The Biography of Catalina De Erauso - an Outstanding Woman of Spain in The Xvi Century

Catalina de Erauso was a woman leading the life of a man in sixteenth century Spain and eventually on to the New World. Her journey begins as a young woman in covenant of nuns, where she was training to be a nun herself. As anyone can imagine gender roles in the 1600’s was not very flexible. Catalina was a pioneer and challenged rigid gender roles by dressing and living majority of her life as a man. As readers we see Catalina distancing herself from identities that are typically associated with being female. She shows very little emotion, which is typically a feminine emotion, and becomes very desensitized to her violent acts. Catalina also distances herself from people. She does not take time to allow herself to make connections with other people. She does not spend more than a few months in a town due to the risk of someone finding her out.

Catalina has a very complex relationship with the church. Growing up in Spain, she spent most of her young life in the church. She was in the process of training to become a nun but left mid process. She felt as if it was too restraining always being questioned. In the introduction, it is discussed that after killing her brother she finds solace in the church. She grew up in the church, so she feels like that is the only community she has. She never forms close attachments while she travels, so the church is all she has. Catalina often finds herself running back to churches though. After leaving Panama she travels with her master to the Port of Paita where she finds herself in a quarrel. She proceeds to stab a man in his side and afterward she states, “I ran straight into the church, Followed just as quickly by the sheriff,” (14). She goes through the court and she is released, and she goes back to the church since that provides a since of comfort for her. After watching the funeral of her brother, she stays in the church for eight months while she was prosecuted. She finds comfort here while she awaits punishment since she doesn’t have any other close attachments until she flees the area with the help of don Juan Ponce de León.

At the end of her autobiography she returns to the church, where she reveals to the senior bishop that she is a woman. Before she discloses this information to him, he promises to keep her secret, but she only feels comfortable telling him inside of the church. Catalina, while she may feel like the church is what held her back in her early life, she cannot help but go back to churches since that is all she knows. As Catalina continues on her journey the reader begins to notice her really become comfortable in taking on male roles and her beginning to identify as a man. The reader can see her pride get in the way and begins battles in her arrival in Panama. She attends the theater and Reyes sits in front of her. When Reyes refuses to move she is infuriated. She sees him again later during the week and she proceeds to cut him ten times and stabs his friend. She helps her friend in a battle in fighting two other men, and one man turns out to be her brother. She stabs him and ends up killing him. She immediately regrets it upon finding out who he is. This does not stop her though because later on she is arrested again after getting into trouble with the indigenous people. Her pride and inflated ego could come from her overcompensating. Since she is a woman she knows the restrictions that comes with it. She takes her time as a man seriously, so she adopts the pride and ego that comes with the stereotype of being a man.

Catalina has killed numerous men along her journeys. She even murders her own brother despite that being one of the few and only close connections she has. People in power still help Catalina despite her increasing violent actions and run ins with the law. She gets away with this because the church and catholic faith always come back to save her. Referring back to when she stabbed Reyes, her master speaks for her, but it was her time spent in the church repenting that saved her. Later after killing a judge and a lieutenant, she isn’t sentenced to jail time. She serves her time in the church, which is guarded like how a prison would be. While Catalina struggles with her own identity within the church, she knows that people in power value religion and uses that to her advantage. Once Catalina is found with her true identity she is sent back to the church. It takes the church a while to realize that she never actually said her vows, and Catalina continues to live as a man in Spain. When people found out about this she was a household name. She lives in the shadows because as she says, “I spent fifteen days, lying as low as much as possible and fleeting from swarms of people…” (73).

Catalina just wanted to resume her previous life. She visits the King of Spain in which she requests a petition for her work as a lieutenant. He grants it but gives her a little less than what she wanted. At the very end of the memoir, Catalina encounters two women on the street. The two women proceed to call her “señora” to get a rise out of her. Catalina calls the two women derogatory names and threatened to kill them. At this point Catalina may be biologically female, but she truly identifies as a man. The women immediately leave Catalina alone which shows her dominance and aggressiveness which are both typical male traits. Catalina was an extraordinary person who paved the way for how people view women and their roles.