'Si no fuere tu hija ilustre': Women Writers’ Social Status in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

The numbers of women writers of the early modern Spain currently identified have risen to over five hundred, with their writings catalogued and systematized by the Spanish data base Biblioteca de Escritoras Españolas (BIESES). The data base’s findings demonstrate the kinds of genres women writers selected, and includes archival documents, correspondence, and other kinds of documentation that reveal much more biographical information than previously obtained. What has yet to be studied more in depth, however, is the social status of the writers, as social origins were a crucial means of identifying one’s self, both from a psychological perspective as well as within society. This article examines the social stratification of writers to weigh their contributions, and arrives at the conclusion that while non-noble women tended to dedicate their time to writing literary works, whether poems, theater, or prose fiction; the few women of the titled nobility who wrote instead authored non-literary works such as correspondence and treatises that allowed them to participate significantly in political crises of the time.