Lieutenant Nun

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-19

Chapters 20-26

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Personal Identity Versus Societal Roles

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.

However, despite Erauso’s success while presenting as a man, there was still a divide between her new and old identities that led to complications. For example, she was unable to tell her brother who she really was, and her “misery” after accidentally killing him shows the depths of her familial attachment (25). Furthermore, her ultimate confession of her sex in Guamanga led to an immediate alteration in her status. Initially, others urged her to return to her “original” societal role. Her identity again became that of a nun, and she was confined to a nunnery. Religious figures, such as the bishop of Guamanga or the archbishop in Santa fe de Bogotá, insisted that she should follow a religious life, evidently believing that she must conform. When she left the nunnery, she returned to her old activities such as fighting over gambling or insults about her identity, while also making a point of visiting nunneries. Her value system remained largely the same as that of men, while also not fitting an exact categorization into the expectations of men and women in that age. When the Pope permitted her to continue wearing masculine clothes, it was an acknowledgement of this fact.

Ultimately, Erauso personally challenged the conception that the societal role one is expected to take must define one’s identity. She rejected her life as a nun twice over, consistently preferring the life and value system of a martial man. However, she did not challenge the systematic upholding of the societal expectations themselves, as she willingly accepted colonialist narratives about the colonies and exhibited a dismissive attitude toward women. In these ways, Erauso presented herself more as an exception to a rule instead of offering a broader social critique.

Freedom and Adventure in the Colonial World

Throughout the events detailed in Lieutenant Nun, Erauso experienced life in the South American Spanish colonies as full of adventure. Presenting as a man, she was able to take advantage of the less rigid and more varied lifestyle offered by the “New World” to young Spanish men of the time, revealing the freedom and opportunities available.

The wealth of the colonies and the consistent need for more Spanish citizens—who had more legal rights than Indigenous people or those of other races—created more opportunities for people of modest backgrounds than what was usually offered in Spain. This difference is apparent in Lieutenant Nun from Erauso’s own ability to gain significant roles in a variety of businesses. Not long after arriving on the continent, she was placed in charge of one of Juan de Urquiza’s shops and received a proposal to marry into a farm-owning family, explicitly because “Spaniards were scarce in those parts” (28). Merchants and soldiers especially had large opportunities in this prosperous and hostile land: Urquiza, a merchant without a stated rank, was able to angle for a marriage between his employee (Erauso) and Doña Beatriz de Cárdenas, a noblewoman. The soldiers of Posotí cited the loot available from war as their reason to refuse the governor’s orders to settle, with many using loot as a reason to desert later.

Erauso also depicts the South American colonies as places where European ideas about law and order had not yet been fully established. Erauso, and others, could flagrantly commit crimes and almost always escape the punishment of the law. In each town she visited, she could reinvent herself, with few consequences carrying over from the last town she was in for most of her 20 years in the colonies. It was also a place of endemic warfare, where the Spanish fought both with other colonial powers (such as the Dutch besiegers of Lima) or the Indigenous populations. The war-like atmosphere of the colonies gave Erauso many opportunities to prove herself as a soldier. Ultimately, Lieutenant Nun presents the “New World” as a place of flux, where the established order of the “Old World” was absent, granting people like her a degree of freedom that would not be possible elsewhere.

Erauso’s connections with South America later brought her fame back in Europe. Her celebrity speaks of the ways in which she embodied the freedom and adventure that the “New World” represented, due to her status as a person who upended the usual norms of society extensively and successfully.

The Role of Religion in Early Modern Life

Religion, mostly the Catholic Church, was a central part of Erauso’s society. Through Erauso’s attitudes and dealings with the Catholic Church and its clergy, she highlights the importance of religion in early modern life.

Erauso’s understanding of geography was impacted by religion; she introduces several towns by describing their local churches or status within the hierarchy of the church, gesturing toward the centrality of the local religious network to each place she visited. The Church also represents a place of undisputed refuge even for criminals: Erauso frequently sought sanctuaries in churches, rendering constables and sheriffs powerless to arrest her, even when she was evidently guilty. Moreover, the clergy played a key role in her society. Erauso was sent to a nunnery as a child, seemingly as a matter of course, and she expressed an absolute trust in most priests. It was only priests that she confessed her identity to, and she even describes Agustín de Carvajal, the senior bishop of Guamanga, as a “saintly gentleman” in whose presence she felt the presence of God (64).

Religion is also a defining aspect of people’s identity. At one point, Erauso wonders if fellow travelers on the road were “cannibals or Christians” (27), revealing that she viewed religion as the central difference between the Spanish and Indigenous peoples. One’s status within the church was nearly as important as the fact of being Christian: The feud between Doña Catalina de Chaves and Doña Francisca de Marmolejo was based on their seating within a church, which carried connotations of their social rank. These factors demonstrate that religion and society were nearly inseparable in Erauso’s view.

Despite this, Erauso often seemed to ignore the precepts of Catholicism, and it had a notably muted impact on her decisions. She rejected her religious vocation as a child in San Sebastian and again as an adult in South America. Her interactions with most of the churches she came across were largely opportunistic, as shown by her interruption of the eucharist in La Paz so that she could get sanctuary in a church and escape a death penalty. Later on, both Agustín de Carvajal and the Pope himself urged Erauso to live a peaceful life—advice that she did not take to heart. After Carvajal’s warning, she got into another fight while gambling, and after the Pope’s, she threatened to attack women in Naples.

Erauso’s decisions and behavior ultimately show that despite religion’s importance, it was not the only factor that impacted Erauso’s decisions. Her honor system and values also exerted significant sway over her. Nevertheless, her autobiography presents the Catholic Church as a significant, and ever-present, aspect of her existence.