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Allusion
Explanation and Analysis—Descartes:
Describing the Perichole's attempts to escape her past as an actress and become a "virtuous" woman, Wilder makes a satirical allusion to Descartes:
In society she cultivated a delicate and languid magdelinism, as a great lady might, and she carried a candle in the penitential parades, side by side with ladies who had nothing to regret but an outburst of temper and a furtive glance into Descartes.
Now considered one of the foremost thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition, Rene Descartes was a 17th-century mathematician and philosopher whose supposedly heretical work aroused the ire of the Catholic Church. In colonial Lima, a society dominated by Catholic authorities and the ongoing Spanish inquisition, espousing Descartes' ideas would have been unorthodox and perhaps politically dangerous. But for women, who were considered incapable of higher learning or political action, a "furtive glance" into the philosopher's books would have been far less scandalous than working as an actress, a profession stigmatized as akin to sex work in many early modern societies.
In this passage, Wilder satirizes the close-minded nature of Spanish colonial society. Especially for his 20th-century readers, who would have recognized Descartes' enormous contributions to mathematics and philosophy, it's funny to imagine people deliberately turning away from his works. Through the tongue-in-cheek phrase "a furtive glance," Wilder also dramatizes the difference between the hypothetical woman's opinion of Descartes and that of the modern reader.
Importantly, Wilder also satirizes the Perichole's aspirations to ascend to the local aristocracy. In a society that is both fixated on hierarchy and repressive of women, her quest is most likely doomed. And if reading Descartes isn't really a sin, then the criteria for respectability in Peruvian society are largely meaningless—and so is the Perichole's desire to fit in.
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