Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Part I Las Trezientas and Carajicomedia
- Part II Cultural Ideology: Gender Roles
- Part III Political Satire and Ideology
- Conclusion: The Purpose and Fate of Carajicomedia
- Part IV A Paleographic Edition of Carajicomedia Carajicomedia
- Appendix A Carajicomedia: A Modern Spanish Edition and Translation
- Appendix B The Erotic Language of Carajicomedia
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Women and Power: El Laberinto de Fortuna’s Divina Providencia and Carajicomedia’s María de Vellasco
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Part I Las Trezientas and Carajicomedia
- Part II Cultural Ideology: Gender Roles
- Part III Political Satire and Ideology
- Conclusion: The Purpose and Fate of Carajicomedia
- Part IV A Paleographic Edition of Carajicomedia Carajicomedia
- Appendix A Carajicomedia: A Modern Spanish Edition and Translation
- Appendix B The Erotic Language of Carajicomedia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
“voy en todas partes / ſegundo te digo : que ſigo mil artes / y en todas tengo : muy gran ecelencia los males que quiero : ordeno eneſſencia / de alcahueterias : yo hago ami guiſa renueuo los virgos : deſto te auisa / y pongo poder : do falta potencia
—Anon., Carajicomedia, stanza 23Central to Carajicomedia's first poem is a concern with the pernicious and emasculating effect that women have on men. This anxiety permeates early modern culture, which considers women to be inherently flawed and the cause of man's perdition. The authors of Carajicomedia echo this cultural assessment of womankind.
Biblical theologians and commentators of Genesis maintained that God had made Adam in His own image from the soil of Paradise. He was therefore a complete and perfect form. Eve, on the other hand, was an afterthought, formed from an insignificant part of Adam's body, a rib. Although technically, she was also made “in the image of God,” Eve was considered a secondary and partial creation by the strictly hierarchical society of the time. Her inadequacy manifested itself by an incapacity to subject her Will to the control of Reason. Her unbridled curiosity therefore made her more vulnerable than Adam to the serpent's temptation. Greek medicine and philosophy added that the physiological differences dividing the sexes were the result of nature's failure to produce a perfect form. Latin authors approached the difference from a moral point of view and endowed their female characters with four types of vulnerability, which could affect the “virtus” (virtue) of the male: “imbecillitas” (imbecility), “impotentia” (impotence), “levitas” (levity), and “impatientia” (impatience).
These ideas about women's nature, when coupled with a typological sense of reality that interpreted life as a repetition of acts, meant that no daughter of Eve could ever be trusted by men, because they required the same constant supervision as children or slaves. The Virgin Mary, of course, was excluded from this general condemnation, but until the late Middle Ages her role in the Incarnation was considered by most to be an exception to the general rule that women were evil. This condemnation of all females, however, began to change during the late Middle Ages.
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- Information
- Carajicomedia: Parody and Satire in Early Modern SpainWith an Edition and Translation of the Text, pp. 89 - 124Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015