Conceiving of Purity: The Literary Immaculism of María de Zayas's Desengaños Amorosos

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Virgin Mary is a central figure in María de Zayas's Desengaños amorosos (1647) but has not yet been analyzed through the lens of the Immaculate Conception, in spite of Zayas's own immaculist leanings. Indeed, despite its extraordinary and unique popularity in early modern Spain, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has received little scholarly attention outside of theological considerations. Recent scholarship has begun to suggest its broader social implications, including its connection to the contemporary discourse of blood purity. The Desengaños articulate and explore this intersection by pairing the intervention of the Immaculate Virgin with anxieties over women's role in maintaining genealogical purity. In this article, I analyze the third, eighth, and ninth tales of the collection, as well as the frame narrative, to argue that Zayas proposes Mary's immaculacy as a counterweight to the perception of women's indelible impurity in the context of limpieza de sangre . Through immaculist language and imagery, and drawing on the early modern obsession with honor, Zayas reimagines a disordered society that viewed women as fallen and corruptible by proposing a uniquely feminine source of genealogical purity.