La desestabilizaci_n de la Jerarqu a Masculina _x000D_en las novelas de Mar a De Zayas / by Susana Vargas Rizo _x000D_

Based on a great variety of primary and secondary sources, and referring to the ideas of Derrida, Spivak, and contemporary feminist theories, this study explores the ways in which Mari_a de Zayas y Sotomayor subverts and destabilizes the rigid patriarchal structure that predominated in the seventeenth century in order to give voice to women or female desire. Zayas constructs characters that are active, strong, clever, and ingenious, and who reject submission to the totalizing conventional customs of the age, and who challenge and fight against elements of a confining patriarchy. Likewise, through female writing about women who speak of cruelty and victimization at the hands of men, this thesis will discuss the resistance and subversion of Zayas in the face of hegemonic structures of early modern Spain or its dominant discourses, that attempt to silence women??s voice and control their subjectivity through absolutist postulations. The thesis will demonstrate, through the Novelas ejemplares y amorosas and Desengan_os amorosos, that there are no inherent absolute truths that can attempt to dominate and concretize the female Subject. Zayas (a paragon of creativity, intellectual capacity, and knowledge) demonstrates the slippery nature of dominant discourses when she presents women who are able to exact revenge by their own hands, who can speak despite their subaltern condition, and who represent themselves by means of female writing