Gossip as Speech Act in Teresa of Avila

Carole Slade writes that Teresa of Avila “might well have considered herself on trial.” Until I read this article, I didn’t even consider this a point of contention, but I don’t think Slade and I have the same judgment in mind. Slade’s claims rely on the Freudian concepts of repression and fantasy, that Teresa conceals much from her friends and from herself in order to protect herself from the truth. It seems to me, though, that Teresa is concealing much in order to protect herself from God.

What, then is concealed? Names and deeds. Teresa, as ordered, is attempting to make some kind of account of herself. She is obedient to her superiors in this but remains obedient to God by refusing to repeat one specific deed, gossip, that she so harshly repudiates in her younger self. The tact she takes is to give an abstract, spiritual history of herself as opposed to the type of autobiography we are more acquainted with, which sometimes foreground their gory details. (And if these details are not gory enough, it seems that some autobiographers of late have even been compelled to invent them.) Thus, Teresa disavows gossip without repeating the mistake. This provides at least some measure of internal consistency. We cannot really corroborate Teresa’s writing with her early life, as the most exhaustive record is her own, but we can at least see that she is acting consistently in concealing certain things, if we consider gossip, or more importantly here abstinence from gossip, a speech act.

This is certainly not the sturdiest basis on which to take her at her word when she says, for instance, that she was her father’s favorite. But the argument that she must have been neglected by her father because she claims that she was favored seems even less compelling, in light of this one shred of evidence we have about her behavior. Teresa’s circumspection, which for Slade was a concealing circumspection, seems genuine enough to me. I do agree with Slade that Teresa leaves much out; only I think she does so with a relatively high degree of conscious intent.