A Father against his Daughter on Marriage Choice: A 1823 Rapto Trial in Chile

Abstract

Studies of rapto—commonly known as the theft of a woman by a man—in scholarship on Chile are extremely scarce. While research into the judicial–legal culture of colonial nineteenth-century Chile from a sociohistorical framework includes judicial files on rapto, scholars have neglected the specific rhetorical and judicial strategies deployed by individual elite legal actors in cases of rapto as an opportunity to explore women’s agency and to understand rapto as an avenue for intergenerational conflict about free will in marriage choice. In this article, I look into the judicial file of a trial of rapto by seduction and its appeal, which took place during the years 1823–1824 in Santiago. I examine the judicial and rhetorical strategies used by a father, his daughter, and her suitor’s public defender to make their claims in court through the lens of gender, honor, and class. Although the father uses rapto by seduction as a tool to hide his daughter’s consent from the judges, her willingness to elope with her suitor eventually comes to the fore and disrupts the trial. In this case, the parties turn to several judicial and rhetorical strategies not only to bolster their cases but also to argue about larger social issues and conflicts specific to the early nineteenth century, such as autonomy in marriage choice and honor.