| In this study I examine, from a feminist perspective, the work of four women dramatists of seventeenth-century Spain: Leonor de la Cueva y Silva (La firmeza en la ausencia), Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor (Traicion en la amistad), Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman (Tragicomedia jardines y campos sabeos), and Sor Marcela de San Felix ("Muerte del Apetito"). I examine this woman-authored drama as part of the culture of Counter-Reformation Spain, while keeping in mind that it was a culture whose religion, laws governing women's economic freedom, and prescriptive literature sought order through the advocation of purity and silence for women by limiting their activity in the public realm through their enclosure within the confines of marriage or the convent. I theorize that the realm of dramatic tradition and convention may have provided women dramatists with a means by which they could couch social criticism and challenge the status quo of their time. The widespread popularity of the comedia, as well as the many social types represented in the comedia, allowed women dramatists a wide range of expression that was difficult to achieve in non-participatory genres such as poetry and prose.;In my analysis of the female characters and their relationships with both the male and female characters, I show that the female characters exhibit a clear understanding of, as well as a subtle resistance to, the gendered social role they are expected to enact. My approach to this study is interdisciplinary, as I utilize feminist research from a wide variety of fields such as anthropology, ethnology, film theory, history, sociology, psychology. This research, which in a general sense seeks to explore, criticize, and theorize the subordinate position of women in patriarchal societies, both past and present, yields rich readings of the dramatic texts, enabling the reader to comprehend the presence of female power and subjectivity that these dramatists crafted into their work. |
