Assuming Roles: Gender, Crisis and the Conservation of Spain in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Fearful that recent military losses and continued economic difficulties indicated the decline of their once powerful state, Spanish reformers and royal officials during the first quarter of the seventeenth century dedicated themselves to finding reform programs to conserve Spain and its monarchy. They were led by the Junta Grande de Reformación, a unique committee formed by the monarchy to rehabilitate what many saw as the central factor in Spain's condition: faltering popular customs (costumbres). Reformers reached the conclusion that Spanish society had grown "effeminate," exchanging the strength and virility of Spain's successful empire for widespread foppishness and idleness. Focused on the efforts to reform customs during this era and the gendered rhetoric and notions that filled related reform writings, this dissertation seeks to understand how gender shaped the policies intended to rehabilitate popular conduct. It shows that these representations of gender revealed not only reformers' understandings of Spain's failing empire and diminished world power, but also the unique gender assumptions that gave rise to the reform plans proposed and enacted to stave off decline. Complaints of widespread effeminacy betrayed the monarchy's disdain for allegedly self-interested conduct, which royal officials felt had displaced the empire's initial commitment to king, community and the established social order. These gendered criticisms also pointed to a set of virtues, which stressed activity, productivity, duty and other qualities associated with idealized, manly conduct. The models of productive merchants or martially trained nobles offered by reformers met the needs of the state, but also conveyed a sense of balance and order that underpinned the contemporary understanding of gender and reinforced the roles Spaniards needed to fill to conserve Spain.