Patriarchal discourse and gender order in manuals for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Mexico

Abstract

In the present work, I analyze the discourse of two books on the place of women in society and in the family. For this purpose, two important manuals in female schools are considered: the Appleton Home Economics Manual, that circulated in Mexico and Latin America, and The Mexican home. Notions of domestic economy by Laura Méndez de Cuenca, that circulated in central Mexico, with contents according to the cultural Mexican experience. The tension and the transformation of patriarchal discourses and the appropriation and adaptation of the pedagogical and practical knowledge offered naturalized by gender to students are problematized. The authorship of this type of school text is also reviewed. How the pedagogical authorities of women are seen and made invisible while subordinating or excluding authority beyond parochial boundaries. The paper emphasizes the case of Laura Méndez de Cuenca, who as a writer teacher of the school books genre, assumes her authorship and struggles to place her work in a world of male authors that prescribe knowledge for women. These texts reveal the order of gender with which the education of girls is carried out and the practices in the middle of which are intended to discipline the teacher-authors, in a world where pedagogy and authorship are controlled.