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Women of Colonial Latin America

ndreds of thousands of pesos, even millions" (xxiv) and the fact that "ladies dressed in luxurious fabrics from Tuscany trimmed with Milanese silver and gold laces" (xxv) as examples of the gentility of society in New Spain. The presence of women in an alien land, and above all the flourishing of families through several generations, which had the effect of creating New World Spaniards who never saw Spain, is evidence of the kind of social stability associated with long-established societies. Cook and Cook cite "courageous women who ventured to the Indies in the early expeditions [and left] an indelible mark on colonial Hispanic society" (xii).

On the other hand, as Padden points out (xxix), the New World could also be violent and disorganized, replete with ethnic rivalries and dueling but not necessarily with courtly formalities and traditions of such encounters typical of the Old World. Colonial culture in some measure developed a life of its own. The opening of the New World "and Spain's penetration of it . . . produced the first major crack in the old Augustinian world view, especially after much of its traditional wisdom had been contradicted by experience in the New World" (Padden xxiv).

This is relevant to the position of women (or at least aristocratic women) in New Spain because of the nature of problems and opportunities of experience they appear to have encountered that by and large would not have arisen in the mother country, dominated by hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. This dynamic is in the background of certain of Arzans's Tales of Potosi, which deal with the behavior of New World women, and Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance, which gives an account of several court cases arising from the bigamous marriage of a lesser nobleman, Francisco Noguerol de Ulloa, who made his fortune in New Spain and returned with his second wife to Spain.

Padden notes that Arzans's work, which is important partly because it is on...

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Women of Colonial Latin America. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:56, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1680772.html