Analysis Of The Dinner Party By Teresa De Cartagena

The Dinner Party is an artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago. The piece symbolises a history of women in the Western world, while being regarded greatly as the first epic feminist artwork. Like many of the women represented in this piece, Teresa de Cartagena explores some of the earliest feminist territories while transgressing between cultures in a conservative and male dominated society. For this reason, I believe she deserves a seat at the dinner table. Teresa de Cartagena explores themes of self-knowledge, feminism and gender in her works while relaying her own personal and physical experiences through imagery and metaphors. Similarly, she makes use of biblical references and conveys her intelligence through her works. Teresa de Cartagena

In her first text Arboleda de los enfermos she expresses her own personal and physical experiences of dealing with her disability through dark imagery and metaphors. She wrote this piece as a consolation; finding a spiritual value in suffering and wrote it with didactic intent. In this text, Teresa expresses feelings of sadness and despair through dark imagery. It is written in epistolary form, addressing the “virtuosa señora”. Teresa wanted to share her belief to people with disabilities that the disadvantage she had in life could be wondrous once sacrificed to God. In her work, she uses rhetorical devices such as extended metaphors and use of quotations to express her feelings, but cleverly undermines herself so as not to show her intellectual superiority over the male generation; “mi mugeril ynegenio”. She showcases her intellectual power by discussing theological ideas and displaces authority onto other sources, ultimately drawing from her own personal experiences. Her emotions take material form through her imagery in this text. She explores the idea of spiritual exile as well as physical from friends and family. By quoting Isaiah 9:2, Teresa leans towards hope from the bible. She credits God with providing solace to her in her sufferings. Throughout Arboleda de los obras enfermos, Teresa de Cartagena considers her own suffering within the context of the human condition, ultimately seeing it as a blessing from God and this separates her from her fellow sufferers. Because of the intelligent and somewhat atypical ideas that Teresa expressed in her work, her authorship of the paper was called into question by outside readers, mainly by men. These doubts argued by disbelievers led to Teresa’s second work, a response entitled Admiraçion operum Dey addressed to Juana de Mendoça, the wife of famous poet Gómez