The body imperiled: Violence against women in Maria de Zayas\u27s novellas

This comprehensive study of Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor\u27s Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desenganos amorosos discusses Zayas\u27s representation of violence against women as it relates both to Golden Age Spain and to the proto-feminist purposes of the texts themselves. Often described as grotesque and sensationalist, these novellas are shown, through a combined theoretical framework of social history and feminism, to constitute a multi-layered critique of the treatment of women in the society which they purport to reflect. The first chapter forges a connection between Zayas\u27s choice of the female body as the site of violation and the use of public torture in early modern Spain. Such an analysis validates Zayas\u27s appropriation of the maimed body as a means through which truth is extracted and displayed. Theories of women\u27s oppression and domestic violence are applied in subsequent chapters to elucidate the similarities between the de facto dynamics of violent relationships and Zayas\u27s representation of this phenomenon as familial and social dysfunction. Chapters Three and Four examine the issues of speech and gendered spaces, revealing that Zayas\u27s female characters are silenced and physically enclosed by their male counterparts. The obsession with enclosure, exposed and criticized throughout the novellas, is cast in terms of the Counter-Reformative preoccupation with containing feminine sexuality. Chapter Five turns to Zayas\u27s strategies to privilege the female perspective and protect the female body. These strategies emerge through a subtext of feminine solidarity, the marginalization of the masculine from the frame tale, and the utopianization of conventual space