Cotoner and Riera pointed out the following crucial feature of Zayas’s narratives in Amar solo por vencer – it is the link between friendship and the feeling of love, “without our believing that this has to do with a presumed homosexuality” (301). In Amar solo por vencer, the supposed homosexual relations that take place between Estefanía and Laurela are founded on Don Esteban’s deceit. According to Cotoner y Riera, these relationships are “justified by the equivocation of the disguise,” given the fact that the audience knows about Esteban’s lie from the very beginning (301). The mentioned relations work as an exemplification of how Zayas understands love. She tends to perceive love from the following two different angles. First, it is “the love of the body” that men admire and desire the most, which is not continuous, as well as implies disgrace for a woman; second, it is “the love of souls” that means the true love that should not be punished (Cotoner y Riera 301). Zayas seems to emphasize that a friendship between women is not just possible but also is a more flawless type of love.
Thus, it should be stated that the role of “transvestism” in Amar solo por vencer is that this phenomenon emphasizes the critical difference between two Zayas’s kinds of love. When Laurela is in relations with Estefanía, their love is presented as perfect and pure. When it comes to Don Esteban’s reveal, his attitude towards this feeling and women changes to insignificant and mercantile. This assumption results from his unwillingness to fight for the relationship with Laurela after the reveal that he is not a woman.
Zayas also tends to advocate the issues of feminism in the mentioned work, and the following citations are the evidence. “You make women bad, and you put yourself at a thousand risks because they are bad, and you don’t see that if you take them away from being good, how do you want them to be?” (Zayas y Sotomayo 166). This is a pro-feminist statement according to which men perceive females as insignificant creatures with only bad traits. Males are blinded by this vision and do not want to assume that it is not true; they even force women to adhere to this false belief so that their masculine order – convenient and unconditional – could remain unchanged.
However, Zayas also gives some anti-feminist claims, such as, “That there are no turtledove women, who always mourn the dead husband” (Zayas y Sotomayo 166). These statements are given to expose their irrelevance and irrationality right after reasonable feminism claims are presented (Solana Segura 29). In particular, according to the latter citation, women are not capable of feeling “the higher love” that lasts forever even after their husbands’ deaths. Hence, females cannot be as close to God as men who understand and appreciate this pure feel better. But this is not true – again, such a vision is only a fiction created to protect the established masculine order of Zayas’s times.
In my opinion, Amar solo por vencer is a significant writing that allows one to understand to which extent women were oppressed during Zayas’s years of activity. The songs’ texts presented in the novel give it a sad tone, showing what price women should pay for their love (Boyer 11). The whole story – especially its last part – represents the reasons for establishing a changed world order in which females could have more possibilities of being with their loved ones, on an equal basis with men (García Gavilán 291). The way “transvestism” is incorporated is also a notable point – it distinguishes the distinction between pure love and “the love of the body.” To summarize, the novel is a significant piece of art that was a bold and even rebellious writing advocating the first manifestations of feminism.
Works Cited
Boyer, Pasty. The Disenchantments of Love: A Translation of Desenganos Amorosos. State University of New York Press, 1997.
Cotoner, Luisa y Carmen Riera (1993), “Zayas o la ficción al servicio de la educación femenina”. En Breve historia feminista de la literatura española, 4. La literatura escrita por la mujer: Desde la Edad Media al siglo XVIII. Coord. Iris Zavala. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 281–303.
García Gavilán, Inmaculada (2001), “El cuerpo femenino como metáfora en Amar solo por vencer de María de Zayas y Sotomayor.” Estudios humanísticos. Filología, 23, pp. 279–292.
Solana Segura, Carmen (2010), “Las heroínas de las Novelas amorosas y ejemplares de María de Zayas frente al modelo femenino humanista.” Lemir. Revista de Literatura Española Medieval y del Renacimiento, 14, pp. 27–33.
Zayas y Sotomayor, María de (2014 [1647]), Amar solo por vencer. En Desengaños amorosos. Edición preparada por Enrique Suárez Figaredo, Lemir. Revista de Literatura Española Medieval y del Renacimiento, 18, pp. 143–167.