Unruly Women: Performance, Penitence, and Punishment in Early Modern Spain by Margaret E. Boyle (review)

This book represents, in some ways, an important updating of Melveena McKendrick’s classic study of the manly woman in Golden Age theater, Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the Mujer Varonil (1974). Although only one chapter is devoted to the manly woman per se, the book depicts at least two alternative iterations of the “bad girl” or “unruly woman” as portrayed on stage. These are the Protean widow and the disloyal female friend who betrays another woman.

In the acknowledgements the author tips her hand by self-identifying as part of a group she calls “scholars of the siglo del otro” as opposed to the traditional Siglo de Oro (the other scholars she mentions are Ariadna García-Bryce, Gloria Hernández, Sherry Velasco, Lisa Vollendorf, and Amy Williamsen). The book’s underwhelming, overly simplistic thesis is stated thus: “The book argues that women’s performances of penitence and punishment should be considered a significant factor of early modern Spanish life” (4). But so were domestic animals, still-life paintings of food, bread riots, and gardens.… At least in her thesis statement, she does not explain how or why these performances were significant.

The book’s theoretical framework stems from Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, although the French material he treats there begins with the French Revolution and is thus too late for the Spanish texts presented here. Some of this book’s material makes for a New Historicist’s dream, as for example when conversion stories of actresses inspired literary adaptations of their lives (11ff.) The New Historicists’ mantra was to emphasize the historicity of texts and the textuality of history, and these examples seem ready-made to suit their approach. The author pays good attention to the original circumstances of the plays’ production. These details amount to flashes of the New Historicism when real-life historical parallels are mentioned, but in the end the chapters are essentially close readings of three plays: Calderón’s La dama duende (1629), Zayas’s La traición en la amistad (1630), and Vélez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera (1613). Boyle analyzes these three plays as “rehabilitation narratives” culminating in happy marriage, exclusion from the marriage option, and exemplary murder, respectively. Two appendices offer transcriptions of historical documents relevant to institutions set up to rehabilitate women (the Galera and Royal House, and the Royal House of St. Mary Magdalene of the Penitence). The book needs illustrations—it describes several paintings but does not reproduce them. The result is frustrating for the reader.

But the biggest problem with this text lies in its rhetoric. The author repeatedly engages in the rhetoric of victimization, such as her claim in reference to the Nueva Recopilación [de las leyes de estos reynos] that “These new laws and decrees mainly targeted ethnic and religious minorities, the poor, and women” (5). This is a gross over-generalization, as the new laws contained all sorts of provisions which could not be tied to these marginalized groups in particular. She also speaks about the laws’ purpose of “ridding city streets of profane topics such as sex, illness, and crime” (5). Does this mean that people talking on the street were no longer supposed to mention these topics? It seems intuitively obvious that the new laws would provoke more debate, not less. And even in the repressive atmosphere of Inquisitorial Spain, the laws did not forbid discussion of these topics, only actual infractions in these areas. At other points the author gets carried away with sensationalistic claims, such as the following: “Rife with raunchy dramatic content, plays were believed to incite bad behaviour and even illness among their impressionable audiences” (7, emphasis mine). One might ask, what type of illness? And where is the evidence for this belief? (The claim is not footnoted or otherwise explained...