SOURCE: Boyer, H. Patsy. “The ‘Other’ Woman in Cervantes's Persiles and Zayas's Novelas.” Cervantes 10, no. 1 (spring 1990): 59-68.

In the essay which follows, Boyer studies the frame narrative of Zayas's Disenchantments as a means of re-creating the notion of the “other” woman as represented in texts such as Cervantes's The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda.

Struck by the impressive array of “other” women in The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda and in Zayas's double collection of framed novelas,¹ I decided to study Zayas's frame narrative as a re-vision of the Sousa Coutinho episode in Persiles (I, 10) because they represent contrary treatments of the “other” woman in the same situation: the bride who decides to enter the convent rather than marry. My reason for juxtaposing such dissimilar works comes from the internally stated purpose of Zayas's novelas: they aim to represent a defense of women's good name² in a violently...