SOURCE: Gamboa, Yolanda. “Architectural Cartography: Social and Gender Mapping in María de Zayas's Seventeenth-Century Spain.” Hispanic Review 71, no. 2 (spring 2003): 189-203.

In the following essay, Gamboa proposes that the image of the house in Zayas's works is representative of the merging space occupied by the modern family, and reflects, in a microcosm, the individual's placement within the larger social arena.

María de Zayas's popular framed novels have been the object of significant attention in the last few decades. Critics have highlighted the crucial difference in tone between her two collections, namely, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares [Amorous and Exemplary Novels] (1637), and Desengaños amorosos [The Disenchantments of Love] (1647), especially regarding the metaphor of the house. According to Amy Williamsen, while “in Novelas Amorosas Zayas explores the comic possibilities of this architectural sign, at times demonstrating that the rigid imposition of patriarchal order also restricts men … Desengaños, on...