Making It Abroad: Bernarda Ramírez (Naples) and Petronila Jibaja (Lisbon)

Abstract From earliest times, the life of actors or actresses was a sort of “escaparate” or showcase, always on display. Much like today’s gliteratti, they were both admired and looked down upon. If the acting profession was seen as morally reprehensible in general, the attitude toward women was no less critical. Given social norms that saw the female sex almost exclusively in terms of her body and the female actor in terms of her class, women ought to know their place and keep to it. That actresses were free to look, act, dress, and behave like their “betters” represented a threat to social and moral order, a threat as often condemned from the pulpit as confirmed in the news sources of the time. Nevertheless, then as now, a good scandal—one involving the highest levels of society and carried on abroad—could “make” one’s career. Two examples of “making it” abroad—a hundred years apart—are Bernarda Ramírez (1615?–1662) and Petronila Jibaja (1692–1763). Both were of humble origin, both were admired, favored, and kept by aristocrats abroad, and both returned to Spain with fame and fortune that they were able to maintain until their careers ended.