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Enchanted Edens and Nation-Making: Juana Manso, Education, Women and Trans-American Encounters in Nineteenth-Century Argentina*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2008

JULYAN G. PEARD
JULYAN G. PEARD
Affiliation:
Julyan Peard is Professor of History at San Francisco State University. Email: jpeard@sfsu.edu
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Abstract

This article considers Juana Manso (1819–1875) as a crucial nation maker in nineteenth-century Argentina. Usually studied as a novelist, Manso was important beyond her literary production. As the first woman to be appointed to a government position and arguably the most radical feminist in nineteenth-century Argentina, Manso's story informs us about Argentine feminism and education, and illustrates how a woman, who lived in Uruguay, Brazil, United States and Cuba, became a crucial transmitter of ideas about emerging nations and a living example of the interconnectedness of the Americas.

Resumen:

Este artículo considera a Juana Manso (1819&ndsh;1875) como un personaje clave en el proceso de construcción nacional argentino en el siglo XIX. Normalmente estudiada como novelista, Manso fue importante más allá de su producción literaria. Como la primera mujer electa para ocupar una posición gubernamental y según algunos la feminista argentina más radical en el siglo XIX, la historia de Manso nos informa acerca del feminismo y la educación en Argentina, e ilustra cómo una mujer, que vivió en Uruguay, Brasil, EEUU y Cuba, fue una transmisora crucial de ideas sobre naciones emergentes y un ejemplo vivo de las interconexiones existentes en el continente.

Palabras clave: Argentina del siglo XIX, feminismo, educación, construcción nacional, transnacionalismo, transamericanismo

Resumo:

Este artigo reconhece Juana Manso (1819–1875) como edificadora da nação fundamental na Argentina do século XIX. Normalmente estudada como romancista, a importância de Manso foi além de sua produção literária. Primeira mulher a ser designada a um cargo governamental e possivelmente a feminista mais radical na Argentina do século XIX, a história de Manso nos fala sobre o feminismo e a educação argentina, e ilustra como uma mulher que viveu no Uruguai, Brasil, Estados Unidos e Cuba tornou-se uma indispensável transmissora de idéias a respeito de nações emergentes, assim como um exemplo vivo da interconectividade das Américas.

Palavras-chave: Argentina do século XIX feminismo, educação, construção/criação de nações, trans-nacionalismo, trans-americanismo.

Keywords

Nineteenth-century Argentinafeminismeducationnation-makingtrans-nationalismtrans-Americanism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 453 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 ‘Emancipación moral de la mujer’, quoted and translated by Francine Masiello, Between Civilization & Barbarism, Women, Nation, and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina (Lincoln 1992), p. 71.

2 Anales, vol. 8, no. 1 (August 1869), p. 4. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are mine.

3 Liliana Zuccotti, ‘Gorriti, Manso, de las Veladas Literarias a ‘Las conferencias de maestra,’ in Lea Fletcher (ed.), Mujeres y cultura en la Argentina del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires 1994); Lily Newton de Sosa, ‘Cien años de periodismo,’ in Fernanda Gil Lozano, et al. (eds.), Historia de la mujeres en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2000), pp. 173–88. For women's journals, see Bonnie Frederick, Wily Modesty, Argentine Women Writers, 1860–1910 (Arizona 1998).

4 Works on Manso in English include, Jim Levy, ‘Juana Manso – Argentine Feminist,’ (Bundoora 1977); Catherine Davies et al., ‘Juana Manso (1819–75), Women in History,’ in Catherine Davis et al. (eds.), South American Independence, Gender, Politics, Text (Liverpool 2006), pp. 241–67; Myriam Southwell, ‘Juana P. Manso, 1819–1875,’ Prospects, XXXV, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 117–32; in Spanish, Héctor Nicolás Santomauro, Juana Manso y las luchas por la educación pública en la Argentina, (Buenos Aires 1994), Lidia F. Lewkowicz, Juana Paula Manso (1819–1875), Una mujer del siglo XXI (Buenos Aires 2000). The best interpretation of Manso is by Liliana Zuccotti, ‘Juana Manso, entre la pose y la palabra,’ in María Esther de Miguel (ed.), Mujeres argentina, El lado femenino de nuestra historia (Buenos Aires 1998).

5 Manso's main books are: Los Misterios del Plata (1840s), La Familia del Comendador (1854), Compendio de la Historia de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata (1862). She founded O Jornal das Senhoras (1852), Álbum de Señoritas (1854) and La Siempre Viva (1864) and contributed to other journals, published articles and letters in newspapers. She was editor of Anales de la educación común. For this study, I have mainly used Anales de la educación común, Álbum, O Jornal, her correspondence with Sarmiento and Mary Mann, and the primary sources in the Appendix of María Velasco y Arias, Juana Paula Manso, Vida y Acción (Buenos Aires 1937).

6 Sarmiento to Mary Mann, Oscawana, 2 July 1866, Boletín Argentino de la Academia Argentina de Letras, no. 4 (1936), pp. 106–7 (hereafter BAAL).

7 On the new domesticity, see Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher, A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven 1973); Amy Kaplan, ‘Manifest Domesticity,’ American Literature, vol. 70, no. 3 (September 1998), p. 582. Bonnie Frederick, ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Virtuous Mother, Argentina, 1852–1910,’ Journal of the History of Women vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 2006), pp. 111–20 provides an interesting account of American ideas of domesticity and their appropriation and (mis)understanding in the Argentine context. Her point about the attraction of the safe idea of a ‘virtuous mother’ does not, however, quite capture the evolution of Manso's thought.

8 Sandhya Shukla and Heidi Tinsman, ‘Editors Introduction’, Radical History Review, vol. 89 (Spring 2004), pp. 1–10; Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. Legrand and Ricardo D. Salvatore (eds.), Close Encounters of Empire, Writing the Cultural History of United States – Latin American Relations (Durham 1998).

9 Zuccotti, ‘Entre la pose y la palabra,’ p. 379. The group is known as the Generation of 1837.

10 They were there from April 1846 to the end of 1847.

11 This was Eulalia born 13 October 1846.

12 Zuccotti, ‘Entre la pose y la palabra,’ p. 375. For Manso in Brazil, see June Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex, The Struggle for Women's Rights in Brazil, 1850–1940 (Durham 1990) pp. 26–36.

13 Maria Lucia Mott, ‘Madame Durocher, Uma Partera Diplomada,’ ONG Amigas do Parto (July 2005), pp. 1–4.

14 Álbum, 6 (17 February 1854), p. 63. Emphasis in original. Frederick's translation, Wily Modesty, p. 21. On Manso's publication, Álbum, see L. Area, Álbum de Señoritas de Juana Manso, Periodismo y Frustración para un proyecto ‘Doméstico’ de fundar una nación (Buenos Aires, Editora Feminaria, 2005).

15 Juan Manuel Chavarría, La Escuela Normal y la Cultura Argentina (Buenos Aires 1947), p. 326 notes in reference to Manso and Sarmiento, ‘It is rare to see an intellectual woman give herself with such loyalty and constancy over to the thinking and action of a man’. Even Sosa de Newton calls Manso, Sarmiento's right hand in Gil Lozano, et al. (eds.), Historia de las mujeres, p. 177.

16 Quoted in Area, Álbum de Señoritas, p. 5. Emphasis in original.

17 Nicholas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley 1991), pp. 112–46.

18 ‘We must be fair with the Spaniards’ Sarmiento noted. ‘By exterminating a savage people whose territory they were going to occupy, they merely did what all civilized people have done with savages … , absorb, destroy, [and] exterminate’, Ibid., p. 255.

19 Álbum, 5 (29 January 1854), p. 39.

20 Thus in her novel La Familia del Comendador, the hero, Mauricio is an educated mulatto doctor imbued with noble and moral values and, as such, represents the basis for a civilised society; whereas in Los Misterios del Plata, Miguel, the blue-eyed gaucho is ignorant and rootless and easily manipulated by Rosas and his power hungry henchmen. On Manso's racial thinking in La Familia del Comendador, see Fletcher, ‘Una voz en el desierto’, Fletcher, ed., Mujeres y cultura, pp. 108–20. On Brazilian racial thought, see Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (Durham 1995).

21 D. Vicente Alcalde Espejo, ‘Informe circunstanciado del visitador de escuelas de la provincial de Córdoba,’ Anales de la educación común, 10, 7 (February 1872), p. 199. (Hereafter, Anales; numbering of volumes and issues is often inaccurate.)

22 Anales, 4, 40 (October 1866), pp. 82, 83.

23 Manso, quoted in Lewkowicz, Manso, p. 111. The depiction of Rosas's home in Misterios del Plata, pp. 57–60, is one of disorder: people come and go, they hang around, Rosas has dinner at irregular hours in the middle of the night and hardly sleeps. This creates chaos and is the opposite of healthiness and good values. For a discussion of the family in Manso's fiction, see Davies et al., ‘Juana Manso (1819–75), Women in History’.

24 Compare Anales, 2, 22 (July 1861), p. 683 and Anales, 3, 30 (December 1865), p. 133.

25 José, Pedro Varela, ‘De Los Derechos de la Mujer’, Anales, vol. 7 (1869), pp. 24–32Google Scholar, 25.

26 Manso, ‘Manuscrito de la Madre, 3 de abril de 1846,’ in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 350.

27 Sarmiento to Manso, Lake Oscawana, 22 September 1866, Obras Completas, Vol. XIX, Ambas Ámericas, (Buenos Aires 2001), pp. 125, 127.

28 Anales, 4, 42 (December 1866), p. 130.

29 See Sarmiento's speech on California's progress, Anales, 10, 3 (October 1871), p. 80.

30 Álbum, 3 (15 January 1854), p. 24.

31 Anales, 4, 40 (October 1866), p. 75; Anales, 3, 27 (September 1865), p. 35.

32 Anales, 3, 36 (30 June 1866), p. 349.

33 Anales, 10, 12 (July 1872), p. 359.

34 Anales, 3, 26 (August 1865), pp. 21–3; Carlos Newland, Buenos Aires No Es Pampa, La educación elemental Porteña 1820–1860 (Buenos Aires 1992) pp. 51, 155.

35 Anales, 3, 36 (June 1866), pp. 333–34.

36 Sarmiento to Señor don J. Rojas Paul, the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Relations, Buenos Aires, 11 April 1870 in Obras Completas XLVII, Educar al Soberano, pp. 12, 15.

37 Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, pp. 330–31.

38 She began working on the Anales in 1859, took on its direction in 1862, and apart from a 30 month hiatus until August 1865, and another from December 1867 to early 1869, was its editor until her death.

39 Anales, 4, 49 (July 1867), pp. 356. Inválido Argentino, 29 (14 de julio, 1867). For this debate, see Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Divorcio y familia tradicional (Buenos Aires 1984), pp. 76–8.

40 La Enseñanza published from 1869 to 1870.

41 Anales, 9, 7 (February 1871), p. 199.

42 Sarmiento to Manso, New York, October 15, 1867, Obras Completas, Vol. XIX, pp. 150, 153.

43 The journal was purchased by government departments, city councilors and interested individuals. In 1866 subscribers numbered about 800, Anales, 3, 37 (July 1866), pp. 421–22.

44 Sotomayor's report appeared in the Anales in 1866 is cited in Lewkowicz, Manso, p. 134.

45 See especially Anales, 4, 40 (Oct 1866), pp. 65–9; 4, 43 (January 1867), pp. 165–9; 3, 32 (February 1867), pp. 204–6; Horace Mann's reports in Anales, 11, 5 (December 1872), pp. 140–60; 12, 6 (January 1873), pp. 161–9; 12, 7 (February 1873), pp. 193–216.

46 Anales, 3, 36 (June 1866), p. 332.

47 Anales, 10, 2 (July 1872), p. 366.

48 Anales, 7 (March 1869), p. 16. On the Sociedad, see Cynthia Jeffress Little, ‘The Society of Beneficence in Buenos Aires, 1823–1900,’ Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University, 1980; Donna J. Guy, ‘La “verdadera” historia de la Sociedad de Beneficencia,’ in José Luis Moreno (ed.), La política social antes de la política social (Buenos Aires 2000), pp. 321–41.

49 Alice Houston Luiggi, Sixty Five Valiants (Gainesville 1965), p. 114.

50 Twenty years later Manso was still complaining that the Sociedad received more monies than the Board of Public Instruction, Anales, 10, 12 (July 1872), p. 358.

51 Marifran Carlson, Feminismo! The Women's Movement in Argentina from its beginnings to Eva Perón (Chicago 1988), p. 53.

52 Manso won a (posthumous) victory over the Sociedad. Her negative reiteration of the Sociedad (a depiction Sarmiento adhered to) took hold and in 1876 the state took over the girls' schools hitherto run by the Sociedad. The organisation expanded into private education and welfare.

53 Sarmiento to Mann, Oscawana, Julio 2 de 1866: ‘[Manso] has starting giving Lectures and is being rewarded with splendid success,’ BAAL, 4 (1936), p. 107.

54 Details of Manso's conversion are few. Her affinity to Protestantism was evident in Álbum, 2 (January 8, 1854), pp. 10–11 where she defended Protestants' right to practice and preach. She taught at the American Methodist Episcopal Church Sunday School where she became close to the Rev. Henry G. Jackson, and teacher and librarian, W. D. Funor, both of whom spoke at her funeral. Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, pp. 123–4, refers to the latter as pastor and places Funor and her conversion at the 25 de Mayo church, which was British, but this may be a mistake.

55 Enrique M. de Santa Olalla, in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 324. An outraged Sarmiento defended her, ‘Un Desagravio’, Obras Completas XXIX, pp. 97–8.

56 Anales, 4, 40 (October 1866), pp. 74–87.

57 Anales, 4, 47 (May 1867), pp. 303–7.

58 Anales, 3, 32 (February 1867), p. 217. The volume and issue number should read 4, 44.

59 Anales, 4, 40 (October 1866), pp. 80–1.

60 Ibid., p. 87.

61 Anales, 4, 47 (May 1867), p. 306.

62 Ibid., p. 307. By 1872 Chivilcoy had completed building its library; so it wasn't that they were against the library, but against Manso.

63 She was one of five members on the Board, Anales, 9, 10 (May 1871), p. 298. There was a flurry of reform during Sarmiento's presidency (1868–1874), which included transport and communications, banking, land reform, federal law, the collection of national statistics and more.

64 Anales, 8 (July 1870), p. 317 (In Index Manso calls this volume 5); Anales, 9, 6 (January 1871), p. 169.

65 Anales, 10, 3 (October 1871), p. 65. Torres (1823–1895) was an influential Spanish educator who arrived in Argentina in 1864 and had a long and successful career in education.

66 Anales, 8 (July 1870), pp. 360–66; Standard, February 25, 1870; Anales, 9, 6 (January 1871), p. 176.

67 Several issues of Anales, 7–8 (1869–70), pp. 160–3, 201–5, 221–7, 285–9; 9, 3 (October 1870), pp. 65–75; 4, 9 (November 1870), pp. 96–101.

68 Anales, 9, 4 (November 1870), p. 98.

69 Anales, 8 (August 1869), pp. 287, 289.

70 Anales, 9, 6 (January 1871), pp. 172–3; Velasco, Juan Paula Manso, p. 173.

71 Anales, 8 (February 1870), p. 102.

72 ‘Resúmen de la estadística escolar’, in Memoria, Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública, 1873, p. 44.

73 Newland, Buenos Aires No Es Pampa, pp. 207–8.

74 In 1871 Manso noted approvingly that vacancies for the positions of principal had been filled through a competition. This was a bad precedent for these women, Anales, 10, 3 (October 1871), p. 73.

75 Some, while welcoming educational reform, questioned the wisdom of importing foreign teachers. José Manuel Estrada in ‘Escuela Normal,’ Anales, 8 (1869), p. 30, argued that foreign teachers may be better trained but they would not have the necessary patriotism for the sacrifices that school teaching required in Argentina.

76 Manso to Mary Mann, 25 November 1866, in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 157.

77 Manso to Mary Mann, September 1872, ‘Letters to Mary Mann from Juana Manso,’ typescript and translation by Luiggi, 1950.

78 Manso to Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, September 4, 1867, ‘Letters … ,’ typescript and translation by Luiggi, 1950.

79 August 8, 1870 ‘Letters … ,’ typescript and translation by Luiggi, 1950. Observations of the new teachers in Anales, 9, 4 (November 1870), pp. 102–3; Anales, 9, 6 (January 1871) p. 177.

80 Anales 9, 4 (Nov. 1870), p. 102. For her description of time she spent with Americans, Anales, 9, 5 (December 1870), pp. 129–144. Most of the small American community were Northerners and, as well as merchants, were teachers, scientists, clergymen, and some missionaries. Many were idealistic and interested in the role of education, as was, for example, the US Consul, Dexter Clapp, who after the Civil War was in charge of freedmen's education in a district in North Carolina. Manso was observing and extrapolating from a group at a very special time that drew even closer because of its expatriate condition.

81 Manso's review of José Manuel Estrada's ‘Memoria sobre la educación común en la provincia de Buenos Aires’, Anales, 9, 3 (October 1870), p. 75.

82 This quote and the two that follow are from Manso's ‘Recuerdos de viaje’, cited in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, pp. 342–3; 347.

83 Ibid., pp. 339–63.

84 Álbum, 4 (22 January 1854), p. 28.

85 Álbum, 7 (12 February 1854), p. 49.

86 In Pennsylvania she had visited a centre for the blind, deaf and dumb, and a prison whose object was to reform rather than punish. Anales, 11 (November 1872), p. 98; Álbum, 6 (5 February 1854), pp. 43–4.

87 Manso to Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, 5 February 1868, in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 330.

88 Álbum, 4 (22 January 1854), p. 28.

89 Ivan Jaksic in Ven conmigo a la España lejana (Chile 2007), pp. 255–61 notes the lively intellectual exchange between Cubans and New Englanders in the 1840s. Could the curious Manso have been aware of these discussions?

90 Álbum 1 (January 1854), p. 3.

91 Levy, ‘Juana Manso,’ pp. 13–5.

92 O Jornal das Senhoras, (8 February 1852), p. 42.

93 My italics. Inválido Argentino, 49 (1 December 1867), p. 387, quoted in Levy, ‘Juana Manso,’ p. 14. This double standard had long troubled her, ‘That which in her is classified as crime, in him is attributed as human weakness’. Álbum 1 (1 January 1854), p. 3.

94 Anales, 3, 36 (June 1866), p. 362.

95 M. C. Mirrow, Latin American Law, A History of Private Institutions in Spanish America (Austin 2004), pp. 133–42; Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León, ‘Liberalism and Married Women's Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century Latin America’, Hispanic American Historical Review 85, 4 (2005), 627–78; Levy, ‘Juana Manso,’ pp. 13–4; Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Divorcio y familia tradicional (Buenos Aires 1984), pp. 29–86.

96 From El Inválido Argentino. Quoted in Levy, ‘Juana Manso,’ p. 14.

97 For example, Levy, ‘Juana Manso,’ p. 10 writes, ‘Manso … accepted without much question the roles of wife and mother’, while Lewkowicz notes, ‘In Juana Manso's [writings … ] there is no petition for equal rights neither civil nor political’. Juana Paulo Manso, p. 71. Masiello's more complex view sees Manso wanting women to put their intellectual energies at the service of the nation, Between Civilization, pp. 53–4. This is accurate but fails to catch Manso's complex oppositional stances; Zuccotti, however, does portray these.

98 Anales, 4, 40 (October 1866), p. 72.

99 Frederick, Wily Modesty, pp. 15–42.

100 Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex, p. 27.

101 ‘Declaracão, Sobre as minhas ideias da emancipacão moral da mulher,’ O Jornal das Senhoras (25 January 1852), p. 27.

102 Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex, p. 26.

103 Anales, 10, 12 (July 1872), p. 364. The evolution of Manso's ideas is also suggested in her fiction. In her novel, Misterios del Plata, p. 85, for example, she defends Colonel Rojas, a ‘noble’ character, whose likely murder of his own wife is justified by her immoral behaviour. It is difficult to imagine the later Manso taking this ‘blame the victim’ stance.

104 Manso to Mary Mann, Anales, 7 (March 1869), p. 15.

105 Jo Burr Margadant, The New Biography, Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley 2001).

106 Zuccotti, ‘Entre la pose y la palabra,’ p. 365.

107 One hangs in the Mitre Museum; the other opens the issue of Anales, 3, 26 (August 1865).

108 Anales, 3, 36 (June 1866), pp. 325–6.

109 ‘Any [educational] reforms that do not include the following solid bases are a waste of time: statistical studies; funds and lands provided specifically for schools; community involvement; clear job demarcations’, Anales, 4, 48 (June 1867), p. 339.

110 None of Manso's heroines – Gabriela in El Comendador or Adelaida in Misterios de Plata – are described as beautiful; rather they are serene, loyal, strong, determined, independent.

111 The government minister, Malaver, was particularly aggrieved when she publicly called him ‘stupid’, Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 185.

112 Anales, 7 (March 1869), p. 15.

113 Quoted in Velasco, Juana Paula Manso, p. 370.

114 Anales, 9, 6 (January 1871), p. 173.

115 The Standard (29 April 1875).

116 Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism, & Social Change in Argentina, Chile, & Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln 1995), p. 17.

117 Luiggi calls her that in Sixty Five Valiants, p. 27, but she is by means the only author to employ paternalistic terms for Manso.

118 Masiello, Between Civilization, pp. 20–1; the most insightful writer on this period is Tulio Halperin Donghi, Una Nación para el Desierto Argentino (Buenos Aires 2005).

119 Shumway, Invention of Argentina, pp. 27–43, 299.

120 Ibid., Quoted p. 136.