Outlooks of female education in Spain (16th and 17th centuries): Luis de León, Juan Luis Vives and Joseph Rojo

Abstract

This paper analyses the different points of view on the question of female instruction and education in the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain. To achieve this objective, we will analyze three testimonies, two of them fundamental for studies on the subject: Instruction of a Christian woman by Juan Luis Vives and The Perfect Wife by Luis de León. In addition, these two testimonies will be compared with the Mirror of illustrious and perfect women of Joseph Rojo. This work was written in the last decades of the 17th century approximately. After studying the ideas that each author shows in his text: for example on childhood, intellectual formation, the importance of virginity or domestic tasks, it is possible to obtain a conclusion in a synthesized ideological way. On this idea, we will draw a line of thought that will reflect the progressive gestation of the changes in the misogynist mentality of the Middle Ages. The first element of this line is The Perfect Wife. Although it is written after Instruction of a Christian woman, it presents values closer to medieval discourses. On the contrary, Rojo’s text is the most advanced and its conceptions are similar to the new views of the Age of Enlightenment. His work allows us to verify whether the changes studied generated a real evolution in collective thought or whether, on the contrary, they could not affect the behavior of the people of Spain in the Golden Age.