Nation, Gender, and Beyond in Mansilla’s Recuerdos de viaje

Abstract

Eduarda Mansilla’s travelogue Recuerdos de viaje represents a gateway for our understanding of nineteenth-century upper-class Argentinian women’s struggle to articulate their position in the nation in the absence of legal rights as citizens. As inhabitants rather than members of the nation, women engaged critically with national imaginaries. Their writings expressed allegiances which transcended national borders, as was Mansilla’s case. Although a successful writer, she faced prejudiced, gendered attitudes towards her work. To boost her authority and legitimize her discourse on nation, in Recuerdos de viaje, Mansilla represents herself as a respected and sought-after habitué of European and North American elite circles. Albeit a successful strategy, her multiple identifications create a tension in her position vis-à-vis her nation and beyond. I argue that she becomes a displaced subject who identifies with Argentina and other countries only to a degree, unable to belong definitively to any of the places with which she identifies.