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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
One day, a young romance writer who has lost his place to urban expansion in Buenos Aires overhears this intimate conversation coming from another bedroom in an all-women's residence hall. An “invisible houseguest” in Madame Bazan's pensionado for middle-class women of all ages, Mauricio Ridel works on finishing a happy ending for his latest serialized novel. During the writing process, however, he finds himself distracted by the sounds and rhythms of the house, his focus carried away to the conversations in the house on fashion, family life and female emancipation. Careful not to indicate his presence in any way (for he has agreed to respect the privacy of the women who live there), Ridel listens in to the conversations between female residents from the comfort of his assigned room. Believing themselves removed from male listeners, the female characters of Juana Manuela Gorriti's Oasis en la vida (1888) openly discuss their concerns and desires in the security of enclosed spaces. The dialogic sequence that begins this essay demonstrates the relief that a group of unnamed women experience when removing their uncomfortable clothing. They complain about the weight and needless complexity of their fashions and even flesh out a conspiracy theory concerning a few of those crazy designers. As the women contemplate the changes that tomorrow's fashions will inevitably bring, their soft, sweet voices appear punctuated by the incongruous thud of tossed garments.
1 See Oasis en la vida (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-Americana de Billetes de Bancos, 1888), p. 57.
2 Interestingly enough, Gorriti chooses to use the word nosotros, suggesting that both men and women aspire for ideal bodies and clothes with which to shield them.
3 See, for instance, Kern's, Stephen study of Anatomy and Destiny: A Cultural History of the Human Body (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1975)Google Scholar and Roberts’, Helene E. essay on “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,” in Signs: Journal of Woman in Culture and Society (Spring 1977; 2: 554–69).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Valerie Steele writes, “It is absurd to blame clothing for limiting women, and pointless to blame “men” or “society” for forcing women to wear restrictive or “feminine” dress” (Fashion and Eroticism, 246).
4 See Lowe, Donald, History of Bourgeois Perception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 96.Google Scholar
5 The interrelationship of Latin American dress, body and culture has received little attention until very recently. See Saulquin's, Susana La moda en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1990),Google Scholar Corcuera's, Ruth Ponchos de las tierras del Plata (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes in collaboration with Verstraeten Editores, 1998),Google Scholar and de Amenábar's, Isabel Cruz El traje. Transformaciones de una segunda piel (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 1996),Google Scholar Assuncao's, Fernando O. Pilchas criollas (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1991),Google Scholar and Root, Regina, ed., Latin American Fashion (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, forthcoming).Google Scholar
6 See Barthes, Roland, The Fashion System (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 249.Google Scholar
7 I write this with the understanding that one's sense of “free choice” may or may not be real.
8 Efrat Tseelon addresses the need for attention to sartorial diversity in order to resist stereotypes in the realm of fashion research. She especially questions the validity of the qualitative and quantitative divide that permeates this interdisciplinary field. See her “Clarifications in Fashion Research,” in Through the Wardrobe: Women's Relationships with Their Clothes, edited by Guy, Ali, Green, Eileen and Banim, Maura (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2001), p. 253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an analysis of the historical presentation of style, which C. Evans and M. Thornton believe has not accounted for the way in which “worn fashion generates meaning,” see “Fashion, Representation, Femininity,” in the Feminist Review, 38 (1991), pp. 48–66.
9 See “A Woman's Two Bodies: Fashion Magazines, Consumerism, and Feminism” in On Fashion, edited by Benstock, Shari and Ferriss, Suzanne (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), p. 59.Google Scholar
10 I borrow this turn of phrase from Maura Banim, Eileen Green and Ali Guy. They write, “The fashion system is fluid enough to show ‘gaping seams’ which allow women some control over their clothed images and identities, spaces which permit personal agency and negotiated images.” See their introduction to Through the Wardrobe: Women's Relationships with Their Clothes (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2001), p. 7.
11 More specifically, I would point to Echeverría's, Esteban El matadero (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1995),Google Scholar Sarmiento's, Domingo Faustino Facundo, Civilización y barbarie (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1972),Google Scholar Mármol's, José Amalia (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1979),Google Scholar and Rivera Indarte's, José Rosas y sus opositores (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de mayo, 1853).Google Scholar
12 La Moda was published in Buenos Aires by the Imprenta de la Independencia from 1837 to 1838.
13 See issue number 1, November 18, 1837, pp. 2–3. For an in-depth analysis of La Moda and its sequel, El Iniciador (Montevideo, Uruguay), see Root, Regina, “Tailoring the Nation: Fashion Writing in Nineteenth-Century Argentina” (Fashion Theory 2000, 4: pp. 89–118).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 See Masiello, Francine, Between Civilization and Barbarism. Women, Nation and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 23.Google Scholar
15 Zoila writes, “Parece que ya veo en ciertos jovencitos una risa sardónica, al mismo tiempo que dicen, ¡qué monada, las muchachas con un periódico!—No obstante estos chascarrillos, adelante compañeras, os de ayudar con toda mi alma y les hemos de hacer comprender, lo que sabemos, lo que valemos, en fin los hemos de humillar.” Eliza narrates a conversation with Don Hermógenes, who believes that the editor is a man using a series of female pseudonyms. (For both citations, see the April 11, 1852 issue of La Camelia, p. 4).
16 See Pratt's, Mary Louise essay on “Women, Literature and National Brotherhood” in Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America, edited by the Seminar on Feminism and Culture in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 52.Google Scholar
17 On other occasions, I have discussed the question of public access through fashion. See “Tailoring the Nation: Fashion Writing in Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” Fashioning the Body Politic, ed. Parkins, Wendy (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar “La moda como metonimia” analyzes the peinetón, a three-foot by three-foot comb worn by the fashionable women of Buenos Aires to assert their presence in the public sphere (Folios 1999; 35.6: pp. 3–11).
18 See La aljaba (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1830), p. 1. Nestor Tomás Aúza believes that a group of nameless women edited La camelia, despite popular attribution to Rosa Guerra. See his work on Periodismo y feminismo en la Argentina 1830–1900 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1988), pp. 166–8. The magazine does indeed use the pronoun “we” when discussing opinions on topics as diverse as literature and equal rights. See also Masiello's, Francine edited volume on La mujer y el espacio público. El periodismo femenino en la Argentina del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Feminaria Editora, 1994)Google Scholar; Green-berg, Janet (“Towards a History of Women's Periodicals in Latin America: A Working Bibliography,” in the Seminar on Feminism and Culture in Latin America's Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and de Newton, Lily Sosa in Narradoras argentinas (1852–1932) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Plus Ultra, 1995).Google Scholar
19 The luxurious pursuits had reached such an extreme that Rosende de Sierra considered it “ruinoso a los caudales; perjudical a la tranquilidad doméstica; chocante a la buena razón, y ridículo a la situación del país.” See issue number 8, p. 3.
20 Published in London by R. Ackerman, Strand, and distributed throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Perú, Chile and Buenos Aires, President Bernardino Rivadavia used this manual to introduce the concept of physical education for women to the River Plate region. From the advertisements of newspapers, as well as one signed copy of this manual in the private library of Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, we know that the second edition (published in 1827) circulated in Buenos Aires after 1830. While very little is known of its author, Rodríguez Molas ascertains that he was a Spanish native exiled in England. See his essay on “La gimnasia femenina como arma de la ilustración,” in the February 10, 1993 issue of Río Negro, p. 11.
21 See pages 121–2 of La ilustración argentina.
22 Carlson, Marifran, ¡Feminismo! The Woman's Movement in Argentina From Its Beginnings to Eva Perón (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1988), pp. 60–61.Google Scholar
23 For an interesting view of material culture, technological advancement and changing domestic roles, see the editorial comments found in Búcaro Americano (1896–1908), a magazine published in Buenos Aires and edited by Clorinda Matto de Turner. The Peruvian author documents the way in which telephones, sewing machines, electric massagers and hairdryers were transforming the daily lives of urban women. Bonnie Frederick comments on the international scope of Matto de Turner's enterprise, explaining that in the magazine's pages “women everywhere were writing literature and urging expanded women's rights.” See Frederick, , Wily Modesty. Argentine Women Writers, 1860–1910 (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press, 1998), p. 28.Google Scholar
24 See the Seminar's collaborative essay in Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 175.
25 Several scholars point to the porous nature of the public sphere in the nineteenth century, particularly when it concerns women's issues. See the volume edited by Calhoun, Craig on Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press, 1992),Google Scholar in particular Ryan's, Mary P. essay on “Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America,” pp. 259–88,Google Scholar and Benhabib's, Seyla “Models of Public Space,” pp. 73–98.Google Scholar When following Habermas’ model, Benhabib reinforces the idea that “participation is seen not as an activity only possible in a narrowly defined political realm but as an activity that can be realized in the social and cultural spheres as well.” See p. 86.
26 See Lavrin, , “Final Considerations” in Latin American Women. Historical Perspectives, edited by Lavrin, Asunción (Westport, Connecticut and London, England: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 316.Google Scholar Donna Guy describes a civil code passed in 1871 that treated women as minors “completely under the control of their husbands or fathers.” Women could not “manage their own money or property; nor could they work without patriarchal permission. Furthermore, until the 1913 Ley Palacios, family heads who forced women into prostitution committed no crime that affected their rights of patria potestad as defined by the civil code.” See Guy, , Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires. Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 44.Google Scholar
27 Lavrin's, “Final Considerations,” p. 316.Google Scholar In the context of early twentieth-century feminism, she writes, “Suffrage was a goal, but almost as a derivataive of the larger goal of legal equality.”
28 See Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 175.
29 Bonnie Frederick also highlights this statement by Luis Telmo Pintos. See his essay on “La mujer: habilitada para la enseñanza” in the August 1, 1875 issue of La Ondina del Plata, p. 301. Cited in Frederick, p. 49. For an insightful discussion of education and “The Angel in the House,” see pages 45 to 49.
30 Miller, Francesca in Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1991), p. 44.Google Scholar
31 Twenty years later, David Rock continues, “although conditions varied greatly among the regions, in some areas education, housing, and consumption standards bore comparison with the most-advanced parts of the world.” See Argentina 1516–1987. From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985 and 1987), p. 118.
32 See Carlson's, Marifran chapter on “Education for Women in Nineteenth Century Argentina,” p. 66.Google Scholar For more information on Sarmiento's contradictory views on the question of female emancipation, see Garrels, Elizabeth in “Sarmiento and the Woman Question: From 1839 to the Facundo,” in Sarmiento: Author of a Nation, edited by Donghi, Tulio Halperín, Jaksic, Iván, Kirkpatrick, Gwen and Masiello, Francine (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 272–93.Google Scholar Donghi's, Tulio Halperín essay in the same volume, “Sarmiento's Place in Postrevolutionary Argentina,” offers a unique vision of this education project as a “gospel of renewal,” pp. 19–30.Google Scholar
33 Conde, Roberto Cortés discusses the transformations of this marketplace in “Sarmiento and Economic Progress: From Facundo to the Presidency,” in Sarmiento. Author of a Nation, pp. 114–23.Google Scholar
34 Scobie, James R., Buenos Aires. Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 213.Google Scholar David Rock points to the transatlantic boom in commerce and the export of sheep wool starting in the 1850s. Sheep, it appears, outnumbered people and cattle for the second half the nineteenth century. By the late 1880s, Rock estimates a ratio of 30 sheep for every one Argentine. See Rock, p. 133.
35 Rock, p. 132. Rock writes, “By the late 1880s the nation's population was increasing threefold every thirty years. Argentina was now becoming a society of white immigrants and large cities.” See p. 118. The census of 1869 indicates 1,836,590 inhabitants. In 1914, the number of inhabitants had grown to 7,885,237. Income levels also boomed as a result of international commerce, with gold prices rising from $7.8 in 1870 to $19.7 in 1910. Susana Saulquin describes how the period's affluence would convert Calle Florida into the city's best known pedestrian mall for window shopping and fashionable purchases. See La Moda en la Argentina, p. 48.
36 Guy, p. 37.
37 Lucio López would address this transformation of Buenos Aires from a provincial village to a materialistic urban center in his social novel of the same name. La gran aldea appeared in serialized form in Sud-América in 1884 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1992).
38 Scobie, p. 234.
39 Scobie discusses the social structure of late nineteenth-century Argentina, defining la gente decente, the emerging interests of the middle class, and la gente de pueblo (who Scobie indicates made up the other 95% of the population of Buenos Aires) in his chapter on “Social Structure and Cultural Themes.” See pp. 208–49.
40 Such imitation had been unheard of previously. Susan Socolow has addressed those legal documents that used dress and other social conventions to denote racial status in the Spanish colonies. See her “Acceptable Partners: Marriage Choice in Colonial Argentina, 1778–1810,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 209–46. By the late nineteenth century, however, dress codes did not distinguish race and class in the same way. Because society did not challenge the well-dressed man, working class males wore coats and ties. This also served to distance themselves from the low status of their foreign-born parents. See Scobie, pp. 220 and 232.
41 Lily Sosa de Newton writes that the modista was often foreign-born. See her “El trabajo de la mujer” in Las argentinas ayer y hoy (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Zanetti, 1967), p. 210.
42 See the December 3rd issue of Correo del Domingo. Periódico Literario Ilustrado (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Siglo, 1885).
43 At the same time, the boina and alpargatas made their way to the rural regions of Argentina, where farmers then adopted them. See Saulquin, p. 57.
44 Martel, Julián, La bolsa (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Artística “Buenos Aires,” 1898).Google Scholar
45 He continues, “Allá va como inmensa vision apocalíptica una sociedad entera, levantada por el agio y la especulación, celebrando la más escandalosa orgía del lujo, que ha visto y verá Buenos Aires.” Also cited in Saulquin, p. 58.
46 The uncorseted waist and “natural style” of North American dancer Isadora Duncan most likely helped bring about this change in Argentina. See Saulquin, p. 53.
47 Saulquin, p. 51. Leigh Summers explains that the taboos of Victorian culture forced women to keep a pregnant body from view. See her “Corsetry and the Invisibility of the Maternal Body” in Bound to Please. A History of the Victorian Corset (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2001), pp. 37–61.
48 Byrde, Penelope, Nineteenth Century Fashion (London: B. T. Batsford Limited, 1992), pp. 66 Google Scholar and 68.
49 Steele, p. 130. Bonnie Frederick highlights the symbolic language that alludes to female modesty in El Álbum del Hogar. The Spanish author María Pilar Sinués de Marco, for instance, compares the modest woman to a violet, “an unobtrusive flower often hidden under the leaves of larger, showier flowers,” as if to show that “a woman-violet should be silent, self-effacing, and out of the public eye.” Her article reads, “Como la violeta, la mujer modesta, despide tan suave y delicado aroma, de tal manera embalsaman sus virtudes la atmósfera, que su presencia se adivina y su hermosura brilla tanto más cuanto mayor es la oscuridad del cuadro en el que voluntariamente se encierra.” Cited in Frederick, p. 47. The question of Sinués de Marco's feminism appears later in this essay.
50 Cited in Rudofsky, Bernard, The Unfashionable Human Body (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, 1974), p. 26.Google Scholar
51 Sosa de Newton, p. 215. Wages for sewing had always been low, in part because most women knew how to sew. Guy, Donna writes, “For poor women in capital city, domestic service and sewing at miserable wages were the major alternatives to prostitution.” In Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires, p. 42.Google Scholar The poem by Evaristo Carriego (1883–1912) reads,
From Selección de poemas de Evaristo Carriego y otros poetas (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1968), p. 34.
52 Just two years after the publication of Oasis en la vida, for example, Cecilia Grierson became the first women to receive the country's medical degree and Eufrasia Cabrai and Elvira Rawson the first women to address publicly feminist concerns at the Plaza de Mayo.
53 Lavrín, pp. 304 and 315.
54 Frederick, pp. 160–1. Many scholars have written on Gorriti's life and creative fiction. Aside from the excellent sources already listed herein, see Berg, Mary, “Juana Manuela Gorriti,” en Escritoras de Hispanoamérica, ed. Matting, Diane (Bogotá: Siglo Veintiuno, 1992), pp. 231–45Google Scholar; Iglesia, Cristina, ed. El Ajuar de la patria: Ensayos críticos sobre Juana Manuela Gorriti (Buenos Aires: Feminaria Editora, 1993).Google Scholar For a more fictionalized account of history, see Mercader, Martha, Juanamanuela, mucha mujer (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1980)Google Scholar and Efron, Analía , Juana Gorriti: Una biografía íntima (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998).Google Scholar
55 Yeager, Gertrude, “Juana Manuela Gorriti: Writer in Exile,” in The Human Factor in Latin America. The Nineteenth Century, ed. Beezley, William H. and Ewell, Judith, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1989): 114–27.Google Scholar See pp. 123–4. During these years, Gorriti supported her children and herself with income from a girl's school and an elementary school that she founded.
56 Meehan, Thomas C., “Una olvidada precursora de la literatura fantástica argentina: Juana Manuela Gorriti,” Chasqui. Revista de literatura latinoamericana 10.2–3 (February-May 1981): 3–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See p. 7.
57 All essays mentioned in this paragraph can also be found in Masiello's, Francine anthology on La mujer y el espacio público. El periodismo feminismo en la Argentina del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Feminaria Editora, 1994).Google Scholar
58 “Los Oasis en la Vida,” La Alborada del Plata, no. 4 (December 9, 1877): 32.
59 “El Oasis en la Vida,” La Alborada del Plata, no. 6 (December 23, 1877): 45–6.
60 “El Hogar,” La Alborada del Plata, no. 5 (December 16, 1877): 33–4.
61 Without question, many of the views held by women authors were extremely conservative. As one widely circulated manual encouraged, “El trabajo, la economía y el ahorro sostienen el hogar y aumentando su bienestar transmiten a todos los miembros de la familia la satisfacción y la alegría.” See Salzá’s, Emilia M. manual for young girls, La economía doméstica al alcance de las niñas (Buenos Aires: Librería del Colegio, 1901), p. 48.Google Scholar Gorriti provided a forum for all of those voices, as if she realized that open discussion on matters of interest and concern to women would promote—and not stifle—the quest for female emancipation.
62 Anthony Castagnaro, R., The Early Spanish American Novel (1971), p. 91.Google Scholar
63 Oasis en la vida, p. 6
64 Masiello, p. 129.
65 Ibid, p. 126. Masiello continues, “A novel whose principal objective is to urge readers to place their savings in the banking institutions of America and to confirm their faith in the future by purchasing life insurance, Oasis en la vida integrates modern materialism with a call to strengthen the home economy.”
66 Oasis en la vida, p. 43.
67 He writes these words on December 22, 1887.
68 Ibid, p. 6.
69 Ibid, p. 6.
70 Ibid., p. 6.
71 Masiello, p. 125.
72 Scholars mention this cross-dressing only briefly. See Scott, Nina M., “Juana Manuela Gorriti's Cocina ecléctica: Recipes as Feminist Discourse,” Hispània 5.2 (May 1992): 310–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See p. 311. Meehan writes that her cross-dressing began in the 1850s, when she organized the veladas literarias at her home in Lima. See Meehan, p. 7.
73 Oasis en la vida, p. 56.
74 Ibid., p. 59. When Gorriti compliments Julia for the comfortable simplicity of her robe and then asks who made it, the resident replies, “¿Quién ha de ser? Julia López, tu servidora.”
75 Out of respect for her recently deceased father, Julia only wears black garments. “Feliz tú,” Gorriti quips, “que puedes emanciparte de la odiosa tutela de las modistas.”
76 Gorriti attributes this melody to Ortiz Zeballos.
77 Ibid, p. 66. Throughout the novel, Gorriti portrays the sounds that Mauricio hears with choppy sentences such as “Risas, remoción de muebles, apertura del piano.”
78 Again, Mauricio views this female presence as an invasion. Upon awakening, Mauricio finds his space overtaken by women, but by now he enjoys the kind-hearted attention. “En ese momento, los paseantes del jardín invadieron el cuarto, llenos pañuelos y sobrefaldas de hermosas rosas primaverales que esparcieron sobre la cama de Mauricio, en los muebles y hasta en el pavimento.” Ibid, p. 96.
79 Ibid., 98.
80 Ibid., p. 110.
81 Ibid., pp. 110–11.
82 Ibid., p. 114.
83 See Warner, Michael on “The Mass Public and the Mass Subject” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Calhoun, Craig, p. 384.Google Scholar
84 Darío's, Rubén Azul was published in 1888,Google Scholar the same year that Oasis en la vida appeared.
85 See his Hand Coloured Fashion Plates, 1770–1899 (Boston, Massachusetts: Boston Book and Art Shop, 1955), p. 21. Holland was a prominent fashion lithograph collector best known for being the son of Oscar Wilde, one of the period's most dramatic dressers.
86 See Hollander's, Ann Seeing Through Clothes (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1978), p. 321.Google Scholar
87 La Ondina del Plata (Buenos Aires: 1876–9), p. 622.
88 Ibid, p. 6.
89 Frederick believes that La Alborada del Plata was a more conservative periodical that celebrated the domestic angel or the type of woman who had “sacrificial tendencies” and worked toward “self-erasure.” See p. 46.
90 Frederick, p. 46.
91 Bonnie Frederick depicts her as a “leading promoter of the domestic angel” concept. Masiello sees her as a feminist in Between Civilization and Barbarism, but notes her ultra-conservative tendencies in La mujer y el espacio público. María Cristina Urruela provides a new historical perspective in her essay on “Becoming ‘Angelic’: Sinués, María Pilar and the Woman Question,” Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition, edited by Vollendorf, Lisa (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2001).Google Scholar
92 Her moral stories found in La ley de Dios (1858) and A la luz de la lámpara (1858), officially endorsed by Spanish religious and government authorities, were even incorporated for use in public instruction. Despite the conservative neo-Catholic approach taken in her conduct manuals and serialized novels, Sinués did not escape criticism. Women authors often found themselves in a precarious public role, their private lives as scrupulously reviewed as their written work. As Ignacio Sánchez-Llama suggests, the “manly realist” tendencies of the late nineteenth-century cultural histories, which assigned inferior status to works by women authors based on biological premises alone, were ultimately responsible for discounting the status that Sinués achieved in her lifetime. See his essays on “María del Pilar Sinués de Marco y la cultural oficial peninsular del siglo XIX: del neocatolicismo a la estética realista,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 23.2 (Winter 1999): 271–88; and “El ‘varonil realismo’ y la cultura oficial de la Restauración en el fin de siglo peninsular: el caso de María del Pilar Sinués de Marco (18351893),” Letras peninsulares 12.1 (Spring 1999): 37–64.
93 Urruela, p. 162.
94 Sánchez-Llama, , “María del Pilar Sinués de Marco y la cultural oficial peninsular del siglo XIX: del neocatolicismo a la estética realista,” pp. 277–8.Google Scholar
95 The title of this magazine refers to the golden tower of a castle in Sevilla, Spain, its tiles reflecting the Andalusian sun. La torre de oro was referred to as a “periódico dedicado a las damas,” highlighting the subjects of “Educación, Labore, Literatura, Economía Doméstica.” I would like to thank Victor Goldgel Carballo for his assistance in the collection of dates for the lithographs disseminated in Buenos Aires by the Spanish author.
96 Urruela, p. 161.
97 La Ondina del Plata, p. 6.
98 In their exploration of the roots of fashion anxiety, Clarke, Alison and Miller, Daniel affirm that “Individuals are frequently too anxious about the choices to be made to proceed without various forms of support and reassurance. Where possible, support involves close friends and family who are trusted to give advice reflecting care and concern.” See “Fashion and Anxiety,” Fashion Theory 6.2 (June 2002): 191–213, p. 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
99 La Ondina del Plata, p. 7.
100 A letter to Sinués unmarried brother reiterates this belief. She writes, “Créeme, de elegir la com-pañera de tu destino, no busques los extremos, sino la mujer modesta y a la vez regularmente ilustrada, que es la bella hija del progreso y de la civilización. Recuerda, hermano mío, aquella afirmación mía que tanta gracia te hace:—“En todo hay figurines atrasados.”—Sí, te lo repito, los hay en el mal, sobre todo.” Ibid, p. 247.
101 Sinués column abounded with all sorts of advice for family and dear friends, encouraging fashion victims to contemplate the simplicity of life and offering useful suggestions to those in “what to wear” despair. When one friend ponders what to wear to an important social gathering, Sinués’ column recreates their conversation. Using a dialogic approach that will remind readers of Gorriti's Oasis en la vida, she writes,
—¿Qué me pondré? exclamó así que entró: ¿qué traje llevaré? Mi marido no está bien de fondos y no me atrevo a pedirle… ¡Dios mío! ¡qué compromiso!
—¿No tienes traje blanco de gasa? le pregunté.
—Sí, me dijo, ¿pero qué hago yo con eso? ya lo llevé a otra casa hace pocas noches.
—¿Y qué importa? ¿Has de ponerte uno cada día?
—¡Es preciso, o no ir!
Yo no lo veo así: te convidan, luego te aprecian, debes ir: saben que no eres rica: ¿pero eso es una falta? ¿puede nadie exigirte que lo seas?
—¡Pero voy a ser muy criticada!
—Por los tontos: ¿quién se ciuda de ellos? Ponte tu traje con un transparente de gro blanco y su prendido de jazmines: lo digno de censura será que te pusieras un lujo extraordinario, poseyendo tu esposo una modesta fortuna: créeme, y tal vez allí te alegrarás de haberme creído.
While Sinués misses the event dub to some unforeseen ailment, the grapevine reveals that guests of the opulent ball admired the youthful freshness of this friend's dress. La Ondina del Plata, p. 6.
102 Barthes, p. 10.
