The main goal of this panel is to provide a forum in which to discuss the form and type of female voices found in Hispanic Literature prior to the 20^th century. Though studies often center on the way women have been silenced, our intent is to look to the various strategies women used to express themselves. Those "tricks of the weak," to use Josefina Ludmer's term, enabled female characters ­­­–whether fashioned by male or female authors­­– to break through the barriers and prejudices of their day and to find ways to counter the dominant dehumanizing or demeaning narratives that justified misogyny, oppression, differentiation, and segregation. The panelists will examine both, discourses written by female authors, and the presence of female voices in the texts regardless of the gender of the authors who create them. This duality represents an interesting opportunity to reflect upon issues of agency and (non?)-speaking subalternity, using Spivak’s terminology. The oppression against women is reinforced or fought through the tools of language. Two of the main rhetorical mechanisms for perpetuating or breaking with this asymmetrical relation of power are insults and laudatory comments. The panelists will present their research about the symbolic and political implications of the always suggestive presence of these rhetorical mechanisms.

This domination is, in part, rooted in the control of females’ fama (in the Latin sense of glory, reputation, public opinion). As demonstrated by Joanna Carraway in her study of criminal trials in Late medieval Europe, fama becomes instrumental in victim blaming, an attempt to shift the responsibility for the crime onto the victim. However, in the 17^th century, we find an extraordinary example of how a woman fought to regain control of her own identity. The first panelist, Rosa Perelmuter, will explain how the writings of Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz reveal a desire to control her own fama and reject attempts by male figures to define her. The many transatlantic opinions and comments the famous nun ­­–the "Tenth Muse of Mexico"– receives in the form of poems and letters gave her the opportunity to explain herself and, in a sense, to have the last word. She variously employs rhetorical figures and strategies (irony, sarcasm, invective) that turn apparent obedience, courtesy, and humility into their very opposite. Hers is ultimately a "double-voiced" discourse meant to defend her rights as a woman to study, learn and write.

In Peru, in the 19^th century, we witness an analogous attempt by a woman to regain control over her own discourse. In this case, Pamela Gálvez will discuss how Clorinda Matto de Turner is responsible for creating a space from which her vision of the world can be projected. Whereas the work of Perelmuter focuses mainly on the authorial voice, Gálvez will discuss the role the author’s gender plays in the production of her craft ­­–her point of view–, the nature of her female fictional characters and the configuration of their discourse. Gálvez considers whether Matto’s fiction consolidates her position as a female author or, on the contrary, represents the continuation of an imposed normative masculine discourse. By relying on the critical tools provided by authors such as Judith Butler and Jonathan Culler, she discusses the construction of femininity and the articulation of predetermined performative features in the works of the Peruvian novelist.

Continuing with this idea, Javier Irigoyen-García will focus on the performative aspects of female characters in 17th-century Spanish theater. While swearing (and especially blasphemy) was considered only proper of male characters, Irigoyen-García will show how swearing is used for certain female characters on the stage to highlight them as "manly women" and situating them in a space of dialectical confrontation and emotional development. Even though the presence of manly women in seventeenth-century theater has been amply studied, most of the scholarship has focused on their specific clothing, violence, or actions considered typically masculine (Inamoto 1992, González 1995, Arellano 1986), but not on their use of strong or offensive language. This presentation adds a new, interesting feature to the construction of this often-used character type and explores the authors' manipulation of the societal structures imposed on female behavior.

The three presentations offer reflections on the ways women –their voices, their discourse, and their language– are represented in a variety of genres (poetry, novel, theater) in the Hispanic world from Sor Juana to Matto de Turner. They bring to the fore the negotiations in the expression of gender, a topic that is still being mediated today.