Society Women and Enlightened Charity in Spain

The authors of this edited collection explore the contributions of the Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito, a secular association of elite Spanish women, to the Bourbon monarchy’s reform programs, as well as how the women of the Junta fulfilled the expectations of their class and gender while at the same time vying for more authority and more visible participation in Enlightenment endeavors. The contributors, though mostly historians, allow for a diversity of perspectives by employing a range of disciplines, including intellectual history, social history, biography, literary analysis, and art history to provide a multifaceted analysis of the Junta de Damas and its members.The first section lays out the history of the Junta de Damas. Bolufer examines the debate over women’s admission to Spain’s economic societies that preceded the creation of the Junta and situates the association in a broader European context. Martín-Valdepeñas Yagüe discusses the Junta’s membership and priorities, influenced as they were by Enlightenment ideas of economic and social reform and the expectation that elite women were obligated to engage in charitable works. The second section consists of biographies of four of the Junta’s most prominent members—the Countess-Duchess of Benavente, the Countess of Montijo, the Marchioness of Fuerte-Híjar, and the Marchioness of Villafranca—as well as an essay that surveys the Junta’s less distinguished members. Although these women’s personal and social trajectories were strongly determined by marriage and lineage strategies, they nevertheless sought personal growth and social change through philanthropic work and their tertulias (salons). Read individually, the biographical chapters (including López-Cordón Cortezo’s chapter in section one on Josefa Amar y Borbón) tend to portray their subjects as “exceptional” (121); however, considered together, we see a group of progressive women cultivating other like-minded women and creating what Jaffe calls a “corporate identity” (220) that helped to extend their influence in Spanish society. The chapters in the third section, which in particular demonstrates the value of interdisciplinarity, focus on the Junta de Damas’ pursuit of Enlightenment efforts. In addition to Méndez Vázquez’s study of the educational projects of the Junta, Lewis considers the spatial dimensions of their works, Jaffe analyzes their literary networks, and Molina examines the members’ portraits and the ways that artists represented these women who often challenged traditional gender expectations. The juxtaposition of these essays reveals the multilayered nature of the agency that these women were able to exercise in a variety of places and spaces.Another important contribution of this collection lies in its discussion of how these women experienced the terrifying invasion of the peninsula by Napoleon and the instability of the post-Napoleonic period. Rarely do scholars of the Spanish Enlightenment move into the chaotic world of Restoration politics and the Carlist wars. Understanding how these women’s experiences and expectations changed during the nineteenth century is a revelation.The collection has been thoughtfully edited to be accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with the Junta de Damas while also providing high quality, archivally-based research for specialists (and the translation of the Statutes of the Junta in the appendix is an added bonus). It will work well in the classroom, as the short chapters connect well to one another but also stand on their own. Examining the Junta de Damas from a number of disciplines makes sense; they were philanthropists, writers, socialites, matriarchs of powerful noble lineages, and patrons and students of the arts and sciences. No other approach could do them justice

Art · Biography · Context (archaeology) · Elite · Enlightenment · Honor · Humanities · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies