Marina S. Brownlee's essay "Postmodernism and the Baroque in Maria de Zayas" classifies the three prevailing views of Zayas' work as realistic, a faithful portrayal of life in seventeenth-century Spain; as exemplary narratives designed to celebrate establishment values; and as exclusively feminist (111, 113-15). Brownlee takes issue with each of these perspectives, proposing instead that we read the novellas as calling attention to the power of language and its complex performative function. "She [Zayas] presents a variety of potentially exemplary, totalizing discourses-feminist and masculinist-in their power both to represent legitimately and to manipulate illegitimately" (120). Brownlee goes on to speak of Zayas' "metalinguistic critique" of such venerable cultural institutions as marriage, honor, religion, and the justice system (120). This article will focus on the third of these institutions in the form of Golden Age sermons, and on how a particular novella by Zayas, La fuerza del amor, incorporates and responds to elements of their totalizing masculinist discourse.