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For want of Women's Lib: Sex, Religion and Politics under the Catholic Monarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Melveena McKendrick, in a work recently published on Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age, makes the point that there was during this period of the 16th and 17th centuries no change in the social position of the vast majority of women, that is, those of the rural peasantry, and she then adds:
‘To the remainder of Spanish women, four main courses were open. They could join the ranks of the mujeres de mala vida somewhere in the hierarchy from courtesan to common prostitute. They could enter a convent. They could enter into service as a dueña or a lady-in-waiting. Or they could remain with their families, marrying or not as inclination or opportunity decided. Those who embarked on this last course concern us most, for the life of the prostitute and the nun, by the nature of their calling, ran along fixed and predictable lines . .
Initially, I found the throw-away line about the prostitute and the nun quietly amusing, or rather, amusingly sardonic in a low pitch way. The juxtaposition seemed to be sufficiently slightly outrageous to underscore the delicate irony of the order of presentation—prostitute first, nun second, capping it all with the application of the term calling to both. Donnish humour at its best? But, on second thoughts, its clever, quiet and telling effectiveness seemed to me to betray a very bourgeois understanding or misunderstanding of the nature of professional sex, politics and religion. I don’t think Buñuel, Genet or Pasolini would have tried to be so neatly clever about such vital things as prostitution and the religious life. You see, deep down, what is wrong is not the question of coupling the two and regarding them both as vocations, the real trouble is to think for one moment that the lives of these practitioners of the most ancient of female professions run along fixed and prescribed lines. But let’s try and put the question into some sort of perspective.
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- Copyright © 1975 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 McKendrick, Melveena, Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age (Cambridge, 1974), 24Google Scholar.
2 It is interesting to note that around 1509 the German humanist, Agrippa von Nettesheim, penned the treatise, De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus, which argues in favour of female superiority, in an apparently vain attempt to gain the patronage of one of these ladies, Margaret of Austria. See Nauert, Charles G. Jr., Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought (Urbana, 1965), 27Google Scholar.
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4 Diálogo XIII, quoted by Melquiades Andrés Martín, Historia de la Teologia en Espana (Rome, 1962), 188Google Scholar.
5 For the authoritative history of this topic see Sircroff, Albert A., Les controverses des statuts de ‘Pureté de sang’ en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe Stécle (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar.
6 For instance, the wronged Leonor in Calderón's play El médico de su honra (Jornada primera, Escena XIV), asks the King to get her into a convent, which she cannot do herself because she is poor.
7 See Juana de Austria (1535‐1573) in Diccionario de Historia de Espana, 2 (Madrid, 1952), 136Google Scholar.
8 The Spanish theatre of the day exploited the connection, as may be seen in the entry: ‘7. März, Seite 72. Nachmittag habe ich die Suor Dorotea à las descahas Reales besuecht. Sie ist des Kaisers Rudolf hija natural und mit 12 Jahren aus Teutsohland hereinkommen’, in Ferdinand Bonaventure Harrach, Graf, Tagebuch über den Aufenthalt in Spanien in den Jahren 1673‐1674 (Wien, 1913)Google Scholar, as quoted by Reichenberger, Arnold G., ‘The Counts Harrach and the Spanish Theater’ in Homenaje a Rodríguez‐Monino, II (Madrid, 1966), 101Google Scholar.
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24 Ibid., 25, quoting Licenciado Munoz, Vida de Fray Luis de Granada (Valverde, 1730), Lib. II, cap. IX.
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26 Ramón Robres y Jose Ramón Ortolá, op. tit., 26.
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28 Antonio Márquez, op. tit., 157.
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30 M. McKendrick, op. cit., 14, quoting Epistolario completo de D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, ed. Marín, L. Astrana, Carta CXXXVI (Madrid, 1946), 264Google Scholar.
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