The Women in La Discreta Enamorada: Lope’s Spanish Golden Age and Franco’s Spain
– by Elizabeth Wiedener (B.A./English, ’07)In his frisky and perceptive play La Discreta Enamorada, Lope de Vega uses the young and clever Fenisa as a comical foil to social norms of his era. De Vega was an expert at taking a conventional moral play, in this case about women’s role in society, and bringing it to life with humor and cynicism. Some have argued that as a social critic and satirist, de Vega attacked many of the institutions of his country – especially aristocracy, chivalry, and rigid morality. True to comedy’s rules, La Discreta Enamorada makes fun of so-called “honorable” behavior between the sexes and challenges what was then thought to be appropriate behavior, especially for women. In a patriarchal or male-dominated country such as Spain, there was good reason for de Vega to compose such a satire, putting the woman in a position to control and manipulate everyone else, including the men, to get what she wants. La Discreta Enamorada presents us with the witty young woman Fenisa, who uses her charm and prudence expertly to finesse her way out of an arranged marriage with a powerful Captain and to mastermind her marriage to his young, handsome son instead – all under the nose of her watchdog mother and despite a rigidly gendered Spanish society. While the play entertains, it also comments on its milieu – in other words, it says something about the cultural environment in which de Vega lived: the Spanish Golden Age. Could such a scheme ever have taken place in reality? Would the social norms have been less strict in an era closer to our own time? In order to consider such questions, one must first examine what life was like for women of the ages.
“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”
~ Paula Threichler
The Spanish Golden Age, also called the siglo de oro, was a period in which the country flourished artistically, from about 1580 to 1680 CE. During this time, in addition to de Vega’s plays such as La Discreta Enamorada, Cervantes also wrote his famous novel Don Quixote and El Greco painted his masterpieces. In the late 1500’s, Spain was thriving in the wake of discovering the New World, but by 1600 the country was in decline economically, stirring some social unrest. In response to this, the strict morality of Christianity – particularly Catholicism – was impressed on Spain’s citizens. Everywhere in sixteenth-century Europe, it was asserted that religious unity was necessary for political unity, but only in Spain was there such a sense of urgency in enforcing religious conformity and obedience. Women were already under the confines of a patriarchal society; in both families and institutions, men carried a disproportionately large share of the power. Women were expected to be chaste and obedient, religiously pious and subservient to male figures, especially if they were to maintain their family’s honor.
In La Discreta Enamorada, Belisa and Fenisa have no patriarch to speak of, but spend the entirety of the play conniving to acquire one – even two. Here are two independent women, yet they each recognize an urgent need for a benefactor and protector. Marriage, it seems, will affirm their economic and social status. Fenisa pleads with her mother to “let me be the one to marry / and the burden would be my man’s to carry,” showing that marriages often occurred simply to procure such stability, rather than a loving partnership. Indeed, later on Fenisa tells the Captain that “Having accepted [your marriage proposal], I belong to you.” In order to be suitable for courtship, first the women must demonstrate their virtue through the ultimate modesty and discretion, in both behavior and appearance. For example, the mantos that Belisa and Fenisa wear are head coverings that, during the time the play was written, were required of any decent woman; these garments covered the head and face almost completely. Since she is a courtesan, Gerarda does not cover her head at all. Early in the play, Lucindo’s servant Hernado must convince him that Fenisa is far more worthy of his admiration than Gerarda, who is little more than a prostitute with high standards. Hernando advises his master that “Loose women, it seems, get the most love / but without honor, they’re really lost.” Lucindo replies, understanding that “That’s why / Love for a loose woman disappears fast, / love for a good one will always last,” and he later admits that Fenisa is “more respectable / than almost any other!” In the first act of the play, a great deal of importance is laid on the modest and respectable behavior of women, in order for them to prove their worth. According to the time when Lope de Vega wrote the play, this can certainly be attributed to the strict religious adherence required by Spanish society and politics of the Golden Age. De Vega uses Fenisa’s wit to challenge the effectiveness of patriarchal control; although she pursues a husband, she manipulates everyone in the play – both men and women – to have her way and get the man that she wants.
For women, however, the reality of oppression would still occur even centuries later. By the 1930’s when Francisco Franco came into power, conditions for the women of Spain were oppressive and repressive to the extreme. The SMU production of La Discreta Enamorada is set in the 1950s, two decades after Franco’s rise to power and the establishment of a repressive governmental regime throughout modern Spain. By the 1950s, there were no longer exactly the same class distinctions that one would have found during de Vega’s time, the original period of La Discreta Enamorada. Fenisa and Belisa would have been found in the upper class of Spanish society during the Golden Age, but a middle class had emerged by the 20th century, and although women had achieved some economic and political equality in other Western countries at this time, the Franco regime still forced women to rely on marriage for their economic stability. Working women were subjected to unfair wages and sexism bordering on abuse, causing them to organize in varied efforts to protect and support themselves. Some groups aimed to empower women, giving them the power to become involved in anarchist politics; they saw it as crucial to involve women directly in the struggle for their own liberation. Some said that they believed that ending the domination of women by men was part of a larger struggle to abolish all forms of domination. Others, feminists, focused on the individual liberation of individual women. A major part of this fight was against the undervaluing of women within the anarchist movement. The fate of women in Spain was closely tied to that of the social revolution in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Their efforts were stunted by the Communist party and the government of the day; as the militias and collectives were defeated, their brief taste of freedom was lost again. The victory of Franco and his nationalists in 1939 only reinforced this loss. Franco was an authoritarian leader, or dictator, who imposed sometimes-excessive ideologies on the Spanish people. During his rule, Spanish individualism, at its most self-seeking, still conformed to the routine requirements of conventional behavior, and conventional behavior ran rigidly in set channels. In the case of women especially, not only their behavior, but also their mental outlook, was set to the conventional pattern of patriarchal dominance. The subject of men taking any part in domestic chores was not even a consideration; for a man to perform household duties was an embarrassment. Such social standards are comparable to the society in which we see Fenisa and Belisa living in de Vega’s La Discreta Enamorada. If there were any independent-minded Spanish women, they concealed this quality; on the other hand, a woman who showed an independent streak in her behavior would be looked upon with scorn. Perhaps the very rich were placed, by their wealth, out of the reach of the effects of such criticism; Fenisa may have fallen into this category, with her clever behavior that was anything except for subservient. Still, her manipulations were executed with such discretion, that until the end when everything is revealed, no one except for her own mother thinks to criticize Fenisa’s bold behavior – because they do not realize what she is actually doing. Her discretion maintained the “honorable” appearance that society demanded of her at the time.
Near the end of Franco’s rule, there was an active feminist movement, helping various women’s communities, groups, and publications, even with their own publishing houses, to be set up. In the decades following, from the 1980’s on, women increasingly worked politically to promote their ideas. Particularly in the 1990’s, equal rights policies have helped women to emerge from a patriarchal Spanish society, although the transition is still not complete. Especially in Spanish and Latin society, we still see traces of patriarchal – or male – dominance. Women are prized, but still as objects more than persons. In today’s society, Fenisa may have more believably gotten away with hoodwinking all of those around her, if she ever would have needed to go to such lengths in the first place.
.