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Book Review
| Tanja Christiansen, Disobedience, Slander, Seduction, and Assault: Women and Men in Cajamarca, Peru, 1862–1900, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp. 288. $60.00 cloth (ISBN 0-292-70288-4); $24.95 paper (ISBN 0-292-70563-8).
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| Christiansen provides a thorough, perceptive, and highly readable study of gender relations as litigated in late nineteenth-century Peru. "By taking judicial documents as my point of departure," she asserts, "I have sought to identify everyday gender practice through the medium of a regulatory apparatus, thus forcing myself continually to compare official attempts to structure gender with evidence of subaltern practice" (173). After introducing the region and time period in chapter 2 and covering relevant portions of the 1852 Civil Code and 1862 Penal Code in chapter 3, Christiansen dedicates the rest of the book to an analysis of 234 lawsuits. |
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Chapter 4 discusses differences between popular and official attitudes toward marriage. Although lower-class men and women recognized that marriage conferred special respectability, by claiming as much in slander lawsuits and taking deathbed vows, they did not consider consensual unions automatically dishonoring. Nor did subalterns share dominant norms regarding domestic violence. That Christiansen found only eleven extant trials and few convictions demonstrates the hesitancy of the state to intervene in marital relations; interestingly, judges were more apt to punish violence against women in consensual unions. Given that the courts provided little protection, wives pursued extralegal strategies to counteract violence. Their ability to leave conflictual relationships was hampered by economic dependence and ongoing harassment from their husbands. More relied on the assistance of family and friends, precisely the kind of interference censured by the courts. |
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Chapters 5 and 6 analyze trials related to honor concerns: slander and sexual crimes respectively. Christiansen finds that in these cases, litigants appealed more closely to dominant norms, but were not necessarily successful in persuading judges. Of the thirty slander lawsuits she examined in detail, only eight resulted in positive outcomes for the plaintiff, most commonly conciliations involving public apologies. Of the six convictions, two were overturned on appeal and three included sentences against both parties. Despite such low success rates and the risks of further public humiliation, Christiansen asserts that litigants were using the courts primarily as a public forum in which to defend their honor. For example, wives often went to court to defend themselves against imputations that they had been unfaithful; regardless of the official outcome, in most of these cases Christiansen found indications that husbands reconciled with their spouses. Christiansen considered the sexual crimes analyzed in chapter 6 as honor offenses, both because they were defined that way in law and because the majority appeared to involve consensual rather than forced relations. As with slander, few defendants were convicted, but the aim of filing charges, she argues, was primarily to rehabilitate the women's reputations in the eyes of the community by shifting blame to deceptive men. Chapter 7 examines cases of primarily lower-class women who demonstrated their rejection of elite honor norms by resorting to violence in their conflicts with other women, arising from rivalries over men, contestation of property rights, and defense of children. Finally, Christiansen explores the networks of aid and protection that women formed with relatives or in spaces of common labor. |
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Although Christiansen is careful to specify her sampling techniques and universe of cases, the numbers (for example of outcomes) do not always add up; in addition to the appendices she provides of marriage rates and occupations, tables of the different kinds of trials and their results would have been useful. She is attentive to local class relations, but her explanations of gender conflict draw upon contemporary anthropological studies, implying that behavior was consistent over time. It would have been interesting to know more about what may have been historically specific to late nineteenth-century Cajamarca, particularly whether the implementation of Peru's first national penal code in 1862 affected either subaltern strategies of litigation or state interests in prosecution. |
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Overall Christiansen does an excellent job of painting a rich portrait of lower-class life and beliefs while remaining attentive to nuances of the legal records that form her primary source. In particular, she carefully considers why certain cases ended up in court, noting the under representation both among elites and peasants. She finds that the lower and middling town dwellers actively used the courts to advance their own interests even though convictions were rare. Plaintiffs with the most to gain and the least to lose, she perceptively points out, were most likely to file charges: "Above all it was women who lived 'in between' codes of honor—women who had previously transgressed against them but who could, for various reasons, claim to have regained their honor—who opted for legal action" (111). Similarly, in cases of seduction and deflowering, parents pressed charges in an effort to enhance the likelihood of marriage for their daughters, whether to the defendants or to potential future grooms who might overlook youthful indiscretions if the women were seen as victims. Christiansen's book, therefore, makes important contributions to our understanding of both social and legal history and deserves a wide readership. |
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| Sarah C. Chambers
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| University of Minnesota |
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