

¿Olvidas lo que te estima?

¿No estimas lo que te adora,

siendo obligación? (278)

Fenisa engages in false mentoring twice more in this act. On the first occasion she asks Don Juan about Liseo’s social standing, giving to believe that she has been enlisted to carry out this task by her friend Marcia. In an apart, however, she reveals her self-interest:

triste de mí, si supieras

que este Liseo me mata;

mas amor manda que calle;

disimular quiero. (280)

After a brief attempt to cover up her true intentions for her inquiries, she falsely plays the role of mediator:

...quíseme informarme de ti

si es noble, porque discreto

y galán, ella me ha dicho

que es de aquesta corte espejo. (280)

Fenisa acts in the guise of mentor once again in the house of Liseo, where she arrives apparently as messenger to deliver a letter on behalf of Marcia. Instead, she gives him a note in which she professes her own desire.

Belisa’s interventions are opposed within the dramatic action to Fenisa’s dissembling. Belisa is the voice of reason. In her interchange with Marcia, she begs her to return to Gerardo, echoing Fenisa’s words but not her intent. She further takes Gerardo aside, advising him not to become disheartened. She will work to support their relationship in spite of Marcia’s resistance:

Aquí estaba, y roguéla

que tu pasión mirase,

más cruel perservera;

más no es justo desmayes,

que, aunque más me aborrezca,

he de hacer vuestras partes;

tened, señor, paciencia.” (284)

While it is not until the end of act 1 that Laura is introduced, resolution for her conflict receives immediate attention by the female community at the opening of act 2. Her desperate social situation should Liseo refuse to fulfill his promise to marry her reflects a prototypical social plight shared by the female community as reflected in Golden Age texts (Stroud 541). Upon narrating to Belisa and Marcia Liseo’s seduction and abandonment of her, Laura reveals that she has come not only driven by her own despair and desire of social restitution, but also to warn Marcia that she too is being deceived by Liseo. The young man is simultaneously courting Fenisa. In the light of Laura’s articulation of her misplaced faith in her lover’s promises, Marcia is now able to understand and come to terms with her internal conflict between social duty and passion, and the repercussions of sexual misrule. It is in the sharing of experiences through dialogue that Marcia is able to assume social responsibility and act reciprocally on behalf of Laura, immediately brainstorming a ruse to restore Laura to her rightful position as marriage partner.^[4]

The rivalry between Belisa and Fenisa is the next conflict to be resolved, and this is morally justifiable due to the fact that Fenisa is the female character that least needs mentoring in how to conduct herself successfully through romantic conflict. She is able to redirect her commitment to Don Juan when he confesses to Belisa his realization of the error of his misguided desires:

¡Aguarda, señora mía,

fénix, cielo, primavera,

cuando abril sus campos pisa;

accidente fue el querer

a ese mujer; mi desdicha

me obligó a tales locuras,

mas ya el alma arrepentida,

a ti, que es su centro,vuelve! (290)

As secondary characters involved tangentially in the central amorous rivalry, Belisa and Don Juan illuminate through opposition the nature of the main characters Liseo, Fenisa, and Marcia. Unlike Marcia who oscillates between passion and duty, and unlike Fenisa, who is driven solely by her passions, Belisa is guided by reason and constancy, and is thus able to function as an authentic mentor. For his part, Don Juan contrasts with Liseo because he only momentarily becomes dominated by his passions and then repentant, quickly attends to social responsibility.

Gerardo functions analogously as foil for Liseo inasmuch as his display of constancy reveals that he does not require either counsel or rebuke when he in turn becomes subject to Fenisa’s seductions. Thus, when Gerardo visits Fenisa in order to seek counsel on how to regain Marcia’s affections, and she declares her desire for him, he rejects her. The potential rivalry between Fenisa and Marcia for Gerardo is thwarted. The loyalty displayed by Gerardo provides the possibility for his reconciliation with Marcia in the next scene. Marcia now reveals her transformation to Belisa, the direct result of her conversations with her and Laura. She confesses that she has come to appreciate Gerardo’s steadfastness in light of the habitual betrayals observable in her time, and enjoins Belisa to seek Gerardo on her behalf, a request that Belisa and Laura praise.

While the way is now paved for Gerardo and Marcia’s relationship to be restored and legally validated, the last scene of act 2 presents the biggest obstacle to the young lovers: Fenisa’s unwillingness to give up as rival and her resistance to the instruction of her peers. While Marcia, Belisa, and Laura act collectively and behind the scenes, employing various means to negotiate their amorous relationships as messengers, mediators, confidantes, compassionate observers, and strategists, Fenisa operates alone and within the public domain, responding to male seduction by turning the seductive trick back onto the trickster. In this manner Zayas is able to represent simultaneously both the beneficial effects of the contained peer community and the harmful ones resulting from women’s individual negotiations within the public sphere.

The ensuing action now hinges on the problem of how the peer community can exert social control over Fenisa. On the strategy to be employed, the female and male group stand divided. Don Juan resorts to violence. The young man had fortuitously witnessed an amorous meeting first between Fenisa and Lauro, and then between Fenisa and Liseo. Upon confronting her and realizing that she pretended to perpetuate the deceit, he first considered stabbing her, but ends up slapping her across the cheek instead. When retelling the tale to Belisa, the emerging key mentor in the play, the young woman objects to Don Juan’s means of control. No woman should be physically mistreated. Women’s errors are due to ignorance, not malevolence:

¿Es posible que esto has hecho?

es mujer al fin; me pesa;

que no hiciera estas locuras,

mi don Juan, si se entendiera.

Instead, Belisa advises ostracism of the female deviant from the group: ...”a las mujeres de prendas/les basta para castigo/no hacer, don Juan, caso de ellas” (296). This exchange highlights the fact that as Fenisa’s disloyal acts accrue, the responses of the group of female friends shift from cautionary discourse to the implementation of judgment and punishment. The range of their reactions reveals that community control does not demand a rigid code of behavior which if transgressed would require sanctions, as the more institutionalized forms of social control might. Instead, the female peer group demonstrates tolerance up to a point towards its members’ behavior suspect behavior, leaving open what Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti refer to as “the threshold of dishonor” (87). But when the limit of tolerance is reached in a given context, the group metes out sanctions, publicly expressed through ridicule, the refusal of a greeting, the exclusion from social events and ostracism (87).

Fenisa is finally eliminated as rival at the end of act 3 due to the effectiveness of Marcia and Belisa’s ruse. Liseo willingly signs a paper promising to marry Laura, believing he is promising to marry Marcia. Once undeceived, he is legally compelled to comply. All of the amorous conflicts now resolved, with the promise of social integration for Laura, Marcia, and Belisa through the marriage ties, the play comes to an end with only Fenisa remaining outside of the social sphere, unheeding of female counsel.

The dramatic tension of the play is thus played out between the individualistic desires of the antagonist on the one hand, which are subsumed and contained through the expulsion of Fenisa from the social circle, and the consensual, communal, and conversational techniques of the peer group, Laura, Marcia, and Belisa on the other. The exemplary female models are multiple, relation-oriented, and ultimately integrated into the larger social community. The spectator becomes engaged with the communal model as she is invited to peer into the intimate circle of the group, and respond to its values, those of reason and good counsel. In terms of the fulfillment of communal values, the culminating point in the play is not when the spectator hears of that initial penetrating gaze of desire that anaesthetizes Marcia’s will at the opening of the play, but the moment in which she exerts control over her own passions.^[5]In a calculated, reflective and rational gesture, Marcia pushes Liseo out of her soul and Gerardo back in. She confides her actions to Belisa, the very person she has come to emulate:

ya como amor su lance había hecho

en mi alma en Liseo transformada,

conociendo su engaño, en lugar suyo

aposento a Gerardo, y tiene

el lugar que merece acá en mi idea.

(295)

Marcia forfeits desire to the demands of society. Her gesture is ostensibly conservative, since by relinquishing her passions, she submits to the ideological ends prescribed by her culture for the social control of women. In other words, she internalizes the very mechanisms of control that subject her, those that demand the suppression of the body and of the passions, as she becomes socially integrated by means of the marriage bonds. Contradictorily and simultaneously, however, she resists becoming her culture’s accomplice and instrument of women’s subjectification. She does so by exercising her rational faculties to regulate her own desires, faculties of which women were said to be devoid by their very nature. In addition, she also seeks out regulation from a female peer group rather than the influence of a male authority figures. In both instances, she becomes the agent and regulator of her own desires.^[6]

Zayas’s vision of interpersonal female relations was, judging from the conduct books published at the time and prevailing female behavior, reflective of a crisis in gender norms that was underway in early modern Spanish culture. The moralists’ objections to women’s presence in society on the grounds that they were essentially weak in their moral makeup and reasoning capacity and would thus become depraved in the public domain were particularly virulent in Zayas’s time.Their commentaries on the ideal roles of women in their various civil statuses were intended to thwart at its inception what Mariló Vigil refers to as a ‘group consciousness’ among urban women of the aristocratic and middle classes, who were resisting social norms by leaving their homes to enjoy more communal-oriented activities not included as part of the acceptable excursions to attend mass, saintly devotions and religious festivals. Although still restricted, women did organize meals and soirées in private homes, attend theatrical functions, and enjoy afternoon strolls (Vigil 156–71).

The conduct books posited collectively an ideological plan, an aristocratic vision of the world that defended a rigid social order based on class and gender (Vigil 15, 31 and 157–58). A few examples will suffice to illustrate this plan. In his Saludable instrucción del estado del matrimonio (1566), Vicente Mexía advises “recogimiento corporal” for the young single woman in order to avoid the occasion to sin (270). Juan de la Espinosa, in his Diálogo en laude a la mujer (1580) published approximately sixty years before La traición, objects to the presence of young women in society on similar grounds. In dialogue form, two men address the question of women’s freedom to leave the domestic cloister. The categorical answer provided, that women must be physically restricted, draws on a popular misogynist commonplace, the danger of women’s mobility:

Philod.—¿...es lícito algunas vezes dejallas yr a holgar?

Philal.—No lo tengo por seguro.

Philod. ¿Por qué?

Philal.—Por que la muger y la gallina, por andar se pierde aina. (247-48)

In his Obligaciones de todos los estados y oficios, con los remedios, y consejos más eficaces para la salud espiritual, y general reformación de costumbres (1619), published approximately twenty years before Zayas’s play, Juan de Soto affirms that young women’s innocence is at stake. Since a young women is naturally shameless, he recommends her containment:

...[D]oblalle las guardas, acortalle los pasos, ponerla pigüelas, echarla grillos, quitarla ocasiones para que no se pierda, y afrente a su padre (135).

For his part, Alonso de Andrade affirms in his work, Libro de la guía de la virtud, y de la imitación de nuestra señora. Primera parte: para todos los estados (1642), published around the time of Zayas’s play, that young unmarried women should not leave the home “si no es por inexcusable y forzosísima causa” (230).^[7]

In opposition to her male contemporaries, Zayas’s representation of the positive attributes of the female community functions to signal to the spectator the benefits of mentoring and moral instruction of women by women. The presence of the peer group operating both in the private and public spheres engages the spectator critically with a series of core gender issues that created significant cultural anxiety in Zayas’s time. These issues include the validity of the implementation of principles of association among women as the means of facing the problems of single and married life as well as for caring for one another, women’s capacity for conducting themselves in a morally sound manner without male supervision, for enjoying female friendship, and for expressing the noble qualities of friendship with their own sex.^[8]

Within the context of this ideological polemic occurring in early modern Europe, female friendship, as suggested in this play, is perceived in its ideal format and from a woman’s perspective as a relationship defined by its ethical and social functions. Often times difficult to discern because of its clandestine nature, female solidarity operates here, as I hope to have shown, in subtle yet clearly perceptible ways, to rebalance and redress the power relationships between the sexes, modifying the rigid and constricting codes of the patriarchal system to which women were subjected.

Works Cited

Andrade, Alonso de. Libro de la guía de la virtud, y de la imitación de nuestra señora. Primera parte: para todos los estados. Madrid: Francisco Maroto, 1642.

Arenal, Electa and Stacey Schlau. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1989.

Burke, Peter. The Art of Conversation. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993.

Cascardi, Anthony J. Afterword. “The Subject of Control.” Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain. Ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. 231–54.

Cavallo, Sandra and Simona Cerutti. “Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800. Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective. Trans. Mary M. Gallucci. Ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins U P, 1990. 73–109.

Cruz, Anne J. and Mary Elizabeth Perry, ed. Culture and Control in Counter- Reformation Spain. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion.” The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. Ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974. 307–336.

___. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975. Ch. 4, “The Reasons of Misrule.” 97–123.

Espinosa, Juan de. Diálogo en laude de las mujeres. Ed. Angela González Simón: CSIC: Madrid, 1946.

Freeman. Susan T. Neighbors: The Social Contract in a Castilian Hamlet. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1970.

Mexía, Vicente. Saludable instrucción del estado del matrimonio. Córdoba: Juan Baptista Escudero, 1566.

Pérez Romero, Antonio. Subversion and Liberation in the Writings of St. Teresa of Avila. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1996. 159–86.

Peters, E. Lloyd. “Aspects of the Control of Moral Ambiguities: A Comparative Analysis of Two Culturally Disparate Modes of Social Control.” The Allocation of Responsibility. Max Gluckman. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1972. 109–62.

Schellenberg, Betty A. The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740–1775. Lexington, Ky: UP of Kentucky, 1996.

Soufas, Teresa S. “María de Zayas’s (Un)Conventional Play, La traición en la amistad.” The Golden Age Comedia: Text, Theory, and Performance. Ed. Charles Ganelin and Howard Mancing. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1994. 148–64.

Soto, Juan de. Obligaciones de todos los estados y oficios, con los remedios, y consejos más eficaces para la salud espiritual y general reformación de costumbres. Alcalá: Andrés Sáncehz de Ezpeleta, 1619.

Stroud, Matthew. “Love, Friendship, and Deceit in La traición en la amistad, by María de Zayas.” Neophilologus 69 (1985): 539–47.

Vigil, Mariló. La vida de las mujeres en los siglos XVI y XVII. Madrid: Siglo veintiuno editores, 1994.

Weber, Alison P. Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1990.

Wilkins, Constance. “Subversion through Comedy?: Two plays by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and María de Zayas.” The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater of the Golden Age. Ed. Anita K. Stoll and Dawn L. Smith. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1991. 107–20.

Zayas y Sotomayor, María. La traición en la amistad. In Women’s Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain’s Golden Age. Ed. Teresa Scott Soufas. Lexington, Ky: UP of Kentucky, 1997. 273–308

^[1]All quotations come from Teresa Scott Soufas’s edition of La traición en la amistad in Women’s Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain’s Golden Age (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997).

^[2]The studies of Davis, Freeman and Peters deal primarily with male youth groups. Cavallo and Cerutti’s work is pioneering because it identifies the presence of female youth groups and analyzes gender differences.

^[3]As Wilkins affirms, the action of the play foregrounds the concerns of women and the female protagonists (110).

^[4]One of the distinctions of Zayas’s literary production is her creation of conversational circles. The female conversational circle is indeed a social entity that Zayas represents as a group that promotes the interests of women. For the different uses of conversation in early modern European texts, see Peter Burke’s The Art of Conversation and Betty A. Schellenberg’s The Conversational Circle: Rereading the English Novel, 1740–1775.

^[5]I realize that this point of view is a departure from previous criticism of this play. Wilkins perceives a more ambiguous identification of the spectator with Marcia: positive on the one hand since all the right couples are formed, and negative on the other, because she believes that no satisfactory amorous relationship is attained throughout the play (115). For her part, Soufas sees Marcia’s sacrifice of romantic love and her safe escape into marriage as an expression of women’s inability to transcend the conventions of femininity prescribed by early modern society (148). I diverge from these perspectives in attempting to focus instead on Zayas’s flight from and transcendence of the romantic emplotment as an act of female empowerment. Soufas does affirm, however, that Zayas uses the conventionality of gender as a social critique (148–52).

^[6]In many ways my analysis is informed by the issues analyzed in Perry and Cruz’s work Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, in particular, the exploration of the relationship between the organized entities or institutions of power and the subjects of control. For a helpful overview of the complexities of this relationship, see Anthony Cascardi’s afterword, “The Subject of Control,” 231–54.

^[7]All of the moralists quoted here, with the exception of Juan de la Espinosa, are cited by Vigil 20–22. See her extended discussion of these and other moralists’ writings on the ideal unmarried woman 18–31.

^[8]Female communal practices were also being cultivated in the religious context. The convent produced an atmosphere where guidance, instruction, advice, consolation and protection as well as intellectual exchange was promoted and cultivated among nuns. For diverse analyses of the communities of women religious in early modern Spain, see Arenal and Schlau’s Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works, Antonio Pérez-Romero’s Subversion and Liberation in the Writings of St. Teresa of Avila, and Alison Weber’s Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity.