Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (review)

One of the greatest challenges for scholars who examine the history of societies from several hundred years ago is to get a grasp on such intimate and private issues as sexuality, the values that underlay the concept of honor, and relations between men and women and their children. This volume uses eighteenth-century petitions for cedulas de gracias al sacar (petitions to legitimize illegitimate children) to more fully understand sexuality, honor, and the dual phenomenan of public and private lives. The petitions contain a wealth of information on the life history of men, women, and the children that they produced through sexual relations outside of formal and legal marriage. Moreover, the cedula petitions provide important insights in to the social values of elite society in Spanish America, since only well-to-do parents or their children had the resources to petition for an act of legitimization from Spain. Illegitimacy stigmatized children for life, and resulted in different forms of legal discrimination.

The title of the book suggests one very important and interesting aspect of elite social perceptions during the eighteenth-century. Private pregnancies kept out of the light of public scrutiny could preserve the honor of elite women. But it was always women who suffered the most in status when they became pregnant outside of marriage. Promises of marriage and extended engagements that included sexual relations and the birth of children protected the reputation of the woman more than did adulterous affairs and illicit sexual relations that did not contain any expectation that the man would legitimate children through marriage with the mother. Concepts of illegitimacy also were flexible. Parents who recognized illegitimate children at birth could legitimize their children through a subsequent marriage, whereas in other circumstances subsequent marriage could not improve the status of illegitimate children in the eyes of the law and society. Priests fathering children often provided the most difficult situation for trying to legitimate the status of illegitimate children. The Spanish legal system evidenced more flexibility than the English, where the general rule was born a bastard always a bastard

The definition of the status of illegitimate children also was flexible. There were four types elements that defined the status of new-born children. The first was the birth or natal status of the child defined by social and canonical conventions, and the social status of the parents. The second determinant was the status recorded in baptismal registers. Parents of illegitimate children could choose to include their names in the baptismal record, or list the child as the offspring of unknown parents. Men could protect the honor of mothers by not listing their names in the baptismal record. The third was the social status of the child, based on whether the parents recognized the child publicly or privately. The fourth was the state’s recognition of civil status, either legitimate or illegitimate.

Twinam’s book reflects mature scholarship developed over several decades of research and reflection. The book opens with an insightful historiographic discussion of the issue of illegitimacy and social status and honor, as well as a critique of methods used in the study of these topics. For example, Twinam finds fault in how Patricia Seed understands the concept of honor in her award winning book To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico. The author also discusses the legal background to illegitimacy in Spain and Spanish America. The second part of the book, which is the most compelling, focuses on an analysis of life courses as shown in the stories found in the documentation. Twinam begins and concludes her book with the story of a Medellin merchant Gabriel Munoz who initiated a law suit because a royal official did not address him by the honorific title Don. There are numerous stories that would make wonderful plots for the telenovelas that are so popular today in Latin America. The third section of the book examines royal social...