Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyaltiy of Peru

xiii+354 pages with frontispiece, illustrations, bibliography and index. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 1/4") bound in original tan cloth with silver lettering to spine. First edition.

In 1498, Queen Isabella of Spain gave license to thirty women to join Columbus on his third voyage to the New World. During the first part of the sixteenth century, while Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incas, women came to "the Indies" to find husbands and begin a new life, and by mid-century, they numbered nearly one thousand. Although the Spanish conquest of Peru has traditionally be regarded as an all-male endeavor, Daughters of the Conquistadores shows that from the beginning, women played a significant role in bringing Spanish culture to Latin America. Martín also shows that, contrary to the view of colonial women as passive and downtrodden, many achieved a degree of personal freedom unknown in the Old World. With a wealth of detail, Martín portrays the lives of many remarkable women of colonial Peru. He describes the system of education for girls and the institution of marriage in a society characterized by the ideals of Don Juanism and marianism-both factors in the great popularity of the nunneries during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Dominated by her father and husband, the average woman-daughters, wife, divorciada, or concubine-had little independence, and many chose instead to be "spouses of the Lord." They did not, however, necessarily opt for a life of ascetic denial, silence, and prayer. Martín shows that life within the nunneries, especially the five conventos grandes, was often fast-paced and exciting, if not at times, outright violent.

Condition:

Jacket spine sunned, head edge sunned, some closed tears at edges else a better than very good copy in a very good jacket.