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Writing Type: Book
Extracts include comments by Lima women.
Keywords: women, Lima, saya, nuns, convents, congress, politics, culture
Archive: University Library, Cambridge
Location Details: Translated by Jean Hawkes. Virago Press, London, 1986
Text: She comments on the freedom of the nuns at the Convent of Incarnation, Lima:
"There is nothing religious about it as nobody obeys any rules. It is just a house like any other: there are twenty-nine nuns, each with her own lodging where she cooks, works, looks after children, talks, sings and behaves just as she likes. We even saw some who were not wearing the habit of their order. They take in lodgers who come and go and the door of the convent is always open. It is hard to see the point of this way of life; one is almost tempted to think that the women here have only taken refuge in these walls in order to be more independent than they could be outside."
(Tristán, 262-262.)
She witnessed the debates in Congress: The senators sit in 4 rows with the President in the middle.
"Above the assembly there are two tiers of boxes for the use of officials, foreign representatives and the general public. The back is arranged as an amphitheatre and reserved solely for ladies. Each time I went there was a large number of ladies present, all wearing the saya and reading newspapers or talking politics." (Tristán, 264)
The Lima town hall library contains many foreign books:
"The library has a total of twelve thousand volumes, most of them French: Voltaire, Rousseau, the bulk of our classics, all the histories of the revolution, the works of Madame de Stael, books of travel, memoirs, Madame Roland and so on. [...] Unfortunately the taste for reading is still insufficiently widespread for many people to profit from it." (Tristán, 265-266.)
She comments on the freedom of the Lima women:
"There is no place on earth where women are so free and exercise so much power as in Lima."
"When these enchanting women of Lima, who have never directed their lives towards any noble purpose, first electrify the imagination of young foreigners and then proceed to show themselves as they really are, heartless and uncultivated, shallow, and above all, mercenary, the powerful fascination is immediately destroyed.
For all that, the women of Lima dominate the men because they are so far above them in intelligence and will-power. But the stage of civilisation the Peruvians have reached is still far behind ours in Europe. Nowhere in Peru is there any institution for the education of either sex: the intelligence can only develop through its native resources. Thus the pre-eminence of Lima’s woman [...although morally inferior to European women] must be attributed to the superior intelligence with which God has endowed them."
The saya gives freedom to Lima women:
"When she is young she escapes the domination of her parents through the freedom the costume allows her; when she marries she does not take her husband’s name but keeps her own; when she is tired of staying in, she puts on her saya and goes out, in the same way a man does when he takes up his hat. Freedom of action characterises everything she does."
"The women of Lima spend little time on their households, but as they are energetic, this is sufficient to keep everything in order. They have a marked inclination for politics and intrigue; it is they who find posts for their husbands, sons and all the men who take their fancy, and there is no obstacle they cannot overcome to achieve their ends." Women enjoy social occasions, gamble, smoke cigars, swim in the sea, and ride horses "in breeches like the men". They sing "rather badly" and "dance their native dances with a charm that is impossible to describe. These women have no education as a rule, they do not read at all, and they are ignorant of everything that is happening in the world. They have much natural wit, a quick understanding, a good memory and a surprising amount of intelligence." (Tristán, 269-277.)
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