Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Venezuela, 1786-1904 (review)

Arlene Diaz explores the historical dynamics linking the formation of an "official culture," the "process of state formation," and how "debates over the meaning and responsibilities of gender relations transpired among ordinary people" (p. 2) in the evolution of the nation state in Venezuela. In short, Diaz asks what was happening officially, legally, and actually, as men created states and laws; and as men and women interacted in Venezuelan courts from the late colonial to the early twentieth century. The methodology is innovative and the scope ambitious. Diaz compares three five-year periods: the late colonial (1786-1790), the liberal (1835-40), and the Antonio Guzman Blanco (1875-80) eras. Three chapters for each chronological period explore parallel themes: the "masculine struggles for hegemony" (p. 17) that structured the administrative and legal underpinnings of the state during each period; the revisions in laws that gendered legal relationships in court during that era; and the "personal narratives" (p. 17) of women as revealed in a "selected sampling" (p. 16) of judicial cases: 139 from 1786-1790, 240 from 1835-1840, and 199 from 1875-80.

Such an approach is conceptually brilliant and promises analytical juxtapositions of exceptional import. Unfortunately, the execution falls short. The first chapters in each chronological section, which set the political scenario, are mostly based on a limited number of secondary sources and provide but a synthetic overview. The chapters on legal change rely on printed laws, commentators, a scattering of archival references, and a too simplistic statistical overview of the court cases. The chapters exploring female reactions to ongoing processes of state formation and law prove particularly uneven, and do not do justice to the material. Just one instance: even though the sample for the 1786-1790 period includes 139 court cases the chapter is but eleven pages. The monograph thus provides an excellent illustration of the exceptional difficulty of the comparative genre. One problem is that the sampling limitations for each five-year period detract from complex analysis. While breakdowns are not supplied Diaz, the raw data provided by the tables suggest that there are 16 different kinds of legal cases (including divorce, family support, guardianships etc.) in the colonial time frame; 34 in the next; and 23 for the late-nineteenth century. Given such variety, comparison of case categories over the three periods becomes problematic. Should analysis of transformations in divorce rest on 4, 12, and 46 cases respectively; or breach of promise rest on 14, 4, and 39 lawsuits from colonial, mid and late century?

Conclusions across time frames can also be challenging. What appears similar in the broadest and most simplistic perspective might also conceal difference. For example, Diaz concludes that "preservation of virginity was not as important for many lower-class people as it might have been in the past" (p. 233); or that only women "who proved without a reasonable doubt that they were virtuous and chaste—received favorable court rulings" (p. 20). Colonial scholars would rightfully agree with such statements. Yet these conclusions derive from analysis of the 1875-80 period. Such a contrast is provocative, and illustrative of the power of the comparative genre, but necessitates in-depth analysis providing nuance and context. Similarly it is somewhat frustrating when Diaz argues that concepts such as "purity of blood and honor" were "aristocratic values" that "waned in the new republic" (p. 146), and then reach a conclusion for the late-nineteenth century that "defense of honor was a central concern among the litigants" (p. 214).

Too often Diaz embraces the single perspective when the circumstances suggest situations were messier. Politics, law, and court cases can be complicated and contradictory: what seems to support one interpretation, might, from another viewpoint, support the other. Take for example, authorial interpretations concerning the "Pragmatic Sanction on Marriages" (1778) and the 1795 gracias al sacar permitting the purchase of whiteness. Diaz sees both as...