Constructions of Domesticity
The chapter argues that discourses of domesticity were connected to modernizing ideals, resistance to social change, and conflicts over gender and family roles, and these meanings often existed simultaneously and even within the same text or cultural product. Nineteenth-century men and women created images of domestic life to present arguments about the many issues to which they related domesticity and to promote ideas about the potential or actual roles for women in society at large. By claiming continuity between the home and the nation, authors of domestic narratives made the case for the importance of women’s role in constructing and maintaining the nation. The division between private and public space gave rise to domestic discourse and the theme of the angel in the house but because that division was rhetorical, many writers envisioned a connectedness between the two realms that allowed for the possibility of women’s seamless movement from the domestic to the public realm. Magazines from Mexico and El Salvador are analysed along with Ignacio Altamirano’s El Zarco, Soledad Acosta de Samper’s novels Laura and Una holandesa en América, and short stories and Cocina ecléctica by Juana Manuela Gorriti.