Letters and love in colonial Spanish America

Americas

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 17-46

  Earle, Rebecca ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849253700     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2005.0120     Document Type: Review

References (106)

1. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)
2. See, for example, the reviews by Alan Macfarlane, E. P. Thompson, and Randolph Trumbach in History and Theory 18:1 (1979)
3. Radical History Review 20 (1979)
4. and Journal of Social History 13:1 (1979), respectively
5. For a later critique, see Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
6. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 41
7. Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
8. See, for example, Philip Greven, "Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly 23:2 (1966), for a description of the extensive control Puritan fathers exercised over their sons' marriages in the seventeenth century
9. See for example Daisy Rípodas Ardanas, El matrimonio en Indias: realidad social y regulación jurídica (Buenos Aires: Fundación para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura, 1977)
10. Silvia Arrom, "Marriage Patterns in Mexico City, 1811," Journal of Family History 3-4 (1978-79)
11. Robert McCaa, "Calidad, Clase
12. Asunción Lavrin, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)
13. Verena Martínez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study in Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989)
14. Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991)
15. Pablo Rodríguez, Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la colonia (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Fundación Simón y Lola Guberek, 1991)
16. Juan Almécija, La familia en la provincia de Venezuela (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992)
17. Robert McCaa, "Marriageways in Mexico and Spain, 1500-1800," Continuity and Change 9:1 (1994)
18. Pilar Gonzalbo Aispuru and Cecilia Rabell, eds., La familia en el mundo iberoamericano (Mexico City: UNAM, 1994)
19. Ward Stavig, "Living in Offense of Our Lord: Indigenous Sexual Values and Marital Life in the Colonial Crucible," Hispanic American Historical Review 75:4 (1995)
20. Richard Boyer, The Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995)
21. Steve Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
22. Pablo Rodríguez, Sentimientos y vida familiar en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Ariel, 1997)
23. Lyman Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honour: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998)
24. and Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)
25. Cook and Cook, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance, 49 (for quote)
26. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets
27. Ramón Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 328
28. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, p. 329
29. Edith Courturier, "Women and the Family in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: Law and Practice," Journal of Family History 10:3 (1985)
30. and Steiner Saether, "Bourbon Absolutism and Marriage Reform in Late Colonial Spanish America," The Americas 59:4 (2003), pp. 475-509
31. José Cadalso, Cartas marruecas [1789] (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1950), pp. 69, 183-85 (for quote)
32. Manuel Azamor y Ramírez, 1795, cited in Rípodas Ardanaz, El matrimonio en Indias, pp. 402-04 (403 for quote)
33. Asunción Lavrin, "Sexuality in Colonial Mexico: A Church Dilemma," in Lavrin, ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, pp. 59 (for quotes), 84n.15, 85n.26
34. Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico. Conflicts of Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)
35. Rodríguez, Sentimientos y vida familiar en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, p. 158
36. Martínez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, pp. 66-67, 70 (for quote), 161n.24
37. and Mark Szuchman, "'A Challenge to the Patriarchs': Love among the Youth in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires," in Mark Szuchman, ed., The Middle Period in Latin America: Values and Attitudes in the Seventeenth- Nineteenth Centuries (Boulder: Rienner, 1989)
38. Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz, "Civilizando la vida doméstica en el Valle Central de Costa Rica (1750-1850)," in Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz, ed., Entre Silencios y voces. Género e historia en América Central (1750-1990) (San José: Centro Nacional para el Desarrollo de la Mujer y la Familia, 1997)
39. Stone, The Family, p. 226
40. See Norton, Liberty's Daughters, pp. 61-62
41. Degler, At Odds, pp. 38-40. Not all historians share this view. Edmund Morgan, for example, claimed that affectionate salutations and closings were not atypical of seventeenth century Puritan letters
42. See Morgan, The Puritan Family, pp. 50-51, 60-61
43. To my knowledge no overview of Hispanic "America Letters" has been written. For an assessment of the uses scholars have made of the "America Letters" from immigrants to the United States, see David Gerber, "The Immigrant Letter between Positivism and Populism: American Historians' Uses of Personal Correspondence," in Rebecca Earle, ed., Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 1999)
44. For an overview of Iberian emigration, see Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz, "The Population of Colonial Spanish America," in Leslie Bethell, ed., Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
45. Macías and Morales, eds, Cartas desde América, pp. 141
46. and Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 196-98
47. For the links between clothing and identity in Spanish America, see Rebecca Earle, "'Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!': Clothing, Race and Identity in the Americas, 17th-19th Centuries," History Workshop Journal 52 (2001), pp. 175-95
48. See J. Antonio D. y Begas, Nuevo estilo y formulario de escribir cartas misivas y responder a ellas (Madrid, 1794)
49. Martin A. S. Hume, "A Fight against Finery (A History of the Sumptuary Laws in Spain)," in Ten Years after the Armada and Other Historical Studies (London: 1896), pp. 235-37
50. Antonio de Torquemada, Manual de escribientes (1552?)
51. Juan Vicente Piliger (or Peligero), Estilo y methodo de escribir cartas missivas (1607)
52. Gabriel Pérez del Barrio, Dirección de secretarios de señores (1613, 1622, 1645, 1667)
53. Miguel Yelgo de Vásquez, Estilo de servir de príncipes (1613?)
54. Juan Fernández Abarca, Discurso de las partes y calidades con que se forma un buen secretario (1618)
55. Juan Páez de Valenzuela y Castillejo, Nuevo estilo y formulario de escribir cartas misivas y responder a ellas (1630)
56. Gabriel Joseph de la Gasca y Espinosa, Manual de avisos para el perfecto cortesano (1680)
57. Diego de Salazar (?), Secretaire espagnol enseignant la maniere d'écrire des lettres espagnols, selon le stile moderne (1732)
58. Gaspar de Ezpeleta y Mallol, Práctica de secretarios (1760-1)
59. and Antonio Marqués y Espejo, Retórica epistolar o arte nuevo de escribir todo género de cartas (1803). I have seen copies only of those manuals whose titles are underlined
60. See also Jacques Lafaye, "Del secretario al formulario: Decadencia del ideal humanista en España (1550 a 1630)," in Lía Schwartz Lerner and Isaías Lerner, eds., Homenaje a Ana María Barrenechea (Madrid: Castalia, 1984)
61. Cadalso, Cartas marruecas, pp. 112-13
62. Hermes Tovar, "Cartas de amor y guerra," Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 12 (1984)
63. Nancy van Deusen, "'Wife of my Soul and Heart, and all my Solace': Annulment Suit between Diego Andrés de Arenas and Ysabel Allay Suyo," in Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, eds., Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 135-37
64. Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America; and the collection of personal letters preserved in Estado 6375, Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid, Madrid
65. See Tejada, Cosa nueva
66. See Salazar (?), Secretaire espagnol
67. Evangelistas operated in town markets and for a fee would draw up written documents on behalf of the illiterate
68. For descriptions from nineteenth-century Mexico, see Joel Roberts Poinsett, Notes on Mexico made in the Autumn of 1822 (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 78
69. G. F. Lyon, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the Republic of Mexico in the Year 1826, 2 vols (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1971), vol. 2, p. 130
70. and Brantz Mayer, Mexico, As It Was and As It Is (Philadelphia, 1847), pp. 39-40
71. For the ownership of letter-writing manuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Lefaye, "Del secretario al formulario," p. 255
72. "Abre niña este papel," in Geogres Baudot and María Agueda Méndez, eds., Amores prohibidos: La palabra condenada en el México de los virreyes, Siglo XXI (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1997), p. 145
73. hijo, Real Academia de la Lengua, Diccionario [1726-37], republished as Diccionario de Autoridades, 3 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1963)
74. Patricia Seed, "La narrativa de Don Juan: el lenguaje de la seducción en la literatura y la sociedad hispánica del siglo XVII," in Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Rabell, eds., La familia en el mundo iberoamericano, pp. 110-14. While the title of Seed's piece refers to the seventeenth century, her argument about male epistolary vulnerability is based on examples drawn from the eighteenth century
75. Gonzalo Correas, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales [1627], Luis Comber, ed., (Bordeaux: Institut d'études Ibériques et Ibéro-américaines de l'Université de Bordeaux, 1967)
76. See William Entwistle, The Spanish Language together with Portuguese, Catalan and Basque (London: Faber & Faber, 1936), p. 209
77. Charles Kany, American-Spanish Syntax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 58-61
78. Rafael Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española (Madrid: Escelicer, 1965), pp. 251, 356
79. Iraset Páez Urdaneta, Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo (Caracas: Casa de Bello, 1981), pp. 34-67
80. Kany, American-Spanish Syntax, pp. 60-61
81. José Joaquín Montes Giraldo, "Sobre el voseo en Colombia," Thesaurus: Boletín del
82. Institute Caro y Cuervo 22 (1967)
83. María Beatríz Fontanella de Weinberg, "El voseo en Buenos Aires en las dos primeras décadas del siglo XIX," Thesaurus: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 26 (1971)
84. Paez Urdaneta, Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo, pp. 50-56 (53 for quote)
85. Jacinto de Lara y Rosales to Manuela de Lara Rosales, Mexico City, 2 August 1730
86. For a study of the terms of endearment used in French personal letters from the eighteenth century, see Marie-Claire Grassi, "Friends and Lovers (or the Codifications of Intimacy)," in Charles Porter, ed., Yale French Studies: Special Issue on Men and Women of Letters 71 (1986), pp. 77-92
87. Torquemada, Manual de escribientes, p. 202
88. Anon., The Character of Spain: Or, An Epitome of their Virtues and Vices (London, 1660)
89. Nicolas de Fer, Historical Voyages and Travels over Europe, tome II: Containing all that is most curious in Spain and Portugal (London, 1693), esp. pp. 34-35
90. Buzen de la Martiniere, Le Grand Dictionnaire géographique, historique et critique (Paris, 1737), pp. 125-26 (entry for "Espagne")
91. Marie Catherine La Mothe, Countess d'Aulony, The Lady's Travels into Spain (London, 1774), particularly the preface
92. and Michael Duffy, The Englishman and the Foreigner: The English Satirical Print 1600-1832 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1986), pp. 23-27. I am grateful to Peter Marshall for his advice on this topic
93. Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask [1848-50] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 271
94. For similar assertions that colonial Spanish was more florid than peninsular Spanish, see Enrique Florescano, Memory, Myth and Time in Mexico from the Aztecs to Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 187
95. Manuel A. Fuentes, Sketches of the Capital of Peru, Historical, Statistical, Administrative, Commercial and Moral (London, 1866), p. 118
96. "attachment and will" are Seed's translation of afiliación y voluntad. (Note that Gutiérrez translates voluntad as "liking.") She teanslates de mi gusto as "to my liking." (Seed, To Love Honor and Obey, p. 48.)
97. See Luis Martín, The Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), chapter 6
98. Thomas Calvo, "Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano: el caso de Guadalajara en el siglo XVII," Revista de Indias 44:173 (1984)
99. Sergio Ortega, "Teología novohispana sobre el matrimonio y comportamientos sexuales, 1519-1570," in Sergio Ortega, ed., De la santidad a la perversión, o porqué no se cumplía la ley de Dios en la sociedad novohispana (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1985)
100. Rodríguez, Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la colonia, chapter 3
101. and Boyer, The Lives of the Bigamists
102. For epistolary self-construction, see Earle, ed., Epistolary Selves
103. See in particular Stern, The Secret History of Gender
104. and Peter Bakewell, A History of Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 77, 172
105. The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers (Durham: Duke University Press, 1955), p. 6
106. Ruth Perry, Women, Letters and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980), p. 77