Fleshing Out Feminism in Early Modern Spain MariÌ-A de Zayas - S Corporeal Politics Author(s) LISA VOLLENDORF

Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos
Fleshing out Feminism in Early Modern Spain: Mara de Zayas's Corporeal Politics
Author(s): LISA VOLLENDORF
Source: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Otoo 1997), pp. 87-108
Published by: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos
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LISAVOLLENDORF
Fleshing out Feminism inEarlyModern

Spain: Mar?a de Zayas sCorporeal
Politics*
Este art?culo estudia la intersecci?nde la violencia y el cuerpo en lasNovelas
amorosas y ejemplares y los Desenga?os
amorosos de Mar?a de Zayas y
Sotomayorpara poner de relieve la importanciadel discurso corporal en su est?tica
y pol?tica.A lo largode losdos vol?menes,Zayas comunica unfeminismomediante
un enfoque en el cuerpofemenino y, en losDesenga?os enparticular, a trav?sde
lamovilizaci?n de la subjetividadfemenina. Estudiamos elpr?logo de lasNovelas

amorosas y laprimera novela de losDesenga?os para mostrar que la clave de la
expresi?ndelfeminismo deZayas se encuentraprecisamente en la violencia contra
lamujer y en un discurso enfocado en el cuerpofemenino.Dada la importanciade
lo corporal y la protesta contra lafalta de control de la mujer sobre su propio
cuerpo, el feminismo de Zayas tiene muchos puntos en com?n con la teor?a
feminista contempor?nea, los cuales examinamos a partir de un estudio de
Elizabeth Groszpara definir conm?s precisi?n no s?lo elfeminismo de Zayas sino
tambi?n la relaci?nproblem?tica entre elfeminismo y los estudios sobre el cuerpo
femenino.
It is possible to construct a biography, a history

of thebody, foreach individual and social body.
Elizabeth Grosz Volatile Bodies
Likemany earlymodern authors,Maria de Zayas holds theviolated body up for

scrutiny,demanding thatwe read itsmultiple historical and culturalmeanings.
In herNovelas amorosas y ejemplares (1637),women are raped,beaten, and killed
by men. In the Desenga?os amorosos (1647), morbidly creative means of
punishing
Iwould
and
containing
women
are
narrated
as
characters
like to thank H.
of this article. Their
attempt
to
Patsy Boyer and Denise K. Buell for reading earlier versions

comments were invaluable
in the preparation
of the final copy.
REVISTA CANADIENSE DE ESTUDIOS HISP?NICOS
Vol XXII,
1 Oto?o
1997

88
eliminate the threatposed to the social order by the femalebody. In this second
volume, every typeof violence imaginable is carried out as characters imprison,
rape, poison, torture,strangle,stab, and behead thewomen closest to them.The
reader of these novelaswould likelyhave been familiarwith such confrontations
with the corporeal: in addition to the violence seen in the public chastisement
of penitents and in autos de fe, many Baroque texts rely on similarly vivid
representations of violated bodies.1

Signalled by the disruption of the physical and/or psychical integrityof the
self,violation occurs in seemingly infinitevariations in the literatureof the
period. The most salient examples can be found in the spectacle of thewife
murder plays, that sub-genre of comedia inwhich the femalebody isposited as

the principle siteof contestation for issues of sexual and political
anxiety.2Here
we find Calder?n's Mencia sacrificiallybled to death inEl m?dico de su honra
and Lopes Casandra killed by her lover inEl castigo sin venganza. In addition
to violation, bodies are also the site for subversion and
challenge during the
as
the
of
and
other
period,
popularity cross-dressing
questioning of gender roles
confirm. Some of the best known female characters of the period, including
Rosaura inLa vida es sue?o and Laurencia inFuenteovejuna, break down gender
roles by dressing and/or acting likemen.3 In spite of thedifferencesamong these
many theatrical characters engaged in transgressive gender behaviour, the one
thing theyhave in common is that theywere all penned bymen. And, as Sheila
Fisher and JanetHalley summarily state in The Lady Vanishes, "for a male
author towrite women in theseperiods was to refernot towomen, but tomen"
(4). The use of thebody by these and other earlymodern authors tellsus many
things,but the one conclusion we can easilymake about the comedia and other
literarygenres and cultural phenomena is thatbodies acted as signifiersfor a
variety of dominant (i.e. patriarchal) ideologies in the seventeenth century.

Bodies had meaning, and, in the literary as well as the social realms,men
controlled the production and presentation of thatmeaning.
In earlymodern Spain, an age inwhich male authors and the Inquisitorial
state used bodies for varying aesthetic, didactic, political, yet ultimately
patriarchal, purposes, Zayas issued her own response tomale dominance over
technologies of sex and gender.Relying on myriad manifestations of violence to
convey a feministmessage, Zayas's novela collection incorporates the spectacle
of violence usually reserved for comedia and the aestheticization of violence
seen, as Patricia Grieve has suggested, in thehagiographie tradition.4Given that
Zayas's texts continually defend women's right to education and to fair
treatment in society,much inkhas been spilled over the nature of her feminist
beliefs. Some critics claim that to read Zayas as a feminist is to read
anachronistically (Perry), to be duped by her rhetoric (Griswold), or to
underestimate the sophistication with which she uses language (Brownlee,
"Postmodernism").5 Others (such as Boyer, Foa, andMaroto Camino) point to

89
the privileging of the feminine in her fiction as testimony to her feminist
ideologies. This debate persists not only because Zayas s textsare, as Brownlee
has highlighted, quintessentially Baroque in their refutationof univalence, but
also, I would argue, because the tenets of Zayas's politics have yet to be
articulatedwithin a theoreticalmodel thataddresses her feminism. It iswith this
task at hand that this article locates the cornerstone of what I read as Zayas's
carefully conceived feminist politics: the connection between violence and
bodies inher texts. In theNovelas amorosas and in themore daring Desenga?os
amorosos, Zayas turns to the storiesof thebody towhich Elizabeth Grosz refers
inmy epigraph. Through fictionalwomen characters, Zayas offersup women's
storieswith the effectof constructingwhat Grosz calls "a biography, a history
of thebody, for each individual and social body" (142). Using women's voices,
Zayas tells the storyof the collective femininebody and of society; she thus lays
out the tenets of an early modern corporeal feminism that engages and
politicizes the female body in order tomobilize male and female readers and
society at large to enact reform thatwould improve the treatmentofwomen.
Zayas's self-conscious appropriation and deployment of the female body will

be examined here in an analysis of the prefatory note "Al que leyere" in the
Novelas amorosas and its ideological counterpoint, the first novela of the
Desenga?os amorosos. After a brief analysis of "Al que leyere" and an overview
of the key narrative techniques that situate the feminine body at the centre of
the texts, Iwill analyse "Esclava de su amante" to elucidate theways inwhich
body, voice, and textmerge inZayas's poetics to create a formidable political
agenda which mobilizes the female body in a campaign to validate women's
This politicization of the feminine constitutes

physical and psychical integrity.6
a corporeal feminism that speaks of and through thewoman's body, thereby
issuing a challenge to the ideologies and cultural practices which utilize and
dehumanize women, practices that position women on the body side of the
mind/body split and that treat the female body as a male domain. Zayas's
theorization of the body forges a close relationship among women's bodies,
voices, and textsand thereforecan be interpretednot only as a corrective to the
prevailing devaluation of the feminine in the seventeenth century,but also as an
anticipation of twentieth-centurybody-based feminisms.
Philosophy and feminist theory of the past two decades are helpful in
Western
bridging the gap between the role of thebody in late twentieth-century
culture and the corporeality of Zayasian discourse. As a reminder of the
changing role of the body throughout history,we need only recallMichel
Foucault 's influentialexplanation, as stated in thefirstvolume of The History of
Sexuality, about sexuality in pre-eighteenth-century Europe:
At the beginning
of the seventeenth century a certain frankness
seem.
would
Sexual practices had little need of secrecy ... Codes
was
still common,
regulating

the coarse,
it
90
the obscene,
century.
the indecent were
and
quite
lax compared
to those
of the nineteenth
(3)
Although much Foucauldian analysis has been challenged and criticized by

feminists, thisparticular observation seems tohold true in the Spanish context,
where the frankness of Zayas's textswas condemned in the nineteenth century.
It isno coincidence thatZayas's fiction,with itsfocus on sexuality and violence,
went out of print in the middle of the nineteenth century after enjoying
publishing success for two hundred years.7 Emilia Pardo Baz?n's cautionary
explanation inher Introduction toher 1892 edition of Zayas's novelas speaks to
this shift in ideology:
Nuestro
recato exterior ha progresado
nuevamente
y algunas
? do?a Mar?a
escenas
poco
de Zayas,
veladas.
el siglo XVII ac?, que temo, al presentar

se la
juzgue mal por culpa de algunas frases vivas
tanto desde
que
(15)
As Pardo Baz?n's remarks imply,Zayas's focus on sexuality and on the tensions

between
the sexes
has
not
gone
unnoticed.
Pardo
Baz?n's
comments
also
draw
attention to the gap between Zayas's conception of these issues and changing
views toward the same issues over time. Iwould argue that, evenwell into the
twentieth century, our impulse to regulate the body and its functions is so
distinct from the attitudes toward the body in the pre-Victorian age that even
at the end of the twentiethcenturywe continue to overlook the important role

of the corporeal inpre- and earlymodern texts.
The difficultiesof readingbodies and interpretingsexuality are compounded
by the fact thatwomen's relationship to theirbodies and to thebody social has
long been problematic for feminist thinkers.As philosopher Elizabeth Grosz

summarizes in Volatile Bodies, the absolute differentiationbetween mind and
body, with its attendant exaltation of themind and denigration of the body,
effecteda "binarization of the sexes" at thevery "threshold ofWestern reason"
(5). Since ancient times, in sources claimed as foundational toWestern thought,
women have been said tobelong to thedisparaged sphere ofmatter, of thebody,
while men's territoryhas been defined as that of reason and themind. The
persistence of such conceptions of women both in intellectual and popular
realms has quite justifiablymade feministswary of approaching the corporeal.
Yet many feminists have taken on the project with grace and force.8 In this
regard, contemporary feminist theory,which influenced and in turn was
influenced by Foucault, has helped tremendously to refineour thinking about
the relationships between mind and body and between body and culture.
In one of the latest publications on corporeality and philosophy, Grosz
addresses the complex history of women's relationship to the body. In the
Introduction to Volatile Bodies, Grosz admits, for example, that feminists are

91
sceptical of putting toomuch stock in the body, since, traditionally,women's
bodies have been acted upon, culturally constructed and represented for us
rather than by us (x). In her book she sets out to issue a feminist corrective to
this corporeal colonization by examining mainstream philosophical discourse
and teasing out the useful aspects of this tradition thatmight be used for the
theorization ofwhat she announces inher sub-title to be "corporeal feminism."
Like Grosz's own philosophical explorations, Zayas's discourse is fundamentally

as a means to
corporeal, for she focuses on the signifyingpowers of the body
a
to
of
the
feminist
message
convey
politically-tense society seventeenth-century
Spain. And, just as Elizabeth Grosz responds to a masculinist philosophical
tradition in an attempt to theorize a body-based feminism in Volatile Bodies,

Mar?a de Zayas responds to the devaluation of the feminine in the intellectual
and cultural sphereswith a feminism based on women's corporeality.
From the beginning of theNovelas amorosas to the end of theDesenga?os,
as the
Zayas politicizes her fiction both directly and indirectly,using the body
the
countless
feminist
Unlike
for
her
central point of reference
messages.
anonymous textsattributed toVirginiaWoolf 'smuch discussed female author
"Anon," Zayas gives her readers no room to doubt her gender or her politics. At
the beginning of the prefatory "Al que leyere"of theNovelas amorosas, Zayas
confronts the readerwith her gender and then insertsherself firmly into the
public sphere as a woman writer whose work has been legitimized by virtue of
having gone to press:
duda,
Qui?n
para
lector m?o, que
te causar?
admiraci?n
escribir un libro, sino para darle a la estampa,
pureza
de los ingenios; porque

cierto ... (21)
hasta que
que una mujer tenga despejo, no s?lo

que es el crisol donde se averigua la
los escritos
se rozan en las letras de plomo,
no
tienen valor
Aware of thepotential criticism her work might receive because of her gender,
In
Zayas does not stopwith simply claiming the public space of publication.
on the querelle des femmes, Zayas also
Renaissance
discourse
with
keeping
diminishes the supposed differencesbetween the sexes as she asserts biological
and spiritual equality between men and women. In this self-authorizingmove,
to validate
Zayas draws on prevailing philosophical and theological paradigms
her own intellectualexercise.Constance Jordantellsus inRenaissance Feminism
that suchmerging of Scriptural and philosophical models was popular among
meant to perpetuate
earlymodern feministswho questioned the discourses
and
social
political practices" (65). By directly addressing thedominant
"existing
sex and gender, Zayas indicts
ideologies (so-called "natural laws") regarding
men formistakenly viewingwomen asweak, inferiorbeings who should remain,
as Fray Luis insists in La perfecta casada, silent, chaste, and humble so as to
please both theirhusbands and God. Zayas argues, for example:

92
... si esta materia
de que nos componemos

los hombres
y las mujeres,
ya sea una
de fuego y barro, o ya una masa de esp?ritus y terrones, no tiene m?s nobleza
en ellos que en nosotras,
si es una misma
la sangre, los sentidos, las potencias
y los
sus
se
son
unos
obran
la
misma
alma
donde
efetos
ellos,
mismos,
que
por
?rganos
las almas ni son hombres ni mujeres...
(Novelas amorosas 21)
porque
trabaz?n
Here, in an allusion to the popular Aristotelian and Galenic models that saw
woman as a biologically defectiveman, Zayas highlights the sameness ofmale
and female corporeality. In emphasizing this corporeal equality,Zayas does not

confirm a natural hierarchy asAristotle does, but, rather,she pinpoints a natural
lack of sexual difference (or sexual indifferenceas Luce Irigaraywould have it)
that can then be interpretedas a sameness between the sexes.9The subsequent
declaration of spiritualequality thatde-sexes the soul expresses the latemedieval

and Renaissance essentialist belief, as discussed by Fisher and Halley, in an
androgynous self (2).10

Throughout thispreface, then,Zayas capitalizes on prevailing topoiof theday
inorder to validate her position as a woman writer. Countering claims tomens
superiority, for example, Zayas elaborates on her arguments for equality and
then actually uses her own biological explanations to posit thatperhaps women
are intellectuallymore capable thanmen:
causa
la verdadera
aplicaci?n
humedad
de no
...
ser las mujeres
doctas
no es defecto
del caudal,
[fu?ramos] quiz? m?s agudas por ser de natural m?s

... (Novelas amorosas
el entendimiento
22)
sino falta de la
fr?o, por consistir
en
Here, Zayas speaks to the reader in termsof thediscourse thatdescribed human

nature in terms of humours, adopting this logic to fit her own feminist
purposes. While Paul JulianSmith in The Body Hispanic reads this rhetoric as
an indication of Zayass failure to "transcend the phallocentric logic of her own
time" (31),we might also consider that rather thanmerely inverting the anti
feministbiological arguments, Zayas perceptively demonstrates the flexibility,
and therefore the fallibility,of logic that claims to explain human nature.With
these and previous comments, she issues a challenge to the reader of thepreface,
pressing him or her to see the flaws in dominant masculine discourse and
simultaneously urging him or her to continue to read her texts.
Zayas does not stop at inverting popular assumptions about sexual
difference, for she also elaborates the challenge to the reader by using her
feminine status to luremen inby appealing to chivalrous obligation:
segura de tu bizarr?a y en confianza de que si te desagradare,
con que nac?
de hacer buenas novelas,
pod?as disculparme
mujer, no con obligaciones
sino con muchos
deseos de acertar a servirte. (Novelas amorosas 23)
Te ofrezco
este libro muy

93
Faced with what she obviously anticipates to be a resistant reader,Zayas relies
on various rhetorical strategies, including a focus on androgynous corporeality
and spirituality and an appeal to chivalry, as a way to lure readers into her
texts.11
Throughout thepreface, she appropriates and uses toher benefit thevery
used
againstwomen inher culture.This appropriation allows her to derive
logic
a conclusion that legitimates her intellectual and political endeavours: she

inverts the dominant models of bodily rhetoric and therebydemonstrates the
slippery nature of "scientific" discourses thatmake truth claims about the
"natural" order of things. In the course of this sophisticated argumentation,
which is rhetoricallycomparable tomany querelle desfemmes debates, she points

to the body as the site of exploration for the issues of social, juridical, and
individual reform thatwill dominate inher novelas.

With such references to bodies, writing, and resistance, the preface
immediately refers us to the culturally constructed boundaries placed on
feminine behaviour. Zayas's concern for legitimizing herself as an author
communicates her awareness of the daring enterprise she undertakes as a

woman offeringup her intellectual effortsforpublic scrutiny.The insistenceon
drawing in themale audience suggests that something larger is at stake here,
men are figured
however, forboth in "Alque leyere"and in the frame tale itself,
as integral to the texts. In theNovelas amorosas, for example, the task of
narrating the ten novelas is equally divided between the sexes. During the
soir?es, held as a diversion for the recuperating protagonist Lisis, the ten frame
characters tellvarious tales dealing with love and relationships. Spurned by the
suitor Juan,Lisis plays the roles of hostess, poet, and vengeful mistress as she
deals with rejection by entertaining the advances of anotherman, Diego. While
Zayas goes out of her way to reel in the resistant (probablymale) reader in "Al
que leyere," in the frame tale there is a sexual equilibrium between male and
female characters. This equilibrium makes itselfmanifest in the sartorial
matching of eachman with awoman and in the equal division of responsibility
for narration.12While Ruth El Saffar argues that the equity of narrative
distribution can be attributed to the dynamics of courtship present in the frame
tale of theNovelas amorosas, itbecomes clear in the preface and in themore
politically charged Desenga?os that toweave men into the texts at so many
different levels and in such a self-conscious way is to recognize men's potential
to influence social change and to improve cultural attitudes towardwomen.
Zayas's dependence on inclusionary discursive practices, then, functions as a
mirror to her largerpolitical project of engaging both men and women in a plan
for social
reform.
First captured in the rhetorically

manipulative "Alque leyere,"thepotentially
resistant reader's attentionmust be held throughout the novelas themselves.13
To accomplish this, inclusionarystrategiesare used throughout thefirstvolume:
in addition to the gender equity and the structure of shared narration in the

94
frame tale,both men's and women's bodies are portrayed as endangered in this
firstvolume. Through various acts of violence and verbal protestations on the
part of characters and narrators, the human body is shown to be in danger
within a cultural system thatplaces exaggerated importance on honor. Periodic
protests against women's oppression and against thehonor code surface in the
Novelas amorosas and thus prefigure the Desenga?os'
indictment of the
women.
In
victimize
that
of
these
resistant
comments,
spite
patriarchal practices
the comparatively idyllicNovelas amorosas y ejemplares do not forge the close
relationship among women's body, voice, and textthat is abundantly evident in
the Desenga?os.
From Zayas's comments in "Al que leyere" to Lisis's illness and theviolence
in the novelas proper, the Novelas amorosas do, however, set the stage for
corporeal
discourse.
The
more
critical
and woman-centred
Desenga?os
then
focus almost exclusively on the female body, exposing the crisis facingwomen
by narrating act afteract of violation. Highlighting the importance of thebody,
the entire collection is framed by Lisis's illnesses.While, at the start of the
discover her
Novelas, she is recovering fromquartan fever,in theDesenga??se
on her deathbed, driven to sickness by tumultuous love relationships. The
institutionsof courtship and marriage lead towomen's physical danger, in other
words, and Lisis is a living example of this correlation. But it is the character
Zelima who best represents themerging of body, voice, and text in thisvolume,
and we turn to her in order to explain the critical shift toward corporeality
which takes place in theDesenga?os.

Articulated by Lisis in the Introduction to the Desenga?os, the rules of
narration of this second publication exchange the general didacticism seen in
theNovelas amorosas fora gynocentric exemplaritymeant to "volverpor la fama
de lasmujeres (tan postrada y abatida por sumal juicio, que apenas hay quien
hable bien de ellas)" (Desenga?os 118). These textspointedly respond to the

masculine literarytradition thatportrayswomen negatively. In effect,the texts
aremeant to freewomen's voices and to tell theirside of the story.As seen in the
remarksmade in "Al que leyere"and in this Introduction to the second volume,
Zayas's indictment of the dominant literary tradition coincides with H?l?ne
Cixous's
Imaintain
more
own
comments
in
"Laugh
of the Medusa":
that there is such a thing as marked writing; that, until now, far
ever
repressively than is
suspected or admitted, writing has been
and cultural
hence political, typically masculine
(249)
economy.
unequivocally
extensively
run by a libidinal
and
Zayas writes against this "typicallymasculine" discursive traditionwhich she

criticizes in "Al que leyere"and again in theDesenga?os. Specifically, she creates
a fictionalworld that redresses the exclusion ofwomen by issuing a new set of
rules for literaryproduction. As iswell known, onlywomen can narrate in the

95
Desenga?os and theymust tell "true" tales ofmasculine deception. That Zelima
is granted by Lisis the privileged position of being the firstnarrator communi
cates the close friendshipLisis has with thiswoman, her new-found companion
and Moorish slavewho will later reveal herself to be theChristian aristocrat,
Isabel. Similar toMar?a de Zayas's position as a voice breaking masculine
barriers, Zelima's is the firstvoice to speak ofwomen's experiences, to answer

to the manipulation, objectification, and commodification of women in
discursive and cultural traditions.Due to Zelima's uneasy position (that of a
woman speaking to men, speaking out against them), Zayas once again
strategizes to draw in themale reader and tomaintain his attention.
As the firstnarrator of theDesenga?os, the slave Zelima is an exotic presence
in the otherwise homogeneous group ofwhite Catholic aristocratswho populate
the frame tale and whose counterparts are the protagonists of the novelas
proper. Presented as a gift to Lisis, Zelima has physical markings of slavery on
her face. An iron brand in the shape of an "s" with a bar through it has a
capacity not lost on the reader: "la S y clavo" clearly serve as a

With slavery
fragmented representationof theword "esclavo" (Desenga?os 117).
thuswritten upon her body, theoutward declaration of her identityseems fixed.
The first to express interest in Zelima's life,her owner and friendLisis shows
curiosity that isdeflectedwhen Zelima promises, "A su tiempo, se?ora m?a, la
sabr?s, y te admirar?s de ella" (Desenga?os 117).The mystery surrounding this
unusually beautiful and intriguingslave intensifieswhen she enters the soir?e on
the firstnight, prepared to be the firstwoman to narrate a tale of disenchant
metaphoric
ment.
Figured as the outsider par excellence,Zelima

serves
to secure
the hegemonic
gaze.
Zelima's
is presented as a body that
Otherness
functions
as a means
to hook the reader, for she represents the "off-centre,non-hegemonic identity"

described by Sidonie Smith in "Identity's Body" as inviting the gaze (269).
Zelima's difference functions to grab themale (and female) gaze, but a process
of undifferentiation is quickly put into place that converts theOther into a
member of thedominant group, therebyencouraging an identificationbetween
Zelima and the reader. Importantly, this identification serves to diminish the
triple threatposed by a non-Christian female slave. The firstmotion toward the
homogenization of Zelima occurs when she communicates her desire tobecome
Christian to hermistress. This initial indication of Zelima's possible assimilation
into the aristocratic, Christian environment of the frame taleminimizes the
threather religious differencemight pose.
Zelima's physical appearance suggests thismixture of identitiesput forth in
the religious context. As Amy Katz Kaminsky has discussed in "Dress and
Redress: Clothing in theDesenga?os," Zelima's breathtaking blue and white
costume of European andMoorish markings "proclaims her rankbut only hints
at her nationality and religion" (382). Focusing our attention on thebody, the

96
narration carefullydescribes thedetails of Zehmas clothing, allowing us to read
her for clues of her true identity.The guests read her as well, variously
interpretingher as "una princesa de Argel, una reina de Fez o Marruecos, o una
sultana de Constantinople
and "una ninfa o diosa de las antiguas f?bulas"
(Desenga?os 124). These attempts at defining a woman through her outward
appearance express a desire to decode the exemplarity of the body. This
willingness to seekmeaning in thebody is related to the conditioning provided
by long-standing literary, artistic, and philosophical traditions that define

women as body and hold women up to be read. As in "Al que leyere,"Zayas
exploits this conditioning in order to gain and maintain our attention.
the audience is at Zelima's mercy, with thewomen envious of her
and
themen "rendidos a ella" (Desenga?os 124), she launches into a
beauty
vituperation about misogyny that echoes Zayas's own invective in "Al que
leyere."Here Zelima remarks on the need forwomen's voices and stories to be
heard "pues ni comedia se representa,ni libro se imprime que no sea todo en
Once
ofensa de lasmujeres" (Desenga?os 124).Having thusdefined themacrocosmic

scope of the storytellingproject, Zelima secures the connection between body
and textby announcing that,although she could tellmany tales of disenchant
ment, she has chosen to tell her own. Zelima thus adopts the personal voice,
which is defined by narratologist Susan Lanser as "indistinguishable from
autobiography" in that itconsists of "a personal narrator [who] claims only the
validity of one person's right to interprether experience" (19). Lanser suggests
that the authority of the personal voice is limited in comparison to other
narrative voices because itmust establish itsown credibilitywith the reader. It
is, therefore,"less formidable forwomen than authorial voice, since an authorial
narrator claims broad powers of knowledge and judgment" (19-20). Yet Zayas's
use of this narrative voice poses a challenge to Lanser's assertions; Zelima's
autobiographical voice is,arguably, themost powerful voice in theDesenga?os,
as it sets the important precedent of the tellingofwomen's stories of victimiz
ation.
Of course, for a woman to speak up or speak out in earlymodern Spain

required her to address the lack of opportunity forwomen to speak and the lack
of credibility given to themwhen theydid speak. Zayas confronts these issues
inher own voice in the preface and has Zelima confront them as well. In spite
of literary, philosophical, and cultural traditions that disparage women's
intellect,Zelima resorts to autobiography, to the creation and narration of her
own
experience,
as a way
to free her own
body
as well
as to free women's
stories,
voices, and bodies. Zelima's tellingof an autobiographical story should also be

read, as Mireya P?rez-Erdelyi points out, as an example that all women have
theirown disenchantment to tell (69). Through the emphasis on thebody inher
autobiography, Zelima's
story solidifies the relationship between

female
97
subjectivity and corporeality that provides the cornerstone for the political
agenda of the texts.
Underscoring themultiplicity of her identity,Zelima immediately decon
structs the initial image she has presented of herself.14In doing so, she reveals
herself to be a living example of the Baroque conceit of deceptive appearances.
With hermultiple subjectivities, Isabel is also a perfect example of the "elusive
subjectivity" thatMarina Brownlee identifies in "Elusive Subjectivity inMaria

de Zayas," forhere the supposed Moorish slave Zelima undermines all of the
previous assumptions made about her in one fell swoop:
Mi
nombre
es do?a
hija de padres
Isabel Fajardo,
y de los m?s
cat?licos,
no Zelima,
ni mora,
principales
de la ciudad
como
sino cristiana,
pens?is,
de Murcia.
(Desenga?os
127)
In search of self-authorization, Isabel then reinforcesher assertion that she is

indeed like theother guests by removing the self-fashionedbrand fromher face
so that the audience will be more inclined to believe her ("para que deis m?s
cr?dito" [Desenga?os 127]). This performative transformation turnsZelima, the

Moorish female slave triplyrepresentative of theOther, into Isabel, a Christian
aristocrat whose only marker of difference is that she is a speaking woman,
willing to perform and give voice to her many identities in a public forum.
Previously Other, Zelima/Isabel thus integratesherself into themainstream,
stripping away the layers separating her from the audience as shemakes her
body a text and encourages the reader to equate textualitywith corporeality.15
In linewith this interchangeability of terms, Isabel describes her condition of
slavery as a willfully chosen position meant to represent on the surface of her
body the spiritual and psychical enslavement she feels as a resultof having been
raped and subsequently rejectedby the rapist,who had professed his love toher.
Thus, as Kaminsky states of Zelima/Isabel,
She makes
determines
marks
brand
material
the metaphor
to advertise
of estrangement
on her face) which
his base
of the
lover's
and unchristian
from Christian
his actions
society
abiding
behaviour
(Muslim
have occasioned.
within
presence
by wearing
dress)
and
her
outwardly
enslavement
and
the
(the
(383)
Isabel does originally fashion herself as a slave in order to publicize her

s
rapist dishonourable behaviour and the effectsof the rape and abandonment
on her psyche, theperformative act also has other implications that range from
the practical to thepolitical. Ironically, slaveryaffords Isabel unusual flexibility
in that,once sold, she secures a freedom ofmovement thatotherwisewould not
While
have been possible for her. And, in keeping with the didactic and political
purposes of theDesenga?os, she posits the violated female body as the focus of

98
the textsand thewoman as the logical and valid spokesperson for the treatment
of women
in society.
Through Zelima/Isabel, Zayas takes care to authorize women's creativityjust

as she did when speaking "al que leyere."Announcing that she herself is a
talentedpoet, Isabel pauses her narration, forexample, to defendwomen's right
to create, their right towrite, demanding thatmen give creditwhere it is due
rather than feel threatened bywomen's creative talents.As Sidonie Smith states
ofwomen's autobiography, the speaking subject (the I of autobiography) seeks
"to pursue her own desires, to shatter theportrait of herself she sees hanging in
the textual frames of patriarchy" (A Poetics 59). Isabel's claims about her poetic
abilities indicate that she is aware of her ability to create, to pursue her own
desires,
for she states,
"Yo fui en todo
extremada,
y m?s
en hacer
versos,
que
era
el espanto de aquel reino" (Desenga?os 128). Isabel's personal voice is a poet's

voice. It iswith creative, corporeal, Christian, aristocratic authority that she is
shown as presenting herself and her story as a textmeant to shatter not only
textualportraits ofwomen but also the treatmentofwomen inher culture.
The positioning of this particular novela, the only tale to sustain the
an analysis not only
autobiographical mode, as the first in the volume requires
of the narrative techniques employed to reel in the reader, but also of the
characterization of the narrator. Isabel's tale of deception, danger, and desire
laysout theprinciple elements of the ten desenga?os. Structured around female
victimization, all of the tales in thisvolume portraymasculine violence and the

victims' frustrated interactionwith men. Repeatedly betrayed and violated, the
female protagonists eitherwind up dead (in six stories) or, for four of the
fortunateones, in a convent. That Isabel gives voice to her own sufferingand
survival sets a precedent that theother femalenarrators (andwomen outside the
texts) can follow.

At the outset of her story, Isabel describes herself as occupying the typical
position of a female: objectified bymen, she only reacted to other's wishes for
her rather than definingher own desires.When shewas younger, she tellsus, she
had many suitors and resisted them all, insistingthat shewould never go against
her father'splans forher future (Desenga?os 131).The lack of articulation of her

own desire at the start becomes increasingly ironic, however, for as the tale
proceeds she shows herself tobe increasinglyautonomous awoman in control
of her identityand in search of justice for thewrongs done to her.
The traumatic incident thatpropels Isabel toward independence and agency

is a rape. That is, once she falls victim to this sexual crime, Isabel is forced to
come to termswith women's precarious position in a society that emphasizes,
even fetishizes,women's sexual purity and physical integrityto such a degree
that a victimized woman is perceived as impure and corrupt. Thus, Isabel is
forced out of passivity and into a repeated, eloquent articulation of her desire
both inwords and action as she seeks to repair the loss of self that she describes

99
as the resultof being raped. The description of Isabel's painful realization of the
crime tellinglypoints to the profound repercussions of the event while also
drawing attention to her enraged reaction to the rape. AfterManuel locks her
in a room and rapes her, Isabel recovers consciousness and realizes what has
been done to her. Using what Lynn Higgins and Brenda Silver call inRape and
Representation the "rhetoric of elision," Isabel gives voice to the rape through
silence.16The silencing of the violent act is apparent inher narration:
pasada poco m?s
me
hall? perdida,
pues
Pues
de media
hora,
y tan perdida,
volv? en m?, y me
hall?, mal
digo,
no me
hall?,
que no me
supe ni pude volver ni podr? ganarme

una
en
m?
mi
mort?fera
rabia, lo que en otra mujer pudiera
agravio
jam?s y infundiendo
en
un
con el cu?l, desasi?ndo
causar
m?
fue
furor
diab?lico,
l?grimas y desesperaciones,
se
me de sus infames lazos, arremet? a la espada que ten?a a la cabecera de la cama ...
[y]
...
a
en
la fui envainar
el cuerpo
137)
(Desenga?os
Isabel equates the integrityof the body (i.e. virginity)with the integrityof the
psyche and consequently interprets thismultiple violation as an erasure of
herself ("no me hall?"). This abrupt change, the erasure of her core identity,
calls into question Isabel's very existence and leaves the reader asking, "Where
is the subject of this autobiography?" The reader already has a partial answer to
thisquestion; in theprocess of unveiling her identity,Zelima/Isabel already has
begun to reveal themultiplicity of self,hermultifarious agency, thatwill be the
key to her survival. The restof the story, including Isabel's immediate violent
reaction of trying unsuccessfully to kill Manuel and then herself, revolves
around the search for the self lost in themoment of violation. Through this
process, Isabel overcomes the position of object inwhich she found herself in
her younger years and the position of victim inwhich she finds herself during
scene.
she becomes
Eventually,
and representation.
self-invention
the rape
own
an autonomous
subject,
an
agent
in her
When
This subject-object binary isproblematized throughout Isabel's story.
she leaves her house and takes on the identityof a slave and,with thehelp of an
ex-servant, is sold forone hundred ducats, she enacts a commodification of self
thatwould appear to undermine her newly found independence. In effect,she
has chosen to objectify herself. However, as Lou Charnon-Deutsch suggests,
Isabel uses slavery to control her destiny, therebygaining an independence that
isusually unavailable towomen (18-19). Isabel's decision to leave her house in
search of justice results inher father's immediate death, and with this,and with
hermother's rancour toward her because of thedeath, Isabel feelsutterlyalone
in theworld, searching for retribution for the rape in a six-yearquest to oblige
Manuel
to marry
her.
Fearing the performativity that affords Zelima/Isabel

movement
and access
to him, Manuel
interprets
her masquerade
independence of
as an

indicator
100
of unstable, dangerous identity.Upon recognizing her,Manuel criticizes Isabels
mutability: "?Qu? disfraz es ?ste, do?a Isabel? ?O c?mo lasmujeres de tus
obligaciones, y que han tenido deseos y pensamientos de serm?a, se ponen en
semejantes bajezas?" {Desenga?os 157). Later, he will use her costume as a
psychological weapon to discredit her.Manuel admits that perhaps he might

have been obligated to marry Isabel at one point, but he now definitively
disavows her "porque es imposible que yo me fiase de mujer que sabe hacer y
buscar tantos disfraces" (Desenga?os 163). From themale perspective, Isabel's
multifarious agency spills over the boundaries ofmodel female decorum and
thus legitimizes his attack on her as a mutable woman of many identities.
Excessive in itsbreaking down of boundaries of class, ethnicity,religion, power,

and space, Isabel's slave identitydisrupts every basic element of the cultural
codes that seek to establish sexual, political, economic, and social order.
Manuel's criticismof Isabel'smany masks bespeaks a culturallycoded fearof the
feminine, of theOther, as thatwhich symbolizes a threateningdestabilization

and complete de-centering of patriarchal order.17 In this sense, Isabel is an
anomalywith regard to her feminine agency and autonomy; she is a threatto the
social order and, in terms of difference, she remains theOther.
The resolution of Isabel's autobiographical tale provides the thematic and
didactic framework for the rest of theDesenga?os. In spite of her impressive
capacity foraction, Isabel does not act in response toManuel's final rejection of
her
as a "base"
woman.
Rather,
a man
steps
in to resolve
the situation:
Isabel's
suitor Felipe, whose help she resists throughout the tale as he follows her inhis
own extended masquerade, exacts revenge by killingManuel. While the death
of her offender should mark a moment of release, Isabel is in fact newly
obligated to yet another man, feeling that shemust marry Felipe to repay him
foravenging her loss of honor. In hiding from the authorities, she contemplates
her options and wavers between fulfillingher obligation to Felipe through
marriage and returning toMurcia to be with her mother. Significantly, Isabel
sets an example forallwomen when she liberatesherself from theobligation she
feels toward Felipe: she decides not to takeon theprescribed role ofwife which
is dictated by the economies ofmarriage and honor and made available to her
(an impurewoman) only through the generosity of a man. Instead, she forges
a new possibility forherselfby takingon the identityof a slave again, preferring
this self-commodification to the culturally-imposed identificationofwoman as
commodity in the sexual economy.18 Later, in themidst of Lisis's soir?e, Isabel
announces
her
intention
to enter
a convent
to become
a slave
to God,
the lover
who will never mistreat her (Desenga?os 167). In keeping with her creative
capacity forwriting poetry, telling a tale, and inventing the self, Isabel once
again seeks out a cultural space inwhich shemay determine, to the greatest
extent possible within patriarchy, control over herself.19
While Isabel finally
settles on the only option available tomost sexually "impure" woman, the

101
exploration of and persistent search for female agency in the autobiographical
tale challenges traditional notions of female sexuality and subjectivity.
Having fashioned herself as a devoted slave to God, Isabel ends her
autobiographical tale, leaving all who have heard her "tiernos y lastimados"
(Desenga?os 167). This reaction seems to result from thehighly personal nature
of the discourse asmuch as from the content of thenarration. In a gesture that
communicates the power of Isabel's tale, Lisis immediately offers all of her
jewels to help Isabel with the dowry thatwill allow her to enter the convent.20
The reactions of the frame characters on both a general and a gendered level
thusmirror the desired reading of the entire novela collection.
This embedding of the desired effectof the textswithin the frame tale is
repeated at the end of the frame tale in theDesenga?os. Recalling the fate of the
various female protagonists (all ofwhom are victimized bymen), Lisis refuses
tomarry Diego. Lisis decidedly linksherselfwith Isabelwhen shementions that

her own doubts about survival in the sexual economy began with Isabel's story:
... no es
me f?e de mi dicha, porque no me siento m?s firme que la hermosa

justo que yo
a
no le
tantos trabajos como en el discurso
de su
Isabel,
aprovecharon
quien
...
nos refiri?, de que mis temores han tenido
508)
desenga?o
principio
(Desenga?os
do?a
Isabel's storythus becomes thequintessential tale of peril and survival.With the

female body figured as text,a female voice speaking from the position of "I,"
and a storyof rape and rejection, Isabel's identification as "slave to her own
lover" pointedly responds to the cultural positioning ofwomen as objects, as
commodities, in a phallocentric sexual economy.
Thinking about the powerful effectsand structural implications of Isabel's
firsttale,we can turn to SylviaMolloy's At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing
in Spanish America, where she states, "All fiction is, of course, a recollection"
(139). Like Isabel's own story,Zayas's novelas purport to collect, present, and
recollectwomen's disadvantaged and imperiled position. Isabel initiates this
project in her autobiographical tale, inwhich the female voice is exposed in a
dramatic, effective fashion: the autobiographical, personal voice narrates the
inextricableconnection between the femalevoice and body, between objectivity
and subjectivity.The self-conscious fashioningof narrative authorityon thepart
of the firstnarrator in theDesenga?os amorosos belies a need, created by the
gender exclusivity of narration in thisvolume, to validate the collective female
narrative voice and the collective feminine experience. By negating distance
between selfand text, thisfirsttale invitesus to readwomen's bodies as textsof
violation and injustice throughout all of the novelas.Declaring her self lost after
being raped, Isabel asserts control over her body and selfby seeking justice for
the crime of a man. In the end, she chooses to become a nun, to be a slave to
Given the emphasis
God inorder to protect her emotional and bodily integrity.

102
on women's community and on women's friendship, Isabel's final fashioning
of the self into a nun can be read as this character's taking control of her body
and her story,her re-invention of self in the gynocentric image of religious
women.
Isabel's personal voice contributes to the collective voice ofwomen's protest,

encouraging other women to speak their victimization just as the remaining
nine narrators of theDesenga?os will on behalf of their violated, victimized
sisters.The important placement of Isabel's tale as firstpaves theway for the
otherwomen narrators to speak, yet none will speak from the "I" in the same
way that she does. Only in the last tale, "Estragos que causa el vicio," will a
female character speak from her body and for herself in a way that recalls
Isabel's bodily discourse. In the intervening stories, other women's violated
bodies are described with great, gory detail. Yet, as narrator of thefinal tale,Lisis
gives over the narration to her protagonist, and thus the collection ends as it
began, with woman speaking of her body and of herself.
Unlike theNovelas amorosas, inwhich thehuman body in general is shown
to be at risk, the Desenga?os feminize and materialize corporeal discourse.
Effectedby a shiftinnarration thatexcludes themale voice, this second volume
is framed by an autobiographical discursive mode that speaks the body and
rewrites the cultural script that reifies the violation of the feminine. The
corporeality of Zayas's textshas theoretical implications both for feminist and
bodily politics in the seventeenth century. Zayas properly perceives the
profundityof the task she has set forherself: seeking to valorize and authorize
women's experiences and voices, she chooses the body as the vehicle through
which tomake her readers invest in the feminine. The Novelas amorosas begin
this process by putting the human body on display, and thus causing us to
reflecton itsmeaning and forging an affinitybetween readers and text.The
Desenga?os
amorosos,
and,
in particular,
"Esclava
de
su
amante,"
then
specificallyclaim the female body as a trulycontested site, as a flesh and blood

textwhose violation is produced by institutionalized misogyny. In case the
reader stillmisses the point and does not appreciate the need forwomen to
speak theirexperiences and formen to learn to listenand to value the feminine,
Lisis and Isabel,who best understand the need to givewomen the opportunity
to speak,make of themselves a bodily example as theyexit the soir?ewith their
nun-friendEstefan?a.Bound for the convent, theywill not be bound tomen and
to the cultural practices exposed and criticized throughout theDesenga?os.
Elizabeth Grosz describes her book Volatile Bodies as awager: betting on the
importance of corporeality, she announces the bet: the body, like themind
(either the conscious or the unconscious), can be used to explain all of the
effectsof subjectivity;bodies, in other words, "have all the explanatory power

ofminds" (vii).Writing in the seventeenth century, in a timewhen women's
minds were purposefully denied cultivation and women's bodies were used as

103
expendable commodities inmen's sexual, political, and ideological markets,
Mar?a de Zayas appears tohave relied on reasoning similar toGrosz's when she
chose to speak through the female body in her fictional texts. Setting out a
feminist politics that indicts the entire culture for its devaluation of the
feminine,Zayas corporealizes women's experiences and mobilizes the body as
a source of self-authorization and political validation. From Isabel's assertion
of agency throughmetamorphosis to Lisis's final decision to remove her body

from themarriage market, theDesenga?os speak of and through the body.
Through this corporealization of her feministagenda, Zayas begs us all to read
the female body for its capacity to conveymeaning about the culture at large.
Likemany late twentieth-century
feministtheoristswho urgewomen towrite
throughthe body of the body for the collective female body, Zayas mobilizes
corporeality as the intersectionbetween the sexes, as the common language
between men and women. Urging women to take control discursively,
intellectually, and physically of their own bodies, Zayas speaks through the
collective female body inher novela collection and pushes women to recognize
theirundervalued position in society.Zayas thus exploits the differentbodily
discourses available toher and uses them inher campaign to educate societyon
the gender question. Hundreds of years before H?l?ne Cixous or Luce Irigaray
or Elizabeth Grosz wrote of thebody,Maria de Zayas claimed the corporeal as
feminist territory.
Wayne State University
NOTES
1
autos de fe were increasingly rare in the seventeenth

century, corporal
did continue to occur in the public sphere. As Henry Kamen
punishment
in Inquisition and Society in Spain, after the first twenty years of the
discusses
Although
Inquisition,
(perhaps less than two percent of the
relatively few prisoners
were publicly executed. More
to being sent to
frequently, in addition
accused)
the galleys,penitentswere also publiclywhipped "inwhich case he [or she] had
to appear
stripped
to the waist - often mounted
on an ass - and was
duly
with the specifiednumber of strokesby thepublic

flogged throughthe streets
executioner"
2
With
The
(187).
regard to the large numbers of Spanish uxoricide

plays, in Fatal Union,
Matthew
Stroud focuses on thirty-one of these comedias dating from 1575-1675.
He points out, however, that "it is very likely that there are others still not
considered"
intriguing
biography,
in his study (19).

life of the woman
warrior Catalina
de Erauso
also represents an
of her
story in terms of the body. Given the recent publication
seem to
Lieutenant Nun, the escapades
of this cross-dressed woman
anomalous

104
as well. For more on the
Americans
captured the imagination of modern
see Mitchell
in
Canonical
modern
States,
drama,
Greenberg's
body
early
Feminism and theHonor Plays of
Canonical
Stages or Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano's
have
Lope de Vega.
with Saintly Threads," draws
Grieve's article, "Embroidering
in
novelas and concludes
of
importance
hagiography
Zayas's
women
encourages
feminine
5
While
community
Mary Elizabeth
'feminist'
to reject "secular martyrdom"

of the convent.
in the modern
and
Perry says that Zayas "cannot

sense" (74), Susan Griswold
attention
to the
that Zayas
seek refuge in the
a
really be considered
"feminist
rejects Zayas's
as
of Zayas's
(100). Taking in the complexities
"purely rhetorical"
in "Postmodernism
and the Baroque," Marina
Brownlee
lucidly
to this author's
"Instead of an exclusive focus
interest in perspectivism:
posturing"
discourse,
points
an
or character, she undertakes
on the gender of the
analysis of the
speaker
as
as
status and
well
discourses
and
socio-economic
many
(sexuality
gender
racial identity) whose
define
the
unstable
collectively
conflicting imperatives
I agree
culture" (119-20). While
of the individual
boundaries
subject of baroque
analysis, Iwill argue in this article that Zayas's

is
the
ideology
driving force behind her aesthetics and politics.
For a more detailed explanation
of Zayas's use of the body and how this relates
to the deployment
of the body by the state, see Vollendorf's,
"Reading
inMaria
de Zayas."
Violence
Imperiled:
against Women
For a detailed publishing
novelas, see Alicia Yllera's
history of Zayas's
with Brownlee's
excellent
feminist
amorosos (64-93).
of the Desenga?os
on the body as a rallying point for politics and as a
long focused
to the
Some writers who have made
focus for theorization.
great contributions
field include, but certainly are not limited to: Luce Irigaray (e.g. This Sex which
Introduction
the Body
Feminists
to her edition
have
Is not One), H?l?ne Cixous

("Laugh of the Medusa"),
Monique Wittig
(eg. "The
and "One Is not Born Woman"),
Judith Butler (Gender Trouble
Straight Mind"
Diana
Fuss (Essentially Speaking), Susan Bordo
and Bodies thatMatter),
and, most recently,
(Unbearable Weight), Elizabeth Grosz
(VolatileBodies),
Moira
9
10
Gatens
(Imaginary Bodies).
See Irigaray's An Ethics of Sexual Difference. For more on the one-sex model
see Chapter One of Thomas
that dominated
European
thinking until 1800,
Sex.
Laqueur's Making
This use of the topos of androgynous
the novelas. In the Novelas
amorosas,
asks in a frustrated
del amor"
souls is repeated several times throughout

for example, the protagonist
of "La fuerza
tone, "?El alma no es lamisma que la de los
hombres?"
11
(241).
all early modern women writing on theWoman
question accommodated
seen in Zayas. Marie de
male characters or readers in the direct manner
de la
readers from UOmbre
Gournay
specifically excludes men as possible
Not
uvre compos?e de
de Gournay:
(1626), saying in the "Advis
m?slanges
"I realize that we will get along best ifwe separate. Is it not an act of
[deux esprits scabreux]
charity to put distance between two irritable characters
demoiselle
au lecteur":

105
before
they actually
quarrel?"
(quoted
in Constance
Jordans Renaissance
Feminism,
12
285).
With
between men
regard to the textual equilibrium
out
El
Saffar
"male
and female
Ruth
that
tale,
points
balanced
against
structure as well,
one another"
(97). This
and women
in the frame
forces are carefully

carries over to the family
balance
for all of the female frame characters
only have mothers while

on the frame
only have fathers. Pointing to the influence of courtship
sexes
to the
of
the
El
Saffar
the
of
the
tale,
explains
separation
"redoubling
as
second generation"
"the
of
the
barrier
separating the
emphasizing
rigidity
sexes" (201).
the men
13
to know who exactly was reading Zayas's bestselling books.

It is impossible
W^hile literacy statistics are sparse for this period, a likely figure is 20% literacy
with the highest figure forwomen's
(see Beverley, Cruikshank),
literacy posited
in the
69). In the "Pr?logo de un desapasionado"
the appeal made actually to buy the book suggests that
that few books would be bought, possibly since most
booksellers worried
texts read aloud. See Ife's Reading and Fiction
people would have heard Zayas's
at 25%
Novelas
inMadrid
(Nalle
amorosas,
in Golden Age Spain formore

in the seventeenth century.
on the transition
from public
to private
reading
coincides with the multiplicity

of the
self-representation
or his
See, for
autobiographical
subject and her
capacity for transformation.
to
and
the
Introduction
Gilmore's
example,
Leigh
Chapter One
Autobiographies
of Sidonie Smith's A Poetics ofWomen sAutobiography.
14
Zelima/Isabel's
15
true identity is one that homogenizes

the
revelation of Zehmas
in a way that points to the general tendency in Zayas to over-categorize
in order to maintain
the integrity of her aristocratic feminist agenda. Butler
or a
would
call this a "colonizing
(Gender
gesture"
"totalizing discourse"
The detailed
Other
Trouble13) thatfunctionstoneglectthediversityof the (feminine)body
16
(Gender Trouble 22). This is an issue of Zayas's poetics and politics that I am
inmy larger project on Zayas.
exploring
Part Two of Rape and Representation
is entitled "Rhetoric of Elision." This
section of the book explores the rhetorical technique of figuring violation as a
of sexual crimes.
in literary representations
can be read in terms of the analysis
novela, as much of Zayas's discourse,
done on classical and un-classical
in Peter Stallybrass and Allon White's
bodies
textual gap
17
This
as a clear
of Transgression. The tale serves
example of
to the classical body: she is an open body that poses a
threat to the stability of the phallocentric,
classical, unchanging
body of the
man.
The Politics
woman
18
and Poetics
as antithetical
For a concise,
effects of the
essay on the deleterious
provoking
see
of women,
"Commodities
among
Irigaray's
in This Sex which Is not One.
commodification
19
Themselves"
As recent scholarship on convents has shown, nuns enjoyed a large degree of

that were, ultimately, controlled by the male
autonomy within communities
church authorities
(see Arenal
and Schlau's
Untold
Sisters).

106
20
her own jewelsand all thatshe isworth tohelp Isabel enterthe

By offering
implicitly imitates Isabel's subversion of the role of commodity
to women
culture. For a materialist
by the dominant
analysis of
assigned
see Charnon-Deutsch
Isabel's use of money,
(16-19).
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convent,
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