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"La fuerza del amor" or "The Power of Self-Love": Zayas'
Response to Cervantes' "La fuerza dela sangre"Author(s): Rosilie
Hernndez PecoraroSource: Hispanic Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Winter,
2002), pp. 39-57Published by: University of Pennsylvania
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LA FUERZA DEL AMOR OR THE POWER OF SELF-LOVE: ZAYAS' RESPONSE TO
CERVANTES' LA FUERZA
DE LA SANGRE
ROSILIE HERNANDEZ PECORARO
University of Illinois, Chicago
U HE debt of Maria de Zayas' Ejemplos and Desen- ? t?ttt ' ganos
amorosos to Cervantes' Novelas Ejem-
plares has been studied frequently. Given the pop-
^| e ularity that the Novelas ejemplares enjoyed, their
w* influence upon other authors of short stories was
i* I trj. inevitable, even obligatory. And Zayas' work is often
read as an elaboration of the style, themes,
and content of Cervantes' ejemplos. Nonetheless, as Cervantes
him- self well demonstrated, imitation does not imply blind
reverence to the model; for Cervantes, as for most writers of the
Renaissance and Baroque, the practice of imitatio was a conscious
effort to trans- form, and in the process hopefully surpass, the
model. In fact, Zayas' texts readily lend themselves to multiple
and paradoxical readings, making any imitation of or response to
the content and themes of Cervantes' works unexpected and highly
original. As Patricia E. Grieve has stated in her study of Zayas'
practice of imitation and
manipulation of hagiographic codes, her works not only "imitate"
(and thus transform) form and content, but radically undermine
the
ideological premises which commonly frame text and reading con-
text:
By foregrounding hagiography and transforming
seventeenth-century male-approved reading matter for women into
material for women's
39
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
writing, while refusing merely to imitate it, Zayas creates a
revisionist text that subverts hagiography's patriarchal discourse.
She appropriates the content but revises the context of the
stories, thereby circumventing the pitfalls of being a female voice
in a male discourse. (89)
I would add that this practice of irreverent imitation, of
taking a male oriented discourse, subverting its premises, and
recontextualizing it into a woman's text is the same practice Zayas
employs in her transformation of Cervantes' works. In this essay I
will discuss the ways in which Zayas' La fuerza del amor is a
direct retort to the irony (whether intentional or not) of
Leocadia's marriage in Cer- vantes' Lafuerza de la sangre. I will
argue that in fact Zayas' tale of marriage and deception is a
conscious continuation of Cervantes' contradictory tale of rape,
sin, and farfetched reconciliation. If La fuerza de la sangre ends
with an uneasy declaration of marital bliss between Rodolfo, an
aristocrat and a rapist, and his victim, Leocadia, Lafuerza del
amor openly exposes the cruel reality that this blessed state can
and will bring. Cervantes' tale ends with Leocadia's surren- der to
her rapist's gaze and her tenuous reintegration into society as his
honorable wife and mother of his children. In contrast, Zayas
focuses on the pitfalls of marriage for women such as Leocadia and
Lafuerza del amor's Laura, beautiful objects of desire always lack-
ing power and readily abused by husband and society. Nonetheless,
Zayas enables her disgraced heroine to find in herself the power of
self-love (this tale should really be titled La fuerza del amor
pro- prio) and establish her subjectivity apart from all male
influence.
First let us examine Cervantes' Sangre. In this ejemplo
Leocadia, a virginal and extremely beautiful sixteen-year-old is
abducted from her family's carriage by Rodolfo, a caballero whose
"inclinaci6n torcida," "libertad demasiada" and "companiias libres"
prevent him from honoring his or her honorable standing in society
(77). She is taken to Rodolfo's room where, unconscious, she is
raped. As the night evolves Leocadia first pleads for her death,
then for her release, and manages to leave taking a crucifix that,
as Marcia Welles estab- lishes, will be both symbol and proof of
her innocent sacrifice (247). Luisico, the product of this unworthy
union, has an accident that miraculously brings him to his noble
grandparents' house where he lies in the bed that seven years
earlier had been the stage of his mother's disgrace. Leocadia,
finally aware of her aggressor's identity, acts accordingly and,
through Rodolfo's parents' grace and kindness,
40 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
is able to regain her honor through marriage. Seven years after
her tragic encounter with Rodolfo's lust she is for the first time
free to acknowledge her son as her own and secure her public
honra.
Edward Friedman has convincingly suggested that the reader of
Lafuerza de la sangre is hard pressed to ignore how "the literal
and figurative levels of meaning [are] self-consciously ambiguous"
(153- 54). Even though Leocadia's story ends with an affirmation of
the "muchos y felices afnos" (95) that she and Rodolfo spend as
husband and wife and of the many more honorable children that they
bear, the literal description of Rodolfo's character and
motivations questions their union's credibility or, as we will see
for Zayas, desirability. It is evident from Rodolfo's first
appearance that his character and ac- tions are incommensurate with
his position in society, even when the narrative voice considers
his youth: "Hasta veinte y dos anfos tendria un caballero de
aquella ciudad a quien la riqueza, la sangre ilustre, la
inclinaci6n torcida, la libertad demasiada y las compafifas libres,
le hacian hacer cosas y tener atrevimientos que desdecian de su
calidad y le daban renombre de atrevido" (77). It thus should not
surprise the reader when Leocadia's beauty ignites in him the
desire to "gozarla a pesar de todos los inconvenientes que
sucederle pudiesen" (78). Soon after, Rodolfo goes to Italy where,
as his father advises him, he can be as good a caballero as he had
been in his homeland.' Seven years after the rape Rodolfo's own
voice is first heard but then only to confirm his lust and lack of
interest in women as worthy subjects. His one opportunity to redeem
himself and demonstrate repentance and transformation is marred
when, upon his mother's questioning, his utter disregard for
anything but the enjoyment of physical beauty is once more
confirmed. Accordingly, during his wedding night with Leocadia, "le
parecia a Rodolfo que iba y caminaba no con alas, sino con muletas:
tan grande era el deseo de verse a solas con su querida esposa"
(95; emphasis mine). The narrator's description of Rodolfo's desire
to find himself alone with his "querida esposa" immediately invokes
his desire to enjoy an object of beauty: "Mozo soy, pero bien se me
entiende que se compadece con el sacramento del matrimonio eljusto
y debido deleite que los casados gozan" (91; emphasis mine). If
years earlier "los impetus no castos de la mocedad" (77) had
driven
1 It is in textual moments such as these that Friedman's reading
of irony in La fuerza de la sangre is irrefutable.
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
him to violate Leocadia's body and honor, it is again his
mocedad which legitimizes his disregard of virtue in favor of
beauty and physical desire in marriage. While his early encounter
with Leocadia is motivated by pure drive, unrestrained by honor and
its demands within the patriarchy, his marriage vows are a
channeling of that libidinal energy into the chain of desire within
the socio-symbolic order of Spanish aristocratic society; this is a
point that Theresa Ann Sears has argued at length and that I will
come back to later in this essay.
Nevertheless, Welles considers Lafuerza de la sangre a woman's
story. Leocadia's plight and actions, not Rodolfo's problematic
ref- ormation, are the focus of this rape narrative. She is, as
described by the narrator, a lamb that without any warning or
compassion is taken from her parents side and raped. Not only does
she have to plead for her death or her liberty, she also has to
defend herself against a second attempted violation. Moreover,
Leocadia is a victim of her circumstance. She is of noble title but
poor. Her parents, as stated by her father, are powerless in the
face of public disgrace and scandal. Even if they had the
inclination to publicize the crime and look for the culprit, such
an action would destroy their tenuous social and economic standing.
Nevertheless, it is evident that Leocadia is first an unwilling and
then an unresigned victim. She memorizes the room that served as
the "sepultura de [su] honra" and takes with her the violator's
crucifix, a glaring symbol of Rodolfo's hypocrisy and Leo- cadia's
Christ-like innocence and sacrifice. Once Rodolfo's identity is
revealed and contact is established with his parents, Leocadia
finally has the opportunity to tell her story, confirmed by her
son's resemblance to his absent father. She is willing to go along
with Rodolfo's mother's scheme in order to regain her and her son's
public honra and private well being, and appears as an angel for
Rodolfo, the "golosina" that he so enthusiastically had come from
Italy to enjoy (89). As she sits across from her aggressor, the
narrator tells us how Leocadia now feels she loves Rodolfo "mas que
a la luz de sus ojos" (93). Yet this desperate "love" (I would
argue the desire to finally be acknowledged as a human being) is
accompanied by memories of her rape and disillusionment: "comenz6 a
revolver en su imaginaci6n lo que con Rodolfo habia pasado" (93).
Her desire for love and an honorable life cannot be separated from
the violence and suffering she has endured. Leocadia wants to be
Rodolfo's wife. She wants to save her family's honor and legitimize
her son's existence.
42 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
But at what cost and with what risk? It is no wonder that at
this long awaited moment she once more faints, confused as she
considers "cuan cerca estaba de ser dichosa o sin dicha para
siempre" (93). As Elizabeth T. Howe has argued, the meaning of "la
fuerza de la sangre" is as much a direct reference to blood lines
as it is to the power of lust and its effects upon those who fall
prey to its unbridled and unapologetic force. Leocadia might have
to "love" Rodolfo in order to enter the symbolic space of Spanish
patriarchal society, but this love is clearly not reciprocated; or
rather it is reciprocated in the only way it can be, as love for an
object of desire, this time sanctioned by state and church. Thus,
as Friedman proposes, the assertion of Leocadia and Rodolfo's many
happy years of marriage should be questioned as a conventional but
paradoxical ending to the events told in Lafuerza de la sangre. In
other words, it is very hard to find believable that marriage and
prosperity can result from rape and unrepentant humiliation. It is,
I propose, this contradictory and ironic ending of 'marital bliss'
which Zayas picks up in her own story of seduction, abuse, and
betrayal.
La fuerza del amor starts off where Cervantes' novela ends. If
Leocadia's tale ends with an idealized marriage, Laura's plight
begins with her falling in love and marrying. The points of contact
between the two characters are evident. To start with, and pivotal
to their status as objects of desire, is their shared beauty. Like
Leocadia, Laura is an extremely beautiful woman. The narrative
voice con- sciously and ironically describes her through poetic
language, thus inscribing Laura within a long line of perfect and
idealized women in literature:
Laura, peregrino y nuevo milagro de Naturaleza, tanto que entre
las mas gallardas y hermosas fu6 tenida por celestial extremo; pues
habiendo escogido los curiosos ojos de la ciudad entre todas ellas
once, y de estas once tres, fue Laura de las once una, y de las
tres una. (221)
"Hermosa" is the adjective that most frequently describes Laura,
which, combined with her extreme "discrecion," "recato," and "ho-
nestidad" (222), make of her one of the most desirable yet unap-
proachable women of Naples; "fueron sus ojos basiliscos de las
almas, su gallardia monstruo de la las vidas, y su riqueza y nobles
partes, cebo de los deseos de mil gallardos y nobles mancebos de la
ciudad, pretendiendo por medio del casamiento gozar de tanta her-
mosura" (222-23).
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
Like his Cervantine predecessor, Zayas' Diego will also long to
"gozar de tanta hermosura." But whereas Rodolfo's "torcida inclina-
ci6n" was evident from his first contact with Leocadia, Diego's
awareness of Laura's high social standing precludes him from taking
any extreme measures and revealing immediately his lust and incon-
stant desire. Initially Laura, like the reader, falls prey to
Diego's apparently true and honorable love. He asks her to dance in
a sarao and when she shies away and rejects his amorous intent, his
suffer- ing and loyalty seem sincere. He laments:
iAy divina Laura, y con qu6 crueldad oiste aquella tan sola como
desdichada palabra que te dixe!, como si el saber que esta alma es
mas tuya que la misma que posees fuera afrenta para tu honestidad y
linaje, pues es claro que si pretendo emplearla en tu servicio ha
de ser haciendote mi esposa, y con esto no pierdes opinion alguna.
(224; my emphasis)4
Yet already there is in this early representation of Diego's
love for Laura something gone awry. Even in his apparent and
expressed respect for her honor and place in society, it is her
beauty and not her virtue that drives him to desperation and
lament, "[aquella] belleza que le tenia tan fuera de si" (224). As
a result, he feels compelled to offer a public serenade, a
declaration of love and jealousy that disregards truth, public
embarrassment, or the possible condemna- tion of Laura by her
family:
[P]rocurando declarar en un romance,... su amor y los celos que
le daba un caballero noble y rico, que por ser amigo muy querido de
los hermanos de Laura entraba muy a menudo en su casa, creyendo que
los descuidos de Laura nacian de tener puesta la voluntad en 1l,
afectos de un celoso levantar testimonios a los inocentes.
(226)
Diego is an equal to Laura in wealth and social status; there
was never a need for him to make a public spectacle out of his
interest for her and his bouts of (as Laura herself points out)
unwarranted jealousy. This is evident given that once Laura's
father is made aware of Diego's interest for his daughter the union
is achieved exclusively through parental intervention. Yet Diego's
impulsiveness dictates his behavior from the very beginning, a
trait that reminds us of Rodolfo
4 In retrospect this declaration of honorable love is ripe with
irony. She will not only lose all private and public respect or
opinion but will almost lose her life.
44 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
and that will only intensify in a thoroughly incoherent manner
once Diego and Laura's marriage is consummated.
On their wedding night Diego possesses his object of desire but
not the fulfillment that, as Lacan reminds us, subjects lack within
their socio-symbolic structures. He is thus soon enthralled with an
ex-lover, Nise, who, abandoned and distraught, feels she has
nothing to lose and seduces him into a very public affair.5 Tired
of Laura's beauty and disgusted by her accusations and laments,
Diego pro- ceeds to verbally and physically abuse her, screaming at
her, bloody- ing her mouth, and threatens to kill her with a
dagger. Unlike Rodolfo's act of violence in Lafuerza de la sangre,
Diego's abuse of his wife is described in great detail, its horror
ironically made into a metaphor through the image of Laura's teeth
which if once were like pearls, "presto tomaron la forma de
corales" (238). Thus, if Cer- vantes' male protagonist is a figure
whose lust leads him to marriage, Zayas' Diego is a warning of what
happens to that lust within marriage: it tires and becomes loathing
and abuse.
Faced with the horrifying reality of marriage, Laura's life,
like Leocadia's, is destroyed and she goes into a kind of hiding,
publicly shamed by her husband's mistreatment. But whereas Leocadia
finds a degree of comfort in her family's private acceptance of her
dis- grace,6 Laura is left behind to deal with her suffering on her
own. Her father and brothers move to another town afraid of what
conse- quences may arise from Diego's rage and any defense of their
daugh- ter and sister. It is made clear that Laura's life was not
worth risking one of the son's lives or public family honor.
Silence and distance are thus the solution of choice. As Lou
Chamon-Deutsch points out:
The life of the Zayasian heroine reveals social contracts to be
sadly unrelated to human passions and sentiment. Unlike Timoneda,
who defines evil as a threat to stable unions that is posed from
outside the
5 Even though Nise's role in La fuerza del amor is in contrast
with Laura's virtuous nature, I would argue that the text
represents Nise's abandonment and cruel actions toward Laura as a
direct result of Diego's deceit and mistreatment.
6 Leocadia family's acceptance and support are, in any case,
marred by their insistence in the shame that the rape brings to all
of them, their powerlessness (or lack of will) to intervene, and
the resulting necessity to hide its occurrence. It seems evident to
me that Cervantes' subtle but complex representation of familial
love and honor (Leocadia's cause is abandoned by her family even if
she is tolerated by them) is understood by Zayas and fully exposed
in her corresponding tale.
45
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
members of the union, Zayas sees the evil within the family unit
as a threat, not to patriarchal stability but to women's physical
and emotional well being. (24)
Laura's father and brothers cannot, or rather will not, help
her, sustaining the social contract that maintains that Diego is
her hus- band, and thus her owner, and they abandon her to further
abuse and victimization. Nevertheless it is important to note that
in both Leo- cadia's and Laura's case it is family neglect that
eventually prompts them to act. If Leocadia family's silence
incites her to personally tell her story to Rodolfo's parents as
soon as she has a chance (albeit, seven years after the rape),
Laura seeks out an hechicera as a substitute for a father's or
brother's defense.7
Laura's self-initiative is brought to light early on in the text
when she first confesses her love to Diego. Embarrassed by his
public and gratuitous claims of jealousy (and the insinuation that
there had been some amorous dealings between her and a friend of
the family), she advises him to be silent and privately declares
her loyalty and love: "Yo no os olvido por nadie, que si alguno en
el mundo ha merecido mis cuidados sois vos, y sereis el que me
habeis de merecer, si por ello aventurase la vida" (228). This
personal declaration firmly estab- lishes Laura as a desiring
subject who willingly enters marriage, a union in which she expects
Diego to be true to his word and his expressed desire to honor her
in marriage. Once Diego psychologi- cally and physically abuses
her, Laura actively pursues reparations for the damage that has
been done to her. First, she seeks Nise's compassion by personally
asking her to desist of her pursuit of her husband. When this
strategy fails she, like Leocadia in Lafuerza de la sangre, is
helped by a maternal figure, this time the "falsa enreda- dora" who
tries to swindle her (239). Finding herself in the impossi- ble
situation of having to go to look for "barbas, cabellos y dientes
de un ahorcado" (239), Laura offers the pivotal and often quoted
speech where she questions women's position within the patriarchy.
In her lament she complains of women's inability to defend their
honor and well-being, "pues nos negais letras y armas" (241). A
careful reading of the speech also reveals Laura's clear
understanding of her partic-
7 As a matter of fact, Rodolfo's mother can be seen as an
hechicera herself, given the sense of magic and wonderment
attributed to Leocadia's transformation into an angel-like figure
and Rodolfo's enchantment with this figure.
46 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
ular situation as an abused and powerless object of exchange and
desire; this is a realization that Leocadia, in Lafuerza de la
sangre, finally avoids. Laura loved and trusted Diego only to find
him to be like all men, "cuyos engafios quitan el poder a los
mismos demonios, y hacen ellos lo que los ministros de maldades
dexan de hacer" (241). The analysis of her family's desertion is
equally lucid. She wonders who can console her and concludes that
no one can, "pues mi padre y hermanos, por no oirlas me han
desamparado" (241). Her con- sciously hopeless cry for help thus
ends with an equally realistic deter- mination. If neither society
nor family will recognize her as a worthy human being, she will
take the only option available to her at the time, "pensar como
dare a esa mujer [la hechicera] lo que pide" (242). She then sets
out to the periphery of the city and to a common sepulcher where
she can find the relics required for the witch's potion.
Laura's visit to the grave can be interpreted as a metaphor for
the descent into hell, a place of death and desperation. Obsessed
with completing the task at hand and saving her relationship with
Diego, Laura spends several hours among the dead. Denied of all
dignity and self-esteem, Laura's act portrays the psychological
extremes a hu- man being can reach. We could say that she herself
has died, losing all sense of self and of right and wrong in her
desperation to regain an honorable place in society. But if Laura
symbolically dies and visits hell in the form of the common grave,
it is also true that when she exits she is reborn.8 As the narrator
tells us, Laura's beloved brother, Carlos, is moved by a miraculous
occurrence much like Luisico's rescue by his grandfather in
Lafuerza de la sangre. Carlos wakes up in the middle of the night
and driven by instinct and fear goes in search of his sister,
knowing that she is in danger, ultimately finding her in the city's
humilladero. Early on Zayas had established the close (hinting on
the verge of incestual) relationship between the two siblings: "que
la amaba tan tiemo, que se olvidaba de si o quererla" (222). Yet,
even though it is Carlos who calls on Laura to come out of the
grave and helps her emerge from the depths of a physical and
psycho-
8 Leocadia in La fuerza de la sangre has been related to the
figure of Christ, an innocent soul sacrificed, the symbol of her
plight and her innocence the Crucifix (see for example Welles'
"Violence Disguised"). I would say that here again we have a point
of contact between the two characters for if Leocadia is sacrificed
symbolically at the
cross, Laura visits hell like Christ did, and like Christ she
emerges a new empowered being.
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
logical hell, I would argue that the miraculous nature of
Carlos' appear- ance is not the determining factor in Laura's
resurrection and her transformation at the end of the tale. Like
the miracle in Cervantes' novela, Carlos' presence is an event that
facilitates, but does not deter- mine, the resolution of the female
protagonist's plight.
When Laura hears her brother's voice she first tries to hide her
identity. Ultimately she comes out of the grave and into her
brother's arms, finding herself once more under her family's
protection. An official complaint is presented to the Viceroy
concerning Diego's behavior, which results in his repentance and
contrition. But con- trary to her family's expectations, Laura
rejects Diego's offer and decides to enter a convent since, "estaba
desengafiada de lo que era el mundo y los hombres, y asi no queria
mas batallar con ellos, porque cuando pensaba en lo que habia hecho
y donde se habia visto, no acababa de admirarse" (246). Even after
her family and the Viceroy insist, she rejects the options they
offer, leaving Diego without a wife, embarrassed, and desperate.
Charnon-Deutsch highlights how in Zayas' works women often find
themselves taking a stand and making deci- sions that go against
social or communal requests:
Such moment of decision when a woman must choose to act on her
own behalf are central to Zayasian narrative. Significantly, they
are not always the moment a woman chooses whether to marry or whom
to marry, a decision often made for her by others. It is in moments
of extreme stress and adversity that women are called upon to make
choices... Ironically, it is often extreme victimization that opens
to a heroine the realm of decision making. (22)
It is evident that the woman who has emerged from the
humilladero is not the same one that found herself helpless and
frantic to regain her husband's love. This experience has served as
a catalyst and the new Laura (a resurrected and cleansed being)
finds it impossible to subject herself once more to Diego's
control, even if he has ex- pressed his repentance. Unlike
Leocadia, Laura has found her liberty not in reconciliation with
her aggressor but in her departure from the patriarchal society
that condemned her to a denigrating existence, and her entrance
into the spiritual and feminine world of the con- vent.9 As Grieve
so clearly proposes:
9 Cervantes rarely uses the flight to the convent as a plot
device, its absence most notable in the Quixote where only one of
the numerous women characters, Leandra,
48 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
[A]ccording to Zayas, women should reject the secular martyrdom
sanctioned by society's view of civilized behavior-marriage-and
seek refuge in the communities of women afforded by convents. As
Cervantes' stories unfortunately demonstrate, love and marriage can
redeem the sinner, but redemption often occurs at the expense of
the redeemer, either through sublimation of violence against her or
the loss of her liberty and free will. (104)
As we analyze and compare the trajectory of the heroines in
these two tales it becomes evident, in my opinion, that Lafuerza
del amor can be read as a manifest continuation of Lafuerza de la
sangre. It is not only the similar wording of the two titles that
supports the idea of a conscious response by Zayas. It is also
evident in the central position of the tale within the collection
(it is the fifth out of the ten), mirroring La fuerza de la
sangre's own central placement in Cer- vantes' volume. If La fuerza
de la sangre is an ideological and/or ironic anchor for the rest of
the Ejemplares, Zayas' La fuerza del amor is not only the central
but, in my opinion, the most effective tale in the Novelas amorosas
y ejemplares. In addition, it clearly announces Zayas' own second
collection, the Desenganos amorosos. Lisis, the woman for whom
these stories are being told in the narrative frame, would have
been wise to listen to the warnings issued by La fuerza de la
sangre, which make the horrors related in the Desenganos
unnecessary, even if revealing.
Theresa Ann Sears in her book on Cervantes, A Marriage of
Convenience: Ideal and Ideology in the Novelas Ejemplares, centers
much of her discussion around the ideological underpinnings of the
ending of La fuerza de la sangre. Where Friedman sees a clear use
of irony in the dissonant encounter between the narrator's words
and
finds herself in the house of God. As Theresa Sears notes in her
analysis of El celoso extremeno,
Leonora chooses the convent, not because it represents some
unheard-of feminine freedom, discursive or otherwise, but the
opposite: it duplicates Carrizales' house exactly, from the
exclusive company of women, its obedient silence, and protective
(or confining) walls, to its presiding male deity (or his
representative, the priest). (161)
Much of the same can be said for Leandra in the Quixote, for it
is not her own will to remove herself from male influence that
drives her to the convent, but her father's desire to cut all ties
to the sexual desire that his daughter has so publicly
revealed.
49
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
the characters' words and actions (the problem of Rodolfo's
unrepen- tant attitude and Leocadia's love mixed with fear, coupled
together with a declaration of many years of productive married
life), Sears interprets a conservative impulse in Cervantes that
defends, or at least condones, the status quo established by the
patriarchy. If Friedman reads in Cervantes both a manipulation and
subversion through irony of the typical marriage plot, Sears views
Lafuerza de la sangre as a proposal for the domestication of
"disruptive" desire under the guise of the sanctioned 'ideal'
Christian marriage. As she states:
Cervantes, in contrast [to Boccaccio], tames desire so that it
can be satisfied and yet not challenge order. For him, therefore,
the marriage plot comes to signify not a moral or theological but
rather a social and literary order, and this shift constitutes one
of the forward-looking characteristics of the collection... It
provides a pattern for both the satisfaction of desire and its
containment, as well as a formula with which to solve the
persistent riddle of our own origins, as individuals, as members of
a family, and as participants in a social structure. For these
reasons, we see in the Novelas what [Robert] Ter Horst has termed
"a fearful devotion to the lifelong bond between husband and wife"
(116), where the telling adjective "fearful" confirms the
uneasiness that afflicts the tales' readers at certain moments.
(151)10
In sum, according to Sears, Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares are a
didactic exercise in which social order rests upon both the
satisfac- tion and containment of desire through marriage. This is
Sears' central, yet most problematic argument, for it is indeed
very difficult for author and reader to support and reproduce an
ideology that elicits fear and trepidation (even if only "at
certain moments"). In other words, if Cervantes is a champion of
Christian marriage as an effective and valuable tool of patriarchal
ideology, then why does he repeatedly include in his texts
descriptions and commentary that make the reader feel uneasy about
the events that lead to marriage and the consequences it may ensue?
Ideology, if we follow an Al- thusserian line of thought, is in
fact the story that we believe to be our natural 'unproblematic'
condition of existence. " Cervantes' rape
10 Sears is here referring to the article by Robert Ter Horst,
"Une saison en enfer: La gitanilla" (Cervantes 5.2 (1985):
87-127).
11 See Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses" (Trans. Ben Brewster. Verso: London. 1971).
50 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
tale, in all its conflictive complexity, never once allows the
reader to forget the suffering endured by Leocadia, and the
perversity of Rodolfo's unrepentant lust for beauty.12 It is true
that Leocadia reappears as a vision of an angel for Rodolfo's
benefit, and that Rodolfo desires this beautiful object and very
willingly enters their marriage union. But Lafuerza de la sangre,
in its representation of patriarchal values and how they frame the
experience of women, does not portray Leocadia's plight as natural
or legitimate. Her marriage to Rodolfo is arranged by his mother as
reparation for the damage and shame she has endured; the only
solution admissible to the socio-symbolic social order in which she
exists. After all, Leo- cadia marries Rodolfo because he had raped
her-their relationship founded upon the violence of Rodolfo's act,
not on their newfound "love" (love as lust, and as a last resort
for a woman who will now be wife to her rapist) for each other.
Indeed, Cervantes does tell a tale of "fearful devotion to the
lifelong bond between husband and wife," a bond founded on
violence, sacrifice, and artifice.
Notwithstanding the arguments for or against Cervantes' defense
of the status quo, or for or against his use of irony, it is safe
to assume that Zayas could have understood Cervantes' tale from
both perspectives: as a patriarchal endorsement of marriage as a
means to social order and the "domestication" of desire (male and
female); and as a "fearful" and, as we see in her tale, ill-advised
undertaking that opens a space for legitimized lust to degenerate
and result in the abuse of married women. In other words, she could
very well have read Lafuerza de la sangre (and most of Cervantes'
corpus, for that matter) as a conventional and conservative
marriage plot and/or as an ironic manipulation and tacit subversion
of the same (as subver- sive rape tale, as a woman tale). If we
follow Sears' argument, Zayas is reacting against Cervantes'
seemingly conservative ideological stance. If we follow Friedman's
reading, Zayas is picking up on the uneasy and jarring nature of La
fuerza de la sangre's ending and openly demonstrating what
Cervantes only insinuates. In either case Zayas is reading along,
with, and against Cervantes' tale. By respond-
12 Even though this point is self-evident, I find it worth
reiterating that La fuerza de la sangre does not in any way lend
itself to a Neoplatonic interpretation. Rodolfo's violation of
Leocadia is an act of the flesh, not of the spirit, and their
eventual marriage takes place because of Rodolfo's preference for
physical beauty over spiritual virtue.
51
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Rosilie Hernandez Pecoraro
ing to La fuerza de la sangre in this manner, Zayas is warning
the reader (here more specifically the female reader) that male
lust cannot be reformed, but rather only imported, with all its
destructive impulses, to the marriage, and then only to be
officially tolerated by family, church, and state. As Lena E. V.
Sylvania argued in her monograph of 1992:
Throughout her [Zayas'] works there is an underlying tendency
that seeks every occasion to vindicate woman against the
misapprehending judgment of man... They take advantage of the
frailty of woman, leading her on to trust their very deceitfulness.
Woe unto the woman who places her faith in so insecure a vessel,
for she shall indeed reap the unjust reward of her love! With
music, with billets doux, with promises and presents... her favor
is sought, and trustingly she accepts all, believing implicitly in
the generous giver and insistent petitioner. Most earnestly does
Dofia Maria exhort women to be firm, to hold much in reserve, to
remember that to give too freely is but to court a broken heart,
broken vows and neglect. (13)
For Zayas patriarchal society offers no happy endings for Leoca-
dia, only a continued life of suffering and victimization. Yet
Zayas' tale is not one of defeat and submission. Here lies the most
important difference between the two stories. If Cervantes can, at
best, suggest the system's injustices and failures through a subtle
use of irony, Zayas does away with the ironical ending and offers
her female protagonist a way out of both her victimization and of
patriarchal ideology. If her father, brother, and the Viceroy were
ready to give her back to the (for the moment) repentant Diego,
Laura insists that she will now go elsewhere; to the convent, a
female space where male desire need not be suffered, tamed, or
endured. Zayas thus creates an alternative society and with it an
escape from patriarchal ideology and the discourse that accompanies
it. As a matter of fact, it is important to note that in La fuerza
del amor the convent remains a place beyond the confines of the
novela itself, beyond the reach of those that would appropriate it,
redefine it, subdue it- beyond patriarchal discourse and its
ideological mandates and limi- tations.
In The Sublime Object of Ideology Slavoj Zizek, in an
interpreta- tion of the Lacanian symbolic order and its mechanisms,
defines "fantasy" (or the way we structure our existence within the
symbolic order) as a structure which offers a totalizing view of
reality. Fantasy-scenarios and the ideological fields that define
them intend
52 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
to cover over or repress the void at the core of all symbolic
struc- tures. As Zizek explains:
Today, it is a commonplace that the Lacanian subject is divided,
crossed- out, identical to a lack in a signifying chain. However,
the most radical dimension of Lacanian theory lies not in
recognizing this fact but realizing that the big Other, the
symbolic order itself, is also barre, crossed-out, by a fundamental
impossibility, structured around an impossible/traumatic kernel,
around a central lack. (122)
The fundamental void is the void of the sexual relationship (of
a true connection between beings, not as interpellated subjects).
And thus:
[F]antasy is basically a scenario filling out the empty space of
a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void. 'There is no
sexual relationship,' and this impossibility is filled out by the
fascinating fantasy- scenario-that is why fantasy is, in the last
resort, always a fantasy of the sexual relationship, a staging of
it. (Zizek 126)
Regardless of the form a fantasy-scenario takes, its symptoms,
or perceived points of malaise, point towards its condition as
struc- ture, not as ultimate truth or logos. Zizek illustrates this
point with figure of the 'Jew' who in the West, both in Europe and
America, has so frequently played the role of symptom in our
societies. Jews are accused of exploiting the rest of the
population, seduc- ing our daughters, and not washing regularly
(48). Yet, whether these ethnic characteristics are true is not the
point; the point is that the 'Jew' is a figure that (in its
representation of everything that is weak or evil) helps us escape
"a certain deadlock" in our fantasy-scenario (48). The 'Jew,' in
other words, is a scapegoat, the figure that comes to embody for
the rest of the subjects in an ideological field all values and/or
characteristics that seem incom- patible with that field or system.
Whatever malignancies (per- verted lust, extreme avarice, etcetera)
exist within an ideological field, their attribution to a specific
figure alleviates all anxiety that there is something wrong with
the system itself (i.e., if we could only get rid of Jews / Women /
Blacks / Terrorists, and so on, everything would be fine).
Following Zizek's description, I would argue that both Lafuerza
de la sangre and La fuerza del amor offer a rather stark reading of
patriarchal ideology and the fantasy-scenarios it supports. This is
a society where masculine desire runs rampant in very
destructive
53
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Rosilie Hernmndez Pecoraro
ways, yet women (like the 'Jew') are held responsible for
ensuing chaos. As a result, Rodolfo and Diego are never condemned
by their communities, never asked for an explanation, never
required to pay for their 'sins.' Instead Leocadia and Laura are
hidden away, left behind, silenced. We are forced to infer from the
way both Leocadia and Laura are treated by their families and
society that, somehow, they are responsible for and worthy of the
humil- iation they endure. Women are believed not inherently
chaste, not honorable, and hence not worth defending. Men, because
of their 'superior' nature, receive the unconditional love of their
parents (in Rodolfo's case) and forgiving words from the Viceroy
(in Diego's case).
Nonetheless, there is one fundamental difference in how these
fantasy-scenarios are ultimately treated in these texts. Leocadia
submits to the ideological system that declares her an unchaste
woman unless she marries her rapist, and ironically ends up com-
plying with the system that violated her dignity as a human being.
Laura, in turn, comes to understand and reveals the empty nature,
the lack of reason or foundation, of the values upon which her
father, brother, husband, and the Viceroy dictate her life. What
Laura finds out is that there is nothing, no truth, no logos,
behind the ideological system that has forced her to suffer as an
abused and abandoned 'Christian' wife. What Laura does is to
'traverse,' as Zizek would have it, the patriarchal fantasy that
has hereto framed her existence as object of love and scorn: "As
such, fantasy is not to be interpreted, only 'traversed': all we
have to do is experience how there is nothing 'behind' it, and how
fantasy masks precisely this 'nothing'" (126). Seen within this
Lacanian paradigm, Laura's flight to the convent is a traversal of
patriarchal ideology and an entrance into a new fantasy-scenario
where feminine values and community can freely operate.13 Further
confirmation of this traversal is seen in Diego's
13 Of course, within this 'matriarchal' fantasy-scenario, we
must assume that new symptoms will arise that will both mask and
point towards the system's inherent lack or void. Nevertheless
Zizek does not propose we resign ourselves to reproducing systems
that vilify and abuse others as 'symptoms.' Instead, he argues for
the con- struction of less destructive, perhaps more just,
fantasy-scenarios. Subjects cannot escape ideology or erase the
constitutive lack within them. But they can, or should, look for
better less destructive ways to live their fantasies. See Zizek's
chapter "Che Vuoi?" in The Sublime Object of Ideology.
54 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes
reaction to Laura's flight; his own fantasy-scenario now
challenged and made invalid, he 'disappears' and flees to a certain
death in the war against the Duke of Saboya.
Amy R. Williamsen has argued for Zayas' use of subversive irony
in her portrayal of the honor code.14 I would add that in La fuerza
del amor Zayas also establishes an alternative concept of honor. If
Leocadia in Cervantes' tale was only able to recuperate her honor
by marrying the man who had raped her, Laura finds honor wholly in
herself as an independent subject, at the end rejecting the
solution offered by patriarchal society. The promise of a happy
marriage will not suffice, resulting in her decision to join other
women in the presence of God, "que era amante mas agradecido"
(246). As a subject unwilling to subject herself once more to
Diego's objectifying and denigrating gaze, Laura achieves her own
definition of honor and of self-love. As the tale's narrator, Nise,
tells us:
Laura, viendose del todo libre, tomo el habito de religiosa, y a
su tiempo profes6, donde hoy vive santisimamente, tan arrepentida
de su atrevida determinaci6n... Yo supe este caso de su misma boca,
y asi le cuento por verdadero, para que todos conozcan hasta donde
se extiende la fuerza del amor y nueva maravilla de su poder. (247;
my emphasis)
What we find in Zayas' tale is an alternative to Cervantes'
uneasy resolution. Marriage becomes an undesirable road and honor
is newly defined, giving Laura the opportunity to find in herself
what Leocadia never was allowed to: the will to be a
self-determining subject. The "fuerza del amor" thus becomes the
'power of self-love' and the convent a feminine space which negates
society's perpetu- ation of women's status as objects of desire to
be loved or abused, adored or discarded, at a parent's or husband's
whim.
If we consider that Lafuerza del amor is central to the Novelas
amorosas y ejemplares two things soon become evident. First that it
is a fully realized tale of "desengano" that announces both in
content and in form the Desenganos amorosos. Second, if, as I have
here argued, Zayas' tale is a direct retort to Cervantes'
'ideal'
14 See "Challenging the Code: Honor in Maria de Zayas" in Maria
de Zayas: The Dynamics of Discourse (Ed. by Amy Williamsen and
Judith A. Whitenack, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP (1995),
133-51).
55
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Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro
Christian marriage, then we must understand the relationship
between Cervantes and Zayas' whole corpus (both the Ejemplares and
the Desenganos) as one that radically contests the ideological
presuppositions that lead parents to hide and condone their
daughter's plight, women to marry their rapists and abusers, and
authors to relate over and again (even if with irony) the highly
implausible and obviously forced happy ending.15
WORKS CITED
Cervantes, Miguel de. "La fuerza de la sangre." Novelas
ejemplares. Ed. Harry Sieber. Madrid: Catedra, 1991. 75-95.
Chamon-Deutsch, Lou. "The Sexual Economy in the Narrative of
Maria de Zayas." Letras Femeninas xvii 1-2 (1991): 15-28.
Friedman, Edward. "La fuerza de la sangre and the Rhetoric of
Power." Cervantes's 'Exemplary Novels' and the Adventure of
Writing. Eds. Michael Nerlich and Nicholas Spadaccini. Minne-
apolis: The Prisma Institute, 1989. 125-56.
Grieve, Patricia E. "Embroidering with Saintly Threads: Maria de
Zayas Challenges Cervantes and the Church." Renaissance Quar- terly
xLIv.I (1991): 86-106.
Howe, Elizabeth T. "The Power of Blood in Cervantes' Lafuerza de
la sangre." Forum for Modern Languages Studies 30:1 (1994):
64-76.
Sears, Theresa Ann. A Marriage of Convenience: Ideal and
Ideology in the Novelas Ejemplares. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Sylvania, Lena E. V. Dona Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor: A Con-
tribution to the Study of Her Works. New York: Columbia UP,
1922.
15 Since this article was accepted for publication, three
important studies have been published on Zayas: Margaret Rich
Greer's Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty
of Men (University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2000); Marina Scordilis
Brownlee's The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria de Zayas (Philadelphia:
U of Pennsylvania P, 2000); and Lisa Vollendorfs Reclaiming the
Body: Maria de Zayas's Early Modern Feminism (Chapel Hill: UNC
Dept. of Romance Languages, 2001). I regret not having the time to
refer to their arguments.
56 HR 70 (2002)
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Zayas' Response to Cervantes 57
Welles, Marcia L. "Violence Disguised: Representation of Rape in
Cervantes's 'La fuerza de la sangre.' " Journal of Hispanic Philol-
ogy 13 (1989): 240-51.
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. "La fuerza del amor." Novelas
amoro- sas y ejemplares. Ed. Agustin G. de Amezuia. Madrid:
Biblioteca Selecta de Clasicos Espafioles, 1948. 221-49.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso,
1989.
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Article Contentsp. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p.
48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52p. 53p. 54p. 55p. 56p. 57
Issue Table of ContentsHispanic Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Winter,
2002), pp. 1-146Front MatterOn the Place of Madness, Deviance, and
Eccentricity in Don Quijote [pp. 1-23]La clave desleda en el
justillo: historia ntima y veladura en "Mazurca en este da" de Pere
Gimferrer [pp. 25-37]"La fuerza del amor" or "The Power of
Self-Love": Zayas' Response to Cervantes' "La fuerza de la sangre"
[pp. 39-57]Fray Luis de Len as Translator of the Psalms: A Reading
of Psalms 103, 44, and 102 in "De los nombres de Cristo" [pp.
59-68]Prisma I and II [pp. 69-88]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp.
89-90]Review: untitled [pp. 91-92]Review: untitled [pp.
92-94]Review: untitled [pp. 94-96]Review: untitled [pp.
96-99]Review: untitled [pp. 99-101]Review: untitled [pp.
101-102]Review: untitled [pp. 102-104]Review: untitled [pp.
104-105]Review: untitled [pp. 106-108]Review: untitled [pp.
108-109]Review: untitled [pp. 109-110]Review: untitled [pp.
110-112]Review: untitled [pp. 112-116]Review: untitled [pp.
116-117]Review: untitled [pp. 117-119]Review: untitled [pp.
119-120]Review: untitled [pp. 120-122]Review: untitled [pp.
122-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-125]Review: untitled [pp.
126-127]Review: untitled [pp. 127-129]Review: untitled [pp.
129-131]Review: untitled [pp. 131-132]Review: untitled [pp.
132-133]Review: untitled [pp. 133-135]Review: untitled [pp.
135-136]Review: untitled [pp. 137-138]
Books Received [pp. 139-146]Back Matter