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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title All the King’s Women: Female Agency in the Political Comedias of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8g65p1bw Author Silveyra, Jesus Jose, Jr. Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles All the King’s Women: Female Agency in the Political Comedias of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Spanish by Jesus Jose Silveyra Jr. 2018 ©Copyright Jesus Jose Silveyra Jr. 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS All the King’s Women: Female Agency in the Political Comedias of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón by Jesus Jose Silveyra Jr. Master of Arts in Spanish University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Barbara Fuchs, Chair In his political comedias, seventeenth-century Novohispanic playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón shows as much interest in criticizing the ethical behavior of male characters as he does in representing violence against the female ones. This intersection of gender and political power is analyzed in the texts from a gender-perspective and supported by recent historiography on the political agency of royal women during the Spanish Golden Age. Despite the aggressions against them, Alarcón’s female characters consistently act according to reason, morality, and law. Furthermore, the decisions that restore the order lost to the intricate movements of the plots are not exclusively proposed or executed by the male characters, but usually foreseen or directly suggested by the female ones. In appropriating the functions reserved for a few privileged men, these women propose an alternative mode of government that challenges the traditional relationships between gender roles and political participation as understood in imperial Spain. ii The thesis of Jesus Jose Silveyra Jr. is approved. John C. Dagenais Javier Patiño Loira Barbara Fuchs, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iii To Lina iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Loving the Favorite: Familial Rhetoric and Bodies Unknown 23 2. Kingslayers: Two Tales of Steel, Desire, and Law 43 3. Kingmakers: Unstable Paternity, Maternal Resolve 57 4. It’s Not You, it’s Him: Is the Problem the Favorite or is it the King? 75 Conclusion 97 Bibliography 105 v Introduction During his lifetime, Novohispanic dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón personally oversaw the publication of twenty of his plays in two separate volumes, one printed in Madrid in 1628, the other in Barcelona in 1634. A handful of previously unknown plays have since appeared as sueltas1 or in unauthorized collections, though only five can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty.2 Of these twenty-five plays, eight are comedias de privanza, political dramas discussing different aspects of the polemical figure of the royal favorite. Seven of them contain plots with acts of violence committed against women by men in power. According to editor Ysla Campbell, these comedias repeatedly draw upon the opposition of love and reason and the relationship between love and madness, topics that reveal Alarcón’s basic political idea that the passions are incompatible with the exercise of power (“Poder” 204).3 Indeed, in these plays the conflicts are fueled by greed, envy, and lust, and resolved once passions are cooled by reason. For Octavio Paz, Alarcón was an author for whom man is a composite of good and evil, invariably subject to a reasonable and universal morality (37). However, Alarcón’s interest in good behavior is as prominent as his inclination for representing violence against women. From the incessant harassment of princes and kings to acts of rape at the hands of the grandees, most of his political plays touch upon the intersection of gender and political power. While monarchs and royal favorites are depicted abusing their authority, the female characters, despite the 1 Single printed plays from the early modern period, with “the gatherings ‘stabbed’ rather than bound, with no covers, to be sold cheaply, often by that prototype of the travelling salesman, the chapman” (Cruickshank). 2 Four of these plays were collected in 1968 by Agustín Millares Carlo for the third volume of Alarcón’s Obras completas: La culpa busca la pena y el agravio la venganza, No hay mal que por bien no venga, Quien mal anda en mal acaba, Siempre ayuda la verdad (a collaboration only partially by Alarcón). One more, El acomodado don Domingo de Don Blas, was edited for the first time in 2002 by Germán Vega García-Luengos. 3 All translations mine unless otherwise noted. 1 aggressions against them, consistently act according to reason, morality, and law. Furthermore, the decisions that restore the order lost to the intricate movements of the plots are not exclusively proposed or executed by the male characters, but usually foreseen or directly suggested by the female ones. In appropriating the functions reserved for a few privileged men, these women propose an alternative mode of government that challenges the traditional relationships between gender roles and political participation as understood in imperial Spain. In the first part of my introduction I offer a brief overview of the playwright and the sub- genre of the political comedia, the comedia de privanza, as critical traditions have, to a certain extent, focused on other aspects and figures of the literary production of the Spanish Golden Age. The second part is dedicated to presenting my argument about the agency of the female characters in Alarcón’s political comedias. I review recent historiography on the role of royal women in the political processes of the Spanish empire, as well as on the critical views of the dramatist’s female characters in specific and the Iberian comedia in more general terms. CRITICS AND PROPONENTS: EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY THEATER AND POLITICS Juan Ruiz de Alarcón has been an oddity for nearly four hundred years. Contemporary writers and modern-day critics alike have attempted to explain his “strangeness” by drawing comparisons to his origins, his physical deformities, his literary style, his life’s ambitions. Propelled at times by academic curiosity and at others by the sheer anxiety generated by the playwright’s otherness, the results of these examinations range from illuminating analysis to ludicrous reductionism.4 Yet I am interested less in the man than in the dialogue between his 4 For an overview of the critical tradition that has centered on Alarcón’s national origins and physical deformities, rather than on his dramatic production, see King (“Conclusión”) and Pasto. For an overview of the dueling insults 2 context and dramatic production. Suffice to say, in terms of his biography, that our playwright was born in the overseas territories of the empire, somewhere in the New Spain near the end of the 16th century.5 He studied law at the University of Mexico before finishing his studies in Spain, at the University of Salamanca, obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Canon Law and that of Bachelor of Civil Law in 1600 and 1602 (Halpern 73). After practicing law in Seville, he returned to New Spain in 1608 and received the degree of Licentiate in Civil and Canon Law from the University of Mexico in 1609 (Halpern 73). Among other official positions, Alarcón worked in Mexico as legal advisor to the city’s corregidor—a representative of the king with duties akin to those of a mayor—and was later appointed prosecutor in the spectacular case of the homicide of Isabel Zubiri by her husband, a notary from the state of Veracruz (King 81). Despite his studies and legal experience, due to changes in the administration of the colonies the dramatist was unsure if the new corregidor would renew his appointment, and he also failed to secure a steady teaching position at the University. Perhaps motivated by his dismal prospects, Alarcón embarked for the second and final time for the Iberian Peninsula, now with his sights set on the royal court (King 83-6). For the experienced lawyer, making the transatlantic voyage once again was a reasonable decision. Ever since the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, men of law such as Alarcón—letrados certified by recognized universities—had been able to find decent work in the tribunals of the crown, and it was not uncommon for prestigious lawyers to amass great fortunes (King 80). But by 1613, the year the dramatist arrived in Madrid, meritocracy was under the assault of the aristocrats. between Alarcón and his fellow poets, see Kennedy, “Contemporary Satire…”; Peña, “Los varios tonos…”; and Peale, “El viejo y la pareja rara…”. 5 Francisco Pérez Salazar offers evidence that Alarcón was born in the City of Mexico in 1580-1581, as the dramatist himself suggested (154-68). Others, however, are not convinced, arguing instead that he was born in 1575- 1576 (King 24, n. 18) in the city of Taxco (Peña, Juan Ruiz 85-91). 3 In 1598, the year of king Philip III’s accession to the throne, the court of Madrid was presented with the “relative and remarkable novelty” that one man would rule “by the side, and even in the stead, of the king” (Patiño 2). This novelty was the royal favorite. I. A. A. Thompson contends that problems in the study of the royal favorite begin with definitions, since the concept of “favoritism” is “both imprecise and protean, covering different relationships and roles” (14). Nevertheless, he distinguishes four features that defined the range of political and institutional functions of the favorite: 1) he was “predominant, if not monopolist […] in the areas of both power and patronage”; 2) he operated outside “established institutional channels”, often interfering with or interrupting “the normal process of conciliar business” and ordinary dynamics of the government, while “diverting through himself the normal flow of access and information to the king”; 3) he “stood at the centre of a national network or clientage” with the “means of integrating court and country on a broad front”; 4) he promoted reforms or fiscal arrangements “designed to reinforce the authority and reputation of the state” (14-5).
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