"La fuerza del amor" or "The Power of Self-Love": Zayas' Response to Cervantes' "La fuerza de

la sangre"
Author(s): Rosilie Hernndez Pecoraro
Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Winter, 2002), pp. 39-57
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246936 .
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LA FUERZA DEL AMOR OR THE POWER OF SELF-LOVE:

ZAYAS' RESPONSE TO CERVANTES' LA FUERZA
DE LA SANGRE
ROSILIEHERNANDEZPECORARO

University of Illinois, Chicago

U HE debt of Maria de Zayas' Ejemplos and Desen?

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i*^I

trj.

amorosos

to Cervantes'

Novelas

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plares has been studied frequently. Given the popularity that the Novelas ejemplares enjoyed, their
influence upon other authors of short stories was

inevitable,

even obligatory.

Ejem-

And Zayas' work is

often read as an elaboration of the style, themes,

and content of Cervantes' ejemplos. Nonetheless, as Cervantes himself well demonstrated, imitation does not imply blind reverence to
the model; for Cervantes, as for most writers of the Renaissance and
Baroque, the practice of imitatio was a conscious effort to transform, and in the process hopefully surpass, the model. In fact, Zayas'
texts readily lend themselves to multiple and paradoxical readings,
making any imitation of or response to the content and themes of
Cervantes' works unexpected and highly original. As Patricia E.
Grieve has stated in her study of Zayas' practice of imitation and
manipulation of hagiographic codes, her works not only "imitate"
(and thus transform) form and content, but radically undermine the
ideological premises which commonly frame text and reading context:
By foregrounding hagiography and transforming seventeenth-century
male-approved reading matter for women into material for women's
39

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40

Rosilie Herndndez

Pecoraro

HR 70 (2002)

writing,while refusingmerely to imitate it, Zayascreates a revisionisttext

that subverts hagiography'spatriarchaldiscourse. She appropriatesthe
content but revises the context of the stories, thereby circumventingthe
pitfalls of being a female voice in a male discourse.
(89)
I would add that this practice of irreverent imitation, of taking a male
oriented discourse, subverting its premises, and recontextualizing it
into a woman's text is the same practice Zayas employs in her
transformation of Cervantes' works. In this essay I will discuss the
ways in which Zayas' La fuerza del amor is a direct retort to the
irony (whether intentional or not) of Leocadia's marriage in Cervantes' Lafuerza de la sangre. I will argue that in fact Zayas' tale of
marriage and deception is a conscious continuation of Cervantes'
contradictory tale of rape, sin, and farfetched reconciliation. If La
fuerza de la sangre ends with an uneasy declaration of marital bliss
between Rodolfo, an aristocrat and a rapist, and his victim, Leocadia,
Lafuerza del amor openly exposes the cruel reality that this blessed
state can and will bring. Cervantes' tale ends with Leocadia's surrender to her rapist's gaze and her tenuous reintegration into society as
his honorable wife and mother of his children. In contrast, Zayas
focuses on the pitfalls of marriage for women such as Leocadia and
Lafuerza del amor's Laura, beautiful objects of desire always lacking power and readily abused by husband and society. Nonetheless,
Zayas enables her disgraced heroine to find in herself the power of
self-love (this tale should really be titled La fuerza del amor proprio) and establish her subjectivity apart from all male influence.
First let us examine Cervantes' Sangre. In this ejemplo Leocadia,
a virginal and extremely beautiful sixteen-year-old is abducted from
her family's carriage by Rodolfo, a caballero whose "inclinaci6n
torcida," "libertad demasiada" and "companiias libres" prevent him
from honoring his or her honorable standing in society (77). She is
taken to Rodolfo's room where, unconscious, she is raped. As the
night evolves Leocadia first pleads for her death, then for her release,
and manages to leave taking a crucifix that, as Marcia Welles establishes, will be both symbol and proof of her innocent sacrifice (247).
Luisico, the product of this unworthy union, has an accident that
miraculously brings him to his noble grandparents' house where he
lies in the bed that seven years earlier had been the stage of his
mother's disgrace. Leocadia, finally aware of her aggressor's identity,
acts accordingly and, through Rodolfo's parents' grace and kindness,

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Zayas' Response

to Cervantes

41

is able to regain her honor through marriage. Seven years after her
tragic encounter with Rodolfo's lust she is for the first time free to
acknowledge her son as her own and secure her public honra.
Edward Friedman has convincingly suggested that the reader of
Lafuerza de la sangre is hard pressed to ignore how "the literal and
figurative levels of meaning [are] self-consciously ambiguous" (15354). Even though Leocadia's story ends with an affirmation of the
"muchos y felices afnos"(95) that she and Rodolfo spend as husband
and wife and of the many more honorable children that they bear, the
literal description of Rodolfo's character and motivations questions
their union's credibility or, as we will see for Zayas, desirability. It is
evident from Rodolfo's first appearance that his character and actions are incommensurate with his position in society, even when the
narrative voice considers his youth: "Hasta veinte y dos anfos tendria
un caballero de aquella ciudad a quien la riqueza, la sangre ilustre, la
inclinaci6n torcida, la libertad demasiada y las compafifas libres, le
hacian hacer cosas y tener atrevimientos que desdecian de su calidad
y le daban renombre de atrevido" (77). It thus should not surprise the
reader when Leocadia's beauty ignites in him the desire to "gozarla a
pesar de todos los inconvenientes que sucederle pudiesen" (78).
Soon after, Rodolfo goes to Italy where, as his father advises him, he
can be as good a caballero as he had been in his homeland.' Seven
years after the rape Rodolfo's own voice is first heard but then only
to confirm his lust and lack of interest in women as worthy subjects.
His one opportunity to redeem himself and demonstrate repentance
and transformation is marred when, upon his mother's questioning,
his utter disregard for anything but the enjoyment of physical beauty
is once more confirmed. Accordingly, during his wedding night with
Leocadia, "le parecia a Rodolfo que iba y caminaba no con alas, sino
con muletas: tan grande era el deseo de verse a solas con su querida
esposa" (95; emphasis mine). The narrator's description of Rodolfo's
desire to find himself alone with his "querida esposa" immediately
invokes his desire to enjoy an object of beauty: "Mozo soy, pero bien
se me entiende que se compadece con el sacramento del matrimonio
eljusto y debido deleite que los casados gozan" (91; emphasis mine).
If years earlier "los impetus no castos de la mocedad" (77) had driven

1 It is in textual moments such as these that Friedman's

reading of irony in La
fuerza de la sangre is irrefutable.

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42

Rosilie Herndndez

Pecoraro

HR 70 (2002)

him to violate Leocadia's body and honor, it is again his mocedad

which legitimizes his disregard of virtue in favor of beauty and
physical desire in marriage. While his early encounter with Leocadia
is motivated by pure drive, unrestrained by honor and its demands
within the patriarchy, his marriage vows are a channeling of that
libidinal energy into the chain of desire within the socio-symbolic
order of Spanish aristocratic society; this is a point that Theresa Ann
Sears has argued at length and that I will come back to later in this
essay.
Nevertheless, Welles considers Lafuerza de la sangre a woman's
story. Leocadia's plight and actions, not Rodolfo's problematic reformation, are the focus of this rape narrative. She is, as described by
the narrator, a lamb that without any warning or compassion is taken
from her parents side and raped. Not only does she have to plead for
her death or her liberty, she also has to defend herself against a
second attempted violation. Moreover, Leocadia is a victim of her
circumstance. She is of noble title but poor. Her parents, as stated by
her father, are powerless in the face of public disgrace and scandal.
Even if they had the inclination to publicize the crime and look for
the culprit, such an action would destroy their tenuous social and
economic standing. Nevertheless, it is evident that Leocadia is first
an unwilling and then an unresigned victim. She memorizes the room
that served as the "sepultura de [su] honra" and takes with her the
violator's crucifix, a glaring symbol of Rodolfo's hypocrisy and Leocadia's Christ-like innocence and sacrifice. Once Rodolfo's identity
is revealed and contact is established with his parents, Leocadia
finally has the opportunity to tell her story, confirmed by her son's
resemblance to his absent father. She is willing to go along with
Rodolfo's mother's scheme in order to regain her and her son's
public honra and private well being, and appears as an angel for
Rodolfo, the "golosina" that he so enthusiastically had come from
Italy to enjoy (89). As she sits across from her aggressor, the narrator
tells us how Leocadia now feels she loves Rodolfo "mas que a la luz
de sus ojos" (93). Yet this desperate "love" (I would argue the desire
to finally be acknowledged as a human being) is accompanied by
memories of her rape and disillusionment: "comenz6 a revolver en su
imaginaci6n lo que con Rodolfo habia pasado" (93). Her desire for
love and an honorable life cannot be separated from the violence and
suffering she has endured. Leocadia wants to be Rodolfo's wife. She
wants to save her family's honor and legitimize her son's existence.

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Zayas' Response to Cervantes

43

But at what cost and with what risk? It is no wonder that at this long
awaited moment she once more faints, confused as she considers
"cuan cerca estaba de ser dichosa o sin dicha para siempre" (93). As
Elizabeth T. Howe has argued, the meaning of "lafuerza de la sangre"
is as much a direct reference to blood lines as it is to the power of
lust and its effects upon those who fall prey to its unbridled and
unapologetic force. Leocadia might have to "love" Rodolfo in order
to enter the symbolic space of Spanish patriarchal society, but this
love is clearly not reciprocated; or rather it is reciprocated in the only
way it can be, as love for an object of desire, this time sanctioned by
state and church. Thus, as Friedman proposes, the assertion of
Leocadia and Rodolfo's many happy years of marriage should be
questioned as a conventional but paradoxical ending to the events
told in Lafuerza de la sangre. In other words, it is very hard to find
believable that marriage and prosperity can result from rape and
unrepentant humiliation. It is, I propose, this contradictory and
ironic ending of 'marital bliss' which Zayas picks up in her own story
of seduction, abuse, and betrayal.
La fuerza del amor starts off where Cervantes' novela ends. If
Leocadia's tale ends with an idealized marriage, Laura's plight begins
with her falling in love and marrying. The points of contact between
the two characters are evident. To start with, and pivotal to their
status as objects of desire, is their shared beauty. Like Leocadia,
Laura is an extremely beautiful woman. The narrative voice consciously and ironically describes her through poetic language, thus
inscribing Laura within a long line of perfect and idealized women in
literature:
Laura,peregrinoy nuevo milagro de Naturaleza,tanto que entre las mas
gallardas y hermosas fu6 tenida por celestial extremo; pues habiendo
escogido los curiosos ojos de la ciudad entre todas ellas once, y de estas
once tres, fue Laurade las once una, y de las tres una.
(221)
"Hermosa" is the adjective that most frequently describes Laura,
which, combined with her extreme "discrecion," "recato," and "honestidad" (222), make of her one of the most desirable yet unapproachable women of Naples; "fueron sus ojos basiliscos de las
almas, su gallardia monstruo de la las vidas, y su riqueza y nobles
partes, cebo de los deseos de mil gallardos y nobles mancebos de la
ciudad, pretendiendo por medio del casamiento gozar de tanta hermosura" (222-23).

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44

Rosilie Herndndez

Pecoraro

HR70 (2002)

Like his Cervantine predecessor, Zayas' Diego will also long to

"gozar de tanta hermosura." But whereas Rodolfo's "torcida inclinaci6n" was evident from his first contact with Leocadia, Diego's
awareness of Laura's high social standing precludes him from taking
any extreme measures and revealing immediately his lust and inconstant desire. Initially Laura, like the reader, falls prey to Diego's
apparently true and honorable love. He asks her to dance in a sarao
and when she shies away and rejects his amorous intent, his suffering and loyalty seem sincere. He laments:
iAy divina Laura, y con qu6 crueldad oiste aquella tan sola como
desdichada palabra que te dixe!, como si el saber que esta alma es mas
tuya que la misma que posees fuera afrenta para tu honestidad y linaje,
pues es claro que si pretendo emplearla en tu servicio ha de ser
haciendote mi esposa, y con esto no pierdes opinion alguna.
(224; my
emphasis)4

Yet already there is in this early representation of Diego's love for

Laura something gone awry. Even in his apparent and expressed
respect for her honor and place in society, it is her beauty and not her
virtue that drives him to desperation and lament, "[aquella] belleza
que le tenia tan fuera de si" (224). As a result, he feels compelled to
offer a public serenade, a declaration of love and jealousy that
disregards truth, public embarrassment, or the possible condemnation of Laura by her family:
[P]rocurandodeclararen un romance,... su amor y los celos que le daba
un caballero noble y rico, que por ser amigo muy querido de los
hermanos de Lauraentrabamuy a menudo en su casa, creyendo que los
descuidos de Lauranacian de tener puesta la voluntad en 1l, afectos de
un celoso levantartestimonios a los inocentes.
(226)
Diego is an equal to Laura in wealth and social status; there was
never a need for him to make a public spectacle out of his interest for
her and his bouts of (as Laura herself points out) unwarranted
jealousy. This is evident given that once Laura's father is made aware
of Diego's interest for his daughter the union is achieved exclusively
through parental intervention. Yet Diego's impulsiveness dictates his
behavior from the very beginning, a trait that reminds us of Rodolfo

4 In retrospect this declaration of honorable love is ripe with irony. She will not
only lose all private and public respect or opinion but will almost lose her life.

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Zayas' Response

to Cervantes

45

and that will only intensify in a thoroughly incoherent manner once

Diego and Laura's marriage is consummated.
On their wedding night Diego possesses his object of desire but
not the fulfillment that, as Lacan reminds us, subjects lack within
their socio-symbolic structures. He is thus soon enthralled with an
ex-lover, Nise, who, abandoned and distraught, feels she has nothing
to lose and seduces him into a very public affair.5 Tired of Laura's
beauty and disgusted by her accusations and laments, Diego proceeds to verbally and physically abuse her, screaming at her, bloodying her mouth, and threatens to kill her with a dagger. Unlike
Rodolfo's act of violence in Lafuerza de la sangre, Diego's abuse of
his wife is described in great detail, its horror ironically made into a
metaphor through the image of Laura's teeth which if once were like
pearls, "presto tomaron la forma de corales" (238). Thus, if Cervantes' male protagonist is a figure whose lust leads him to marriage,
Zayas' Diego is a warning of what happens to that lust within
marriage: it tires and becomes loathing and abuse.
Faced with the horrifying reality of marriage, Laura's life, like
Leocadia's, is destroyed and she goes into a kind of hiding, publicly
shamed by her husband's mistreatment. But whereas Leocadia finds
a degree of comfort in her family's private acceptance of her disgrace,6 Laura is left behind to deal with her suffering on her own. Her
father and brothers move to another town afraid of what consequences may arise from Diego's rage and any defense of their daughter and sister. It is made clear that Laura's life was not worth risking
one of the son's lives or public family honor. Silence and distance are
thus the solution of choice. As Lou Chamon-Deutsch points out:
The life of the Zayasian heroine reveals social contracts to be sadly
unrelated to human passions and sentiment. Unlike Timoneda, who
defines evil as a threat to stable unions that is posed from outside the
5 Even
though Nise's role in La fuerza del amor is in contrast with Laura's
virtuous nature, I would argue that the text represents Nise's abandonment and cruel
actions toward Laura as a direct result of Diego's deceit and mistreatment.
6 Leocadia
family's acceptance and support are, in any case, marred by their
insistence in the shame that the rape brings to all of them, their powerlessness (or lack
of will) to intervene, and the resulting necessity to hide its occurrence. It seems
evident to me that Cervantes' subtle but complex representation of familial love and
honor (Leocadia's cause is abandoned by her family even if she is tolerated by them)
is understood by Zayas and fully exposed in her corresponding tale.

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46

Rosilie Herndndez Pecoraro

HR 70 (2002)

members of the union, Zayas sees the evil within the family unit as a
threat, not to patriarchalstability but to women's physical and emotional
well being.
(24)
Laura's father and brothers cannot, or rather will not, help her,
sustaining the social contract that maintains that Diego is her husband, and thus her owner, and they abandon her to further abuse and
victimization. Nevertheless it is important to note that in both Leocadia's and Laura's case it is family neglect that eventually prompts
them to act. If Leocadia family's silence incites her to personally tell
her story to Rodolfo's parents as soon as she has a chance (albeit,
seven years after the rape), Laura seeks out an hechicera as a
substitute for a father's or brother's defense.7
Laura's self-initiative is brought to light early on in the text when
she first confesses her love to Diego. Embarrassed by his public and
gratuitous claims of jealousy (and the insinuation that there had been
some amorous dealings between her and a friend of the family), she
advises him to be silent and privately declares her loyalty and love:
"Yo no os olvido por nadie, que si alguno en el mundo ha merecido
mis cuidados sois vos, y sereis el que me habeis de merecer, si por
ello aventurase la vida" (228). This personal declaration firmly establishes Laura as a desiring subject who willingly enters marriage, a
union in which she expects Diego to be true to his word and his
expressed desire to honor her in marriage. Once Diego psychologically and physically abuses her, Laura actively pursues reparations
for the damage that has been done to her. First, she seeks Nise's
compassion by personally asking her to desist of her pursuit of her
husband. When this strategy fails she, like Leocadia in Lafuerza de
la sangre, is helped by a maternal figure, this time the "falsa enredadora" who tries to swindle her (239). Finding herself in the impossible situation of having to go to look for "barbas, cabellos y dientes de
un ahorcado" (239), Laura offers the pivotal and often quoted speech
where she questions women's position within the patriarchy. In her
lament she complains of women's inability to defend their honor and
well-being, "pues nos negais letras y armas" (241). A careful reading
of the speech also reveals Laura's clear understanding of her partic-

7 As a matter of fact, Rodolfo's mother can be seen as an hechicera herself, given

the sense of magic and wonderment attributed to Leocadia's transformation into an
angel-like figure and Rodolfo's enchantment with this figure.

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Zayas' Response to Cervantes

47

ular situation as an abused and powerless object of exchange and

desire; this is a realization that Leocadia, in Lafuerza de la sangre,
finally avoids. Laura loved and trusted Diego only to find him to be
like all men, "cuyos engafios quitan el poder a los mismos demonios,
y hacen ellos lo que los ministros de maldades dexan de hacer" (241).
The analysis of her family's desertion is equally lucid. She wonders
who can console her and concludes that no one can, "pues mi padre
y hermanos, por no oirlas me han desamparado" (241). Her consciously hopeless cry for help thus ends with an equally realistic determination. If neither society nor family will recognize her as a worthy
human being, she will take the only option available to her at the time,
"pensar como dare a esa mujer [la hechicera] lo que pide" (242). She
then sets out to the periphery of the city and to a common sepulcher
where she can find the relics required for the witch's potion.
Laura's visit to the grave can be interpreted as a metaphor for the
descent into hell, a place of death and desperation. Obsessed with
completing the task at hand and saving her relationship with Diego,
Laura spends several hours among the dead. Denied of all dignity and
self-esteem, Laura's act portrays the psychological extremes a human being can reach. We could say that she herself has died, losing
all sense of self and of right and wrong in her desperation to regain
an honorable place in society. But if Laura symbolically dies and
visits hell in the form of the common grave, it is also true that when
she exits she is reborn.8 As the narrator tells us, Laura's beloved
brother, Carlos, is moved by a miraculous occurrence much like
Luisico's rescue by his grandfather in Lafuerza de la sangre. Carlos
wakes up in the middle of the night and driven by instinct and fear
goes in search of his sister, knowing that she is in danger, ultimately
finding her in the city's humilladero. Early on Zayas had established
the close (hinting on the verge of incestual) relationship between the
two siblings: "quela amaba tan tiemo, que se olvidaba de si o quererla"
(222). Yet, even though it is Carlos who calls on Laurato come out of the
grave and helps her emerge from the depths of a physical and psycho8 Leocadia in La
fuerza de la sangre has been related to the figure of Christ, an

innocent soul sacrificed, the symbol of her plight and her innocence the Crucifix (see
for example Welles' "Violence Disguised"). I would say that here again we have a point
of contact between the two characters for if Leocadia is sacrificed symbolically at the
cross, Laura visits hell like Christ did, and like Christ she emerges a new empowered
being.

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Rosilie Herndndez

48

Pecoraro

HR70 (2002)

logical hell, I would argue that the miraculous nature of Carlos' appearance is not the determining factor in Laura's resurrection and her
transformation at the end of the tale. Like the miracle in Cervantes'
novela, Carlos' presence is an event that facilitates, but does not determine, the resolution of the female protagonist's plight.
When Laura hears her brother's voice she first tries to hide her
identity. Ultimately she comes out of the grave and into her brother's
arms, finding herself once more under her family's protection. An
official complaint is presented to the Viceroy concerning Diego's
behavior, which results in his repentance and contrition. But contrary to her family's expectations, Laura rejects Diego's offer and
decides to enter a convent since, "estaba desengafiada de lo que era
el mundo y los hombres, y asi no queria mas batallar con ellos,
porque cuando pensaba en lo que habia hecho y donde se habia visto,
no acababa de admirarse"(246). Even after her family and the Viceroy
insist, she rejects the options they offer, leaving Diego without a wife,
embarrassed, and desperate. Charnon-Deutsch highlights how in Zayas'
works women often find themselves taking a stand and making decisions that go against social or communal requests:
Such moment of decision when a woman must choose to act on her own
behalf are central to Zayasiannarrative.Significantly,they are not always
the moment a woman chooses whether to marry or whom to marry,a
decision often made for her by others. It is in moments of extreme stress
and adversitythat women are called upon to make choices... Ironically,
it is often extreme victimization that opens to a heroine the realm of
decision making. (22)
It is evident that the woman who has emerged from the humilladero
is not the same one that found herself helpless and frantic to regain
her husband's love. This experience has served as a catalyst and the
new Laura (a resurrected and cleansed being) finds it impossible to
subject herself once more to Diego's control, even if he has expressed his repentance. Unlike Leocadia, Laura has found her liberty
not in reconciliation with her aggressor but in her departure from the
patriarchal society that condemned her to a denigrating existence,
and her entrance into the spiritual and feminine world of the convent.9 As Grieve so clearly proposes:
9 Cervantes

rarely uses the flight to the convent as a plot device, its absence most
notable in the Quixote where only one of the numerous women characters, Leandra,

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Zayas' Response to Cervantes

49

[A]ccording to Zayas, women should reject the secular martyrdom

sanctioned by society's view of civilized behavior-marriage-and seek
refuge in the communitiesof women affordedby convents. As Cervantes'
stories unfortunately demonstrate, love and marriage can redeem the
sinner, but redemption often occurs at the expense of the redeemer,
either through sublimation of violence against her or the loss of her
libertyand free will.
(104)
As we analyze and compare the trajectory of the heroines in these
two tales it becomes evident, in my opinion, that Lafuerza del amor
can be read as a manifest continuation of Lafuerza de la sangre. It
is not only the similar wording of the two titles that supports the idea
of a conscious response by Zayas. It is also evident in the central
position of the tale within the collection (it is the fifth out of the ten),
mirroring La fuerza de la sangre's own central placement in Cervantes' volume. If La fuerza de la sangre is an ideological and/or
ironic anchor for the rest of the Ejemplares, Zayas' La fuerza del
amor is not only the central but, in my opinion, the most effective
tale in the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares. In addition, it clearly
announces Zayas' own second collection, the Desenganos amorosos.
Lisis, the woman for whom these stories are being told in the
narrative frame, would have been wise to listen to the warnings
issued by La fuerza de la sangre, which make the horrors related in
the Desenganos unnecessary, even if revealing.
Theresa Ann Sears in her book on Cervantes, A Marriage of
Convenience: Ideal and Ideology in the Novelas Ejemplares, centers
much of her discussion around the ideological underpinnings of the
ending of La fuerza de la sangre. Where Friedman sees a clear use
of irony in the dissonant encounter between the narrator's words and
finds herself in the house of God. As Theresa Sears notes in her analysis of El celoso
extremeno,
Leonora chooses the convent, not because it represents some unheard-of feminine
freedom, discursive or otherwise, but the opposite: it duplicates Carrizales' house
exactly, from the exclusive company of women, its obedient silence, and protective
(or confining) walls, to its presiding male deity (or his representative, the priest).
(161)
Much of the same can be said for Leandra in the Quixote, for it is not her own will
to remove herself from male influence that drives her to the convent, but her
father's desire to cut all ties to the sexual desire that his daughter has so publicly
revealed.

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the characters' words and actions (the problem of Rodolfo's unrepentant attitude and Leocadia's love mixed with fear, coupled together with
a declaration of many years of productive married life), Sears interprets
a conservative impulse in Cervantes that defends, or at least condones,
the status quo established by the patriarchy. If Friedman reads in
Cervantes both a manipulation and subversion through irony of the
typical marriage plot, Sears views Lafuerza de la sangre as a proposal
for the domestication of "disruptive"desire under the guise of the
sanctioned 'ideal' Christian marriage. As she states:
Cervantes, in contrast [to Boccaccio], tames desire so that it can be
satisfied and yet not challenge order.For him, therefore,the marriageplot
comes to signify not a moral or theological but rathera social and literary
order, and this shift constitutes one of the forward-lookingcharacteristics
of the collection... It provides a pattern for both the satisfaction of
desire and its containment,as well as a formula with which to solve the
persistent riddle of our own origins, as individuals, as members of a
family,and as participantsin a social structure.For these reasons, we see
in the Novelas what [Robert]Ter Horst has termed "a fearful devotion to
the lifelong bond between husband and wife" (116), where the telling
adjective "fearful"confirms the uneasiness that afflicts the tales' readers
at certain moments.
(151)10
In sum, according to Sears, Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares are a
didactic exercise in which social order rests upon both the satisfaction and containment of desire through marriage. This is Sears'
central, yet most problematic argument, for it is indeed very difficult
for author and reader to support and reproduce an ideology that
elicits fear and trepidation (even if only "at certain moments"). In
other words, if Cervantes is a champion of Christian marriage as an
effective and valuable tool of patriarchal ideology, then why does he
repeatedly include in his texts descriptions and commentary that
make the reader feel uneasy about the events that lead to marriage
and the consequences it may ensue? Ideology, if we follow an Althusserian line of thought, is in fact the story that we believe to be
our natural 'unproblematic' condition of existence. " Cervantes' rape

10

Sears is here referring to the article by Robert Ter Horst, "Une saison en enfer:
La gitanilla" (Cervantes 5.2 (1985): 87-127).
11See Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (Trans. Ben
Brewster. Verso: London. 1971).

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51

tale, in all its conflictive complexity, never once allows the reader to
forget the suffering endured by Leocadia, and the perversity of
Rodolfo's unrepentant lust for beauty.12 It is true that Leocadia
reappears as a vision of an angel for Rodolfo's benefit, and that
Rodolfo desires this beautiful object and very willingly enters their
marriage union. But Lafuerza de la sangre, in its representation of
patriarchal values and how they frame the experience of women,
does not portray Leocadia's plight as natural or legitimate. Her
marriage to Rodolfo is arranged by his mother as reparation for the
damage and shame she has endured; the only solution admissible to
the socio-symbolic social order in which she exists. After all, Leocadia marries Rodolfo because he had raped her-their relationship
founded upon the violence of Rodolfo's act, not on their newfound
"love"(love as lust, and as a last resort for a woman who will now be
wife to her rapist) for each other. Indeed, Cervantes does tell a tale
of "fearful devotion to the lifelong bond between husband and wife,"
a bond founded on violence, sacrifice, and artifice.
Notwithstanding the arguments for or against Cervantes' defense
of the status quo, or for or against his use of irony, it is safe to
assume that Zayas could have understood Cervantes' tale from both
perspectives: as a patriarchal endorsement of marriage as a means to
social order and the "domestication" of desire (male and female); and
as a "fearful"and, as we see in her tale, ill-advised undertaking that
opens a space for legitimized lust to degenerate and result in the
abuse of married women. In other words, she could very well have
read Lafuerza de la sangre (and most of Cervantes' corpus, for that
matter) as a conventional and conservative marriage plot and/or as
an ironic manipulation and tacit subversion of the same (as subversive rape tale, as a woman tale). If we follow Sears' argument, Zayas
is reacting against Cervantes' seemingly conservative ideological
stance. If we follow Friedman's reading, Zayas is picking up on the
uneasy and jarring nature of La fuerza de la sangre's ending and
openly demonstrating what Cervantes only insinuates. In either case
Zayas is reading along, with, and against Cervantes' tale. By respond12
Even though this point is self-evident, I find it worth reiterating that La
fuerza de la sangre does not in any way lend itself to a Neoplatonic interpretation.
Rodolfo's violation of Leocadia is an act of the flesh, not of the spirit, and their
eventual marriage takes place because of Rodolfo's preference for physical beauty
over spiritual virtue.

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ing to La fuerza de la sangre in this manner, Zayas is warning the

reader (here more specifically the female reader) that male lust
cannot be reformed, but rather only imported, with all its destructive
impulses, to the marriage, and then only to be officially tolerated by
family, church, and state. As Lena E. V. Sylvania argued in her
monograph of 1992:
Throughouther [Zayas']works there is an underlyingtendency that seeks
every occasion to vindicate woman against the misapprehendingjudgment
of man... They take advantageof the frailty of woman, leading her on to
trust their very deceitfulness. Woe unto the woman who places her faith
in so insecure a vessel, for she shall indeed reap the unjust reward of her
love! With music, with billets doux, with promises and presents... her
favor is sought, and trustinglyshe accepts all, believing implicitly in the
generous giver and insistent petitioner. Most earnestly does Dofia Maria
exhort women to be firm, to hold much in reserve, to rememberthat to
give too freely is but to court a broken heart, broken vows and
neglect.
(13)
For Zayas patriarchal society offers no happy endings for Leocadia, only a continued life of suffering and victimization. Yet Zayas'
tale is not one of defeat and submission. Here lies the most important
difference between the two stories. If Cervantes can, at best, suggest
the system's injustices and failures through a subtle use of irony,
Zayas does away with the ironical ending and offers her female
protagonist a way out of both her victimization and of patriarchal
ideology. If her father, brother, and the Viceroy were ready to give
her back to the (for the moment) repentant Diego, Laura insists that
she will now go elsewhere; to the convent, a female space where
male desire need not be suffered, tamed, or endured. Zayas thus
creates an alternative society and with it an escape from patriarchal
ideology and the discourse that accompanies it. As a matter of fact,
it is important to note that in La fuerza del amor the convent
remains a place beyond the confines of the novela itself, beyond the
reach of those that would appropriate it, redefine it, subdue itbeyond patriarchal discourse and its ideological mandates and limitations.
In The Sublime Object of Ideology Slavoj Zizek, in an interpretation of the Lacanian symbolic order and its mechanisms, defines
"fantasy"(or the way we structure our existence within the symbolic
order) as a structure which offers a totalizing view of reality.
Fantasy-scenarios and the ideological fields that define them intend

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to cover over or repress the void at the core of all symbolic structures. As Zizek explains:
Today,it is a commonplacethat the Lacaniansubject is divided, crossedout, identical to a lack in a signifying chain. However, the most radical
dimensionof Lacaniantheory lies not in recognizingthis fact but realizing
that the big Other,the symbolic orderitself, is also barre, crossed-out, by
a fundamentalimpossibility, structured around an impossible/traumatic
kernel, arounda central lack.
(122)
The fundamental void is the void of the sexual relationship (of a true
connection between beings, not as interpellated subjects). And thus:
[F]antasy is basically a scenario filling out the empty space of a
fundamentalimpossibility,a screen masking a void. 'There is no sexual
relationship,'and this impossibilityis filled out by the fascinatingfantasyscenario-that is why fantasyis, in the last resort, always a fantasy of the
sexual relationship,a stagingof it.
(Zizek 126)
Regardless of the form a fantasy-scenario takes, its symptoms, or
perceived points of malaise, point towards its condition as structure, not as ultimate truth or logos. Zizek illustrates this point with
figure of the 'Jew' who in the West, both in Europe and America,
has so frequently played the role of symptom in our societies.
Jews are accused of exploiting the rest of the population, seducing our daughters, and not washing regularly (48). Yet, whether
these ethnic characteristics are true is not the point; the point is
that the 'Jew' is a figure that (in its representation of everything
that is weak or evil) helps us escape "a certain deadlock" in our
fantasy-scenario (48). The 'Jew,' in other words, is a scapegoat,
the figure that comes to embody for the rest of the subjects in an
ideological field all values and/or characteristics that seem incompatible with that field or system. Whatever malignancies (perverted lust, extreme avarice, etcetera) exist within an ideological
field, their attribution to a specific figure alleviates all anxiety that
there is something wrong with the system itself (i.e., if we could
only get rid of Jews / Women / Blacks / Terrorists, and so on,
everything would be fine).
Following Zizek's description, I would argue that both Lafuerza
de la sangre and La fuerza del amor offer a rather stark reading of
patriarchal ideology and the fantasy-scenarios it supports. This is a
society where masculine desire runs rampant in very destructive

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ways, yet women (like the 'Jew') are held responsible for ensuing
chaos. As a result, Rodolfo and Diego are never condemned by
their communities, never asked for an explanation, never required
to pay for their 'sins.' Instead Leocadia and Laura are hidden
away, left behind, silenced. We are forced to infer from the way
both Leocadia and Laura are treated by their families and society
that, somehow, they are responsible for and worthy of the humiliation they endure. Women are believed not inherently chaste, not
honorable, and hence not worth defending. Men, because of their
'superior' nature, receive the unconditional love of their parents
(in Rodolfo's case) and forgiving words from the Viceroy (in
Diego's case).
Nonetheless, there is one fundamental difference in how these
fantasy-scenarios are ultimately treated in these texts. Leocadia
submits to the ideological system that declares her an unchaste
woman unless she marries her rapist, and ironically ends up complying with the system that violated her dignity as a human being.
Laura, in turn, comes to understand and reveals the empty nature,
the lack of reason or foundation, of the values upon which her father,
brother, husband, and the Viceroy dictate her life. What Laura finds
out is that there is nothing, no truth, no logos, behind the ideological
system that has forced her to suffer as an abused and abandoned
'Christian' wife. What Laura does is to 'traverse,' as Zizek would have
it, the patriarchal fantasy that has hereto framed her existence as
object of love and scorn: "As such, fantasy is not to be interpreted,
only 'traversed': all we have to do is experience how there is nothing
'behind' it, and how fantasy masks precisely this 'nothing'" (126).
Seen within this Lacanian paradigm, Laura's flight to the convent is
a traversal of patriarchal ideology and an entrance into a new
fantasy-scenario where feminine values and community can freely
operate.13 Further confirmation of this traversal is seen in Diego's
13

Of course, within this 'matriarchal' fantasy-scenario, we must assume that new

symptoms will arise that will both mask and point towards the system's inherent lack
or void. Nevertheless Zizek does not propose we resign ourselves to reproducing
systems that vilify and abuse others as 'symptoms.' Instead, he argues for the construction of less destructive, perhaps more just, fantasy-scenarios. Subjects cannot
escape ideology or erase the constitutive lack within them. But they can, or should,
look for better less destructive ways to live their fantasies. See Zizek's chapter "Che
Vuoi?" in The Sublime Object of Ideology.

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reaction to Laura's flight; his own fantasy-scenario now challenged

and made invalid, he 'disappears' and flees to a certain death in the
war against the Duke of Saboya.
Amy R. Williamsen has argued for Zayas' use of subversive
irony in her portrayal of the honor code.14 I would add that in La
fuerza del amor Zayas also establishes an alternative concept of
honor. If Leocadia in Cervantes' tale was only able to recuperate
her honor by marrying the man who had raped her, Laura finds
honor wholly in herself as an independent subject, at the end
rejecting the solution offered by patriarchal society. The promise
of a happy marriage will not suffice, resulting in her decision to
join other women in the presence of God, "que era amante mas
agradecido" (246). As a subject unwilling to subject herself once
more to Diego's objectifying and denigrating gaze, Laura achieves
her own definition of honor and of self-love. As the tale's narrator,
Nise, tells us:
Laura,viendose del todo libre, tomo el habito de religiosa, y a su tiempo
profes6, donde hoy vive santisimamente,tan arrepentidade su atrevida
determinaci6n... Yo supe este caso de su misma boca, y asi le cuento
por verdadero, para que todos conozcan hasta donde se extiende la
fuerza del amor y nueva maravilla de su poder.
(247;my emphasis)
What we find in Zayas' tale is an alternative to Cervantes' uneasy
resolution. Marriage becomes an undesirable road and honor is
newly defined, giving Laura the opportunity to find in herself what
Leocadia never was allowed to: the will to be a self-determining
subject. The "fuerza del amor" thus becomes the 'power of self-love'
and the convent a feminine space which negates society's perpetuation of women's status as objects of desire to be loved or abused,
adored or discarded, at a parent's or husband's whim.
If we consider that Lafuerza del amor is central to the Novelas
amorosas y ejemplares two things soon become evident. First
that it is a fully realized tale of "desengano" that announces both
in content and in form the Desenganos amorosos. Second, if, as I
have here argued, Zayas' tale is a direct retort to Cervantes' 'ideal'
14

See "Challenging the Code: Honor in Maria de Zayas" in Maria de Zayas: The
Dynamics of Discourse (Ed. by Amy Williamsen and Judith A. Whitenack, Madison:
Fairleigh Dickinson UP (1995), 133-51).

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Christian marriage, then we must understand the relationship

between Cervantes and Zayas' whole corpus (both the Ejemplares
and the Desenganos) as one that radically contests the ideological
presuppositions that lead parents to hide and condone their
daughter's plight, women to marry their rapists and abusers, and
authors to relate over and again (even if with irony) the highly
implausible and obviously forced happy ending.15

WORKS CITED
Cervantes, Miguel de. "La fuerza de la sangre." Novelas ejemplares.
Ed. Harry Sieber. Madrid: Catedra, 1991. 75-95.
Chamon-Deutsch, Lou. "The Sexual Economy in the Narrative of
Maria de Zayas." Letras Femeninas xvii 1-2 (1991): 15-28.
Friedman, Edward. "La fuerza de la sangre and the Rhetoric of
Power." Cervantes's 'Exemplary Novels' and the Adventure of
Writing. Eds. Michael Nerlich and Nicholas Spadaccini. Minneapolis: The Prisma Institute, 1989. 125-56.
Grieve, Patricia E. "Embroidering with Saintly Threads: Maria de
Zayas Challenges Cervantes and the Church."Renaissance Quarterly xLIv.I(1991): 86-106.
Howe, Elizabeth T. "The Power of Blood in Cervantes' Lafuerza de
la sangre." Forum for Modern Languages Studies 30:1 (1994):
64-76.
Sears, Theresa Ann. A Marriage of Convenience: Ideal and Ideology
in the Novelas Ejemplares. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Sylvania, Lena E. V. Dona Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor: A Contribution to the Study of Her Works. New York: Columbia UP,
1922.

15 Since this article was

accepted for publication, three important studies have
been published on Zayas: Margaret Rich Greer's Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales
of Love and the Cruelty of Men (University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2000); Marina
Scordilis Brownlee's The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria de Zayas (Philadelphia: U of
Pennsylvania P, 2000); and Lisa Vollendorfs Reclaiming the Body: Maria de Zayas's
Early Modern Feminism (Chapel Hill: UNC Dept. of Romance Languages, 2001). I
regret not having the time to refer to their arguments.

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Zayas' Response

to Cervantes

57

Welles, Marcia L. "Violence Disguised: Representation of Rape in

Cervantes's 'La fuerza de la sangre.' " Journal of Hispanic Philology 13 (1989): 240-51.
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. "Lafuerza del amor." Novelas amorosas y ejemplares. Ed. Agustin G. de Amezuia. Madrid: Biblioteca
Selecta de Clasicos Espafioles, 1948. 221-49.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989.

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