A CLOISTERED SUBJECT: THE CASE OF MARÍA DE ZAYAS

Abstract

Honesto y entretenido sarao ends with Lisis’ and some other female narrators’ reclusion to the convent. The stories told in Sarao demonstrate the close relationship of this ending with the practice of the epoch, and in the plot, this ending is linked to the notion of disappointment. However, as a radical solution, the critics wanted to interpret this ending as a space, constructed for female identity and sociability, with an affirmative and positive value. Nonetheless, the causes of this significant gesture —in the different levels of the narrative and in the author's own reality—, offer other critical perspectives on the meaning of this withdrawal from society and the possibilities of a cloistered subject. The conceptual framework studies the place of women in the literary field of the seventeenth century.