Servants of Desire, Masters of Deceit: The Discourse of Servitude in Selected Spanish Early Modern Novellas

There are several recent studies on the servant character type in English Renaissance literature, but few such studies in Spanish literature. Alison Weber's study of the Celestina and Carroll Johnson's study of the relationship between Sancho Panza and Don Quijote are two notable exceptions that specifically address conflicts between masters and servants. My dissertation aims to contribute to the critical discussion of domestic service in early modern European literature by studying relationships between servants and masters as presented in canonical novellas by Miguel de Cervantes and Maria de Zayas. To provide cultural context to my analysis, I also examine prescriptive literature's presentation of servants as well as foreigners' perceptions of domestic service as documented in travel literature. Through this study, I will show how this character type played a key role in literary discussions of the shifting boundaries of social class and personal identity in seventeenth-century Spain.;Gender issues divide Cervantes and Zayas' approaches to the servant character. Cervantes' novellas explore issues of resentment and social mobility among male servants. He acknowledges domestic service as an essential aspect of life, and uses service as a metaphor for the role of the professional author in society. He proposes that solidarity and friendship among non-elite men is a solution to the problem of ungenerous masters and unfair working conditions in early modern Spain. Zayas' novellas focus on female servants and their interactions with aristocratic mistresses. As agents of their mistresses' desires, they are expected to hide their mistresses' sexual delinquency, but they are also in a position of great power to reveal these secrets, with fatal consequences in a society in which female sexuality forms the basis of honor. Servants symbolize guilt over illicit female desire; thus, discussions of servants are also discussions about unacknowledged aspects of female aristocratic desire.