Religion and Love in Mexico :: essays research papers

spousal relationship in Colonial Mexico patriarchate and EconomyIn To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, Patricia Seed argues that the Bourbon vitamin C drastically throwd the view of marriage in New Spain. She suggests that the fierceness on virtue and free will in marriage gave way to a new quasi-bourgeois family unit based upon status and patriarchal control. While this is reliable for the selected of eighteenth century New Spain, this could not collect dispense to the urban or rural poor. They did not have an overwhelming emphasis on scotch prosperity or status and did not have a necessity for strict patriarchal order.     The Bourbon order prompted changes in family structure. From the outset, in that location was a stringent focus on patriarchate and male dominance. Marriage was a decision not left for the to-be-married to decide out of approve and desire, but an issue with which the entire family, especially the father, was involved. Inst ead of marriage world simply an expression of the mutual feelings of man and woman, it was a system of loving and economic status in which the honor of patriarchal lineage was at stake. Children and parents alike had distinct visions of social moralities, but those of the father prevailed. This was the change, as exposit in Seeds text, of the Bourbon century in New Spain. However, this change was not fully encompassing. The urban and rural poor would not be affected nearly as much by patriarchal subordination or the evolving status of honor. As social hierarchy began basing itself more upon economic ideas, New Spains poor population became increasingly disenfranchised. Members of the upper air division were responsible for the elevated value of status. It was the fathers of well-off families in New Spain that were boost to marry practiced spouses as to not bring dishonor to the family name. The missy of an elite family would be prodded to marry and an elite man simply becaus e of his honorable status, not his honorable sense of rectitude or moral consciousness. The perform was once a sanctuary to marry those who felt bonded by an pious devotion, but now the church served as administrator for the will of elite patriarchs. The lower class, being void of elites, the high status of honor, and overbearing patriarchy was exempt from this defiling of sanctity. For the urban and rural poor there was no vested entertain in retaining status. They were at the bottom of what had become the class system of eighteenth century colonial