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C h a P t e R 6 L U I S A D E C A R VA J A L More Martha than Mary In 1601, lUiSa de CaRvaJal y mendoZa wrote a letter to a friend, a nun at the court of the archduchess of Flanders, from her small and impoverished, yet independent, home in Madrid. In it, she confided that “[t]odos estos días estoy deseando que me dejen tomar la pluma en la mano para aliviarme de las pesadumbres y ocupaciones que traigo” (Epistolario 109; every day I desire to be left to take up the pen in my hand to relieve myself of the pressures and occupations that I carry). Although the relief she sought in this instance was to be found in writing to her friend, her comment indicates that, among the chosen difficulties of her ascetic life, Carvajal y Mendoza sought comfort in the written word. The solace she derived from this exercise must certainly have extended to poetic composition, since all her poetry was written in Madrid during the 1590s. Abad concludes that when Carvajal y Mendoza finally set up house in London she was too preoccupied with her mission to write poetry, and notes that in Madrid “hubo momentos en que su vida mística, llegada a cierta tensión, la obligó a desahogar en esa forma los afectos del alma” (Epistolario 422; there were moments in her mystic life when a certain tension appeared, obliging her to unburden herself of the feelings of her soul in this manner). Several poems are datable, in relation to known facts of her life, to 1597.1 246 E 1. olivares and Boyce suggest that her works were composed between 1593 and 1601; see Espejo, 491. The circumstances of Carvajal y Mendoza’s life are so extraordinary that it becomes impossible to read and discuss her works without taking into account the suffering she was made to endure while still a young girl and the self-inflicted difficulties of her adult life.2 It is important that an analysis of Carvajal y Mendoza’s sonnets takes into account these tensions and conflicts, as well as her own avowed determination to seek martyrdom. of her fifty poems, nine are sonnets. An analysis of seven of these will demonstrate the nature of Carvajal y Mendoza’s mysticism and her poetic capabilities. The foundations of Carvajal y Mendoza’s determination to endure a martyr’s death, and her desire to suffer as Christ, reside in her early life, for even in the heightened religious atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation her childhood was excessively devout, arduous, and tormented. Born into a noble family in Jaraicejo, Extremadura, in 1566, Carvajal y Mendoza was orphaned at the age of six and was sent to live with her aunt, a dama at the court of Philip II. Here she first made contact with the Jesuits through her aunt’s confessor. on the death of her aunt, she was moved to Pamplona, under the guardianship of her uncle, the Marquis de Almazán. Her exceptional piety from an early age is noted in her autobiography and in subsequent writings about her life. This attitude was assisted by her uncle, who prescribed and oversaw her unusually broad general and religious education . However, he also imposed penitential practices that were by any measure excessive, but which amount to appalling abuse when the facts of her life are known. She was only fourteen years old when the systematic torture and humiliation began, administered by two servants especially employed for the task.3 Carvajal y Mendoza began her self-imposed religious reclusion when her uncle moved to the court in Madrid in 1588. Until the deaths of the l U i S a d e C a R va J a l 247 2. There have been numerous writings about Carvajal y Mendoza’s life. Her militant political efforts in London ensured that she appeared in the Calendar of State Papers and in the dispatches of Felipe III’s London ambassadors, as well as in the Downshire papers, which give voice to Archbishop Abbot’s negative opinions of her vocation. Unless otherwise stated, I draw details of Carvajal y Mendoza’s life from Camilo María Abad, Una misionera española en la Inglaterra del siglo XVII (1566–1614) (Santander: Universidad Pontificia , 1966). 3. Southey went so far as to describe the marquis as an “incarnate fiend” in his exploration of Muñóz’s...

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