Nineteenth-century professionalization of women's writing on defiance of the male mandate: The treatises on domestic economy in Catharine Beecher and Josefa Acevedo de Gómez

Abstract

This article reviews two nineteenth-century texts of female authorship produced in different latitudes of the American continent: A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School (1841) by Catharine E. Beecher (United States) and the Tratado sobre economía doméstica para el uso de las madres de familia y de las amas de casa (1848) by Josefa Acevedo de Gómez (Colombia). The text exposes and analyzes forms of female resistance contained in these treatises apparently folded to the imposed patriarchal order that, nevertheless, encourage their female readers to the economic and political emancipation of their male peers, either through awareness of the conditions of female subordination of the time or through the very exercise of women paid professional work as writers.