María de Zayas

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María de Zayas

María de Zayas Sotomayor (Madrid, September 12, 1590 – after 1647) was a Spanish writer of the Golden Age. Her short novels were very successful and continued to be reprinted until, in the 18th century, the Inquisition decided to ban them.

María de Zayas was, together with Ana Caro de Mallén and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of the three great women writers of the Spanish 17th century.

Biography

She was baptized in the parish of San Sebastián in Madrid on September 12, 1590. Her parents belonged to the lower nobility: Fernando de Zayas y Sotomayor and María Catalina de Barrasa. He was an infantry Captain and in 1628 obtained the habit of the Order of Santiago.[1] Because he was in the service of the Count of Lemos, the family was subjected to continual moves, which were reflected in María's work. They were in Naples when the Count held the office of Viceroy there. There are few other facts about her life.

She was friends with the writer Ana Caro de Mallén, with whom, it is speculated, she may have lived in Madrid.

Although her usual residence was in Madrid, there has been speculation about other places of residence in connection with the publication of her works. She may have lived in Zaragoza, since she published the first part of her Novelas ejemplares y amorosas (1637) there; ten years later, the Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimiento honesto (desengaños amorosos) was published in Madrid. She may also have lived at some point in Seville or Granada, or even in Barcelona, according to Kenneth Brown, since he found allusions to the author in the Vexamen de 15 de marzo de 1643 by the Barcelona poet Francesc Fontanella, so it is very possible that she lived there in 1643. Other data relating to the reprinting of some of her works lead him to state that she either returned to Barcelona around 1647 or never left it.[2]

For her part, María José Martínez points to the possibility that María de Zayas and Madame de Sévigné had met because

Zayas's novels were translated and scandalously copied by the poet Scarron, first husband of Madame de Maintenon, future morganatic wife of Louis XIV, who maintained an excellent friendship with the marquise.[3]

But this opinion is not very plausible: Paul Scarron plagiarized almost all the relevant authors of the Spanish Baroque.

The remaining data are even more doubtful and are based on the presumed autobiographical allusions in the texts published by the author, with particular predilection for her feminism, which is completely real and certain. A premodern feminism, as was only possible then. Some deduce that it is driven by mere personal disillusionment and is simple anti-machismo,[4] while others, more focused on the genealogy of feminism, point to her denunciation of the oppression suffered by women and of the treatment they receive from men.[5]

After 1647 there is no information about her, nor any new publications, only reprints. There is no certainty regarding the place and date of her death since, although there are two death certificates in the name of María de Zayas, one dated January 19, 1661, and the other November 26, 1669, neither corresponds to the novelist.[6]

Controversy over her existence

In 2019 a study by Rosa Navarro Durán was published[7] in which she states that the author is only a heteronym of Alonso Castillo Solórzano. This hypothesis, however, has been rejected by other researchers, such as José Manuel Fradejas, through a conclusive stylometric analysis of the author's work compared with texts by Castillo Solórzano.[8]

Works

Novels

Main article: Novelas amorosas y ejemplares y Desengaños amorosos

The first part of her Novelas amorosas y ejemplares o Decamerón español (Zaragoza, 1637) consists of ten courtly novels in which she analyzes the upper social strata of her time, with a visible influence of Miguel de Cervantes.[9]

From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio she takes the formula of the narrative frame: the gathering, because of an illness (instead of the plague, a quartan fever suffered by Lisis), of a group of characters who, over five nights, each night narrate two novels of great harshness.

Unlike other contemporary novelists, she does not try to display her courtly wit by complicating her style with culterano expansions and ornaments, nor does she pose as a moralist sermonizing in the manner of Mateo Alemán: she is more interested in narrative entertainment and in the psychological description of the characters and of the settings in which they move. In addition, there is a strong component of social denunciation: her revelation of outrageous injustices reflects a strong independence and a robust female pride, without sparing harshness in the lurid scenes. She also reflects like no one else the devastating and oppressive effects of passion.

The second series bears the title Novelas y saraos (Barcelona, 1647) and Parte segunda del Sarao y entretenimientos honestos (1649), reissued under the title Desengaños amorosos. It differs from the first only in that it increases the truculence and luridness of the plots, which is why she has been considered the pioneer of Spanish horror literature.[10]

There is not enough testimony to form an idea of what level her theater, and above all her poetry, might have reached, since themes as trivial as occasional ones preclude conjecture. Zayas's essential value lies in the strength of her narrative creations and her flexible prose, absolutely free of the usual moral elements that weigh down the other novelists of her time, with the sole precedent of Miguel de Cervantes, so that she can justly be called the second-best "pure" storyteller of her time in freshness and novelty, and, like the great native of Alcalá, she will have no followers either. From her time she draws the morbid taste for violence, cruelty, magic and enchantments, but she departs from it in the moral interpretation she gives of events, which in her is not so much a moral as the lesson derived from the events themselves. This detachment, and her virtues as a writer, constitute the substance of her literary effectiveness.

She sometimes approaches picaresque narrative with a harshness not inferior to Quevedo's Buscón; nor does she fall behind when she cultivates the Cervantine genre of the Byzantine novel in La fuerza del amor or El prevenido engañado. But perhaps what is most surprising in her is the unusual boldness with which the female characters behave in sexual and amorous matters: from the woman who pursues a man she sees from her balcony to the one who keeps a Black lover in the stable until she devours him sexually "before infinite adulteries". Not for nothing, in the 18th century the Inquisition banned the reprinting of her novels.

Although there are women who come to a bad end because of the liberality with which they give themselves, not all do. It is also notable how little they consider their personal or family decorum when they follow their impulses, which is almost always: her characters are absolutely passionate. Through dialogues among the various narrators gathered around the discreet Lisis, María de Zayas criticizes (with the same freedom her characters display) all the ideas of the time about honor and virtue which, in her opinion, did so much harm to women. Thus, in a phrase reminiscent of those of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Lisis tells a suitor who proclaimed his wish to find a foolish and honorable woman:

"And how will she know how to be honorable who does not know what being so consists of?"

From the picaresque mockery steeped in tremendismo in the first series of novels, she moves in the second to the Baroque motif par excellence: desengaño (disillusionment), which sometimes expresses the unjust deception of women by men and at other times reflects an almost metaphysical frustration at the impossibility of the sexes living loyally and in harmony: so different are the forces that govern them. In La esclava de su amante, La inocencia castigada, El verdugo de su esposa or Mal presagio casar lejos there is a pure fatality, a sinister fate that dominates the vicissitudes of love. From the laughter of El castigo de la miseria one passes to the deep melancholy and sorrow of Estragos que causa el vicio, the last narrative and apparent farewell of the author. There is no dignity in love:

What greater disillusionment do you await than the tarnishing of your reputation at the hands of men? (...) Is it possible that, with so many things as you have seen and heard, you do not recognize that in men the will lasts no longer than the appetite lasts, and once that ends, it is over?

Lisis enters a convent at the end of the novels, and for this reason many of her critics and editors have assumed that this was the final destiny of Doña María de Zayas. Azorín imagined her in a Madrid garret, gazing at the rainy rooftops and the stray cats.

María de Zayas's style shuns the rhetorical excesses typical of culteranismo, as she declares in the last novel of Desengaños amorosos:

I, since I do not intend to canonize myself as well-understood but as a good disabuser, the truth is that neither in what I have said nor in what I will say have I sought rhetorical or cultured arguments because, besides being a language I abhor to the extreme, I would like everyone to understand me: the learned and the layman [...] And so I have tried to speak in the language that my nature teaches me and that I learned from my parents, for the rest is a sophistry into which writers have fallen in order to distinguish themselves from others, and they sometimes say things that they themselves do not understand. How will others understand them, except by saying (as has sometimes happened to me) that, my mind tired from trying to know what it means, and drawing no fruit from my toil, I say: "It must be very good, since I do not understand it."

Theater and poetry

She also composed a comedy, La traición en la amistad, and some of her poems are preserved in various anthologies (Botello, Montalbán, Cuevas, Del Castillo) as well as in the Fama Póstuma, in which Juan Pérez de Montalban collected praise from the world of culture for the recently deceased phoenix Lope de Vega. The comedy La traición en la amistad exists today in different modern versions: the edition by Manuel Serrano y Sanz; the edition by Alessandra Melloni; the edition by Felicidad González Santamera and Fernando Doménech; the edition by Teresa Scott Soufas; the edition by Valerie Hegstrom.

Zayas as seen by other authors

Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega praises her in silva VIII of his El laurel de Apolo,[11] to which she responded by paying homage to him in a sonnet.

Alonso Castillo Solórzano

Alonso de Castillo Solórzano calls her "Sibyl of Madrid" in La Garduña de Sevilla:

In these times the wit of Doña María de Zayas y Sotomayor shines and triumphs with happy laurels; with just title she has earned the name of Sibyl of Madrid, acquired through her admirable verses, her happy wit and great prudence, having brought out from the press a book of 10 novels that are 10 marvels for those who write in this genre, for the considered prose, their artifice, and the verses she interpolates are all so admirable that they daunt the bravest pens of our Spain

Francesc Fontanella

Francesc Fontanella, a Catalan Baroque poet, read a Vexamen, or literary satire in verse, at the Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Barcelona. Following custom, the poet had to create a fantastic world that would facilitate the jibes against members and guests. On this occasion, those ridiculed were Fontanella's contemporary poets, María de Zayas among them.[12] Kenneth Brown asserts that the poet

was on very close terms with María de Zayas to offend her so impunely. If the opposite were true, such conceits would be in far too bad taste.[2]

In Desengaños, besides treating beauty according to the canons of preciosismo, María de Zayas has one of the narrators, Lisis, say:

For there is no doubt that if they did not give themselves so much to adornment, making themselves more effeminate than nature made them, and since, instead of applying themselves to wielding arms and studying the sciences, they study growing their hair and coloring their faces, it could well be that they would surpass men in everything.

— Fifth disillusionment: Tarde llega el desengaño[13]

Emilia Pardo Bazán

Long overshadowed by criticism, her work was vindicated by Emilia Pardo Bazán, who defined it as the picaresque of the high society of the Golden Age and highlighted some passages in which she perceived her feminism:

In the era now running we are held in such adverse opinion by men that neither with suffering do we overcome them nor with conscience do we oblige them. (...) Why, vain legislators of the world, do you tie our hands for vengeance, disabling our strength with your false opinions, since you deny us letters and arms? Is our soul not the same as that of men? (...) To keep us subject from the time we are born, you go on weakening our strength with fears for our honor, and our understanding with the modesty of shame, giving us distaffs for swords and sewing cushions for books.

For María de Zayas, "souls are neither men nor women". She was very fond of reading, as she says in the prologue "Al que leyere" ("To whoever may read") of Novelas amorosas y ejemplares:

What reason is there for us not to have readiness for books? And all the more if all women have my inclination, for upon seeing any book, new or old, I leave the sewing cushion and do not rest until I have gone through it.

The feminist reading of the work of María de Zayas

Premodern feminism is, in the genealogy of feminism, a first historical block in which the "first feminist polemics" appear and a coherent set of demands is articulated, both in theory and in practice, for whose achievement women organize themselves.[14] As early as 1922 Lena E. V. Sylvania wrote an entire chapter on feminism in her study of María de Zayas.[15] In 1976 Frederick A. de Armas included María de Zayas among the feminist women writers who used the myth of the invisible woman.[16] Andrea Blanqué, citing Sandra Foa,[17] places the work of María de Zayas within the "misogyny–premodern feminism" polemic. The denunciations made by the protagonists of her novels have the aim of social change, for which entertaining is not enough. Zayas insists that what is narrated is true, in the second part of her work, which she calls "Desengaños". They are truths for the purpose of disillusionment.[18] In the same vein, María José Martínez Girón, who considers María de Zayas a passionate feminist, states that she seeks to draw attention to the limitations that the society of her time imposed on women.

That is why she wishes to convince us that her stories are indeed true, since otherwise they would lose the character of warning and teaching that she intends to give them.[3]

Rosa Navarro Durán[19] analyzes, in the work of María Zayas, the descriptions of female beauty and loveliness in relation to how this beauty has been blamed as the cause of all social ills. Nevertheless, Zayas strives on the one hand to warn women that they are victims of men's deceptions and, on the other, through another of the narrators of her novels, Zayas states regarding women's cosmetics that:

"There is no doubt that, if they did not give themselves so much to adornment, making themselves more effeminate than nature made them, and since, instead of applying themselves to wielding arms and studying the sciences, they study growing their hair and coloring their faces, it could well be that they would surpass men in everything"

In the opinion of Rosa Navarro Durán, the beautiful Filis, narrator of the "Fourth disillusionment", embodies the passionate voice of María de Zayas when she says:

So I am not off the mark in saying that men, out of fear and envy, deprive them of letters and arms, as the Moors do to the Christians who must serve where there are women, whom they make eunuchs so as to be sure of them. Ah, beautiful ladies, what I could tell you, if I knew that, as I am heard, I would not be gossiped about! Come, let us leave the finery, roses and curls, and stand up for ourselves: some with the understanding, and others with arms!

Rosangela Schardong, citing De Lara, states that Zayas is the first theorizing feminist who consciously comments on the situation of the female sex in Spain.[20] However, authors such as Salvador Montesa note contradictions in María de Zayas's feminism, since she defends equality between the sexes but not women and men oppressed by the social class to which they belong. Melloni makes another criticism of Zayas's feminism, considering that she divides women into two stereotypes: good and bad. Montesinos, moreover, is in line with those who claim that "everything is invented", that the alleged truth is a commonplace more typical of the literary genre that mixes the magical and the supernatural, presenting it as real. Both criticisms are answered by Andrea Blanqué, who points out the biases derived from chronocentrism and applies the hermeneutics of suspicion to this "overly keen" interest in denying the truthfulness of the stories. Blanqué insists that María de Zayas tells these truths to show the deception of the official version of events, which blames women for all ills.

For her part, Oliva Blanco Corujo[21] highlights the aspects of María de Zayas's work in which she anticipates the defense of women put forward by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo in his Discurso en defensa de las mujeres. The author of the Decamerón español denounced the injustice of women not being given education:

...Because souls are neither men nor women. What reason is there for them to be wise and for us not to be able to be so?[22]

According to Nieves Baranda, Zayas was "fully aware of her condition as a woman and a writer, obtained the recognition of the literary circles of her time and encouraged women to claim the right to culture. The protagonists of her novels (educated, brave, active, intelligent) question all the negative stereotypes usual in the literature of the period". Together with Ana Caro de Mallén, they are the best examples of professional women writers in the Golden Age. Because she wanted to publish, she chose the best genre for it, the novel. It was very popular among women, who were assiduous readers, and in these novels she offers them a vision of the world that makes them reflect and become aware. The multiple voices that appear lend themselves to the author making her own reflection hidden behind one of them. Thus her women are brave, capable and intelligent[9]

Anna Caballé, in her work "El feminismo en España. La lenta conquista de un derecho", points out that the prologue of the first collection of short novels, published in 1637, could be considered the first feminist manifesto in Spain because it is "clearly" a text vindicating women's right to knowledge. She compares her work with the pioneers of universal feminism and considers that "the radical difference between these authors and Zayas lies in the lack of cohesion, in the immaturity that the ideas of the Madrid writer still present".[23]

María de Zayas on television

The work of María de Zayas has been adapted for television four times. Two novels from the second part of the Sarao were rewritten for the series Cuentos y leyendas: Tarde llega el desengaño (José Antonio Páramo, 1969) and La inocente castigada (Alfonso Ungría, 1975)[24]. As for the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares, in 1972 José Antonio Páramo directed for Estudio 1, with a script by Carlos Muñiz, a version of El castigo de la miseria, starring Juanjo Menéndez and María Luisa Ponte. In 1983, the miniseries El jardín de Venus, by José María Forqué, devoted three episodes to El prevenido engañado, with José Sazatornil in the lead role[25]. The main story was set in the 19th century or the early 20th century: some people resting at a spa gathered every afternoon in a garden and enjoyed a session of tales, these indeed set in other periods.

References

  1. ↑ See the section [1] in Female monasticism.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Brown, Kenneth (2011). "María de Zayas y Sotomayor: Escribiendo poesía en Barcelona en época de guerra (1643)" (PDF). Dicenda. Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica.Universidad Complutense de Madrid (in español). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 15, 2018. Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Martínez Girón, María José. "Dos feministas avant la lettre. María de Zayas Sotomayor y Madame de Sévigné". Oceánide 2 (in español). ISSN 1989-6328. Archived from the original on March 15, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2012.
  4. ↑ Montesa, Salvador (1979). "texto y contexto en la narrativa de María de Zayas". tesis doctoral (in español). Retrieved June 15, 2012.
  5. ↑ Rodríguez Campillo, María José. "Las implicaturas en el teatro femenino de los siglos de oro" (PDF). Tesis doctoral. Universidat Rovira y Virgili (in español). Retrieved June 15, 2012.
  6. ↑ María de Zayas y Sotomayor en la Real Academia de la Historia
  7. ↑ Navarro Durán, Rosa. María de Zayas y otros heterónimos de Castillo Solórzano (in español). ISBN 9788491682882. OCLC 1110691101. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
  8. ↑ "https://twitter.com/JMFradeRue/status/1143803032485990400". Twitter (in español). Retrieved 2023-02-28. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Baranda, Nieves (2003). Anna Caballé (ed.). Por mi alma os digo (in español). Círculo de lectores. ISBN 84-226-9863-3.
  10. ↑ "Literatura de terror española". A cara de libro (in español). 2019-10-29. Retrieved 2022-10-31.
  11. ↑ "Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio, Laurel de Apolo". Bieses (in español). Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  12. ↑ Doña Maria de Zayas
    viu ab cara varonil.
    que a bé que «sayas» tenia
    bigotestilava altius.
    Semblava a algun cavaller.
    mes jas’ vindrá a descubrir
    que una espata mal se amaga
    baix las «sayas» femenils.
    En la décima tercera
    fou glosadora infeliz,
    que mala tercera té
    quant lo pris vol adquirir.
    O Senyora Doña Saya,
    per premiar sos boas desitgs
    del sércol de un guardainfant
    tindrá corona gentil!
  13. ↑ Quotation taken from Navarro Durán, Rosa. "La "Rara belleza" de las damas en las novelas de María de Zayas y Mariana de Carvajal" (in español). Retrieved June 13, 2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ↑ de Miguel, Ana. "Los feminismos a través de la historia. Capítulo I" (in español). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. ↑ Sylvania, Lena E. V. (Lena Evelyn Vincent), 1882- (1922). Donã Mariá de Zayas y Sotomayor; a contribution to the study of her works. Columbia University Press. OCLC 26491687. Retrieved June 29, 2019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ Armas, Frederick A. de, Auteur. (1976). The Invisible mistress : Aspects of feminism and fantasy in the Golden Age. Biblioteca Siglo de Oro. OCLC 489996716. Retrieved June 29, 2019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ↑ Foa, Sandra M. (1979). Feminismo y forma narrativa : Estudio del tema y las técnicas de María de Zayas y Sotomayo (in español). Albatros. ISBN 8472740455. OCLC 865227867. Retrieved June 29, 2019.
  18. ↑ Blanqué, Andrea (1991). "María de Zayas o la versión de las noveleras". Nueva revista de Filología hispánica (in español). 39. Retrieved June 14, 2012.
  19. ↑ Navarro Durán, Rosa. "La "rara belleza" de las damas en las novelas de María de Zayas y Mariana de Carvajal" (PDF) (in español). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 23, 2005. Retrieved June 14, 2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  20. ↑ Schardong, Rosangela. "El celoso extremeño: fuente para una novela feminista de Doña María de Zayas y Sotomayor" (in español). Retrieved June 14, 2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  21. ↑ Blanco Corujo, Oliva. La polémica feminista en la España ilustrada (in español). ISBN 978-84-937184-7-3.
  22. ↑ María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Novelas ejemplares y amorosas o el Decamerón español. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
  23. ↑ Caballé, Anna (2013). El feminismo en España : la lenta conquista de un derecho (in español). p. 55. ISBN 978-84-376-3130-1. OCLC 859553331. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  24. ↑ Victoria Aranda Arribas, "Maravillas de ayer y de hoy: la narrativa de María de Zayas en la televisión", in: Javier Espejo Surós and Carlos Mata Induráin (eds.), Trazas, ingenio y gracia. Estudios sobre María de Zayas y sus «Novelas amorosas y ejemplares», Pamplona, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021, pp. 337-361. Colección BIADIG (Biblioteca Áurea Digital), 64 / Publicaciones Digitales del GRISO. ISBN: 978-84-8081-694-6.
  25. ↑ Victoria Aranda Arribas and Rafael Bonilla Cerezo, "El prevenido engañado (María de Zayas, 1637) en El jardín de Venus (José María Forqué, 1983)", Criticón, 143, 2021.
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