Risky Business, Gender Roles, and Reform in Regina (1886) by Teresa González de Fanning

Many female Hispanic authors of the nineteenth century penned novels on practical topics that directly affected their households and children, such as education and religion. Later, some women writers also approached economic concerns surrounding modernity and industrialization in the new nations of Latin America. Teresa González de Fanning (1836–1918), a Peruvian writer and activist who was a member of several intellectual circles in Lima (such as Juana Manuela Gorriti’s veladas literarias), added her voice to the public debate surrounding women’s financial security in her short novel Regina (1886). I argue that González de Fanning’s depiction of the downfall of an entire family due to the patriarch’s illicit business dealings allows her to denounce Peruvian economic and political systems for their exclusion of women from many work, business, and investment opportunities. Consequently, Regina’s mutilation by a machine that her husband owns graphically highlights the danger for defenseless women when they are subjected to their husbands’ reckless financial mismanagement and limited in their access to education and job opportunities. The novel thus permits González de Fanning to insert her opinion into Peruvian economic policy discourses from which she would have otherwise been excluded.