Title: The Female Utopia in Lope de Vega’s Play Fuenteovejuna

Abstract: Fuenteovejuna, the masterpiece of the seventeenth-century Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, is one of the most famous plays of the Golden Age. The play was based on a peasant uprising in Spanish history, but the playwright deliberately added a gender dimension to allow women to play a special role. Under the honor system, women become the tools for men to demonstrate their power. Faced with the dual oppression from both the ruling class and male residents, the female community in the play forms a utopia that heals and rebels against the patriarchy. Such an utopia is manifested as a harmonious spectacle associated with the agricultural and the pastural in peacetime; it evolves into a violent utopia consisting of Amazons when the conflict exacerbates. Though the female community in the play cannot completely overthrow the patriarchal system and are trapped in the male-dominated discourse, the playwright Vega still affirms the confrontational significance of the female utopia.

Keywords: Lope de Vega, Fuenteovejuna, honor system, female utopia, Amazon

Author：Lu Lu, Lecturer, School of International Studies, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China.