Calderon De La Barca's Life Analysis

A recent, two women version of Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream was staged in London this year, retelling it from the point of view of its main female character. The website for Rosaura proclaims her as "one of the strongest characters in the history of theatre", (REF), which leads to the impression that Calderon had written a proto-feminist character, despite his strong absolutist and catholic views. After all, in the original play, when Rosaura bursts onto the stage, dressed like a man, swearing and climbing down a mountain side, she is signalling to the audience that this is a female character breaking down all the restrictions placed on her gender in 17th Century Spain. Are we meant to infer from this that Calderon believed in some …show more content…
Thus, Rosaura is given agency in the play and she is moving freely in the public, masculine space of adventure and danger. Had she not been in disguise, she would have been expected to stay in the safe, private sphere of the female. These acts, of cross-dressing and taking on a masculine quest, would seem to confirm her as a proto-feminist. Yet the agency that the playwright bestows on her is swiftly taken away. First, she must surrender her sword - the phallic symbol of male authority, she then requests the aid of Clotaldo to help avenge her honour. Clotaldo, showing consternation at her male disguise, quickly has her back in female garb lest "Astolfo might see you as you were, and deem you wanton" (251). When Clotaldo demurs about killing Astolfo to exact revenge, Rosaura insists she will do it herself though it is "madness" and "self -destruction" (ref), then, when we next see her, she is asking Segismundo for help in restoring her honour. It appears that Calderon was not overly concerned with consistent motivations for his female character, instead, Rosaura is reduced to a device that is used to serve the male characters with a plot; Clotaldo with a dilemma (how to balance his honour code with loyalty to the nobility) and Segismundo with how to learn to be a wise and just monarch. More damning is the fact that Rosaura, a woman, is hell bent on pursuing the honour code for the entirety of the play. This is a code which rests on the control of women's bodies; it's very existence helping to oppress her entire gender. In a country obsessed with the sexual behaviour of women with harsh punishments on unfaithful wives and a daughter's virginity highly prized ( A Companion to Gender History, 21) it beggar's belief, that a bright, intelligent woman like