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10%OFFAnn Twinam - Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America - 9780804731485 - V9780804731485
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Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America

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Description for Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America Paperback. Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, illegitimate offspring of elite families in colonial Spanish America appealed to the Council of the Indies in Spain to purchase legitimations. This analysis provides a detailed picture of attitudes to illegitimacy in colonial Spanish America. Num Pages: 464 pages, 16 tables 2 maps. BIC Classification: 1KLS; 3J; HBJK; HBTB. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 229 x 158 x 29. Weight in Grams: 646.

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, illegitimate offspring of elite families in colonial Spanish America appealed to the Council and Cámara of the Indies in Spain to purchase gracias al sacar legitimations. Their applications provided intimate testimony concerning their own lives, accounts of their parents' sexual relationships, and details regarding the impact of illegitimacy within their families and communities. Bourbon officials in Spain debated which petitions merited approval, and in the process forged policies concerning gender, sexuality, illegitimacy, and the family.

Scattered throughout the Archive of the Indies, the petitions were difficult to locate until the author determined the ... Read more

The collective biographies of the gracias al sacar parents, and of their illegitimate offspring—as infants, children, and adults—reveal a Hispanic mentality that consciously differentiated between the public and private spheres. Colonial elites distinguished between a private circle of family, kin, and intimate friends and a public world where status (honor) was negotiated with outside peers. This bifurcation was distinct yet permeable; an individual might "pass" to negotiate a public status different from a private reality. Thus, an unwed mother might enjoy the public reputation that she was a virgin, the bastard son of a priest might be treated as legitimate, and a mulatto could be transformed into someone white.

The author explores how the probability for passing varied throughout the Spanish Empire, and how it narrowed as the eighteenth century drew to a close. She also demonstrates that the inability to conceptualize passing beyond the scope of the individual exacerbated social tensions prior to independence.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
1999
Publisher
Stanford University Press
Number of pages
464
Condition
New
Number of Pages
464
Place of Publication
Palo Alto, United States
ISBN
9780804731485
SKU
V9780804731485
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Ann Twinam
Ann Twinam is Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati.

Reviews for Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America
"Beautifully written, capaciously documented, and compellingly argued, this book contributes enormously to the colonial Spanish-American historiography on race, social status, and culture, as well as on how these themes were played out in daily life as concerns for honor, gender, and sexuality."—Ramón Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego "Fresh, well written, thoroughly documented, and extraordinarily informative, this outstanding social history ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America


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