El anti-don Juan de María de Zayas

All critics agree on considering that María de Zayas writes inspired by the anger that she feels for the women condition. Both in her prose and in the only play we know, La traición en la amistad, Zayas censures with irony and wit the don-Juan type who deceives women leaving them without honour. She does it elaborating an intertextual relationship with El burlador de Sevilla. Specifically, in the play she uses three characters: Liseo, who deceives three women, Fenisa, who is a don-Juan female even more exaggerated than Liseo, and don Juan, the less donjuanesco of all. As a matter of fact, Zayas creates an anti-don Juan similar to the one that Ventura de la Vega will realize in the XIX century with his play El hombre de mundo, a parody of Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio; nevertheless it has a clear ethical purpose: to warn women of his age in order to avoid men's abuses.