Gender and the Monstrous in El burlador de Sevilla

Abstract

In his 1611 Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Sebastián de Covarrubias defines "monstruo" as "cualquier parto contra la regla y orden natural" (761). Covarrubias's definition reveals his culture's understanding of the presumably feminine source of the monstrous for any biology in which females give birth. The relative disorder associated with Woman indirectly manifest in this dictionary entry is directly apparent in documents such as seventeenth-century prescriptive literature and pragmáticas against male effeminate behavior. 1 Such references provide ample evidence of how gender constituted one of the most rigid categories of "la regla y orden natural" through which baroque Spanish society proposed to sustain and reproduce itself. The young, virile, and vicious protagonist of El burlador de Sevilla challenges dominant precepts of natural order by executing a dualistic performance comprised of both Female and Male attributes. Losing the challenge costs him his life, at the same time it guarantees his character a prominent place in western cultural history. Specifically, Don Juan performs negative cultural assignations of Woman while executing the positive features of Man, with the result that the [End Page 267] feminine traits of his character assure his damnation and his masculine properties render him heroic for posterity.