SOURCE: Jehenson, Yvonne, and Marcia L. Welles. “María de Zayas's Wounded Women: A Semiotics of Violence.” In Gender, Identity, and Representation in Spain's Golden Age, edited by Anita K. Stoll and Dawn L. Smith, pp. 178-202. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2000.

In this essay, Jehenson and Welles evaluate the Zayas's positioning of women as related to contemporary debates about women, pornography, and the sadomasochistic dynamic.

The Desengaños amorosos (1647) [The Disenchantments of Love] are set in a period preceding “los alegres días de las carnestolendas” (118) [“the festive days of Mardi Gras” (37)].¹ Situated in the period of the three carnivalesque days preceding Ash Wednesday, that is, in the “mundo al revés” [world upside-down] of disguises, crossdressing, and unexpected happenings, the Desengaños look forward both to a lenten period of mortification of the flesh and to the prospect of rebirth and resurrection. This cycle of carnival...