Retórica católica en el siglo XIX en México : de “ángel del hogar” a “ángel viril”

This work proposes that the rhetoric of virtue, virility and charity is one of the foundations of the most important epistemological discourses in the decades of 1860s through 1880s in Mexico, for the construction of the feminine model of what I call the “viril angel,” a model for female education that is even more rigid and bears a heavier ethical load than the “angel of the house”. Both models promote domesticity, marriage and maternity as the principal goals of womanhood, as well as the development of virtue and the containment of passion. I propose that the latter model, of a bourgeois and positivist nature, fits only a segment and just some aspects of the female population and is thus insufficient to represent what was expected of 19th century Mexican women. The “viril angel,” by contrast, operates within a wider context and demands not just abnegation, but sufficient fortitude for women to bear their female condition and fight for their virtue, their faith and for social order. My research is built upon analysis of rhetoric within newspaper articles, columns, editorials, textbooks, poems and literary narratives of catholic influence. I propose these texts, for being part of a narrative imaginary that delineates “the feminine” from a rather utilitarian point of view, for creating totalizing categories within a civilizing discourse, and for having been poorly studied by critics. I approach them through a transverse study of the discursive networks that, within the everyday life, motivate the collective action of women as active agents in their community and sublimate an “ideal” feminine model, through emotional rather than rational arguments. I deconstruct concepts such a “marianism”, delving deep within its biblical origins, and the so-called “Dogmas of the Virgin”, rereading them as axioms reinforcing a binary logic of sexuality and argumentative knowledge that impose “feminine virility” as a basic attribute of women. Finally, I complicate the representation of charity and poverty, analyzing them within a market rhetoric designed to increase the social capital of women.