The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater of the Golden Age (review)

Reviews155 Briesemeister nos lleva al Brasil del XVIII para historiar las representaciones de comedias españolas allí realizadas. El volumen lo cierra la lección magistral del Prof. J. E. Varey sobre "la genealogía, origen y progresos de los gigantones de España," extendi éndose desde la primera referencia a un gigante en 1391 hasta la restauración de estos curiosos personajes por folcloristas del presente siglo . La miscelánea es un claro testimonio de la riqueza inagotable de aspectos dignos de investigación. También lo es de la alta calidad de los que hoy laboran en ese campo, y todo ello es motivo para congratularnos . La disposición tipográfica del volumen hace que su lectura sea agradable . Hay un mínimo de erratas, y las observadas no afectan el sentido. Ricardo Arias Fordham University Stoll, Anita K. and Dawn L. Smith, eds. The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater ofthe Golden Age. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press / London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1991. Hardcover. 276 pp. This lively collection addresses a multiplicity ofthemes and issues related to the perception(s) of women as characters and authors of the comedia . With a variety of traditional and recent critical approaches—from biographical, source, and reception studies to Bakhtin's theories of carnival and feminist perspectives—the essays re-articulate familiar issues and open up new topics for exploration. A recurrent theme in the essays of Part I, "Theoretical Approaches," is the way in which the comedia—albeit with varying emphasis in individual plays—both upholds and subverts its artistic traditions as well as the societal norms and gender roles that it represents. For example, Catherine Larson challenges the notion that female characters in the comedia are limited to static, conventionalized figures. Analyzing the multifaceted Angela of La dama duende, she demonstrates how Calderón's "diabolical angel" moves beyond mere sexual stereotyping and succeeds in freeing herself from the societal limitations placed on women. Nevertheless , Larson acknowledges that the comedy, while creating an autonomous and even aggressive female figure, in the end "undercuts the feminist gains made by [its] protagonist." Similarly, Maria Martino Crocetti, 156BCom, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Summer 1993) in her study of the same play, finds subversive implications in Angela's "spatial appropriation and manipulation," although she questions whether Calderón "was aware of the subversive text he assigned to the protagonist ." Using a Lacanian approach, Matthew Stroud discovers an analogous pattern of subversion and containment in Tirso de Molina's Don Gil de las calzas verdes. Stroud argues that the heroine's multiple masculine disguises expose the arbitrary link between anatomical sex and gender roles. However, the resolution of the play, when disguises are abandoned and marriages arranged, points to "a successful working through of the passage from the Imaginary (love and revenge) into the Symbolic (of marriage and society)," that is, a triumph not of love, but of order and tranquility. The essays in Part II address plays which, however ambivalently, take "the woman's part." Constance Wilkins finds a profound difference from the masculine norm—in style, thematic interest and cultural attitudes— in the comedies of Maria de Zayas and Sor Juana. Teresa Soufas discovers both protest and an underlying pessimism in Ana Caro's re-working of the topos ofthe mujer varonil in Valor, agravio y mujer. Although the play's heroine succeeds in redressing the abuses perpetrated against her, Soufas affirms, "the positive model enacted by Leonor will not be a lasting part of the society represented." Daniel Heiple examines Maria de Zayas's and Lope's problematic feminism within the context of the debate provoked by Huarte de San Juan's humoral misogyny. He concludes that if both writers were ambivalent about women's social roles, their works nonetheless reveal a strong defense ofthe intellectual powers of women. Margaret Hicks also makes a case for Lope's feminism—expressed through his parody of misogynist rhetoric—in her study of one of his lesser known comedies, La boba para los otros y discreta para si misma. The essays in Part III explore female representation in plays informed by the themes of rape, politics, and sexual inversion. Calderón's varied...