la fuerza del amor y la fuerza de la sangre

"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 PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246936 .Accessed: 25/02/2015 09:40

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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 himself 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 transform, 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 context:

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 establishes, 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,

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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 actions 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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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.

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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 consciously 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 "honestidad" (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 hermosura" (222-23).

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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 suffering 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.

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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 disgrace,6 Laura is left behind to deal with her suffering on her own. Her father and brothers move to another town afraid of what consequences may arise from Diego's rage and any defense of their daughter 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.

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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 husband, 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 establishes 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 impossible 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.

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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 consciously 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 human 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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logical hell, I would argue that the miraculous nature of Carlos' appearance 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 expressed 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 convent.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,

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[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.

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the characters' words and actions (the problem of Rodolfo's unrepentant 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 satisfaction 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).

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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 subversive 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.

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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 interpretation 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

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to cover over or repress the void at the core of all symbolic structures. 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 structure, 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

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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 humiliation 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.

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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).

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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.

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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 amorosas 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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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

la fuerza del amor y la fuerza de la sangre

Documents

cervantes la fuerza

zayas response

content of cervantes

themes of cervantes

jstor terms

zayas ejemplos

zayas texts

jstor archive