Subtle Subversions: Reading Golden Age Sonnets by Iberian Women

1. Politics, Patronage, Parentage

21 E C H A P T E R 1 P O L I T I C S , PAT R O N A G E , PA R E N TA G E An imPoRtant PaRt of the funtioning of upper-class society in early modern Spain was the acquisition of suitable patronage. Class was fundamental to the client’s chances of success in the patronage systems that obtained in the greater and lesser courts of the Iberian nobility . The stratification of class was complex, including strands of nobility as well as an upwardly mobile merchant class. For example, in her study of the role of honor and class in the works of María de Zayas, nieves Romero Díaz identifies in Zayas’s La burlada Aminta the blending of the antigua nobleza (old nobility) with the urban nobility of Segovia. Romero Díaz observes that when Aminta seeks to avenge an offense against her personal honor she is doing far more than avenging herself, since the offense , in ideological terms, has been committed against an entire class, “la nobleza tradicional, que se quería preservar de la amenaza de otros grupos sociales que con el ‘negocio’ y apoyados en el dinero atentan con desmitificar una pureza ideal nobiliaria” (120; the traditional nobility, which sought to preserve itself from the menace of other social groups who, through commerce and supported by their money, attempt to demystify a pure, nobiliary ideal). Class and family status were intertwined; family name, renown, and proof of limpieza de sangre (blood purity) were of the utmost importance in acquiring the appropriate introductions that could set the patronage process moving. Allied to that were the subtle methods of making oneself visible in what was a highly competitive atmosphere. In this chapter I examine sonnets written specifically to further personal and family status. These are principally the poems of Sor Violante del Cielo, who was unusually close to the sources of power in Portugal, in spite of her monastic status, and the works of Leonor de la Cueva y Silva that promote her family, written from a provincial center. Although they approach their compositions from different viewpoints, they seek to achieve a similar result: an increase in status, rewards, and political protection for the client. In writing to flatter a highly placed patron, to incorporate themselves into the courtly milieu, or to advance the cause of the family as a whole, they engage with a specifically masculine discourse, to which, in most instances, they accommodate their own writing. A formal definition of the patron-client relationship in early modern Europe describes it as a set of social practices that conditioned all areas of nobiliary and ecclesiastical existence (Baker 106). The system was frequently the butt of criticism from humanists such as Thomas More, whose Utopia proposed the abolition of the property relations upon which patronage rested. within the prevailing model of governance, framed on the hierarchical ideal, where government of the state and the family alike were supposed to mirror the government of heaven, the patronage system operated in a revolving system of debt and favor, carried up the social scale on a tide of flattery. The importance of political patronage that obtained in all the western European courts is exemplified in the following description: [P]ower and prestige must always be expressed through a large and impressive entourage ..... met partly by periodic attendance of peers and leading gentry at court....... Kings also appointed provincial magnates to ceremonial posts within their households, ..... such appointments served as an important form of patronage , helping to cement allegiance to the crown. More was always involved, however , than a simple exchange of material rewards for political service. Gentlemen coveted court positions not only for the salaries they carried, but for the honor that membership in the king’s household conferred. Conversely a crowded court manifested the king’s own honor. (Smuts 88) The value placed upon honor is clearly to be seen in the poetry of Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, who proclaims the aura of hombría (overt masculinity ) that clings to her male relatives and, through this, the honor that accrues to herself and her family. 22 P o l i t i C S , P a t R o n a g e , P a R e n t a g e Providing a wider definition of the nature of the patronage that structured early...