María de Zayas, or Memory Chains and the Education of a Learned Woman 1

Determined by gender and class, education in Spain exhibited great contrasts. Whereas a rich female culture existed in the convents, one of the most significant venues for learned women, as Electa Arenal has shown us, ² the lower classes had little or no access to education, aside from what they could learn orally. Women from the bourgeoisie and lower nobility were initially taught to read by their mothers or tutors, but they were not encouraged to write. Therefore, when studying early modern women writers such as María de Zayas, who was a very popular and well-read writer, and who participated in the literary academies of her day, we must keep in mind that the handful of learned women we know as “letradas” were not representative of the norm, most particularly, with respect to writing and their participation in the world of letters. As separate educational endeavors, the acts of reading and writing are not always connected to one another, and the right to practice them differentiates cultural access both along gender and social lines. In Nadia Salamone’s words, “the relation between women and literature is mediated by that between women and writing: it requires specific and competent study, and is historically determined” (509).