ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, women are represented as murderers. Wanton murder, including that of husbands and of other family members, including children, is a topic of the pliegos sueltos. Particularly intimate forms of violence, namely mariticide and infanticide, seem to originate from internal tensions as husbands are often murdered as a way to remove a legal impediment to the continuation of another illicit sexual relationship. María Sánchez-Pérez studied this phenomenon as it manifested itself in early modern works. The representation of women is consistent with the stereotype of the adulterous, sexually promiscuous, and deviant woman whose uncontrollable sexual desires lead her to commit a series of horrific crimes and murders. Although the Church frowned upon any type of extramarital sexual activity and adulterous behavior, men’s adulterous behavior—“tolerado y solo vagamente censurado” [“tolerated and only vaguely censured”]—did not warrant judicial attention (Sánchez-Pérez 289). Adulterous women even ran the risk of being murdered by their own husbands in response to their husbands’ loss (or perceived loss) of honor (Bazán Díaz, “La pena de muerte” 13). In these pliegos sueltos, however, the wives’ murder of their husbands results in the husbands’ inability to avenge their own dishonor and the need for the intervention of civil authorities to impose justice.
