Through the lives and works of three women in colonial California, Barbara 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 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 Perez, 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?
Product Identifiers
Publisher
University of Texas Press
ISBN-13
9780292723474
eBay Product ID (ePID)
94785146
Product Key Features
Author
Barbara O. Reyes
Publication Name
Private Women, Public Lives: Gender and the Missions of the Californias
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Zoology, History
Publication Year
2010
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
245 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Item Weight
538g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Barbara O. Reyes
Series Title
Chicana Matters
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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