Mujeres e Independencia en Chile. La cultura del trato y la escritura de cartas

Abstract

This work aims to evaluate cultural changes developed by elite women during the crisis of Independence in Chile. Those changes enabled certain women to assume an active social role at this juncture, even though their actions challenged gender norms derived from the traditional catholic order. These actions, which complemented the emancipator project designed by the male Creole elite, involved two areas of female agency; on the one hand, the development of an illustrated female sociability (“cultura del trato”), on the other hand, the writing of letters. From this on, those elite women joined the new revolutionary sociability through initiatives rooted in the private sphere that, nevertheless, influenced political events. At the same time, these actions made it possible for these women to reconstruct both their female identities and subjectivities.