| This
book tells the story of how ordinary Peruvian men and women experienced
their lives and especially their marriages in a patriarchal society
and how, through the struggles involved in divorce, women tried to
defend their rights and in the process helped bring about change in
society more broadly.
Careful examination of more than one thousand cases of conjugal
suits filed in Lima's archbishopric, as well as wills in notarial
records, allowed the author to trace over time quarreling spouses'
relationships, attitudes, and perceptions of gender, life cycle,
race, and class and to study their evolving moral expectations and
the varying pace of social change.
The history of this marital dialogue reveals the contruction of
a new terminology, based on liberal ideas imported from England
and France, that found its way into domestic life and influenced
how conflicts were perceived and resolved. Far from opening doors
for women, liberalism maintained women's inferior status but also
shifted the ground on which women waged battles for survival.
By the end of the nineteenth century, many women had concluded
that basic patriarchal and Christian arrangements were a sham, and
they sought ways to cope within a system rife with hypocrisy. This
book shows how women and children, made destitute by intimate tyranny,
challenged this tyranny by finding new means of defense and social
support.
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