The Case of the Ugly Suitor and Other Stories of Love, Gender, and Nation in Buenos Aires, 1776-1870

Abstract

Since the 1775 Pragmática on marriage, which permitted sons and daughters to challenge their parents’ opposition to their marriage decisions, the colonial state mediated in parent-child conflicts over marriage. Shumway traces the persistence of this policy through the postindependence period. Looking at a number of judicial cases, the author examines the evolution of marriage decisions, patriarchal authority, and parent-child relations. Between 1776 and 1870, he finds important continuities and also significant changes in the terrain of family and gender relations. Key notions of patriarchy, appropriate parenting, filial obedience, and women’s responsibility for preserving the honor of the home continued from the late colonial period into the 1860s. However, the transition to independence also brought important transformations: greater toleration for interracial marriages, judicial legitimization of challenges to paternal authority, and enhanced litigation initiated by women.Chapters 3 – 6 contain the core of Shumway’s argument. Chapter 3 deals with the “ruptures” in society and family brought about by independence. The expulsion of Spaniards and the recruitment of men for the revolutionary armies caused strain on families, and some couples had to postpone their marriages. Protestant immigrants created a wave of interfaith marriages. Greater state intervention in the regulation of families characterized the period. The government questioned the ability of poor families to raise their offspring and placed many poor children with foster parents. Chapter 4 examines the tension between paternal reason and youthful romance. Shumway argues that although postindependence judges sided with parents who sought to prevent their childrens’ unions, the majority of these disenso cases were ruled in favor of the young couples. Romantic love was gaining ground, while parental authority was undermined. This enhanced autonomy came at the price of increased state intervention in family life.Chapter 5 examines attitudes toward interracial marriages. In the postindependence period, judges were more disposed to permit marriages between interracial couples involved in disenso cases, evidence the author uses to argue that postindependence society was more tolerant of such marriages. Economic factors gradually replaced racial arguments as obstacles to marriages; in postindependence society, “purity of blood” did not guarantee the provision of food to the family. Chapter 6 discusses societal attitudes toward women. In the postindependence period, journalists became concerned with women’s education as a means to civilize society. The period also witnessed an increase in female litigation. In particular, women took the lead in initiating disenso cases and made their voices heard in child-custody battles. They argued their cases using the language of natural rights. The increased visibility of women in the press and in the courts, Shumway suggests, reflected increased emphasis on individual freedoms in the postcolonial era.The “Ugly Suitor” refers to an 1842 disenso case, in which the father objected to his daughter’s intended marriage because her fiancé was too ugly. Under the surface, however, the father’s opposition stemmed from various other reasons, including the couple’s age disparity and the suitor’s poor financial situation. The case is interesting because the judge, contradicting the doctrine of patria potestad, validated the daughter’s decision and granted her permission to marry. Are such cases indicative of changing social attitudes toward marriage, family, and patriarchal authority? Shumway thinks so, arguing that these marriage and custody cases provide an opening into the hidden territory of family and gender relations on a quotidian level.This book is a good introduction to the history of the family and gender relations in Buenos Aires. It presents, for example, the interesting stories of Mariquita Sánchez, Camila O’Gorman, and other less-familiar women as a means to better understand how the postindependence period enhanced the choices available to individuals and families. To the specialist in Argentine history, this book offers little new. The author does not provide significant statistical support for his arguments and instead depends upon relatively few “stories,” some of them quite exceptional. Judicial procedures and jurisprudence, two important dimensions of the subject matter, are not sufficiently explored. The book contains an abundance of generalizations about great themes (the Atlantic world, the Enlightenment, human passions, family ideals versus real life) but few moments of in-depth analysis. The reader will find also an abundance of primary quotes taken from secondary sources. The author also demonstrates excessive restraint in his critique of existing historiography, which makes it difficult to locate the author’s position in relation to other authors who had ventured into this territory (such as Mark Szuchman, Ricardo Cicerchia, Donna Guy, Kristin Ruggiero, José Luis Moreno, Viviana Kluger, Carlos Mayo, and others).The Case of the Ugly Suitor is a welcome addition to the project of engendering Latin America, for it focuses on issues of tremendous importance to social history: the evolution of patriarchal authority, societal attitudes toward women, the question of childhood, and judicial decisions concerning families and gender relations. But there are certain misgivings that should be noted. Examining the Bourbon reforms on marriage and family relations, the author takes too literally the reformers’ claim that they expected to produce more-loving parent-child relationships. Probably, less benevolent goals animated these policies. The author’s claim that postindependent society showed more open attitudes toward women emerges mostly from disenso and custody cases, but the author neglects the important dimension of property, a critical consideration in analyzing women’s autonomy. The analysis of family relations would have benefited from a more extensive treatment of the practice of crianza and from an in-depth discussion of promesas de matrimonio. The difference between the toleration of mixed marriages in Argentina and the strict enforcement of the “color line” in the U.S. is so striking as to deserve some commentary.The book lives up to its presentation as a collection of “stories” about love, gender, and nation. To the extent that it advances historical propositions regarding models of patriarchy, family, and honor in postindependence Buenos Aires, it goes beyond this goal. To the extent that does not deliver on its promise to relate family, gender, and nation, it falls short of the mark. In spite of these gaps, the book deserves a wide readership. It is a well-written and engaging book that would certainly stimulate student interest in the crucial issues of family honor, patriarchal authority, women’s role in society, attitudes toward children, and the persistence of colonial legacies.