Hallucinations, Persecutions and Self-Defense: The Autobiography of Teresa of Ávila

This article examines the testimony of a chronically sick woman, Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda (Ávila 1515), who—at this moment in time—is suspected of having had the stigmatized disease of epilepsy. Teresa, a Carmelite nun who reported having divine visions and graces, dedicated her life to spiritual perfection, and died in 1582 with an aura of sanctity. She was beatified in 1614, canonized in 1622, and proclaimed doctor of the Church in 1970. Around 1554, after she started having visions, some male clerics ordered the nun to explain her extraordinary occurrences, fearing that the phenomena was dangerously reminiscent of other non orthodox practices in the period. The result is the autobiographical account Libro de la vida, whose final version dates to 1565 (Weber, “The Three Lives” 8-9).

In Libro de la vida, Teresa de Ávila talks about frequent corporeal pains, convulsions, stomach problems, dizziness, loss of consciousness and strong emotional fluctuations occurring along with mystical graces, involuntary and uncontrollable raptures, beatific and devilish visions, and the experiences of hearing voices and receiving prophetic messages. She writes also of the most ineffable pleasures in repetitive ecstasies—or the most horrible pains and anxieties, for that matter—as well as the acquisition of transcendental truth through these experiences. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of Teresa’s symptoms have been interpreted as a hysterical condition (Álvarez 15-62; Hayes 335; García-Albea, Teresa de Jesús 100-102).¹ Recent studies by the neurologists Esteban García-Albea (Teresa de Jesús; “La epilepsia”), Pierre Vercelletto and E. Carrazana and J. Cheng suggest that, among other illnesses, Teresa de Ávila suffered from so-called ecstatic epilepsy as a result of a lesion in the temporal lobes. Other medical research on contemporary subjects with ecstatic epilepsy seems to support that Teresa endured this kind of ailment.

The abundant criticism of Libro de la vida has avoided focusing on Teresa’s neurological condition, in spite of the frequent and remarkable presence of her ailing body in her autobiography. I interpret Teresa de Ávila’s narration both as a private elucidation and public apology concerning her special body’s occurrences and the terrible social consequences resulting from them. In my reading, I use a feminist disability perspective, as has been developed by scholars such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Margrit Shildrick and Susan Wendell. This approach contemplates the traditional similarities between the female and the disabled body, both considered deviant and inferior in opposition to the male norm, the importance of cultural meanings given to certain bodily configurations and diseases, as well as the social practices and consequences that create and perpetuate these conceptions (Garland, “Feminist Theory” 280). As Garland-Thomson says, disability studies add to feminist approaches the emphasis on the materiality. “Disability becomes intense, extravagant, and problematic embodiment. It is the unorthodox made flesh” (“Feminist Theory” 283). The double deviation and devaluation for being woman and disabled is always attributed to corporeal characteristics and marks (Garland 287-88). Wendell states that “a disabled woman is redundantly fulfilling cultural expectations of her” (The Rejected 62) and that definitions of disability should recognize the “biological, social, and experiential components” (The Rejected 23). Therefore, in addition to analyses that uncover the social construction of disability and gender in texts, it is also important to study how it feels to live with an impairment that denigrates the person. In view of these theoretical concepts, I underscore how Teresa presents herself in Libro de la vida as the subject of her experience (Wendell 60). Teresa de Ávila’s personal testimony leads me to a phenomenological reading that underscores the role of individuals in interpreting their own corporeal experiences in relation to the surrounding world.² I also connect the book with the peculiarities of the autobiographical genres, including present pathographies.³ Finally, I understand impairments as discursively constructed and, therefore, I have taken into account early modern medical and religious concepts of female embodiment and illness, as well as present disability theories, and current clinical research.

Pre-industrial female representation connects women...