The Disenchantments of Love 3

     I think story ten definitely has an effect on the overall book. In this story the main characters switched roles in a sense from the characters in the previous stories. Florentina commits terrible acts of betrayal and causes a mass murder in her home while don Gasper does nothing wrong. (Besides perhaps 'loving the ladies' a bit too much).I think de Zayas ended the book with this story because it illustrates that will many men deceive women, some women also deceive men. In the end of the book it says, "In a machine as wide and vast as this world, there must be a mixture of good women and bad just as there are men both good and bad... There are in this day and age more loose and viscous women then there have ever before been, but that doesn't mean there aren't more good women than bad." I think that although this book is meant to defend women, it couldn't be left out that there are  some women who give "motive to men for their widespread lack of regard for women." After all, de Zayas writes these words in the paragraph that directly follows the tenth story. I think she wanted to emphasize that while there are some women who give men reason to deceive, the good women outweigh them. For this reason, women should be defended and protected from these deceitful men. The female gender shouldn't just be generalized as viscous and deceiving.

     I think that fact that there is such a high body count in the tenth story (almost all women) is that if you deceive there will be a consequence. In this case, two women were a part of the deceiving yet anyone who got in don Dionis' way was killed. Once you have lost your honor or deceived your punishment is to die for it. don Dionis believed in his mind (party due to the society at the time) that if a woman betrayed her husband she was to be punished. Death by a husband wasn't uncommon. After all, Florentina's maid suggests that they get don Dionis to kill Florentina. Her justification behind it is, "I think the best way, so that neither of us is in danger, is to get her husband to kill her. That way nobody will be blamed." When don Dionis comes home to find Fernando in his wife's room he immediatly kills them both without thinking twice. In our society today it wouldn't matter whether it was the husband or a stranger that killed dona Magdelena. Either person would be held accountable and it would matter a great deal. This just goes to show a husband's hold on his wife; his ownership. He can do what he wants to her.
     In the beginning of story seven I got that feeling that dona Blanca was unhappy despite her control of the situation because she didn't actually want to get married. She wasn't the one who arranged this marriage. She wanted a husband that she actually knew, hence the one year courtship. She says, "I'm in even greater despair because the time is running out so quickly and if they think it's too long, I think it's too short." I think that dona Blanca is different than most women we've seen in that she wants a courtship. She doesn't want to just marry a man she knows nothing about for this would bring about despair. "All too often women who get married without pleasure, and without pleasure they go from life to death, never really living during all the time of their marriage." I think this condition of a courtship was in part she didn't think she had the courage to do it. She said, "It took great courage for a woman to marry a man about whose nature and habits she knew nothing simply for the convenience and pleasure of others." This would end in one of them being deceived. "When a marriage is not founded on love, you can blame no one but yourself."