NARRATING THE NATIONAL IDENTITY: MYTH, POWER, AND DISSIDENCE

Throughout the ten stories that comprise the Desengaños amorosos (1647), by María de Zayas y Sotomayor, maids, servants, and slaves are always present, but rarely fully developed as characters. Their functions in the stories vary from serving as a textual audience for a protagonist’s laments, to instigating plot sequences by suggesting to a character a certain course of action. In spite of the diversity of narrative functions these minor characters fulfill, they maintain a highly stable cultural value in relation to the author and to the narrators of the tales. Through her female narrator’s performance of moralistic “true” stories, Zayas consistently positions the servants and slaves in her text as the other to her own social rank, nationality, or race. The text not only establishes cultural and class difference between the narrating voice and the servant or slave characters, it also provides a space in which the author can convert the other into a vehicle for affirming her growing preoccupation with the value of capital in human interactions.

Judith Butler, in Bodies that Matter (1993), describes the use of clothing and gestures as part of an overall performance of gender which garners its force from the constructed functions of certain apparel and mannerisms. According to Butler, because categories of dress are constructs of society, the gender assigned according to the performance of these can be nothing more than a fiction (231). In Zayas’ stories, identity is negotiated in the same way that Butler describes the categorization of gender. According to a society’s constructed notions of class identity, it is possible for characters to appropriate material objects in order to create a fiction of class that convinces those who trust the performance of physical markers of identity. In each class or gender switch that takes place in the Desengaños, worldly goods are fundamental props in the staging of the transformation.

The changing economy of Spain during the mid-sixteenth century, and its growing dependence on a capitalist system of commodity exchange, privileged material signs of wealth. Through Zayas’ stories, we learn that these indicators themselves are unstable because they are vulnerable to manipulation and misuse. The class they are meant to identify—noble woman, slave, or servant—may not be the type of person who appropriates an object to effect a mis-identification. Several characters in the Desengaños take advantage of this flexibility of social classification based on their appropriation of different articles of clothing, jewels, and even titles of nobility. A first reading of the text would lead to the conclusion that Zayas challenges the existing social hierarchy by providing her reader with examples of characters who successfully perform a class level that is not one consistently assigned to them by society. In spite of the obvious fluctuation of social boundaries that takes place in the stories, the work in its entirety reflects a conservative desire to maintain distance between the nobility and others in society, the slaves and servants who can too easily feign a social position which lies beyond their true financial means or blood line.

Zayas wrote her Desengaños during the early 1600’s, a time of financial decline for the Spanish monarchy. John Lynch describes the years from 1618–1640 as, “a period of appalling financial difficulties caused partially by financing the war in Germany” (98)^[1]. Poorly managed funds from the colonies in America, as well as the lack of established trade with those colonies, also led to Spain’s economic failures of the seventeenth century. Given their financial troubles, the monarchy was forced to rely on bankers and merchants who could afford to make loans to the government. This dependency on the merchant class led to their gradual admittance in the ranks of high society, a phenomenon which deeply disturbed members of the nobility. The solid position of dominance of the aristocracy was being threatened by those members of society who could purchase acceptance into previously inaccessible social circles. Coupled with the lower classes’ ability to appropriate material signifiers of wealth, the social acceptance of the merchant class proved how fluid the structure of Golden Age Spanish society had become.

Antonio Maravall explains this shift in social ranking; “The sale of titles, nobility, and commissions accentuated the decay of the old society’s values, giving greater emphasis to economic values” (136–7). Zayas portrays the social mobility of her era as a disturbing phenomenon through her narrators’ frequent, yet subtle comments about the changing class structure. In “Amar por solo vencer” Esteban leaves the title “don” off his name when he introduces himself to Laurela. He thinks it would sound false: after all, many people use the title, even for their pets, “hasta a una perrita llamó una dama doña Marquesa y a una gata doña Miza” (296)^[2]. In light of the development of the story, his thoughts seem trivial because they do not motivate the action or help to characterize Esteban. This type of comment is more a reflection of either the narrator, Matilde, or of the author’s preoccupation with easy social mobility.

The author clearly excludes lower class citizens from her text. She writes for, and her narrators speak to, the nobility. The guests who attend the nightly gatherings at Lisis’ retreat, “todos ilustres” (359), enter the pages of the text adorned with fine clothes and expensive jewels. Lisis, the organizer of the event, embodies the shine and grace of the noble women who attend the sarao: “Salieron las desengañadoras siguiendo a Lisis, que traía de la mano a doña Isabel, muy ricamente vestidas y aderezadas, y muy bien prendidas, y con tantas joyas que parecía cada una un sol con muchos soles...” (234). Amy Kaminsky, in her discussion of the clothing in the Desengaños, concludes that clothing is “an economical rhetorical device” helping, through the richness of its description, to stage the stories in wealthy surroundings (381)^[3]. The women who relay their stories of disillusionment clearly pertain to the privileged class in Spain, and they do not seem willing to allow others into their ranks.

At least one story, “La esclava de su amante,” is told with the clear intention, “para que de mí [Isabel] aprendan las mujeres nobles” (205)^[4]. The moral overtone of the collection is for those women who can afford morality. The warning that precedes each tale of disillusionment, that women need to learn from others’ experiences and not trust men who will inevitably cheat them, is not intended for all women. The author leaves servants out of the major plot sequences, and excludes them as well from her warning message. What is really at stake in these stories is not, as many feminist critics of Zayas’ work have indicated, the exposure of the difficulties women face when trying to preserve their honor in a patriarchal society that only allows for their degradation in amorous, heterosexual relationships^[5]. Rather, the issue that resurfaces throughout the stories is the difficulty of projecting and maintaining honor in a society whose standards can be manipulated by women from a lower class level. Although the author wages criticism against men’s treatment of women, and thus (unwittingly) furthers the feminist cause, she nonetheless excludes a majority of the female population by directing her text to members of one social class alone.

William H. Clamurro examines the Desengaños on the basis of the declining power of the nobility in Spain. He interprets Zayas’ moralizing as an indirect complaint levied against the aristocracy that has abandoned its former, “ideals and obligations” (46). According to Clamurro’s observations, Zayas excludes all women from her moral message: instead, she addresses the noblemen in her society, in the hopes that the horror of her stories will make them aware of the need to return to their former values. John Rosenberg perhaps unintentionally defends Clamurro’s thesis by emphasizing that Zayas finished her Novelas ejemplares (1637) and Desengaños amorosos (1647) during a time of “deterioramiento de valores e ideales” (73). Both authors locate the text within the context of seventeenth-century Spain, to better understand the author’s reaction against the breakdown of aristocratic society. The Desengaños serve as an, “appeal to the traditional values of a class whose ‘original’—if not fictitious—heroic values apparently have not survived into an age that has made such values anachronistic” (Clamurro 49). If we take into account Clamurro’s approach to Zayas’ work, it is difficult to argue for a sustained feminist perspective in her stories. It would appear that the author privileges class issues over feminist concerns.

Another contradiction between a temporary questioning of society’s values and an underlying conservatism in Zayas’ text involves the issue of identity. On the one hand, her stories reinforce Butler’s theory that gender identity cannot be essentialized because the entire process of gender identification belongs to a constantly shifting system of codes and norms for dress and behavior that are as unstable as they can be misleading. On the other hand, the stories in the Desengaños uphold rankings of social class on a deeper level, relying on essential difference based on non-performative qualities. The Desenagños illustrates the flexibility of the code of dress and mannerisms associated with social standing, thus achieving a questioning of society’s construction of class. Both Butler and Zayas challenge essentialized gender and class through examples of signs that jam the identity radar. What the author of the Desengaños fails to accomplish, however, is precisely that which feminist readers of the text seem too willing to encounter; a sustained critique of seventeenth-century Spanish society’s social constructs. A renegotiation of signs and referents takes place, as well as an attack on social mobility that is achieved through material/financial fraud. In spite of these ground-breaking insights into Spanish society, and the importance placed on materiality and the performance of identity, the text never abandons the social structure nor does it present female characters free of other essentializing traits.

In her introduction to Essentially Speaking (1989), Diana Fuss helps to explain the possibility of the co-existence of constructionism and essentialism. Through efforts, such as the one made by Zayas, to deconstruct class categories by highlighting the difficulty of fixing class and gender indicators, the deconstructor many times essentializes some other aspect involved in identity formation (2). In the example of the Desengaños, class constructs are questioned as unreliable on the surface, only to be reinforced throughout the text by reference to essential characteristics that can be trusted, in the end, to reveal a character’s true nature. Both elements are handled in the text: a questionable, essentialized class identity based on performance and material object/wealth associations, and a trustworthy essential identity based on discoverable native traits. The stories question essentialism to a point, but much more subtly and powerfully maintain current class divisions, upholding a firm belief in the traits that are assigned to the nobility as inherent facets of their identity.

In the final story of the collection, “Estragos que causa el vicio,” this division of the two contradictory directions of the text manifests itself in the narrator’s treatment of the servants and the noble Florentina. Doña Florentina precipitates the bloody murder of an entire household at the hands of her lover, and brother-in-law, Don Dionís. Because Dionís is married to her sister, this sister presents an obstacle to Florentina’s amorous plans. She consults with her maid about the difficult situation. It is interesting to note that the maid, and not Florentina, is the one who devises the plan to be rid of Magdalena, the honest wife. The narration disassociates Florentina from the treacherous plotting as a means of keeping the noble character’s hands clean. When the husband discovers a male servant leaving her room, he suspects Magdalena of adultery and murders her instantly. He then proceeds through the house, slaying as he goes. The narrator of the story catalogues the bodies of the servants and the dead wife, describing in detail how they were each disfigured by the stab wounds to their bodies. When commenting on one particular, albeit nameless, servant’s death, the narrator comments that the examiners of the case found, “una esclava blanca, herida en el rostro” (411). The slave has no name and a face disfigured by a stab wound. Doña Magdalena, although also mortally injured, possesses not only a name, but also unstainable beauty that belies the brutality of her death, “…doña Magdalena, también muerta de crueles heridas, mas con tanta hermosura que parecía una estatua de mármol...” (411). The underlying beauty of Magdalena shines through, long after the moment of her death. The rostro, or face, of the female characters holds the essentialized goodness and nobility of their identity: in their faces, one discovers the truth of these women’s identities, in spite of what they have suffered. If the eyes are the window of the soul in novels of courtly love, then the face in the Desengaños is the window to the essential woman.

The author furthers class divisions in her text by describing the faces of each of the noble women protagonists as white, fresh, or beautiful; while she employs harsh language to outline the features of only one slave woman. Beatriz possesses a, “sereno, honesto, y hermoso rostro” (388). Even in death, what the narrator establishes as the essentially beautiful features of the upper class women remain pure and untouched by the decay that affects other parts of their bodies. At the end of the story, “El traidor contra su sangre,” Ana suffers decapitation, then her head is buried apart from her body, only to be discovered six months later. When her father retrieves her severed head from the ground, he observes its freshness and beauty, “como si no hubiera seis meses que estaba debajo de tierra” (356). In another story, Camila drinks poison which causes her entire body to swell, except for her face (230). Even doña Inés of “La inocencia castigada,” finds herself, “ya sana y restituida en su hermosura,” after recovering from years of narrow confinement and infestations in her flesh of various bugs and worms (252). Inevitably, after reading the gruesome details of a protagonist’s death or near-death experience, the reader of the Desengaños encounters a disclaimer to the effect that: although some man’s brutal act of revenge against the woman disfigured her body, the rostro reveals her true beauty, which cannot be tainted. This essential beauty is associated only with the noble women characters.

When categorizing the characters of the Desengaños as essentially beautiful, class matters more than gender. Esteban, in “Amar solo por vencer,” disguises himself as a young girl so he can work in the household of Laurela, as her personal maid. Although he is a man, and one who will inevitably cheat the noble protagonist, he too is described, when in drag, as having a nice face (295). Esteban is, after all, not really a servant, a fact which he asserts himself by declaring he is descended from noble blood. True nobility somehow reveals itself to others in the face of the characters. Estefanía obviously believes; “que no sé qué tiene la nobleza, que al punto se da a conocer” (377). No matter what the trappings seem to communicate or disguise about a person, the nobility of certain characters shines through. The constantly beautiful face of the aristocratic women in the stories serves as a reminder to the reader of the permanence of their noble aspect. Unfortunately for the servants and slaves of the tales, noble qualities belong only to those who are also classified as members of the noble class, based on their longstanding wealth and blood lineage.

The physical description of the African slave in the story, “Tarde llega el desengaño,” epitomizes the sharp distinction between nobility and servitude. Filis grants this nameless character a large space in her narration, the most lines dedicated to a slave or a servant in the entire collection (except of course to Zelima, who is a noble woman acting as a slave.) She presents her to the reader as; “una negra tan tinta, que el azabache era blanco en comparación, y sobre esto tan fiera, que juzgó don Martín que si no era el demonio, que debía ser retrato suyo” (278). Filis allows the slave woman to figure prominently in her Desengaño; however, she strips her of any dignity by reducing the woman to a mere manifestation of the narrator’s racially-inspired description. Kaminsky also focuses on this moment in the text, and comments:

The ex-slave’s ugliness is a physical manifestation of evil, and Zayas sets it off against the precious jewels and costly gown which she wears. The writer clearly sees the juxtaposition as an abomination, since the clothes and jewels bespeak the Black woman’s ‘unnatural’ position as honored lady of the household (386).

Kaminsky mentions a crucial element in examining the class issues that arise in the text; the author’s uneasiness with the mis-appropriation of material signs of wealth by an unworthy subject. The judgment that surfaces against the black woman could be understood as a critique against the morally inferior slave woman who ruthlessly plotted against the innocent Helen. Taking into account the consistent exclusion of the other’s presence in the text, however, the reader can discern that this one close description of a slave or servant character suggests a greater purpose outside the plot of the individual story being told.

The slave woman in this story assimilates the value her household members place in material objects. She understands the importance of the jewels and fine clothes with which she is “costumed” in order to punish Helen for an offense she did not commit. Not only does the black, and very black, woman lack a name, she is also stripped of any cultural heritage through her role as mannequin to the noble dress and jewels. The only description of her uniqueness that the narrator provides functions as a confirmation of her otherness. The slave must maintain a precarious position of both extreme physical difference and complete adherence to the Spanish monetary value system.

Many servants in the Desengaños are posited as the other, in the sense of belonging to a different class from that of the noble guests assembled to hear the tales: yet they too, in spite of their positioning as lower-class and inferior citizens, serve the author as models for the decline of the aristocracy. The textual portrayal of the servant characters then fuses two quite distinct goals of the author: to lament the loss of aristocratic values because of an increased reliance on material manifestations of social standing, and to exaggerate the difference between the classes. It is interesting that the same author who devalues servants and slaves in her text still believes they are characters capable of illustrating her deepest societal concerns. If the slaves and servants in the stories are portrayed as essentially and unfailingly low-class, then how can these same characters effectively represent the new social mobility that can be achieved through newly or dishonestly acquired wealth?

The author’s discomfort with new wealth and class fluidity infiltrates the text, yet she does allow for some identity changes to take place. On the one hand, characters negotiate their own identities by using different material signs that denote gender or class. On the other hand, these changes can only be temporary because the text reveals a strong critique against rapid social mobility. The two elements do not need to be harmonious to coexist. The author does accomplish both a portrayal of servants as essentially inferior beings, and as people capable of enormous social change, albeit temporary, performed social change. What the text fails to demonstrate, however, is that all class levels are performed in accordance with an implicit pact among the members of society to believe the referent for a sign is what they consistently imagine it to be. Zayas, while questioning the servants’ performativity of class levels, overlooks the same actions in her noble characters and narrators.

Pedro, one of many irrationally jealous husband characters in, “El traidor contra su sangre,” makes a statement that confirms his belief in certain criteria for pertaining to the noble class. He explains that, even though he descends from laborers, he does nonetheless belong to an Old Christian family (340). In his mind, the religious history of his ancestry compensates for their trade. He values Christian families, especially those that are free of the stain of Jewish blood, the Old Christians; he also devalues labor. Pedro the character thus adjusts the standards of his society to fit his particular circumstances. He seems to maneuver society’s codes, but what he actually does, by being defensive of his ancestors’ professions, and proud of their religious affiliation, is reinforce the social code commonly upheld by the nobility. His need for assurance that he is noble, based on his weighing of the evidence, reveals his dependency on some exterior mode of identification. This code he uses needs to be at once stable, so he can be classified as noble by it, while at the same time show flexibility to assure his acceptance into the noble class. Don Pedro’s situation mirrors the theoretical problem of Zayas’ text: to show flexibility, but remain conservative at the same time.

In his examination of the function of cross-dressing in Zayas’ work, Paul Julian Smith sheds some light on the difficulty the author encounters in attempting to represent a change on a textual level that she does not sustain on an ideological plane: “The reversal of male and female roles serves merely to reinforce the status quo, through its actual intermittence and incongruity” (14). Applying this gender issue to the question of class in the story, “La esclava de su amante,” we can draw a similar conclusion from the performed slavery of Isabel/Zelima. Zelima crosses social barriers when she dons the “S” and “clavo” that mark one as a slave. But even in the moment of such great class transgression, the narrator makes it clear to us that Isabel is only assuming a role that is contrary to her noble nature, “fingiendo clavo y Spara en el rostro” (230). Of course, because Isabel’s rostro is mentioned, the reader and the audience for Isabel’s tale must be reminded that she was pretending when she applied the outward signs of slavery. Her face is the sight of the transformation, but only in the sense of wearing removable signs of slavery. Thus, Smith’s comment on “perceived incongruity” manifests itself in this scene as a contrast between the beautiful face of Isabel and the disturbing marks of her elected servitude^[6].

Although Isabel assumes a new class ranking, and a foreign national identity, her performance is so obvious to the reader that it is presented as not ideologically disturbing. The appropriation of the identifiers for another social level only becomes problematic in the text when it poses a threat to the separation between the nobility and the lower classes. Marjorie Garber begins her sustained study of transvestitism, Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (1993), with an examination of the social and economical circumstances that motivated the installation of sumptuary laws in the Seventeenth Century. She describes the regulation of clothing choices as a means for the controlling faction in society to protect class barriers and employ “visible markers of rank and degree” in order to more effectively achieve “the subordination of the social classes to one another” (23). When members of the servile classes appropriate styles and garments from the nobility, they are doing much more than dressing themselves: they actually challenge the perceived structure of society. For this reason, Isabel can pass herself off as a slave without recrimination from her author. Esteban also enjoys freedom from criticism for his choice to cross-dress. However, when an actual (ex)slave dresses or is dressed in a noble woman’s clothes, she ends up humiliated in the text and revealed as a horrible impostor. The servants in the text are continually being “put in their place” by the narrators and by the author, even while they seem to achieve some form of social mobility.

The most positive servant figure in the Desengaños is María, from “Mal presagio casarse lejos.” She serves Blanca faithfully, helping her cope with unfair treatment in a foreign land. Doña Blanca rewards María for her loyal service by providing her with some valuable jewels so that she may attract a spouse. This action by Blanca illustrates two important aspects of the relations between women of the nobility and their servants: the members of the nobility can only improve a servant’s life by condescendingly assuming the role of grantor of favors, and money is always a part of their dealings, regardless of the depth of feeling involved.

Lou Charnon-Deutsch accomplishes a thorough investigation of the role of money in the Desengaños, focusing on the commodification of women. Charnon-Deutsch does not locate value within the bodies or persons of the noble women, but within their role in preserving the commodities exchange between men (15). In the story, “La mas infame venganza,” Lisarda, the narrator, comments; “el zeloso... guarda la dama... envidioso de que lo que es suyo ande en venta para ser de otro” (231). Jealousy is not inspired by a need to be alone in a woman’s affections, but rather in the need to control the buying and selling of her. When a female protagonist, such as Isabel, gains control of some material wealth, she disturbs the financial system by assuming a subject role in trading. Isabel further complicates this by simultaneously controlling the facts of her sale, through her orders to Octavio, while she also places herself in the object position of the thing to be sold (19). Charnon-Deutsch concludes that material objects, such as the jewels that abound in Zayas’ stories, “helps women control their immediate circumstances” (18). What is interesting about the use of the word “immediate” is that it reveals the critic’s belief that the flexibility the jewels offers these women can only signal a temporary change in their circumstances. Material objects can transform circumstances, but only for a while. The “real” position of the women, in this case as commodified objects of men’s trading practices, can never be fully or permanently erased.

The successful trading of women depends not on them, but on the assets which accompany them. Financial means guaranteed marriage contracts. As Enrique notes in the story, “El traidor contra su sangre,” “donde hay dinero, todo se negocia bien” (349). A man without money or credit encounters the same type of difficulties in contracting a spouse as do penniless women. For this reason, Esteban will not dare to ask for Laurela’s hand in marriage, even though his lineage is noble (307). Don Carlos upholds the same monetary value system when he describes the lack of financial value of a woman’s beauty, “ya no es dote la hermosura” (“La mas infame venganza,” 215). A dowry is the only means a woman possesses to achieve a lucrative financial union with a man. Once again, the focus of the exchange is not the woman herself, but the material manifestations of her nobility. The woman who does not own objects that communicate wealth will be excluded from successful trading.

The situation is even worse for women who do not pertain to the inner circles of the nobility. Don Juan, in “El verdugo de su esposa,” “enjoys” Ageliana without the need for deception. She requires no such manipulation because because she is, “de la calidad que todos sabían, y no tenía padres” (259). She has no parents to negotiate for her exchange, and no means to find a servant who will accomplish the feat for her. Unlike doña Isabel who assumes control over her exchange, Ageliana cannot hope to bargain for herself because of her poor “calidad.” She is permitted to associate with the nobility, but the other characters and the audience all know she does not really belong.

Angeliana finds herself excluded from the possibility of performing nobility, supposedly because of her poverty and lack of parents to guide her. But Esteban, also orphaned and poor, seems free enough to pursue his goal of entering a noble household and proposing marriage to Laurela. The difference lies in Esteban’s declared noble ancestry. Because of his noble lineage, he is allowed to achieve what he seeks in the story: a marriage agreement between himself and a noble woman. His means of realizing his goal are based on the successful manipulation of material objects. Esteban “compró todo lo necesario para transformarse en doncella” (295). According to the narrator, Lisarda, of “Amar solo por vencer,” Esteban can actually purchase his pretended womanhood. It is possible for him to buy the trappings that will identify him to others as female, a clear indicator that his gender is assigned according to the props one uses in his or her performance.

Esteban maintains his assumed identity easily because he transforms himself from “poor, but noble man” into “poor, but still nobly beautiful maid.” His transgression of gender does not meet with recrimination from the author, nor does his assumed servile role. Essentially noble characters are allowed to manipulate material objects without resulting judgment in the text. It is the servants and the slaves who are portrayed as vile when they tap into same value system.

Throughout the Desengaños, money is repeatedly passed from a high class character to a servant. The servants exemplify the importance of commodities exchange in their trade of favors and celestina services for cash or jewels. Don Pedro (“El traidor contra su sangre,” 340) delivers his love note by means of a servant; Claudia (“La esclava de su amante,” 191) continually updates don Manuel on the developments in his relations with doña Isabel; and doña Blanca assures herself that her maid, María, will carry a message for her giving the servant a precious jewel as payment (“al presagio casarse lejos,” 323). The use of a go-between, or celestina, who acts as the link between two lovers who wish to preserve the codes of honorable behavior, is a common trope in literature of the Golden Age. In Zayas’ text, this traditional Spanish figure not only contributes to the successful beginning of an affair, but also ensures its total conclusion.

The servants are frequently portrayed as being motivated by money to help their mistresses or others seek revenge. Octavio agrees to help Zelima sell herself into slavery when she offers him financial rewards (“La esclava de su amante,” 201); and the ‘pretend’ doña Inés happily divides the profits from her deception with her cohorts (“La inocencia castigada,” 241). The same woman who tricks doña Inés into relinquishing her garment is the one who claims, “los pobres también tenemos reputación” (240). The only time a defense is made of the morality of the poor, the words are placed in the mouth of a character called “la mujer engañosa,” who is in the act of deceiving a noble woman. The servants who effect the task of carrying out another’s revenge are doubly evil in the text. Not only do they capitalize on a situation to profit from another’s distress, but they also usually devise the scheme of revenge themselves. In both cases, the person of the servant allows the author to displace her criticism of a money-based value system to an entity outside her realm of social activity. Not only does she freely critique her society, she does so in a way that will not offend, even if it is perceived by her audience. The servants who carry the burden of acting out society’s declining morals in the text are not part of the imagined audience for the Desengaños, nor do they attend the sarao to hear the tales told by the noble women narrators. The author entrusts the servants and slaves in her text with the function of relaying her subtle social commentaries to the audience of her work, yet she devalues these same characters by not allowing them to occupy central positions in the narrative.

The portrayal of the servant and slave characters in the Desengaños, although sketchy, remains constant. The servants function mostly as greedy or conniving examples of the growing value placed on cash or commodities in Spanish society of the seventeenth century. The same material objects that allow for so much social mobility and performed class standing are a cause for fear in the nobility, of too much flexibility in characterizing people as noble or otherwise. The author of the stories questions the instability of material indicators of nobility, a de-constructionist critique of essentialized identity that is based on the troublesome reliance on an increasingly monetary code of nobility. However, the same author essentializes noble identity in another way; through the revelation of the true nature of her noble characters as something which is manifested physically, based on beauty or blood lineage, which cannot be altered fundamentally by time. The growing fear among the Spanish nobles, of the threat of upward mobility by the lower classes, motivates Zayas’ conservative adherence to some form of essentiality when classifying her characters. Though it communicates the flexibility of material signs of wealth provide, the Desengaños ultimately rejects the props associated with outwardly performed identity, only to replace these material signs with its own subtle encoding of class and inherently noble traits.

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Zayas y Sotomayor, María de. Novelas ejemplares y amorosas. Paris: Baudry, 1847.

^[1]For a complete description of the historical circumstances in Spain that coincide with the publication of Zayas’ novellas, refer to the work by Lynch cited in this bibliography, which is part of a series titled, A History of Spain. The edition cited here handles years 1598–1700.

^[2]All quotes from the Desengaños stories are taken from Novelas ejemplares y amorosas, published by Baudry, Paris, 1847.

^[3]Refer to her article cited in the bibliography. Kaminsky approaches the function of clothing in the stories from a feminist analysis of the flexibility and control they lend to the women protagonists. I agree with her that the material aspects of identity allow the women in the stories to manipulate their circumstances: however, I believe these changes in subjectivity are too short-lived to accomplish an effective questioning of the status quo.

^[5]See “El feminismo de Doña María de Zayas,” by José María Díez Borque. Also helpful is Eva M Kahiluoto Rudat’s article, “Ilusión y desengaño: El feminismo barroco de María de Zayas y Sotomayor.”

^[6]Amy Kaminsky also mentions this conscious choice for servitude of Isabel.