Private women, public lives : gender and the missions of the Californias / Bárbara O. Reyes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reyes, Bárbara.

Series:

Chicana matters series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church.

Women--Mexico--Baja California (Peninsula)--Social conditions--18th century.

Women.

Women--Mexico--Baja California (Peninsula)--Social conditions--19th century.

Women--California--Social conditions--18th century.

Women--California--Social conditions--19th century.

Catholic Church--Missions--Mexico--Baja California (Peninsula)--History--18th century.

Catholic Church--Missions--Mexico--Baja California (Peninsula)--History--19th century.

Catholic Church--Missions--California--History--18th century.

Catholic Church--Missions--California--History--19th century.

Missions.

History.

Social conditions.

Baja California (Mexico : Peninsula)--History.

Baja California (Mexico : Peninsula).

California--History--To 1846.

California.

Mexico--Baja California (Peninsula).

Physical Description:

xi, 231 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2009.

Summary:

Through the lives and works of three women in colonial California, Bárbara O. Reyes examines frontier mission social spaces and their relationship to the creation of gendered colonial relations in the Californias. She explores the function of missions and missionaries in establishing hierarchies of power and in defining gendered spaces and roles, and she looks at the ways that women challenged, and attempted to modify, the construction of those hierarchies, roles, and spaces.

Reyes studies the criminal inquiry and depositions of Barbara Gandiaga, an Indian woman charged with conspiracy to murder two priests at her mission; the divorce petition of Eulalia Callis, the first lady of colonial California who petitioned for divorce from her adulterous governor-husband; and the testimonio of Eulalia Pérez, the head housekeeper at Mission San Gabriel who acquired a position of significant authority and responsibility but whose work has not been properly recognized. These three women's voices seem to reach across time and place, calling for additional, more complex analysis and questions: Could women have agency in the colonial Californias? Did the social structures or colonial processes in place in the frontier setting of New Spain confine or limit them in particular gendered ways? And, were gender dynamics in colonial California explicitly rigid as a result of the imperatives of the goals of colonization?

By initiating discussion about these questions, this work fills a critical gap in the history of colonial California-which has only recently begun to give adequate attention to Hispanic women-but it also adds to current research on indigenous, Spanish, and Mexican women and public space.

Contents:

Introduction : gender and public space in the nineteenth-century Californias

"For the riches of its souls" : the Society of Jesus in Antigua California

"To teach the natives love and loyalty toward the Spanish monarch" : the Order of the Predicants of Santo Domingo in Baja California

"[For its] very large and fine harbor" : the Franciscans of the College of San Fernando in Alta California

Bárbara Gandiaga : race and agency at Mission Santo Tomás

Eulalia Callis : privilege and power in the colonial Californias

Eulalia Pérez : gender and labor in the Spanish frontier

Conclusion : women in the public missions of the Californias.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780292718968

0292718969

OCLC:

261342744