Desde sus confesores y los primeros editores de su obra en el siglo XVI, a los estudiosos como Víctor García de la Concha y Alison Weber en el siglo XX, tanto los partidarios como los detractores de Teresa han notado esta obediencia como virtud y como método.

Esta estrategia no ha pasado desapercibida, ni en su época ni en la nuestra. En su escritura se presentó como obediente a sus confesores, a la jerarquía y doctrina ortodoxa de la Iglesia, a su condición de mujer y a Dios. Irónicamente, para lograr esto, se retrató como una mujer común, pecadora, y construyó un discurso en torno a la obediencia que le permitiese es-cribir y actuar para reformar su orden y fundar múltiples conventos. El ser mujer exigió que se presentase como una mujer virtuosa y consecuentemente obediente. Ávila (1515-1582) ha cautivado a sus lectores como visiona-ria y, en particular, como escritora, agobiada por el ' double hindrance of being both female and sinful ' (Hollis 26). This paper will discuss her rhetoric of obedience and how it has been received over time while demonstrating that Teresa's readers depend on their own respective objectives and circumstances, conscious or unconscious, to assign meaning to Teresa's discourse. From her confessors, through early editors of her works in the sixteenth century, to Teresian scholars such as Víctor Gar-cía de la Concha and Alison Weber in the twentieth, both Teresa's advocates and detractors have noted this obedience as virtue and method. This tactic did not go unnoticed in her day, nor in ours. In her writing, she represented herself as obedient to her confessors, superiors, Orthodox Church doctrine, the female condition and God. Ironically, to achieve this, she portrayed herself as an ordinary, sinful woman and constructed a discourse around obedience that enabled her to write and act to reform her order and found multiple convents. Being a woman necessitated that she cast herself as a virtuous and thus obedient woman. AbsTrAcT: For centuries Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) has captivated readers as a visionary and, particularly, as a writer, burdened by the ' double hindrance of being both female and sinful ' (Hollis 26).

Teresa of Avila by Cathleen Medwick