La Edad de Hierro en La traición en la amistad de María de Zayas

Abstract

For María de Zayas, a fundamental objective of her literary work is to demonstrate that women possess keen perception and ingenuity. In La traición en la amistad, the perspicacity and ingenuity of women are made obvious by way of a complex plot based on self-interested friendships, woven around a series of references to the Iron Age. Self-interest and virtue are two opposite poles within reference to the classic philosophy of friendship: without virtue it is impossible to create a true friendship. That said, the question of what is virtue and what are its limits corresponds to the field of ethics, a discipline traditionally centered on relationships between men. Unsurprisingly, Zayas constructs a feminine friendship completely peripheral to the masculine concepts of virtue, as much for the masculine gender as for the feminine gender. These feminine friendships represent the possibility of a return to harmony after the Iron Age.