Subtle Subversions: Reading Golden Age Sonnets by Iberian Women

2. Marriage, Motherhood, Patriarchy

C h a P t e R 2 M A R R I A G E , M O T H E R H O O D , PAT R I A R C H Y The family in eaRly modeRn SPain was the smallest element through which social control was exerted by the patriarchal establishments of Church and state. Seventeenth-century notions of the family stemmed partially from the Church Fathers and from postTridentine Church doctrine. These notions were supported by the many moralists who went into print in didactic literature, of whom the most widely known and respected were probably Juan Luis Vives, Luis de León, and Juan de Zabaleta. Also still current and a valuable source of education, in spite of their relative antiquity, were the precepts of Alfonso x el Sabio (Alfonso the wise) and his Siete partidas (seven divisions of the law). The post-Trent urge for order as a means to present a united front to growing Protestantism reinforced the paradigm. As head of the household, the father was responsible for all under his roof, and with absolute power over every aspect of their lives he held a power reinforced by law. The family, however, stood for more than this. At the upper levels of society, the importance attached to limpieza de sangre and hombría established the family as a social statement and a ladder to preferment in the patronage system. The value of these connections to social success can be discerned in the sonnets written by Leonor de la Cueva y Silva to her uncle and to her brother, already discussed. E 73 74 m a R R i a g e , m o t h e R h o o d , P a t R i a R C h y Family and home were the approved, indeed the only, life paths for secular women that the Church, the state, and the moralists who went into print would countenance. In her poems to St. Joseph, Sor Violante del Cielo demonstrates her adherence to Counter-Reformation orthodoxy in promoting the nuclear family, with the pater familias at its head, as the epitome of Christian organization. However, within the family, Sor Violante’s sonnets on the motherhood of the Virgin Mary present an entirely different view of maternal empowerment from that promulgated by the Church. Her view proposes Mary as an example to other women, not of meek submission, but of strength and independence. The poems these women write about the family virtually ignore the institution of marriage, but find much to say about the role and responsibilities of the father as head of the family. They also demonstrate the empowering role that motherhood could provide for women. These poems cover both religious and secular matters, but at the base of almost all of them is a determination to express independent thought, clearly held views that reveal a great deal about the authors’ intentions and concerns with regard to their own families and an awareness of their own importance within the family structure. Through them can be gained a glimpse into the hidden world of women’s experience of family life in seventeenth-century Spain. Even bearing in mind Anne Cruz’s warnings about the danger of misreading the writing in search of its authors, I shall contend, as she does, that, “we may still glean significant aspects of women’s subjectivity through the self-referential traces left in their literary production” (“Challenging Lives” 104). the yoke of maRRiage Family links provided opportunities for an advantageous marriage organized between the respective fathers without any requirement to consult the wishes of their daughters. Marriage was an important rite of passage , not only for its class significance, but also because it marked the beginning of a new, legally and theologically sanctioned, socially recognized unit in the patriarchal system. Though marriage is often portrayed as the silent enslavement of women to their husbands’ control, where women were able to secure socially advantageous marriages they also m a R R i a g e , m o t h e R h o o d , P a t R i a R C h y 75 gained in prestige. There are no poems, even among Ramírez’s often acid verse, that denounce the institution of marriage or want of affective support . It is nevertheless significant, in the terms of this study, that, with one solitary exception...