Mary Elizabeth Perry argues that early modem Seville’s patriarchal system was in crisis and responded by strengthening its “authority through a political system that was closed to women, through guild regulations that multiplied to restrict the economic activities of women, and through more careful enclosure of women in convent, home, or brothel” (p. 13). Based on extensive research in Inquisition, hospital, convent, municipal, and other documents, plus judiciously culled writings of the period, she weaves a complex tapestry of information about women at two levels: (1) societal expectations for women, the gender system, and (2) the reality of women’s lives.
The book begins with women’s work at the time when male relatives left for the Spanish Indies, and then offers an analysis of a gender ideology that “emphasized the weakness and passivity of women, even as women’s active participation became more essential ” (p. 12). The author paints a skillful picture of what was expected of wives and describes the institution of dowry, cases of bigamists, and the class components of seduction and marriage. An analysis of both the confining and liberating elements in the lives of nuns and beatas is followed by especially interesting discussions on the “manly” woman and on prostitutes and the means used to control them.
I wish the author had compared expectations for women with those for men and the experiences of women with those of men. For example, whereas Perry shows that women were classified as either “good” or “bad,” she does not tell us whether similar categorizations were applied to men. And though she reviews the Inquisition’s treatment of women heretics, we do not learn in what ways this differed, if it did, from the justice applied to male heretics. Nonetheless, this book fills a need by providing a kaleidoscopic window onto the reality of women in early modern Seville.
