For some interesting observations on sex roles in conversation, see Elizabeth Flynn, «Gender and Reading», in Gender and Reading, p. 285.

It is this escape from the rigid rules of courtly behavior, signaled by escape from the court itself, that marks the sharpest distinction between the pastoral books and sentimental books such as the Cárcel de amor; the rigid structure of the courtly love code as interpreted in the sentimental books objectifies women and provides for the expression of codified emotions, Thus, in spite of the emphasis on emotional issues shared by sentimental and pastoral books, they are radically distinct.

See Melveena McKendrick, Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age. A Study of the mujer varonil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).

Fray Domingo de Baltanás, Enchiridión de estados, donde se pone lo que deuen guardar los que tienen el estado del matrimonio: y los eclesiasticos: y los religiosos, hombres y mugeres (Sevilla, 1555), fols. cxxxiiv and cxxxvr.

Juan de Espinosa, Diálogo en laude de las mujeres [1580], ed. Ángela González Simón (Madrid: CSIC, 1946), p. 268. Aside from standard literary sources such as the works of Cervantes, non-fictional examples abound of the notion that it was woman's responsibility not only to be virtuous but appear to be so: «que los principes y los sacerdotes y las mugeres, no basta que sean buenos sino que lo parescan» (Baltanás, fol. cxiiiir).

Crawford and Chaffin, p. 23.

Eleanor Leacock, «Women in Egalitarian Societies», in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), pp. 11-35.

David Bleich, «Gender Interests in Reading and Language», in Gender and Reading, pp. 234-67.

Patrocinio P. Schweickart, «Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading», in Gender and Reading, pp. 31-62 at pp. 54-55.

Gaspar de Astete, Tratado del gouierno de la familia, y estado de las viudas y donzellas (Burgos, 1603), p. 183 (cited in Glaser, p. 407).