top of page

SITES OF TRANSGRESSION

Like other societies in history with oppressive social orders, Early Modern Spain was rife with individuals who retaliated against a system that sought to police and control their personhoods. Historical accounts testify to women who defied the patriarchy and exercised authority, queer individuals who loved and expressed their sexualities under the heteronormative church, and enslaved persons who found freedom in the subversion of ambiguous definitions around identity.

 

But, as liberating as it may be to discover moments of transgression in history, they often result from consulting archival evidence created by the oppressors themselves. Not only do such accounts risk tainting the event and the individuals in a negative, possibly false light, but the accounts that make it onto the hands of historians are often limited to the ones that were deemed especially criminal to the greater society. What results is a misleading yet understandable assumption that history was mostly compliant with its oppressive systems, overlooking the very possibility that transgressions were happening more frequently in secret.

 

​

​

​

​

 Like the theater, history is a process of interpretation and creation. But unlike history, theater has no obligation to provide the factual truth, but rather allude to it, play with it, and sometimes even suggest it. To uncover the courage of those in history who challenged the status quo is to provoke our imagination, not only for the past but for the present and future. 

"One of the key problems is that sexual behavior is most often hidden. Spaniards’ views about sex, especially heterodox views, were rarely expressed."

- Edward Behrend-Martinez

"Notarized documents from the sixteenth century indicate that women bought and sold property, rented it, arranged marriages for their children, made wills, and arranged for the care of their children in the absence of their husbands" 

​

Megan Gibbons; Speaking out from within: Ana Caro and her role as a woman writer in seventeenth-century Spain

Isabella I of Castile
Queen Isabella the Catholic.jpg
Isabella I of Castile

Despite Early Modern Spain and early modern Europe in general being highly patriarchal, women were constantly challenging the gender expectations placed on them and taking on positions of leadership and authority. Most notably within the Spanish theater, women were allowed to be on stage (unlike their Elizabethan England counterparts) in addition to writing commissioned plays, directing productions, and managing their own theater companies. Like other powerful European women at the time, various Spanish women took on the throne and wielded their influence, guiding and managing often warring Spanish constituents. Caro sets the play in Brussels because from 1621 to 1633, it was ruled by the female ruler or Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia.

"Quite possibly they mingled with other free and freed Indios in Seville, several of whom were from East Asia. There they could share legal knowledge and help others recover from the ravages of slavery."

​

Nancy E. van Deusen; Indios on the move in the sixteenth-century Iberian world

Retrato_de_Juan_Pareja,_by_Diego_Velázquez.jpg
Juan de Pareja

Sixteenth-century Spain was a powerful empire that actively participated in slavery and trade and thus had a cultural milieu that was racially diverse. Although Spaniards at the time did not share contemporary notions of race, people’s physical appearance, skin coloration, and place of origin were used as modes of classification in addition to religion to group, oppress, and commodify society at large. Social classifications became especially important in maintaining an easily identifiable “authentic” national identity–which tended to be conflated with White Catholics–due to the mixing of peoples; trade and slavery meant people from all over the world were entering the country. Despite the hierarchization of an immensely diverse Spanish society, individuals during that period, such as Indios (slaves from the Spanish Indies) and non-Indios, resisted by redefining and subverting the arbitrarily defined classifications used to subjugate individuals who were not of the dominant identity.

"Early modern legal cases reveal the range and variety of [female homoerotic] intimate relationships. Some cases include same-sex marriage achieved through cross-dressing"

​

Sherry Velasco; "If these beds could talk": Narrating Lesbian Sex Acts in Early Modern Spain

330px-Catalina_de_Erauso.jpg
Catalina De Erauso

Early-modern Spain was filled with individuals who deviated from heteronormative sexual norms as defined by the Catholic Church. Though various Inquisitional records report homosexual activity in staggering amounts, they tend to focus on the ones deemed most “criminal” that necessitate prosecution, distorting the reality of homosexual relations during that time. Similarly, historical accounts of lesbian relationships exist within the same oppressive confines of the Inquisition. However, the existence of such accounts in the first place, ladened with explicit yet fascinating details about what took place inside these relationships, points to the suggested ubiquity of queer love in Early Modern Spain. In addition, gender was not as stable as one may think it would have been in patriarchal 16th-century Spain. Indeed, historical records uncover stories of individuals who toyed with the established gender binary by dressing up and living their lives under different, often ambiguous, gender identities.

How can we put as many diverse bodies, identities, and experiences on the stage to dramatize this collective struggle for the basic recognition of one’s humanity, a sentiment that is not far off from Early Modern Spain and especially pertinent to today's world?

bottom of page