This excess of caution defeated its own purpose. Women, left much alone within their cloister-like homes, waited not in vain for opportunity. The gay mistress could often too easily win over her attendant, and make of her dueña a go-between; yet if we may believe the record, infidelity was rare, and for two reasons. First, woman in her seclusion escaped many temptations; and secondly, a wholesome fear, the certainty that vengeance, swift and sure, would follow the offence, resulting in the death of one or both offenders, placed a curb on passion. Females of the lower classes, left alone to take care of their virtue as best they might, with faces open and actions free, were less given to transgression than their wealthier sisters.
Lewd women could not testify in criminal cases. Respectable women were permitted to testify, but the judge was obliged to wait on them at their homes, as they were not allowed to attend court. Learning to write was discouraged in females, as they could then have it in their power to scribble love-letters to their gallants. Queen Isabella did much to elevate and purify both religion and morals. The court of Enrique IV., her predecessor, has been described as but little better than a brothel, where "the queen, a daughter of Portugal, lived openly with her parasites and gallants, as the king did with his minions and mistresses." Maids of honor were trained courtesans, and the noblemen of the court occupied their time in illicit amours and love intrigues. From the king on his throne to his lowest subject, all who could afford it kept a mistress.
Ware states that within a century the widows of Madrid were "compelled to pass the whole first year of their mourning in a chamber entirely hung with black, where not a single ray of the sun could penetrate, seated on a little mattress with their legs always crossed. When this year was over, they retired to pass the second year in a chamber hung with grey." This savagism is paralleled by the Thlinkeets of Alaska, who at certain times confine women in a little kennel for six months, giving them one a size larger for the second six months; likewise by the Tacullies of New Caledonia, who make the widow carry the deceased husband's ashes upon her back in a bag for one or two years.