Women and Print Culture in Post-Independence Buenos Aires (review)

Men parading as female authors; fictionalized mothers and sisters giving advice to young girls to teach them about civilized behavior; newspaper editors unabashedly fueling a debate about the new social roles of elite women—all are part of Iona Macintyre's probing study of women and print culture in the Buenos Aires of the 1820s. In the age of bicentennial celebrations of Latin American independence and the accompanying surge in scholarship on this period, this book is a welcome contribution. Macintyre's study offers close readings of six texts published between 1820 and 1831, all of which engage revolutionary print media and shifting gender meanings. The picture that emerges is one in which print media and the treatment of women are central to the success of liberalism and the prospects of nation-building.

The book begins with an overview of the political history and challenges to state formation in Río de la Plata in the 1820s and then turns to contributions women from elite families made to the war effort and to public and political life during and after independence. Chapter two considers the Defensa del bello sexo, published in 1820 and marketed to wealthy female readers in Buenos Aires. The book consisted of a selection of translated passages from an English text that followed the outlines of European comparative history books. Like these, the Defensa dealt with "civilization" and "barbarism" and presented the "fair sex" in a positive light. Francisco de Paula Castañeda's female editor characters offer a humorous take on gender roles in Chapter three, one of the book's strongest sections. Limited scholarship on Castañeda's periodicals and use of political satire does not lend to a thorough understanding of his positions regarding women in the public sphere. This chapter aims to provide a more complete account, positing that Castañeda's primary objective was to criticize government policy and enemies of the Church. Chapter four links one example of "conduct literature" to education projects under the purview of liberal leaders. Originally published in London by Rudolf Ackermann, this collection of "letters on the education of the fair sex" was reprinted in Buenos Aires for female readers in hopes of teaching them to be both the measures and harbingers of civilization. The final two chapters pair contemporaneous publications from 1830–1831. The first of these was La Argentina, a satirical periodical with commentary on life in the city that has often been mistaken as a women's newspaper. La Aljaba was a more serious periodical that lauded the virtues of women and the only text in Macintyre's study that was in fact written by a woman. Rather than characterize the paper as feminist, the chapter presents a more nuanced understanding of "upper-class gender ideology" as it fit with republicanism (p. 166).

The very decision to focus on women in the world of print culture and the related redefinition of gender roles during independence is laudable. The texts the author studies expand both the chronological and thematic horizons of the traditional scholarly conversation on civilization and barbarism in Argentina that is so often attached to Sarmiento, the Rosas years (1829–1852) and the second half of the 1800s. At the same time, Macintyre notes that literacy was low in the region in the early 1800s and concludes from there that print media had minimal impact. Though this claim undercuts some of the power of the stories she tells, the larger issue it raises is the need for literary scholars and historians to consider multiple modes of reading (even among illiterates) and how these transformed communication during the independence period. That said, Macintyre's study is a welcome ray of light that will help guide the work of scholars interested in issues of gender and writing in the Plata during the early 1800s. While the book is not suitable for classroom use, it should be required reading for those specializing...