Codes amoureux et criminalité dans les Desengaños amorosos de María de Zayas

Plaidoyer pour une norme matrimoniale ?

Abstract

In María de Zayas’s second book of short stories, Desengaños amorosos, published in 1647, men submit their wives to violent and bloody treatments. The spectacular dimension is part of the book’s baroque aesthetics. At the same time, the social structures of confinement or solidarity that are found in the text can also be related to the contemporary judicial discourse on conjugal relations and the rights of husbands. Zayas’s work can thus be interpreted under a different perspective from the strictly feminist or clearly religious one. I would like to contend that María de Zayas is advocating, through the abuses described in her book, a reform of the matrimonial state so that rights are guaranteed to spouses, wives particularly, who would then be protected and helped within a legal framework.