Because she was susceptible

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Author's text

By that time, a prison reform was being carried out, hence it is indeed quite probable that Goya leveraged his art, and this engraving specifically, in order to condemn the deplorable conditions in which prisoners were living. Goya might have been influenced by a real prison sentence he knew what led him into the idea of improving the penitentiary system.

Be that as it may, Goya successfully portrays the overwhelming loneliness of this unfortunate woman who had been abandoned and sentenced due to a disconcerting ‘crime’: her sensitivity. Back in those righteous days, the Spanish Inquisition court was meant to judge behaviours and attitudes which usually were unconnected to its main doctrine. On account of that, this woman would have been prosecuted for her unethical passion: a way of love deviated from an imposed morality which people, and mostly women, had to obey without hesitation.

Hard lines and discrimination do not distinguish among situations, reasons or circumstances. Those ones who dare to not follow or simply disagree with dominant ideas, which are deeply narrow minded and irrational, are isolated, judged and punished on behalf of an updated Inquisition, not official , yet socially accepted.

Goya's comment

That’s life! Sometimes you are at the top of the world, some others in the deepest hole. Her way of living took her to an inevitable outcome.

Comparison with the original print