Lieutenant Nun

Miguel was Erauso’s brother, and he moved to South America when she was a child. They met while Erauso was in the military, but he did not know her true identity. They then spent three years together in Concepción before they fought over a mistress that both were seeing. Later, and unbeknownst to Erauso, he acted as the second in a duel where she was also a second; she mortally wounded him before she realized his identity.

While he only appears in one chapter of the book, he plays an important role in the story and shows the complications of Erauso hiding her personal identity. She and Miguel bonded over a shared feature of their identity, that both were Basqueros from San Sebastian. The reader and Erauso know that they are were fact siblings, something that adds a layer of nuance to their relationship and tragedy to Miguel’s death. His character shows the complications involved with Erauso’s secret life.

Narratively, the main role of Miguel is to cause Erauso’s descent into outlawry. Before this, she was a lieutenant in the army, known for her heroism on the battlefield. Due to her murder of Miguel, she began fleeing from town to town, which defined a large portion of her later experiences in South America.

Carvajal was the senior bishop of Guamanga and the person to whom Erauso made the confession of her true identity. He thus plays a crucial role in an essential turning point in the book, as through confessing to him, Erauso effectively revealed herself to the world, which ended her adventures in South America.

Erauso frames Carvajal as a kind and supportive man who acted as a “saintly gentleman” following her decision to reveal herself to him (64). He is characterized as nearly an epitome of Christian morality, first appearing while stopping a battle in the street over Erauso’s arrest. He then acted as a spiritual advisor to Erauso, urging her toward a moral life. In his presence, Erauso claims that she felt “as if [she] might already [have] be[en] in the presence of God” (64). Later, she describes her grief at his death, the only other time she does this being when she describes her brother’s funeral, which is a hint at their closeness. Erauso’s presentation of Carvajal is thus as a moral authority, and through his description, her broader views of the Church can be seen. He, like the churches she so often took sanctuary in, acted as a source of comfort and safety whenever needed. Her positive assessment of him reveals that, despite her lack of interest in the life of a nun, she was still invested in Catholicism.

Narratively, Carvajal acts as the facilitator for the end of Erauso’s wanderings and as the person who caused her social role to change. It is his apparent disclosure of her secret to others that means that she was locked into the life of a nun for over two years and then became an unwilling celebrity. With this role in Erauso’s life, it may seem surprising that she has nothing but positive opinions of Carvajal, as his intervention nearly caused her to lose the life as a man that she demonstrably favored. Nevertheless, Erauso evidently did not hold anything against him.

Cárdenas was a lady of rank in Saña with whom Erauso had a flirtation before she fled. She is depicted as a lover of finery and goods, as demonstrated by her frequent purchases from Erauso’s shop, while being sexually forward in private. Her role within the book is mostly to be a source of comic entertainment, as Erauso had to struggle to escape her advances.

Cárdenas is less notable as a character in herself than as the first of the many women throughout the book that play a similar role to her. The same model of character reappears several times: a woman whom Erauso treated as some form of love interest before she disappeared from her life entirely. With Cárdenas, and the two suitors in Tucumán, Erauso’s escape is part of the narrative drama, while her entanglement with Doña María Dávalos places her in the role of an unwitting and unwilling rescuer, a comedic twist on a trope of rescuing a damsel in distress that her audience would be familiar with. These depictions are important because they give an idea of Erauso’s values: She consistently focused on martial priorities (and therefore masculine priorities, in the beliefs of early modern Spaniards), with the female characters providing comedic relief or acting as love interests.