Within Zayas’s feminine world, problematically diverse relationships between female characters are frequently of significance in the development of plot in her novellas; relations of courtship between the two sexes do not receive sole or even main authorial attention. Zayas’s elucidation of human relationships, particularly those between women, coincides with Brownlee’s view of the Baroque epoch where ‘contradictions are designed to be foregrounded and insoluble’. It follows that a Baroque writer such as Zayas should illustrate and explore interaction in specific sectors of society, particularly those to which the author would have been most exposed – women’s same-sex relationships – and should reveal their inherent problematics.

In this chapter, I will turn from my previous theme of Gyn/affection to examine a contrastive aspect of female interrelations: woman’s acts of treacherous agency against her fellow sex in Zayas’s novellas. The first section of this chapter is an investigation of the close relationship that emerges between women’s treachery and their opportunistic use of the honour code. In the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares, Zayas unveils several instances of female perfidy, evidencing disintegration in the prevailing social structure as woman turns on woman; the current of women’s perfidy continues to flow through the circuit of desire in her Desengaños amorosos. The consequences of woman’s victimisation by her fellow sex, which frequently cost innocent women their lives, are far graver than the titular ‘disillusionment with love’ suggested by the latter work. In the denouements of the Desengaños amorosos, hope for poetic justice evaporates. The second part of this chapter will explore relationships of sisterhood in Zayas’s prose and the treachery among those of her female protagonists who are ‘sisters’ by blood or marriage. The three tales that foreground the sisterly bond contain particularly grievous instances of women’s perfidy. In these novellas, sister betrays sister, symbolising the disintegration of that element of the family structure. The abuse of patriarchal values and the honour code is certainly ubiquitous in these diverse instances of female relationships, exacerbating the effects of betrayal and hindering loyalty, but the primary focus is on the wrong done to women by women.