Sorcery, Adultery, and Penalty in <i>El carnero</i>

Through an analysis of the characters of Juana García (a Celestinesque black woman) and Inés de Hinojosa (an unfaithful Creole wife), this article shows how El carnero represents women and adultery. My first thesis is that Juan Rodríguez Freyle incorporates these stories into his crónica as a cautionary tale. The second thesis is that El carnero’s hostility toward women goes hand in hand with an essentialist discourse about them. By essentialist discourse, I mean a set of assumptions that present women as inherently prone to certain negative traits, specifically: moral weakness, deceitfulness, and sexual indiscretion. These two theses are interrelated, as the cautionary tale serves to alert readers to purported dangers: namely, the innate wickedness of women (as perceived by the author) and the necessity of controlling them.