Beyond the Canon: New Documents on the Feminist Debate in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

IN spite of many recent studies of women's writings from Early Modern Spain, it is not yet clear if one can claim that there was a widespread feminist debate in which women actively participated, analogous to the intense controversy that took place in Renaissance England.1 I am referring specifically to a phenomenon that was extensively documented by Katherine Henderson and Barbara F. McManus, which suggests that during the Renaissance female British writers, such as Rachel Speght and Ester Sowernam began to respond publicly to misogynous pamphlets in a substantial manner. Due to the scarcity of textual evidence of a feminist consciousness in Early Modern Spain, contemporary critics have either turned to the study of well-known seventeenth-century writers who clearly spoke in defense of women, such as Maria de Zayas or Ana Caro, or have focused on the second half of the eighteenth century, when various women, such as Josefa Amar y Borbon, also raised their voices. Notwithstanding the eager efforts of some feminist scholars to assert Spain's participation in the long European tradition of the querelle des femmes, much remains to be accomplished in order to trace the poetics of the still highly undefined Spanish feminist discourse. This essay does not aim to carry out such an ambitious task, but instead sheds light on a new document which could contribute substantially and importantly to the efforts of critics in reconstructing the history of Spanish feminist thought: Defenses politica y gustosa conversacion entre Marido y Muger, en la qual la mi senora con sapientissimas razones convence, y se defiende del oprobio le hizo, leyendole el papel intitulado: `Registro, y estado de la imperfection, ruindad; y malicia de las mugeres (1699). The only located copy of this text is at the Hispanic Society of New York, although, according to Simon Diaz and Antonio Palau, there is was also a reprint in Barcelona by the press of Escuder (Diaz 9: 285; Palau 4: 334).2 As the title indicates, this document was written in direct response to a misogynous pamphlet printed in Gerona by Geronimo Palol, which circulated in 1698. As I mentioned above, responses to misogynous pamphlets were common among European feminist writers during the Early Modern period. For instance, just a few years before the publication of the Defensa, Sarah Fyge Field Egerton in Britain penned her long polemical poem, The Female Advocate (1686), in response to Robert Gould's A Late Satyr Against the Pride, Lust and Inconstancy of Women (1683). The Defenses was published during highly unstable times. In 1697, two years prior to its publication, Barcelona had been captured by the French troops of Louis XIV, who in September of the same year signed the Treaty of Ryswick, hoping that such a diplomatic move would ensure the Bourbons' status as legitimate heirs to the Spanish throne (Elliott 367). The last Habsburg, Charles II, died in 1700, and as Louis XIV of France had wished, the French Duke of Anjou was proclaimed Philip V, King of Spain and the first member of the new Bourbon dynasty. It is impossible to determine to what extent the feminist spirit of previous women writers inspired the author of the Defensa to subscribe to a feminist agenda and to speak publicly about it. It is equally conjectural to say that the particular history of Catalonia, which, unlike other Spanish regions, had political and economic ties with European powers boasting more consolidated feminist traditions, somehow stirred the writing of the Defenses. I am referring to the rise of French immigration which resulted in economic prosperity in Catalonia in contrast with Castile, impoverished and depopulated by the 1660s and the 1670s (Elliott 365). However, as I shall suggest in this essay, the Defenses shares some standard arguments, common interpretations, themes and examples with other contemporary European writings by women, a fact that could suggest the existence of both a more consolidated Spanish feminist tradition and a more coherent and widespread European feminist discourse than has been previously acknowledged. …