The Case of the Ugly Suitor and Other Histories of Love, Gender, and Nation in Buenos Aires, 1776-1870 (review)
Although it is the courtship of Francisca Canicoba and her ugly suitor Gumersindo Arroyo that provides both the title and the narrative thread of this book, no less pronounced in it is the presence of Alexis de Tocqueville. Inspired by de Tocqueville's observation that the rise in democracy in the United States had weakened the power of the father within the family, Jeffrey Shumway sets himself the task of determining the relationship between nationhood and family structure in Argentina, Buenos Aires in particular, between 1776, when the city became the capital of the newly created viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, and 1870, when the nation of Argentina, which had become independent in 1816, adopted its first civil code. How did family life and gender relations change, Shumway asks, during the transition from colony to nation?