This book considers how lower-class Peruvians reconciled everyday behavior with the strict norms established by church, state, and the public at large. While the state and church in late-nineteenth-century Peru established premarital virginity, patriarchal sovereignty, and the indissolubility of marriage as absolute norms, most Peruvians were unable to follow such rules. Public preoccupation with virtue and honor is evident in contemporary literature and contributions to national and regional newspapers, where the ideal woman was described as the guardian angel of the home.

Despite such concern for moral norms, the near-unattainable standards set by public discourse were defied in everyday life...

The department of Cajamarca comprises the provinces of Cajamarca, Celendín, Cajabamba, San Marcos, Contumazá, San Pablo, and Santa Cruz, as well as the provinces of San Marcos, Cutervo, and Chota, more remote from the provincial capital. Located between the coastal departments of La Libertad, Lambayeque, and Piúra, on the one side, and the tropical department of Amazonas, on the other, the department of Cajamarca spans a range of ecological zones. These include arid highlands and fertile valleys, as well as districts such as Magdalena and the province of Contumazá with a lush, semitropical climate.¹

While cattle—and, eventually, labor—were...

Elite gender norms permeated Peruvian society, influencing all classes in a variety of ways, but most concretely via legislation. The legal framework, revised several times in the course of the nineteenth century, codified elite views on gender and offers us a window to elite perceptions of gender.

The role and importance of the institution of matrimony, the position of women and men within marriage, and the place of women in society were all dealt with in legislation, as were matters of honor and respectability and how male and female comportment impinged on reputation. Although far from all social groups abided...

This chapter analyzes marital relations and how popular and official views of consensual unions and formal marriage differed and were negotiated in practice. One of my recurring concerns is how socially differentiated marriage practices shaped womenʹs and menʹs lives in practical terms. While state and church doctrine defined marriage as the only appropriate framework for sexual relations, procreation, and family life, consensual union was the norm for large sections of the population. Popular attitudes reveal little prejudice against what official ideology labeled ʺillicit sexual relationsʺ; on the contrary, many common-law unions functioned as permanent unions. Formally married husbands and wives,...

A growing literature regarding honor documents its importance in colonial Latin America and during the nineteenth century, as well as some of the changes the definition of honor underwent in this period. Honor was described as all or nothing by contemporaries, a matter as clear-cut and dramatic as life and death. But paradoxically, it was both negotiable and elastic. Twinam has documented how the colonial elite could retain honor by acknowledging transgressions in private, but not in public; in some cases stains on honor could be removed by purchasinggracias al sacar, formal legitimation granted by bureaucrats in Spain; illegitimate...

This chapter addresses questions of sexuality and how women and men of the lower orders reconciled their actions with their concern for reputation and honor. To this end I analyze trial transcripts catalogued under the labels of ʺrapto,ʺ ʺseducción,ʺ ʺviolación,ʺ and ʺestuproʺ—abduction, seduction, and rape.

Legally, the terms overlapped and partially contradicted one another;¹ nevertheless, most plaintiffs used them interchangeably and apparently indiscriminately. Thus Bartolomé Gálvez complained that his niece had sufferedestupro,violación, andseducción, but he did not differentiate among the mutually exclusive meanings of these terms. Marcos Paz sought to force his daughterʹs recalcitrant fiancé to...

This chapter begins with the story of Remigia Bermúdes and her former employer, Isabel Basauri, who came to blows in 1862. The incident sheds light on this chapterʹs theme—conflict and solidarity among women—and highlights the issue of illegitimacy, the plight of single mothers, the complexity of patron-client relations, and the prevalence of violence in Cajamarcan society.

Remigia Bermúdes and her five illegitimate children lived in poverty, and evidently in a client relationship with the Basauri-Cabanillas household. Bermúdes was employed as a servant by the Basauri household, and Isabel Basauriʹs brother had fathered several of her children. An assault...

The trial transcripts I used as sources for this study contain a wealth of stories and record moments of both high tension and everyday banality. They offer insights into how gender worked in provincial towns and hamlets in northern Peru in the nineteenth century. Honor mattered to both the poor and the rich. People lived according to multiple, overlapping, and, above all, potentially conflicting definitions of honor. Despite the importance of honor, many couples defied the norms, opting for consensual unions rather than formal marriage. In contradiction of official norms, spouses involved in-laws in their battles, usually—but not always—...