La mujer y el cuerpo femenino en La perfecta casada de Fray Luis de Leon
by Olga Rivera

The institution of marriage was much debated and subject to an important process of reform in sixteenth-century Europe. In Spain, the implementation of the “Marriage Reforms” approved in the 24th Session of the Council of Trent (November 11, 1563) led to the prohibition of secret marriages, the prosecution of bigamy, polygamy, cohabitation and adultery, and to the significant increase of penalties for infractions. As the discourse in favor of married life put forth in the works of several contemporary Christian humanists reveals, there was a profound revaluation of the state of marriage. One of the most important of these works was Erasmus’ Uxor Mempsigamos, whose statements on family morals and prescriptions regarding the behavior of married women were amply disseminated in Spain by Juan Luis Vives, Antonio de Guevara, Pedro Luján, and Fray Luis de León, among others.
    This study demonstrates how, in Spain, the discourse regarding family morals was ideologically related to the marriage reforms implemented by the ecclesiastic, political, and judicial authorities. Along these lines, it shows how the role assigned to the “perfect wife” as guardian of morals within the private sphere reveals the importance that was attributed to the institutions of marriage, and the family, and to female conduct in achieving social order.
    The ‘perfect wife’ was confined to the home and forbidden to intervene in public affairs. On the other hand, as producer of legitimate children and active agent in their breast-feeding, rearing, and socialization, she gained a decisive role in the preservation of Christian virtues, chastity, honor, and lineage–i.e., the basic values of the society of the time. In 16th Century Spain, women were believed to transmit their own virtues and vices, social values and religious beliefs through breast-feeding. For this reason, Fray Luis decries the common practice of middle class and noble women of sending their children to be raised by village wet nurses. Since the mother’s milk was seen as a form of blood, Fray Luis maintains that this practice is tantamount to committing adultery, for it transformed legitimate children into illegitimate ones, and the case was even worse if the wet nurses of the noble children happened to be foreigners (Jewish, Moorish) or peasants.
    Influenced by the medical and philosophical topoi of the time, Fray Luis attributed to the milk of the mother the power to preserve the legitimacy of the children, to transmit to them the ethical virtues of the Christian mother, and, if she belonged to the nobility, to preserve lineage from contamination. Although the economic role prescribed for the wife has led some scholars to identify–and correctly so–the moral values presented in La perfecta casada with the bourgeoisie of the period, Fray Luis’ discourse regarding the raising of children includes the nobility, for he stresses how people of noble ancestry ought to keep their lineage pure and uncontaminated for the sake of their descendants. Furthermore, the discourse of La perfecta casada maintains the need to redirect the productive and reproductive capacity of married women, including their role in the process of feeding, raising, and educating children in order to reinforce the ethical and social order at the time.

isbn: 978-1-58871-095-5 (PB) 142 pp. 2006 $18.95