Unruly Women

Performance, Penitence, and Punishment in Early Modern Spain

By Margaret E. Boyle
Categories: Literature & Language Studies, Literary Criticism, History, World History, World Literature, Renaissance Studies
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Paperback : 9781487520267, 184 pages, December 2015
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Table of contents

Introduction

Part One

Chapter 1: Gendering Recogimiento in Early Modern Madrid

I. Reforming Prostitutes: Madrid’s Magdalen House

II. Reforming the Magdalen House: Madre Magdalena de San Jerónimo’s galera

III. Recogimiento as a Women’s Practice

Part Two

Chapter 2: Stage Widow in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La dama duende

Chapter 3: Dramatizing Women’s Community in María de Zayas’s La traición en la amistad

Chapter 4: Women’s Exemplary Violence in Luis Vélez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera

Conclusion

Epilogue

Appendix 1A Reason and Form of the Galera and Royal House (1608)

Appendix 1B Razón y forma de la galera y casa real (1608)

Appendix 2A Historical Compendium and Instructive Manifesto on the Origin and Foundation of the Royal House of St. Mary Magdalene of the Penitence, commonly known as the Recogidas of Madrid

Appendix 2B Compendio histórico, y manifiesto instructivo del origen, y fundación de la Real Casa de Santa María Magdalena de la Penitencia, vulgo las Recogidas de Madrid

Works Cited

Description

In the first in-depth study of the interconnected relationships among public theatre, custodial institutions, and women in early modern Spain, Margaret E. Boyle explores the contradictory practices of rehabilitation enacted by women both on and off stage. Pairing historical narratives and archival records with canonical and non-canonical theatrical representations of women’s deviance and rehabilitation, Unruly Women argues that women’s performances of penitence and punishment should be considered a significant factor in early modern Spanish life.

Boyle considers both real-life sites of rehabilitation for women in seventeenth-century Madrid, including a jail and a magdalen house, and women onstage, where she identifies three distinct representations of female deviance: the widow, the vixen, and the murderess. Unruly Women explores these archetypal figures in order to demonstrate the ways a variety of playwrights comment on women’s non-normative relationships to the topics of marriage, sex, and violence.

Awards

  • Winner, Vern Williamsen Comedia Book Prize awarded by The Association for Hispanic Classical Theater 2017

Reviews

‘Unruly Women provides readers with enough valuable insights on early modern judicial and rehabilitative practices to make it well worth the read.’

- Barbara Mujica

"Margaret Boyle has produced a compelling study, based on the ingenious juxtaposition of the rise of custodial institutions and their interconnections with a thriving professional theater business that nurtured many "unruly" female performers, entrepreneurs, and audience members."

- Elizabeth R. Wright

‘Unruly Women provides a strong foundation from which to build a more nuanced understanding of the engendering of early modern women’s roles and behaviors in Spain. This brief volume makes its argument with great clarity; it will be useful to both graduate students and scholars of early modern Spanish cultural studies.’

- Stacey Schlau

‘Unruly Women deftly explores the relationships between historical recogidas and the fictional female protagonists of the comedia… It will be of interest to scholars and teachers of early modern theater, history, and women’s studies.’

- Emily C. Francomano

‘One of the latest in a series of excellent University of Toronto Press books on the social and cultural context of early modern Spanish Literature… Boyle’s work is well grounded in the body of recent scholarship that emphasizes women’s active and formative role in early modern Spanish Society.’

- Jodi Campbell

‘Unruly Women offers a rich discussion of gendered rehabilitative practices and their performative dimensions, both on and off the stage in early modern Spain.’

- Jane Bitomsky