Embodied Authority in the Spiritual Autobiographies of Four Early Modern Women from Spain and Mexico

EMBODIED AUTHORITY IN THE SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF FOUR EARLY MODERN WOMEN FROM SPAIN AND MEXICO DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Christine M. Cloud, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Maureen Ahern, Adviser Professor Elizabeth Davis ________________________ Professor Julia Watson Adviser Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Program Copyright by Christine M. Cloud 2006 ABSTRACT This dissertation is a study of how four early modern Hispanic women religious constructed embodied authority through their fusion of different hagiographic models with their bodies and their lived bodily experiences within their spiritual autobiographical writing, or vidas, and in the process transformed the formulaic nature of the genre. Six chapters analyze the four distinct, complex autobiographical narratives of the Spanish religious Isabel de Jesús (1586-1648) and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1566-1641) and the Mexican nuns María Magdalena Lorravaquio Muñoz (1576-1636) and María de San José, (1576-1636). The chapters explore how these four women accomplished this goal by talking back to enforced enclosure by re-defining their “unruly” or “unenclosed” feminine bodies in the interest of obtaining and/or justifying a position of religious and spiritual authority. The introductory chapter offers an explanation of the hypothesis, the theoretical framework and methodology, a summary of the chapters, and a review of the literature regarding the topic. The second chapter explores the revalorization of the maternal body of the Spanish Augustinian Isabel de Jesús. Chapter three discusses the transformation of the Mexican Hieronymite María Magdalena from sickness to authority through her embodied mysticism seen with “los ojos corporales.” Chapter four analyzes how bodies, space and authority are mutually constructed as the body of another Mexican nun, the Augustinian María de San José, is transformed into first a “Desert Mother” and ii then later a “virgin bride of Christ.” Chapter five considers how the construction of remembered experiences of childhood bodily abuse transformed Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza’s Vida into a hybrid text that is both a spiritual autobiography and a trauma narrative. The final chapter offers an analysis of how the diverse ways in which each of the spiritual autobiographers made their textual bodies visible within their Vidas reflect their positions as multiple embodied subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the project’s contributions to the fields of Golden Age and colonial Hispanic literature. iii Dedicated to my husband iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Maureen Ahern, and the members of my committee, Elizabeth Davis and Julia Watson, for the excellent courses in colonial women’s writing, female writers of the Golden Age, and women’s autobiographical theory that inspired this dissertation. I am also grateful to them for their unwavering intellectual support, encouragement, and enthusiasm which made this project possible, and for their patience in correcting both my stylistic and content problems. I thank my husband Joel Cloud for his continual support during the duration of this project. Specifically, I am grateful for his willingness to edit multiple copies of the chapters and assist me with the digital formatting process. I also thank my children, Hayden and Lauren Cloud, for their love and understanding, and Dalina Brackens for her willingness to help me with childcare while I worked. I am indebted to my parents, Rodney and Judy Henningsen, and my sister, Ann Al-Bahish, for their belief in the project and for their careful reading and editing of several of its components. I also thank my sister, Katie Henningsen, and my mother-in- law, Jean Cloud, for their belief in my abilities. I am grateful for the patience, understanding and support of my colleagues in the Wittenberg University. In addition, I am indebted to my student research assistant, Chris Horrel, for his assistance with photocopying of sources and my copy editor, Susan Pavilkey, for her stylistic corrections. v VITA January 3, 1973……………………………………Born-Wichita, Kansas, USA 1995………………………………………………. B.A., Texas Lutheran University 1998………………………………………………. M.A., The Ohio State University 1996-2003…………………………………………Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University 2003-present………………………………………..Instructor of Spanish, Wittenberg University PUBLICATION 1. C. Cloud, “Latin America: 15th to 18th Centuries.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Margaretta Jolley ed. London: Fitzroy-Dearborn Publishers, 2001. (539-541). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..v Vita……………………………………………………………………………………...vi Chapters: 1. Introduction: Reading for the Body in the Vida................................................. 1 2. Isabel de Jesús’s Revalorization of the Maternal Body………………………. 61 3. María Magdalena Muñoz’s Bodily Agency: Seeing with “Los ojos corporales” ................................................................... 133 4. Body, Space and Authority in the Vida of María de San José………………… 191 5. Writing the Abused Body, Deconstructing the Hagiographic………………… 265 “I” in Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza’s Vida espiritual 6. Conclusions………………………………………………………………....... 329 Bibliography…….………………………………………………………………....... 344 vii CHAPTER 1: “READING FOR THE BODY” IN THE VIDA INTRODUCTION Finally, to the extent that the female body is seen as a direct source of female writing, a powerful alternative discourse seems possible: to write from the body is to recreate the world. Ann Rosalind Jones, “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of l’écriture feminine.” Introduction All people inhabit material bodies. However, given that some bodies are considered more connected to their materiality than others, subjects are not all equally embodied. Throughout history women have been seen as being closely connected with their materiality because they inhabit bodies that bleed every month, expand and contract during pregnancy and childbirth, and express fluids while nursing. Men disassociate themselves from their corporeality more readily and thus have claimed the cerebral and spiritual realms. Because materiality is associated with sickness, death and decay, while the psychic and spiritual are linked to heaven and the afterlife, throughout the years the association of women with the corporeal has—at least in Western society—had an extremely negative effect on the position of women within the gendered social hierarchy. 1 This ultimately led to the adoption of the widespread and deeply seated view that women, because of their close connection with the permeable flesh, were especially susceptible to demonic influences, and thus needful of both physical and metaphysical enclosure (Lochrie, Ashton). By the dawn of the early modern age,1 the idea that women had to be enclosed in order to mitigate their threat to the rest of society had already become deeply ingrained in the minds of Western European political and religious leaders, thinkers and writers. Because of the widely perceived disordered nature of their society, those living within Spain and Spanish America had become especially cognizant of the “threat” that “wandering women” presented (Perry, Merrim). The Protestant attack on the Church and the Holy Roman Empire, the dislocations of developing commercial capitalism, epidemics, famines, and seemingly continual warfare had left Spanish society in a chaotic state (Perry 23).2 In contact with an unfamiliar land and its “strange” inhabitants, Spanish Americans also saw their society as disordered. On both sides of the Atlantic wandering women became the scapegoats of a people desperate to reinstall order among the chaos; as if control of the disruptive female might restore a society turned upside by change and turmoil (Merrim 128). 1 There is some disagreement over just what constitutes the “early modern period.” In this dissertation the term will be used to refer to the period of time beginning with the mid sixteenth century and ending with the mid eighteenth. 2 Haliczer states in Between Exaltation and Infamy: Spanish Mystics of the Golden Age that this perception of chaos stemmed principally from severe economic problems and the many revolts and military disasters, both on land and at sea, that portended the breakup of the monarchy itself. These included the successful rebellions in Catalonia and Portugal in the spring and fall of 1640 and the decisive military defeats in the Netherlands, especially at the battle of Rocroi on May 19, 1643 (16). 2 Women were blamed for the vulnerable position of the Spanish empire, and, therefore, were subjected to a litany of misogynist treatises and discourses regarding their character. After The Council of Trent (1545-63) they were relegated to the enclosed spaces of the home, the convent and the brothel (Perry 23, Giles, Women in the Inquisition 10). Political and religious leaders reinforced the physical enclosure of women with a metaphysical one; women were told to be humble and obedient, and most importantly, chaste. In other words, they were advised to keep their souls and their bodies sealed up and “intact.” Religion played a very political role in this period as it justified

Load more