Transgressions, connections and the New World Order in Sor Juana\'s Los empeños de una casa

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   1   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       Transgressions, connections and the New World Order in Sor Juana’s Los empeños de una casa Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz writes and presents Los empeños de una casa in order to fittingly welcome the Archbishop Francisco de Aguiar and Seijas and to honor the marquises of Laguna in the year 1684. The timing places this theater piece very close to the Baroque aesthetic, which José Antonio Maravall dates between 1605 and 1650 in his classic study La cultura del barroco where the author summarizes the major tenants of the era. It was, Maravall explains, a time of conflicts and crises when monarchs and ruling classes employed a variety of entities (among them cultural productions) to legitimize their power by means of persuasion. In light of the Renaissance’s shift toward humanism and individualism in every field, as well as this preceding era’s vast proliferation in the arts, it was only natural that the dominating classes would find it harder to exercise control over their subjects. The answer was to persuade, or seduce perhaps, the individual into truly assimilating the inherent superiority of the upper classes. An important way to get that message across to all social groups was through the arts. A different kind of literature is produced then, where writers were deeply committed to the ways of order and authority, even if these happen to disagree with the writers’ individual point of view.1 A dramatic expression, an extremely complicated rhetoric, and an abundance of ludic devices that aim at entering the collective’s                                                                                                                 1  Translated  from  Maravall  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   2   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       consciousness are what characterize this literature. In the case of Spain in the XVII Century, one must also add a feeling of instability and “unavoidable decadence”2 which resulted in more tension among all social groups. According to Maravall, there is a reduction in terms of the novelty afforded to cultural productions at the time. Instead, artists look to mimic and perfect past creations. This was very much the case with most of the work done by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz who lived her life under Spanish Baroque rule in Nueva España. As Maravall explains, Baroque culture disperses from a powerful center (the Spanish monarchy in this case) toward important political cities and rural zones, albeit with a considerable time differential. As one of the most important Spanish colonies, Nueva España made an appropriate ground to further create and consume continental trends. Sor Juana writes Los empeños de una casa in true Baroque form, even molding its title from a previous piece by Calderón de la Barca, Los empeños de un acaso. If Baroque is distinguished by contrasts and crises, Sor Juana sticks out as an emblematic figure due to her position as an illegitimate and educated Mexican woman. By and large an unauthorized voice, Sor Juana ingeniously subverts order and tradition by openly parodying literary genres, the condition of women and marriage in her society, and the situation of colonial Mexico. As S. Hernández Araico states, Sor Juana’s writing style in Los empeños de una casa is hyper-Baroque. This quality extends to the very way in which the abovementioned themes are treated throughout the piece. The tangling and interconnections of characters, spatial sceneries and genres give way to a reading weaved                                                                                                                 2  ibid.  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   3   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       in dissidence but always with enough humor to appease the ruling classes. This essay aims to study these instances in Los empeños de una casa, while centering on Celia and Castaño, two peripheral characters who announce the imminent decay of the dominating classes and the arrival of a new social order. ¿Capa y espada or comedia de enredos? In her essay “Engendered Theatrical Space and the Colonial Woman in Sor Juana’s Los empeños de una casa”, Julie Johnson Greer states that Sor Juana transforms a cloak and sword (capa y espada) tale to a comedia de enredos or comedy of manners. She argues that through Doña Ana’s schemes she becomes the director of her own play, which is in turn inside her brother’s play, and that “the intent of this recourse is to defamiliarize the traditional drama of cloak and dagger […] and to invite consideration of its subversive reinscription, which more closely resembles a comedy of manners. Such juxtaposition is designed to contest the imposition of Spanish cultural codes on Americans and to highlight gender differences as well.” (Johnson Greer 2001) What is certain is that Sor Juana deliberately subverts the genre the moment she relegates all the play’s action to a house. “Women’s location in the confines of the patriarchal house is a cultural condition of the era,” writes Mercedes Moroto.3 Although there is the typical duel scene held outside by the men just before the play begins, we are only made aware of this through four different dialogues between characters throughout the play.4

                                                                                                                3  M. Maroto Camino. "'En distintas cuadras': Gender, Exile and Shipwreck in Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa" 2002, 156   4  S.  Hernández  Araico  points  out  that  in  “hyper-­‐Baroque”  fashion,  we  hear  four  different  versions  of   the  duel  scene:  Doña  Ana’s,  Doña  Leonor’s,  Don  Carlos’  and  Don  Pedro’s.    

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   4   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       It can be said that by leaving out the street-side violence and moving the happenstances to a feminized space, Sor Juana has feminized the genre itself. Furthermore, she has feminized a traditional capa y espada to the point of transforming it into a comedia de enredos, a genre typically accommodated to female audiences. It is also worth noting that Sor Juana chooses to parody what S. Donnell describes as a monolithic and “compromised art form due to overt commercialism and state censure.” (Donnell 2008, 181) As is to be expected, Sor Juana is careful to embellish her transgressions with a number of Baroque devices including a break with the theatrical illusion, which reminds the audience of their complicity5 while possibly exculpating the playwright: Y aquí, altísimos señores, Y aquí, senado discrete, Los empeños de una casa Dan fin. Perdonad sus yerros (3380-3383) I propose that this genre transformation parallels the transformation undergone by Castaño, the play’s gracioso when he dons women’s clothing in his unsuccessful attempt to cross the border between the house and the street. Castaño, the only character clearly defined as criollo, not only allegorizes the colonial subject (as Díaz Balcera writes) but also coupled with Doña Leonor’s happy marriage, constitutes a defiance to the era’s established code, making Sor Juana’s position as playwright one that we might interpret as a criollo colonial subject that produces a discourse of differentiation and separation                                                                                                                

5  S.  Donnell.  “From  Cross  Gender  to  Generic  Closure”,  184  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   5   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       from the decaying peninsular powers. In addition, the main couple’s success can be interpreted as a metaphor of the colonial subject’s desire and capacity to forge his or her own projects.6 Of persuasions, decorum and appearances In Los empeños de una casa, Doña Leonor, a loquacious and beautiful young woman has escaped her father’s house to run away with Don Carlos. Don Pedro, who wishes to court Doña Leonor, devises a plan to capture her in a compromising position in this way forcing her to marry him if only out of obligation to the era’s decorum. He succeeds in the first part of his plan and the play begins with Doña Ana (Don Pedro’s sister) already awaiting Doña Leonor’s arrival to her brother’s house. Just as Constance Jordan explains in her essay “The Terms of the Debate” women were, in the context of pre-modern Europe, handled as exchangeable property and increasingly confined to the patriarch’s rule. Following a long line of misogynistic tradition dating back to Aristotle, women were equaled to the body, the form and the passive while men were considered to be the head and the active force, essentially crafted by nature to lead the body through society. In the same way, women were also destined to follow this rule, be it in the guise of daughters, wives or sisters, but always under a patriarchal head. To ensure this behavior, there emerged a host of conduct books, most of which cemented women’s position in society as the dominated sex, in accordance with the era’s cultural baggage. One such book, by Franceso de Barbaro, asserts that a woman’s eloquence is her silence. On the other hand, an abundance of speech was a sign of her promiscuity.                                                                                                                

6  Translated  from  Díaz  Balcera,  1993,  73

 

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   6   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       This viewpoint highlights significantly Sor Juana’s characterization of Doña Leonor who describes herself as beautiful and given to intellectual pursuits from a young age. Doña Leonor’s biggest sin is compromising her honor by fleeing with the man she herself has chosen to marry. As an unmarried woman outside of her father’s house (a body without a head to guide it), Doña Leonor can easily fall prey to any man who wishes to force himself upon her. This is exactly what happens when she enters the web created by Don Pedro, and later by his sister Doña Ana. Moreover, Doña Leonor’s background renders her practically unmarriageable since she has noble blood but no economic power. These open transgressions in Doña Leonor’s portrayal are a way of reshaping the public’s opinion regarding femininity. Johnson Greer makes the case that Sor Juana “directs her criticism in Los empeños primarily toward domineering men who seek to define femininity and judge women on their ability to approximate this definition.” (2001) This is an opinion that can be clearly perceived in the play’s closing scene, specifically in the fates that await the five lead characters, as well as in the similarities between Doña Leonor and the playwright herself.7 But Sor Juana doesn’t stop there. Apart from criticizing women’s place in society she also questions the very foundations of courtly love. In her essay “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Joan Kelly writes that “[N]ot until the Renaissance reformulation of courtly manners and love is it evident how the ways of the lady came to be determined by men in the context of the early modern state. The relation of the sexes here assumed its                                                                                                                

7  Much  has  been  written  of  the  similarities  between  Doña  Leonor  and  her  creator.  See  accompanying  

bibliography  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   7   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       modern form, and nowhere is this made more visible than in the love relation.” (1984, 36) The Renaissance’s deep concern with reaching the ideal of beauty and love through platonic encounters raised woman’s status in the collective imaginary to—inarguably— unsustainable heights and further cemented the view of women as empty form. “The Renaissance lady is not desired, not loved for herself,” states Kelly. Slavoj Žižek analyzes what he dubbs the “libidinal economy of courtly love” in his essay “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing,” but he warns us that “[T]he idealization of the Lady, her elevation to […] an ethereal Ideal is […] to be considered of as a strictly secondary phenomenon: it is a narcissistic projection whose function is to render her traumatic dimension invisible.” (2005, 90) The trauma caused by her Otherness pertains to the “cold” and “distant” representations of women in the courtly love model. Doña Leonor is cold and distant towards Don Pedro’s advances, which only serves to fuel his desires. Don Pedro says: Yo, señora, he sido vuestro, y aunque siempre desdeñosa me habéis tratado, el desdén más mi fineza acrisola, que es muy garboso desaire el ser fino a toda costa. (1316-1321) This passage serves to highlight Don Pedro’s relentlessness, as well as his preference for appearance over reality. Díaz Balcera reiterates that, culturally, this

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   8   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       preference of the image over the substance is the great Baroque perversion.8 Undeniably ahead of her time, Sor Juana questions the very nature of the performance of gender when Don Pedro misguidingly courts and gets engaged to Castaño, and she does it in such a way as to make the spectators reflect on gender identity and the infallibility of such an established notion as courtly love. To agree with Kelly and Žižek, despite it being a medieval product, courtly love is still very much a part of our culture and we are continue to feel its remnants today. For her own reasons, Sor Juana satirizes courtly love with devices like cross-dressing, comedic dislocations and by switching traditional gender roles. But in true “hyperbarroque” fashion, these gender displacements find their parallels on both sides of ongoing class and colonial struggles. With Celia and Castaño, Sor Juana—unknowingly or not—predicts the possibility of a new social order. The possibility of a new social order As Johnson Greer writes, “Doña Ana and Celia take full advantage of the conventional space mapped out for females and additionally attempt to usurp masculine control by taking extraordinary liberties.” (2001) The play opens with Doña Ana recounting what will be the main points of the play: after a brief courtship with Don Juan, Doña Ana is now in love with Don Carlos. This compromises her honor, in keeping with the appropriate behavioral code and yet her brother is openly bending the code to his favor by catching Doña Leonor and forcing her into his house. The house, one might add, that is traditionally a feminized space yet always led by the head patriarch. Here we are once                                                                                                                 8  Translated.  “Los empeños de una casa: El sujeto colonial y las burlas al honor", 68  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   9   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       again privy to male privilege. But when her brother is outside that space, Doña Ana is the governing force enabling her to devise her own schemes to simultaneously seduce Don Carlos, aid in the coupling of Don Pedro and Doña Leonor, and preserve her honor of any blemishes previously awakened by her passing liaison with Don Juan. Unbeknownst to her, Celia has already introduced Don Juan into the mix by giving him the key to Doña Ana’s room, an event that will eventually lead to the frustration of both siblings’ plans to seduce their unrequited loves. Throughout the play, Celia will repeatedly carry out her lady’s directives by moving the characters around the house, just as pieces in a board game. Although faithful to Doña Ana, Celia’s tone throughout the play serves to further distance herself and her schemes to that of the Madrid siblings: […] esto de “yo te mando”, cuando los amos lo dicen, no viene al caso, pues están siempre tan hechos que si acaso mandan algo, para dar luego se excusan y dicen a los criados que lo que mandaron no fue manda, sino mandato (1559-1567) On the other hand, it is through Castaño (dressed as a woman and engaged to Don Pedro) that Sor Juana actively voices her dissatisfaction with the gender hierarchy. “[I]f

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   10   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       Pedro’s home is read as a symbol of the metropolis, then a Mexican manservant has thoroughly feminized the head of the household, resulting in a suggestive parody of […] decadence. […] The consequences of Castaño/Morena’s so-called ‘trick’ reveal a great deal about Don Pedro and other empowered men’s gender identities in Imperial Spain.” (Donnell 2008, 185) But what of Celia’s and Castaño’s apparent marriage betrothal while Castaño is still dressed as a woman? When the gracioso asks for Celia’s hand she answers him by offering her finger instead. Donnell writes that “Without a patriarch (such as a father or a brother) to giver her hand away […] her finger becomes a powerful phallic symbol, suggesting that she is the ‘butch’ and the feminized gracioso (still in drag) is the “femme” in the relationship.” (2008, 188) If Pedro’s seduction announces the imminent decay of the patriarchal household and Imperial Spain, Celia’s and Castaño’s refusal to commit to a monogamous relationship and to their corresponding gender roles perhaps also announces the upheaval of heteronormative standards. Just as Díaz Balcera explains, the colonial subject imitates and appropriates the colonizer’s hegemonic models in order to consolidate their own points of view.9 Los empeños de una casa can be read as a series of paralleled and complimentary conflicts between gender groups on one side and social classes on the other. The result is a number of interconnections and transgressions aimed at dramatically persuading the public to question courtly and colonizing values, as well as the patriarchal notions that sustain them.                                                                                                                 9  Translated.  Díaz  Balcera,  66  

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   11   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       Aldrete, David, and Amelia León. "Barroco americano de Sor Juana en Los empeños de una casa". Arenas Blancas: Revista Literaria 5 (2006): 18-26. Web. 17 sept. 2014. Pdf. Díaz Balsera, Viviana. "Los empeños de una casa: El sujeto colonial y las burlas al honor". El escritor y la escena II: actas del II Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Teatro Español y Novohispano de los Siglos de Oro. 7-20 mar. 1993, Ciudad Juárez. Ed. Ysla Campbell. Ciudad Juárez: Univ. Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 1994. 61-73. Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Web. 15 sept. 2014. Donnell, Sidney. "From Cross Gender to Generic Closure: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Los empeños de una casa." Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 33.1 (2008): 177-193. JSTOR. Web. 3 sept. 2014. Hernández Araico, Susana . "El espacio escénico de Los empeños de una casa y algunos antecedentes calderonianos". El teatro en la Hispanoamérica colonial. Ed. Ignacio Arellano and José A Rodríguez Garrido. Pamplona; Madrid, Frankfurt: U de Navarra; Iberoamericana/Vervuet, 2008. 183-200. Print. Johnson, Julie Greer. "Engendered Theatrical Space and the Colonial Woman in Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa."Ciberletras 5 (2001). n. pag. Ciberletras. Web. 3 oct. 2014. Jordan, Constance. “The Terms of the Debate.” Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca; London: Cornell UP, 1990. 11-64. Print. Kelly, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Women History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago; London: The U of Chicago P, 1984. 19-50. Print. Maroto Camino, Mercedes. "'En distintas cuadras': Gender, Exile and Shipwreck in Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa." Romance Studies 20.2 (2002): 155-64. Print. Maravall, José Antonio. “La cultura del barroco: una estructura histórica.” Historia y crítica de la literatura española (Siglos de Oro: Barroco). Ed. Francisco Rico et. al. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1983. 49-53. Print. Bergmann, Emilie L. "Amor, óptica y sabiduría en Sor Juana". Nictimene… sacrílega: Estudios coloniales en homenaje a Georgina Sabat-Rivers. Colección de Investigación y Crítica. Ed. Mabel Morańa and Yolanda Martínez San-Miguel. Mexico City, Mexico: U del Claustro de Sor Juana, 2003. 267-81. Print.

 Angela  Inez  Vargas  /  University  of  Puerto  Rico   12   Undergraduate  Capstone  Research  Paper   Presented  at:  V  Congreso  Internacional  de  Literatura,  Arecibo  P.R.       Messinger Cypess, Sandy. "Des-velando los papeles del género en Los empeños de una casa de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz". Hacia un nuevo canon literario: actas del XII Congreso de Literatura Latinoamericana, 1991, Montclair State University. Inca Garcilaso Series 603. Ed. JoAnne Engelbert and Dianne Bono. Montclair, NJ: Montclair State University, 1995. 91-104. Print. Poot Herrera, Sara. "Las prendas menores de Los empeños de una casa". Y diversa de mí misma entre vuestras plumas ando: Homenaje internacional a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Ed. Sara Poot Herrera. Mexico City, Mexico: Colegio de México, 1993. 257-67. Print. Žižek, Slavoj. “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing.” The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality. London; New York: Verso, 2005. 89-112. Print.