Lieutenant Nun

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Indigenous racism.

Lieutenant Nun examines the gulf that can exist between the facts of someone’s personal identity and the expectations of their society. This theme is mainly explored through Catalina de Erauso herself, who struggled to align the various aspects of her initial identity, her assumed identity, and the societal role she found herself in as she sought to present herself as a man in search of adventure.

Following Erauso’s donning of masculine clothes, a separation existed between her initial identity as a nun in training and the identity of a young Spanish gentleman that she assumed. From this point on, she embraced the masculine code of honor and attempted to conform to expectations for young Spanish men. During her time in South America, she engaged in typically masculine actions: She engaged in flirtations with women, delved into the world of commerce, and fought other men often. These fights often occurred due to events around the gambling table and, on occasion, followed the heavily charged insulted of “cuckold.” She thus fulfilled the expectations of her new social role, while her quick, violent reactions to perceived insults reveal that she had internalized the masculine value system in the early modern world.