Gender Matters In the riveting novel, Lieutenant Nun, Catalina de Erauso goes against every norm for a young woman in Spain. This story told from a first person point of view has many themes including religion, violence and gender. Catalina de Erauso was able to achieve things disguised as a man that she wouldn’t have been able to as a woman. Catalina was able to embrace her masculine alter-ego and did so by resorting to extreme violence in some ways, and she was also able to keep in touch with religion throughout the book. Catalina’s ability to transform herself into a man and live undetected for more than two decades suggests that gender is constructed, not innate, and that masculinity can be created. The changing of Catalinas gender gave her the opportunity to travel outside of Spain and all over the earth. If she had stayed a woman, these opportunities would not have been available to her. In Chapter Three you can begin to see the benefits that her travels are bringing to her. For doing a good job on the journey to Peru, Catalina’s explained that her employer, “In his gratitude he made me a gift of two fine suits, one black and one of color. He put me to work in his store in charge of textiles and other goods worth more than one hundred and thirty thousand pesos, for which I was to keep strict accounts.” These rewards and even opportunity to earn such rewards would have never been given to a woman. Because of her new gender and identity, Catalina was able to explore and see many new places and she was able to work in many jobs that she wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. This was a great benefit to her because it helped her to really develop her masculine side and choose only to accentuate those masculine features that she wanted others to see.
Catalina is no longer the victim of violence, as she was as a child and teenager; now she is combative and