Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Those roles included writing plays for both secular theaters as well as convent productions. In contrast to the English stage, women could perform in the Spanish theater, so that the female audience members occupying the cazuela or “stew pan,” as the women’s section was called, could observe actresses portraying everything from queens to peasants.

In their avowed admiration of Isabel’s accomplishments, Fray Martin, Lucena, and others ascribe her success in an avowedly male environment to her “masculine” qualities of leadership. Although they accept these qualities in a queen who must rule, they just as surely deny them to virtually all other women.

Nevertheless, throughout the Jardin de nobles donzellas, the author emphasizes the exceptional status of princesses vis-a-vis other women. While the latter have no need of learning since their role encompasses only home and children, princesses and queens are expected to practice the heroic virtues. “The princess is, as it were, a man by virtue of her birth, and hence the masculine standard of morality applies to her” (Maclean 62).