INTRODUCTION

The life of Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor remains largely a mystery. The only facts known about her are that she lived in Madrid during the first half of the seventeenth century and was a recognized literary figure. She wrote much occasional poetry, at least one play, The Betrayal of Friendship , and two best-selling collections of framed novellas, The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels (Novelas amorosas y ejemplares , 1637) and its sequel, The Disenchantments of Love (Desengaños amorosos , 1647). It is believed that she was noble, probably the daughter of don Fernando de Zayas y Sotomayor, a captain in the army and member of the elite Order of Santiago, and of doña Ana de Barasa. As a girl, she may have spent time in Naples when don Fernando served under the Spanish viceroy, the count of Lemos (1610–1616). The only contemporary references to Zayas pertain to her literary activity; her works were highly acclaimed by such notable contemporaries as Lope de Vega, who praised "her rare and unique genius." The first such mention occurs in 1621; there is no further reference to her after the publication of the Disenchantments in 1647. The dates and places of her birth and death have not come down to us.

With so little known about Zayas's life, it is no wonder that scholars have set forth an amazing amount of conjecture about this intriguing woman. Interpreting statements made by characters in the novellas, critics have debated whether Zayas was beautiful or ugly, whether she married, remained a spinster, or suffered a devastating love affair and

took refuge in a convent like so many of her characters. What stands out is that Maria de Zayas was a remarkable woman for her time and is acknowledged by Hispanists as one of the foremost writers of Spain's Golden Age. She is among the first secular women writers in Spain and certainly the first to achieve such great fame.

Zayas's novellas became instant best sellers in Spain and remained so for two hundred years, rivaled only by Cervantes's novellas in popularity. During the 1650s, Scarron and Boisrobert translated and adapted them into French without attributing them to Zayas. Consequently, the widespread diffusion of Zayas's novellas in France and England has redounded to the fame of her French adapters. Often her works were attributed to Cervantes, but never, outside of Spain, have they achieved recognition as hers. The only direct translations of her work into English are Roscoe's "The Miser Chastised" (1832) and Sturrock's A Shameful Revenge (1963), in fact a lively adaptation of two enchantments and six disenchantments.

With the rise of subjective criticism in the nineteenth century, the popularity of Zayas's works waned precipitously. Renowned historian of Spanish literature George Ticknor wrote of the Enchantments in 1849: "Although written by a lady of the court, the work is the filthiest and most immodest that I have ever read." In 1929, the famous German Hispanist Ludwig Pfandl wrote: "Can there be anything more gross and obscene, more nonaesthetic and repulsive, than a woman who writes lascivious, dirty, sadistic, and morally corrupt stories?" This kind of masculinist criticism resulted in a total eclipse: her works at last disappeared. The twentieth century has produced a few editions, which soon went out of print. Agustin G. de Amezua published authoritative editions of the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares in 1948 (used for this translation) and the Desengaños amorosos in 1950; Maria Martinez del Portal reedited these two scholarly versions in a popular edition in 1973; at present the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares is not available in Spanish; the Desengaños amorosos has recently appeared in Alicia Yllera's superb scholarly version (1983). So, despite the long popularity of Zayas's work in Spain and its intrinsic merit as a Spanish and a world classic, this is the first complete translation of the Enchantments into English. The fate of her work reflects historical attitudes toward women through time and culture.

Remarkable, then, is the fact that, in an age when women received little if any formal education, Zayas managed to become highly literate and set pen to paper. She published her works in a society where, as

a rule, women had no place in public life and had no voice. Zayas felt it necessary to defend herself as a woman writer in her foreword to the Enchantments , "To the Reader." The need for formal education of girls and the importance of women having a voice, of being able to communicate, inform both collections of novellas. Because of her commitment to these tenets, Zayas has been recognized as a women's advocate and a feminist in the modern sense of the term.

Zayas read widely and knew thoroughly the literature of her day, which she used as a base for her fictions. To appreciate her art, it is helpful to have some information on the genres she cultivated. Cervantes, in the prologue to his Exemplary Novels (1613), affirmed that he was the first in Spain to write the exemplary novella modeled on the Italian Renaissance novella. This elegant genre differs substantially from the ancient and naive folktale which has persisted down through the ages in that the stories are longer, more complex and sophisticated. Cervantes's novellas stem from the tradition of Boccaccio's Decameron (1350), a work that radically influenced the development of the narrative in Europe. In England, France, Italy, and Spain, many great writers made artful use of Italian tales, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marguerite de Navarre, Scarron, Moliere, Masuccio, Bandello, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Tirso de Molina. Maria de Zayas wrote in the same fashionable Italianate tradition.

Characteristic of Zayas's art, as of all Renaissance literature, is the ingenious reworking of accepted plots and literary conventions to create a new work. We recognize in her stories motifs reminiscent of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , Shakespeare's Italianate plays, Moliere, and Cervantes, because they derive from the same Renaissance tradition. The modern reader, formed within this common literary heritage, is familiar with the reiterated plot elements, stylized language, and artificial conventions, while the scholar finds it difficult, if not impossible, to point with certainty to the original source of these elements.

Zayas drew from all the narrative and poetic literature in vogue in her day: chivalric, sentimental, pastoral, picaresque, Moorish, and Byzantine as well as the Italianate love story. She also made extensive use of motifs from Spain's most popular genre during the Golden Age, the comedia . We still delight in the tantalizing stage device of the woman disguised as a man, and anyone familiar with Calderon's bloodcurdling honor tragedies will recognize very similar scenes in Zayas's works, especially in the Disenchantments . Even the rich and

popular ballad tradition finds echo in her poems. Many scholars, most notably Edwin Place, have studied her use of sources to conclude that her stories have a highly original and unique stamp.

Before discussing her stories, a brief explanation of terminology and the titles is in order. The term "novella," as in the original title Novelas amorosas y ejemplares , designates a fairly extensive, complex, prose narrative based on the fashionable Italian model. Undoubtedly the primary inspiration for Zayas's work was Cervantes's Exemplary Novels (1613). The genre became immediately popular in Spain as it already was elsewhere in Europe. In the author's "Beginning" to The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels , we learn that, by 1637, the term was so overused that it had lost its appeal. The organizer of the soirees, which make up the frame for the stories, instructed the storytellers to tell "enchantments" instead: "In using this term, she wanted to avoid the common term 'novella,' so trite that it was now entirely out of fashion." So, in spite of the work's title, the stories themselves are called "enchantments."

The Spanish word I have translated as "enchantment," maravilla , accords with the oft-stated aim of Golden Age literature to "fill with wonder, to amaze" (maravillar). In place of the literal "marvel," I have chosen to use the word "enchantments" for the stories and have also added it to the original title in order to underscore the relationship between the first and the second parts of Zayas's work (The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels , 1637, and The Disenchantments of Love , 1647) and to emphasize the word "disenchantment." This term constitutes a primary theme in all twenty novellas, designates the stories of the second part, and is the Spanish title of the second part, Desengaños amorosos .

The Spanish word desengaño has no good equivalent in English; it does not quite mean "disenchantment," just as maravilla is not the same as "enchantment." Desengaño is the negation of the word engaño , which means "deceit-deception" so, literally, desengaño means the state or process of being "un-deceived," "disabused of error," "seeing the light." This concept, then, adds meaning to the term "exemplary"; from reading the novellas, the reader should learn and take example, should "see the light." Hispanists use the term desengaño to describe the overall theme of seventeenth-century Spanish literature, particularly when studying its baroque aspects. The most moving illustration of desengaño occurs in Alonso Quijano's deathbed disavowal of books

of chivalry, of knight-errantry, and of his identity as don Quixote. He recovers his sanity and "sees the light." Engaño , how men deceive or enchant women, and desengaño how women should see through the deception, are fundamental themes in both parts. To stress the importance of these two concepts and to reiterate the reciprocal relationship between the two parts, I refer to them as the Enchantments and the Disenchantments and use the term generically to differentiate the novellas from each of the two parts.

Inextricably intertwined with the pervasive theme of desengaño is the theme of love between a handsome gallant and a lovely lady. It appears in myriad forms from raw lust, rape, and eroticism to ritualized courtship, true love, and marital relationship. Love is not treated philosophically but rather is taken as an inevitable fact of life, a powerful and irrational force beyond the individual's control. Problems arise because men and women have vastly different notions of what love is. According to literary convention, the instant a man sees a beautiful woman, he desires simply to enjoy her favors without having to commit himself to marriage, and he calls this love. A woman, when she sees herself courted by a handsome gallant, wants to select for herself a man who promises to be a loving husband (thereby confusing suitor and husband), and she calls this love. Generally, Zayas's men are characterized as fickle and her women as constant. Men deceive in order to get their way and women, inexperienced and credulous, let themselves be deceived. The clash between their intentions produces disenchantment.

This agonistic approach to love is further complicated by the issue of honor. In Zayas's novellas, honor conforms to the rigid literary code of honor, which reflects social attitudes that still persist in our society—namely, that men (father, brother, husband, church, and state) have the right and the responsibility to control women's sexuality. The tension derives from the fact that a woman's purity, her chastity, must remain intact while men, whether single or married, devote their energy and their cunning to the conquest of that fortress. Traditionally, a promise of marriage made in the presence of a witness was considered binding. (It was not until 1545 that marriage became a sacrament.) In Zayas's work, a man's most vile deception was the abuse of this sacred promise that allowed him to have his pleasure while it left the trusting woman dishonored and, like Aminta, faced with death. Interestingly, however, in "Aminta Deceived and Honor's

Revenge," Aminta avenges her dishonor and finds a happy marriage, as does doña Hipolita in "Just Desserts," suggesting that the loss of virginity does not necessarily ruin a woman forever.

In 1609, Lope de Vega wrote that honor was the best dramatic subject, and every one of Zayas's novellas treats some aspect of this unhappy theme. (It is important to distinguish between conventional literary treatment of courtship, honor, and marriage and actual social practices.) Zayas's characters, unlike Calderon's, do not typically rail out against the bloody honor code, although several do accuse men of exaggerating its importance in order to oppress women, as we see in the epigraph to this book. In the novellas, honor represents women's vulnerability, that which gives men power over them. For this reason, there is insistence that women assume responsibility for their own honor, to such a degree that they should be trained in swordsmanship so they can properly defend themselves and women's good name. This message underlies the enchantments, as in "Aminta Deceived and Honor's Revenge," and becomes explicit in the disenchantments.

The honor code may strike the modern reader either as too artificial and literary, or as characteristic of a barbaric, "macho," society. Nevertheless, given that men's violence against women is still a reality in even the most advanced societies, honor, insofar as it represents men's power over women, continues to be a deeply emotional issue. For that reason, the theme of honor is rich in dramatic and tragic potential, particularly when presented from the woman's point of view. In the Enchantments , we find female characters deceived and sometimes dishonored, but the emphasis is on how these women cope with deception. They explore their options and attempt to control their destinies in a variety of ways, not the least of which is withdrawal into the convent. The Disenchantments , however, focus almost exclusively on unjustified wife abuse, torture, and killing, often in the name of honor. In this work, the central theme is women's powerlessness and inability to cope, expressed in extreme and bizarre cases of female victimization and male cruelty.

Zayas's artfully focused examination of sex roles as depicted in literature makes her work coherent and unique. Whereas earlier writers, like Boccaccio and Marguerite de Navarre, playfully exploited the battle of the sexes and a less rigid version of the honor code, Zayas refined the issues and their implications. She did, however, use her renowned predecessors as models in structuring her two collections around one

central frame, which gradually develops into an exemplary tale in itself. While both collections clearly come from the same pen, their stories are as different from each other as day and night. The Enchantments contains ten courtly novellas narrated by five women and five men at a series of five lavish Christmas soirees held for the purpose of entertaining the lovely Lysis, ill with the quartan fever. This courtly frame develops the character of the ten narrators, provides opportunity for commentary on the stories, and, because it continues throughout the second part, serves to unify Zayas's two collections of novellas. The Disenchantments repeats the structure of the first part in that there are ten exemplary tales narrated by characters from the original frame story.

In the Enchantments , the frame seems mostly decorative as it describes costume and elaborate entertainments consisting of music, skits, masked balls, and sumptuous banquets. The plot presents the amorous intrigue of don Juan's change of affection—from the hostess, Lysis, to her cousin Lisarda—and is complicated by the fact that don Juan's friend, don Diego, begins to court Lysis. At the end of the Enchantments , the Narrator concludes: "I end my well-intentioned and entertaining soiree, promising a second part if this one is received with the pleasure I hope. In the second part, we shall see don Juan's ingratitude, Lisarda's change of heart, and Lysis's wedding. I hope my work is appreciated, valued, and praised, not my rough style, but the will with which it has been written."

The second set of soirees was planned for New Year's Day to celebrate Lysis's marriage to don Diego. The occasion gets postponed for over a year in the frame, although ten years separate the publication of the two parts. On this occasion, the hostess Lysis establishes rules: only women will narrate; the tales must be true "case histories" to enlighten, or disenchant, women about men's deceptions; and they must be in defense of women's good name. After hearing the ten disenchantments, told according to her stipulations, Lysis sees the light and decides not to marry her adoring suitor. She prefers to retire from the world to live a secular life in the convent. Four other ladies join her. After the soirees end, the Narrator concludes the book by stating: "this end is not tragic but rather the happiest that one could have asked for, because she, wanted and desired by many, did not subject herself to anyone." This stunning conclusion, so similar to the end of Mme de La Fayette's Princesse de Cleves , was published some thirty years prior to the French masterpiece.

A principal difference between the two parts, then, is the way the Disenchantments unfolds from the Enchantments ; the frame story elaborates a coherent feminist message, which produces a greater unity and homogeneity in the ten stories. The Enchantments , on the other hand, is characterized by the variety of the ten stories and a highly subtle feminism. The distinctions between the five tales narrated by women and the five by men, and the variation in plots, tones, and textures demand reader interpretation. As in Cervantes's Exemplary Novels , the ten enchantments represent a mix of very different kinds of novellas: there are a pastoral and a Byzantine tale, two satires, two miracle stories, and honor pieces with cloak and dagger elements. When read from a feminist perspective, these stories and their ironies raise a host of questions which are left to the reader to answer. What, for example, do we know about the frame narrator? How are male and female characters depicted? Who is the central character? What does the end mean?

Besides raising provocative questions, each of the ten enchantments relies on some sort of catchy device intended to enchant and amaze (maravillar). There are, for example, several powerful and prophetic dreams ("Everything Ventured"), and two miracles, interestingly worked by Christ and not by the Virgin ("Triumph over the Impossible" and "The Power of Love"). God sends an awesome warning to Juana through the ghost of a former lover in "Disillusionment in Love and Virtue Rewarded." The devil plays a key part in "The Magic Garden" and in the first edition ending of "The Miser's Reward." Magic and the supernatural are pervasive in medieval and Renaissance literature and in Zayas's novellas. Treated sarcastically at times, magic seems to represent a fashionable and flashy literary device, but we should bear in mind that this was the age of witchhunts in northern Europe. (In Spain, there were few witch trials, as the zeal of the Spanish Inquisition was directed against heretics rather than witches and magicians. Magic and witchcraft are significant feminist issues in that the persecution of witches was, in fact, a persecution of women, and the phenomenon points out women's lack of power in posthumanist societies.) Don Marcos is fooled by a farcical magician ("The Miser's Reward"). Laura ("The Power of Love) and Juana ("Disillusionment in Love and Virtue Rewarded") seek the aid of a magician in their futile efforts to hold the affections of their lovers. Lucrecia, in the latter story, exercises powerful spells to keep her don Fernando en-

chanted. An appealing dramatic device is the woman disguised as a man who sets out to redress some wrong ("Everything Ventured," "Aminta Deceived and Honor's Revenge," and "Judge Thyself"). The two witty satires ("The Miser's Reward" and "Forewarned but not Forearmed") derive much of their humor from deliciously exaggerated situations, as we see in the description of don Marcos's rude awakening the morning after his wedding night, or when don Fadrique teaches his simple bride her marital duty.

The Disenchantments , on the other hand, relies on violence and irrationality for effect. Because of the ground rules that define the disenchantments, the differentiation between men's and women's stories is eliminated and there is less irony and less left to the imagination. The disenchantments seem to raise questions about human behavior rather than about how the tales are told. They are bizarre and shocking, even to the modern movie-goer, in their depiction of female victimization and male brutality. Through a meticulous process of undeception, or disenchantment, these novellas deconstruct the familiar and seemingly conventional literary universe established in the Enchantments . Six of the ten enchantments, for example, end in an ostensibly happy marriage, two women enter the convent, and the two satires end with the death of the foolish male protagonist. In contrast, six of the ten disenchantments end in vicious wife murder, and the other four depict traumatic torture and persecution of the female protagonist before she takes refuge in the convent. The enchantments generally treat courtship in a way reminiscent of Lope de Vega's cloak and dagger plays, while the disenchantments treat marriage in the style of Calderon's honor tragedies, but in both cases stressing gender perspective.

The grounding of the novellas in well-known literature is fundamental to Zayas's creative technique and her originality in that one of her aims is to demonstrate how literature written by men projects a negative and damaging image of women, an aim that brings to mind the modern concern about the influence of the media on thinking and values. This is summed up in the "Beginning" to the Disenchantments as Zelima begins the first tale: "My lady, you have commanded me tonight to tell a disenchantment to caution ladies about men's deceptions and their cunning, and also to defend women's good name in an age when it has fallen so low that no one ever hears or speaks a good word about them. Without a single exception, there is no play

staged or any book printed that is not a total offense against women [italics mine]." There was, of course, at least one exception: Zayas's own Enchantments , published ten years before.

New in Zayas's work is the conscious feminization of a tremendous array of motifs taken from a highly refined, male-produced literature. In the Enchantments , this feminization is seen in the difference between the five stories narrated by women and the five narrated by men, in the perspective of the protagonists, in the way the character-narrators portray male and female characters, and in the pervasive irony. All five of the women's stories have strong female protagonists who are noble in character, constant in love, and perform some heroic deed. The men's protagonists reveal serious moral flaws. Only two of the five men's tales have female protagonists: doña Hipolita, in "Just Desserts," is of dubious moral fiber, and Estela, in "Judge Thyself," attributes her heroic valor to her love for don Carlos, as opposed to the women's self-motivated protagonists like Aminta. Ironically, after Estela becomes viceroy of Valencia and reveals that she is, in fact, a woman, the honors she has won through her heroism are transferred to her less valiant husband. In the other three men's tales, the women in some way deceive or betray the male protagonist.

In "Triumph Over the Impossible," don Rodrigo stands out as one of the more ambiguous of the men's protagonists. In order to merit the hand of his true love, doña Leonor, he goes off to war in Flanders, where he indulges in a highly unconventional dalliance. He neglects to write to doña Leonor and returns home more than a year later than he had promised. Then he blames doña Leonor for her betrayal in marrying another man, even though he knows that her parents, in order to force her into the undesired marriage, treacherously told her that he had married in Flanders. This tale, narrated by a man from the perspective of its flawed male protagonist, brings into contrast the adventuresome, novelistic, lives of men and the cloistered, restricted, and uninteresting, lives of women.

The men's tales differ significantly from the women's in many other ways. They have a more artificial, literary quality, with a polish and an intellectual control in their manipulation of traditional sources which tend to distance the reader from the action and the characters. They seem more ambiguous, perhaps because they are narrated by those "masters of deception," perhaps because of the ironic undermining of masculinist discourse. Of the twenty novellas, the only three that contain humor are men's tales. "The Miser's Reward" is a witty

satire of a man's avarice. "Forewarned but not Forearmed" satirizes a man who, fearing that a clever woman will dishonor him, deliberately marries a mindless woman and, too late, learns his lesson. With delicious humor, both focus on the male protagonist who deceives and is himself deceived. Both were translated into French by Scarron and so, indirectly, came to serve as inspiration for Moliere's L'avare and L'ecole des femmes . It is interesting to note, from a cursory review of Zayas's stories adapted into French and English, that the five men's tales have far outstripped in popularity the fifteen women's tales.

Another frequently adapted men's tale with several highly comic moments is "Just Desserts." The protagonist, doña Hipolita, deceives her good husband, ultimately causing his death. She is raped by her brother-in-law, whom she murders. In the end, she marries the compassionate gentleman who rescued her from certain death, and, we are assured, they lived happily ever after. When we ponder what he knows about her character, however, we must wonder what kind of marriage they will have. The conventional happy ending with marriage as the solution to a woman's problems, as well as the title itself, appear to be highly ironic.

As the men's tales vary in type, so do the women's. Several stress what happens after marriage ("The Power of Love" and "Disillusionment in Love and Virtue Rewarded"). Husbands are all too often unfaithful, neglectful, and physically abusive. Wife battering is, in fact, the theme of "The Power of Love" and later becomes the central focus of the Disenchantments . This story is one of the most moving of the enchantments in its description of don Diego's transformation from loving suitor into abusive husband, and of Laura's solitude and helplessness. In the end, her husband realizes the "power of her love," but she has learned her lesson; unable to trust him, she chooses life in the convent.

In tone, the five women's stories seem more serious, intimate, and human, allowing the reader to identify more closely with the characters, which are better developed than in the men's stories. In women's tales as well as men's, female characters tend to be depicted as helpless and driven to resort to magic or needing a compassionate man to rescue them. Contrary to the Italianate tradition, the only women who deceive men occur either in the men's tales or as secondary, and evil, characters. Once enamored, the women's protagonists are invariably constant in their love. Some undertake heroic action and so, in effect, rescue themselves, albeit with the assistance of

a man. Because the novellas tend to be bipartite rather than unitary, with two separate parts to the plot and at least two distinct messages (e.g., "Disillusionment in Love and Virtue Rewarded"), it is difficult to characterize them in simple terms, but, significantly, the women's tales present a wide range of female experience and feminine fantasy.

The contrast between the two kinds of enchantments is enhanced by the fact that men's and women's tales occur on alternate nights. On the last night, the concluding stories are don Juan's "Judge Thyself," a reworking of a novella by Lope de Vega, and Laura's "The Magic Garden," a reworking of a Boccaccio tale. To the modern reader, these two may seem the most contrived, but, as the final enchantments, they represent a culminating irony in the way they treat their sources and in the posture of their narrators. "Judge Thyself," told by the arrogant don Juan, is a prototypical feminist tale. It is based, not only on Lope's novella, but also on the historical-legendary precedents of Joan of Arc, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Spain's lady lieutenant, Catalina Erauso, three viragos made popular by the comedia . The Byzantine adventures of the protagonist, Estela, include abduction, enslavement, sexual assault, and timely rescue by the Prince of Fez. By dint of her extraordinary valor, she becomes a captain in the Emperor Charles V's cavalry and rises so high in his favor that he appoints her viceroy of Valencia. The first case brought before the new viceroy is her own disappearance. When she reveals her true identity, her titles and honors are transferred to her unheroic husband. Why is it that the arrogant don Juan narrates the tale of an improbably heroic female protagonist, a woman disguised as a man who achieves great military and political power? And why does this tale follow on the heels of don Lope's characterization of doña Leonor, in "Triumph Over the Impossible," as a woman who has no means whatsoever for controlling her life?

The final tale, "The Magic Garden," further exemplifies the subtle feminism of the enchantments which must be extrapolated from the action, characters, narrative points of view, ironies, and from what is not said. At the end of this final story, the frame characters debate who is noblest: the husband, the lover, or the devil. Each has behaved ignobly. None of the frame characters, however, defends the genuine nobility of the faithful wife, Constanza, who preferred death to dishonor. Indeed, they blame her for setting an impossible price on her honor when the true cause of the crisis is the lover who courted an honorable married woman and resorted to a pact with the devil to

get his way with her. This tale, narrated by the hostess's mother, is in fact a prototypical masculine story recounted in similar form by Boccaccio (X, 5) and by Chaucer ("The Franklin's Tale"). Since it is told by the most important female narrator and is the concluding story in the first part, we cannot fail to perceive that the true protagonist is Constanza; the other characters, including Constanza's sister, Theodosia, reveal serious moral flaws. Nor can we overlook the irony of the frame characters' misinterpretation of the story which culminates in the arrogant don Juan's winning the prize for playing the devil's advocate so "divinely." (His name may be ironic as well, since Tirso de Molina's famous don Juan play was produced in 1630, only seven years before the publication of the Enchantments .) The subtlety of this subversion of a masculinist story and a masculinist interpretation of it keeps Zayas's readers on their toes. These nuances would have been easily understood by a seventeenth-century audience, accustomed to deciphering the riddle of meaning by looking beyond deceptive appearances.

As previously mentioned, the enchantments cause the reader to ask questions. Tales like "Judge Thyself," "The Magic Garden," and "Triumph Over the Impossible" could and, perhaps, should be narrated from a different point of view. That is, the fact that a female narrator tells a masculinist story, and a male narrator tells a feminist story, accentuates the importance of the identity and reliability of the narrator and, consequently, of the author. One of the more intriguing questions we can ask is: why this detail? Each story contains puzzling and seemingly gratuitous details that may be fraught with significance. In the men's stories, generally more tightly knit, the questions refer to flaws in character (e.g., doña Hipolita, don Rodrigo) whereas, in the women's stories, the questions usually relate to plot elements. Why, for example, doesn't Jacinta marry her rescuer Fabio at the end of "Everything Ventured"? Or, why did Laura spend three hours in the charnel house? This kind of question, so exploited by television series, brings alive the character of the narrators, involves the reader, and removes the stories from neat predictability.

In her feminism, Zayas wrote within the tradition of the medieval "woman question" debates that flourished in Spain and elsewhere in Europe and inspired a number of amusing comedias (see Matulka's article). What is new is that Zayas wedded the philosophical arguments in defense of women with exemplary fiction, a genre of rising popularity. Although the Enchantments and the Disenchantments differ

in the way they present their feminist message, both collections were written primarily to entertain and to entertain both men and women; they did, in fact, become best sellers and remained so for over two hundred years. In "To the Reader," we see that Zayas was concerned from the very beginning to explore the gender implications of the message inherent in literature: what does literature communicate to men and women, about men and women, and how? On the basis of the amazing success of the Enchantments , it would seem that she felt encouraged to strengthen the defense of women in the Disenchantments .

In the disenchantments, it is easier to identify subtexts, or elements drawn from other works, such as Cervantes's "The Man Who Was Too Curious for His Own Good," or Calderon's "Surgeon of His Honor," as well as reworked elements from the Enchantments . All the novellas, however, stress the interplay between a masculinist perspective and a feminist perspective in text and subtext. This conscious pastiche technique of reworking recognizable motifs is fundamental to Zayas's feminization of Golden Age literature and to her resoundingly modern feminist message.

In both parts, the compelling criticism is directed against a society whose social institutions (courtship, the rigid honor code, marriage, the family) and cultural institutions (education and the arts, which we should equate with the media) conspire to oppress women and to deny them access to power. Zayas created her masterpiece primarily to entertain, but to entertain at the expense of a literature and a theater whose popularity was rooted in the negative depiction of women, so evident in Tirso's don Juan Tenorio, who has come to be one of Western literature's most widely interpreted heroes.

In seventeenth-century Spanish society, as opposed to literature, the well-to-do girl had only one decision to make in her lifetime: whether to marry or to enter the convent. Normally, even this decision was made for her by her parents, who typically determined a daughter's future, be it marriage or convent, before puberty. As we see in the epigraph, a woman's status, indeed her very identity, was controlled by her parents, by her husband, or by the church, and there was no place in Spanish society for the respectable single woman except the convent. This explains why the choice of a husband and marriage represented the crucial events in the life of a Spanish woman. It also explains why women's powerlessness is such an important theme in Zayas's novellas. Aminta's revenge, Estela's heroic exploits, even

Clara's constancy, represent fantasies rather than options available to the average Spanish woman.

In contrast, a man's life, his identity, was not circumscribed or even limited by marriage. Given the age-old double standard, men were always free to womanize, to engage in the chase in an effort to conquer a woman's chastity. To a masculine public, the "happily ever after" marriage in literature symbolized the male conquest of the female (otherwise called "social order restored"). Marriage, as a literary device, was a celebration of masculine triumph while, for a feminine public, marriage was only the beginning of what might turn into an excruciating honor tragedy, as is powerfully depicted in the disenchantments (see the entry on "marriage" in Barbara G. Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets ). A woman's only sure exercise of self-determination and self-protection lay in the decision to enter the convent.

It was not uncommon for an upper-class Spanish woman to retire to a convent. This did not necessarily mean that she became a nun or took vows, but rather that she chose to live her life in an environment protected from a society that had no place for the single woman. The convent represented a safehouse for those who wished to abandon the arena of amorous struggle, which is how Zayas depicted life in society. In feminine literature, to enter the convent symbolizes a return to sisterhood, to the feminine. A few of her characters do take their vows, but many, like Lysis, simply withdraw from the world while continuing to live a secular life filled with all the comforts their rich estates afford: elaborate dress, servants, music, soirees, even suitors.

With regard to the religious dimension of the novellas, it is difficult for us in the twentieth century to understand the nature of Catholicism in Golden Age Spain. Dominant and omnipresent, based upon a complex theology, seventeenth-century Spanish Catholicism differs vastly from twentieth-century Protestant ethic. Following upon the Council of Trent and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Spanish Catholicism permitted moral freedoms unthinkable to the Victorians at the same time that there was dogmatic control and harsh repression of heresy under the Inquisition. Zayas's novellas are in no way unorthodox and were lauded as exemplary by the censors, yet they treat moral issues and present material (e.g., rape, battering, murder) with a frankness that seems shocking to us. The spirit of the novellas is secular and the language conventional. Even in the miracle stories, like "Triumph Over the Impossible," there is little religious sentiment. Few of the

characters who enter the convent express a vocation although all seem to find happiness in that way of life.

Many scholars have described Zayas's stories as "realistic" depictions of life in seventeenth century Spanish society which, to my mind, is like saying that television accurately reflects the life of the average American. There are, however, many elements in Zayas's stories which make them appear "realistic." The stories are set in specific places at precise moments in contemporary Spanish history and include references to well-known historical personages. Sometimes we feel as if we are glimpsing a moment in a real life, especially in the characters' monologues. Graphic descriptive detail contributes a painterly quality that brings to mind Zurbaran's paintings, as when don Fadrique watches doña Beatrice descend the staircase. The lavish descriptions of feminine attire, like the spectacular portraits of the time, depict the external constraint that characterized women's lives. But, when we consider the derivative plots, the courtly characterizations, and Zayas's aim to entertain and instruct by exposing the gender messages in literature and drama, we must acknowledge the primacy of the literary and the aesthetic over any desire to depict life as it really was. Certainly art reflects life, as was suggested in my comments on the meaning of love, courtship, and marriage for men and women, but art also filters and purifies the way such concepts are presented, in accord with the cultural climate of the time. In practically every story the character narrating it insists that it is a true tale and often provides elaborate proof, but this conventional insistence upon the literal truth of the tales has a Borges-like ring when it is followed by the ironic disclaimer: only the names and the places have been changed.

Even if we resist the temptation to believe that Zayas is speaking personally when, in fact, her characters are speaking, we can still draw parallels between the novellas and her experience. Clearly the oft-repeated pleas for the formal education of girls reflect a deep personal conviction. Reiterated is the statement that women should have access to culture through literacy and access to power through learning and swordsmanship. There is insistence that women must be responsible for their own honor and be able to defend it with the sword. Zayas wielded her pen as a sword. The remarkable existence of the Enchantments and the Disenchantments attests to the importance of women having a public voice with which to defend their good name and their honor. These two works added a new, feminist dimension to the recognition of the ways literature affects perception, thinking, and values,

a theme central to the Spanish masterpiece, Don Quixote , as well. Zayas's genius lies in her masterful use of masculine discourse to subvert masculine literature.

The novellas are courtly and pertain to the life of the nobility, as opposed to the variety of social classes we find depicted in Boccaccio, Chaucer, Marguerite de Navarre, and Cervantes. This is undoubtedly the only world Zayas experienced directly. Her class and gender denied her freedom of movement; she could not get out and make contact with other ways of life as could any man. Given the traditional cloistering of women in Spain, the sheltered leisure and astonishing isolation of Zayas's female characters most likely reflect her own life. This might explain why there is not a shred of biographical information about this remarkable woman. Zayas's unflattering treatment of the lower classes indicates an elitist attitude. Servants and other "ordinary" people, be they courtesans, matchmakers, or nobles come down in the world, tend to act ignobly, but then so do a surprising number of the nobles. Shocking to us is the racism we find in "Forewarned but not Forearmed," a story that also presents women in a dubious, if comic, light, in the spirit of the Decameron and the Heptameron .

Zayas's narrators apologize for their inexperience in telling stories, for their use of everyday language, and their artlessness, as she herself does in "To the Reader" and in the concluding words of the Enchantments . Repeatedly, they urge their audience to appreciate the substance of what they say and their "will," which we would call message, meaning, or intention, and not criticize how they say it, because they are unschooled women. These statements are, I believe, both accurate and ironic appraisals of the style of both parts. While we would not consider her elegant prose "everyday" language, it is prose, and it does seem "everyday" in comparison with the refined and hermetic poetic language of her contemporaries like Quevedo and Gongora.

The novellas are liberally laced with a wide variety of poetry, some of which is so complex that it defies adequate translation. The poetry of the Enchantments varies greatly and is of high quality, particularly the long love ballads. It serves several purposes. First, in the Renaissance and in seventeenth-century Spain, prose was regarded as an inferior genre, demonstrating little art in comparison with poetry. In this connection, we will recall that the comedia was quintessentially poetic and the public went to the theater to "hear" a play rather than to "see" it. For this reason, writers dressed up prose with poetic adornment to prove their art and also to complement the content, to add

variety and emotional nuance. Also, as the novellas often stress, competence in singing and composing music and verse were hallmarks of the well brought up nobleman and, sometimes, noblewoman. They were an important dimension of courtship and of everyday diversion. Zayas achieved renown as a poet beginning in 1621, and, by including so much poetry, she offsets criticism of her "rough style," she depicts the importance of poetry and music in the life of the nobility, and she revels in her own talent. Some technical aspects of Spanish poetry will be further described in the "Translator's Note."

The style of the two parts is powerful; the language is sparse, dynamic, and vigorous. The dialogue is lively, the description vivid, the narration fast-paced. The stories have a dramatic, oral quality that almost demands that they be read aloud, acted out, that the songs be sung. Given the widespread illiteracy in that day and especially among women, this is undoubtedly how the book was read. We can envision a group of women doing their needlework while one read aloud from Zayas's novellas. With this scene in mind, we can imagine the listeners' discussion of the stories, which would contrast sharply with the frame characters' commentary.

Another, more subtle, aspect of Zayas's writing is that each of the character-narrators has a distinctive manner of narrating consistent with his or her characterization. This contributes to the rich texture and variety of the two works. The characterization of the frame narrators develops more fully in the Disenchantments , but, even so, there are marked stylistic differences between the novellas. This can be seen, for example, in the way narrators do or do not use such elements as poetry, poetic language, classical allusion, visual imagery, exclamations, humor, irony, parenthesis, and subjective editorial commentary. Some of this variation derives from the nature of the stories but much reflects conscious differentiation.

As a result of the multiple layers of discourse in the novellas, it is sometimes difficult to identify the speaker. The omniscient Narrator controls the frame and seems to speak for Zayas at the conclusion of both books; this voice may also intrude on the stories themselves. The nature of the frame characters determines the kind of story they tell, and their personality is revealed in their attitudes toward characters and events, expressed when they introduce or conclude the story and editorialize or comment on it. From within the stories, the perspective of the protagonist contrasts with that of the other characters in the story. Any of these perspectives may be subverted by irony. Beyond

the text are recognizable subtexts, or elements reworked from other sources, which serve as counterpoint. We may also include the imagined dimension of commentary by a seventeenth-century audience, such as a sewing circle or a men's club. In addition to these interpenetrating levels, there is a strong sense of authorial presence in many of the tales which has led scholars to affirm that "Zayas says this or that." The sporadic exclamations, "Poor girl, if only you knew what you were getting into!", comments such as "I don't know if it was caused by . . ." or "when I think of where she went, it fills me with horror," serve to remind us of the fiction within the fiction. The complex structuring and articulation of Zayas's two collections of novellas attest to her mastery of the form, despite her apology for her rough style.

Above and beyond the complex stylized literary world depicted in these novellas there are characters and moments of immediate and touching humanity, for example, Laura and her plight in "The Power of Love." Zayas's characters are not simple types; there is a wide range of sensible and good characters, both male and female, just as there are evil men and evil women. A significant number have unsettling flaws, particularly in the men's tales. There is harsh criticism of evil women, like Flora and Claudia who betray their sex ("Aminta Deceived and Honor's Revenge," "Judge Thyself"); of the deceits and abuses of unscrupulous men, like Celio and don Jacinto ("Everything Ventured," "Aminta Deceived"); of parents, especially fathers, who neglect and deceive their daughters (lack of parental support typifies almost all of the stories); of blabbing servants and greedy matchmakers.

Most striking in Zayas's stories is the development of character through monologue. This technique was unusual in Golden Age literature, which stressed external action over character development. Most of the novellas contain at least one moving monologue that humanizes the character and makes the situation poignant, as we see in don Diego's lovesick sleeplessness, and later in Laura's desperate hopelessness in "The Power of Love," part of which appears as the epigraph. Besides these touching moments, the use of seemingly minor or incongruent detail also serves to particularize the characters in such a powerful way that the reader gets caught up in the fiction. Just as the characters vary, so too the plots and styles maintain a vivid freshness, avoiding the predictability or monotony one might expect of an "unschooled woman." Evil often goes unpunished and good may or

may not be properly rewarded. Indeed, contrary to all the rules of poetic justice, the most repeated motif in the twenty novellas is the victimization of an innocent woman sacrificed on the altar of love, or honor, a motif reminiscent of stories of the early Christian martyrs.

What strikes us as "truest" in the novellas is the presentation of love from the woman's point of view. The treatment of this complex emotion is much more than a cliche or a pretext for a message. Zayas magically succeeds in bringing this age-old theme to life and in capturing its powerful effects on men and women. The modern reader surely will respond with wonderment and sometimes shock at the passion and suffering depicted in these stories. The Enchantments are enchanting, and it is my hope as it was Zayas's, that the reader will be both edified and entertained.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Bourland, Caroline. The Short Story in Spain in the Seventeenth Century. (1st ed. 1927). New York: Burt Franklin, 1973.

Foa, Sandra. "Humor and Suicide in Zayas and Cervantes," in Anales Cervantinos XVI (1977): 71-83.

———. "Maria de Zayas: Sibyl of Madrid," in Female Scholars: A Tradition of Female Scholars Before 1800 , ed. J. R. Brink. Montreal: Eden Press, 1980, 54-67.

Griswold, Susan C. "Topoi and Rhetorical Distance: The Feminism of Maria de Zayas," in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos XIV, no. 2 (1980): 97-116.

McKay, Carol. "Maria de Zayas: Feminist Awareness in Seventeenth Century Spain," in Studies in Language and Literature . Richmond, Ky: Eastern Kentucky University Press, 1976, 377-381.

McKendrick, Melveena. Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Matulka, Barbara. "The Feminist Theme in the Drama of the Siglo de Oro," in The Romanic Review XXVI, no. 3 (1935): 191-231.

Miller, Beth, ed. Women in Hispanic Literature. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press: 1983.

Morby, Edwin S. "The Difunta pleiteada Theme in Maria de Zayas," in Hispanic Review XVI (1948): 238-242.

Ordoñez, Elizabeth J. "Woman and Her Text in the Works of Maria de Zayas and Ana Caro," in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos (1985): 3-15.

Place, Edwin B. "Maria de Zayas: An Outstanding Woman Short Story Writer of Seventeenth Century Spain," Boulder: University of Colorado Series , no. 13, 1923.

Scarron, Paul. The Innocent Adultery and Other Short Novels (Trans. Tom Brown et al. 1700) New York, London: Benjamin Blom, 1968.

Stackhouse, Kenneth A. "Verisimilitude, Magic and the Supernatural in the Novellas of Maria de Zayas," in Hispanofila 62 (Jan. 1982): 65-76.

Sturrock, John, trans. A Shameful Revenge and Other Stories. London: The Folio Society, 1963.

Sylvania, Lena Evelyn. Dona Maria de Zayas: A Contribution to the Study of Her Works. (1st ed. 1922). New York: AMS, 1966.

Welles, Marcia L. "Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor and Her novela cortesana : A Re-evaluation," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 55 (1978): 301-310.