Cognitive Dissonance in María de Zayas' "La esclava de su amante"

According to Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, a number of strategies can be implemented to reduce feelings of cognitive dissonance4: a person can (1) change his or her behavior; (2) change his or her attitudes; (3) add cognitions; (4) alter the importance of the discrepancy; and/or (5) reduce his or her perceived choice (Franzoi 172). Because her sexual body is the ground of the culture's system of differences, the woman's hymen is also the ground of contention. In a sense, both Leocadia and Rodolfo are redeemed to the extent to which redemption is possible given the socio-historical context. Since Rodolfo had never promised to marry Leocadia and since he pertains to the nobility (a status only accessible to her through marriage), her legal recourses are limited, and marriage is her only option. Interestingly enough, historical documentation has shown this solution to rape to have been a viable and accepted option for some women during the early modern period. [...]as Festinger has suggested, the seventeenth-century social group may not have actually experienced cognitive dissonance with regard to this issue either, or at least if it did, a woman's marriage to her rapist was such an accepted cultural practice that there existed little outright objection to it (177).