University of Texas Press
Women's Lives in Colonial Quito
About this book
What did it mean to be a woman in colonial Spanish America? Given the many advances in women's rights since the nineteenth century, we might assume that colonial women had few rights and were fully subordinated to male authority in the family and in society—but we'd be wrong. In this provocative study, Kimberly Gauderman undermines the long-accepted patriarchal model of colonial society by uncovering the active participation of indigenous, mestiza, and Spanish women of all social classes in many aspects of civil life in seventeenth-century Quito.
Gauderman draws on records of criminal and civil proceedings, notarial records, and city council records to reveal women's use of legal and extra-legal means to achieve personal and economic goals; their often successful attempts to confront men's physical violence, adultery, lack of financial support, and broken promises of marriage; women's control over property; and their participation in the local, interregional, and international economies. This research clearly demonstrates that authority in colonial society was less hierarchical and more decentralized than the patriarchal model suggests, which gave women substantial control over economic and social resources.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
PREFACE Nothing Stays the Same: One City, Two Women
ix -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
xiii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction: Putting Women in Their Place
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 1 Ambiguous Authority, Contingent Relations: The Nature of Power in Seventeenth-Century Spanish America
12 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 2 Married Women and Property Rights
30 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 3 Women and the Criminal Justice System
48 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 4 Women as Entrepreneurs
71 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 5 Indigenous Market Women
92 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 6 Conclusion
124 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
133 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
163 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
173
