Of Love And Loathing Summary

Author Nicholas Robins in his book Of Love and Loathing looks at the Bourbon policies involving marriage and how this shaped, created, broke or reinforced partnerships and intimate relationships in the Colonial Andes. The author is looking at the role of marriage, from the years 1750-1825 in Charcas, encompassing modern-day Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. Within this look at Bourbon laws, the author emphasizes how these policies constructed patriarchy, the moral code, and honor. The author also showcases female agency throughout his book, illustrating that wives and women were not powerless, but could, in fact, pressure the court to send their husband to jail, or for financial compensation. By looking at personal letters, court case documents, and archives in the Library of Bolivia, Nicholas constructs a broad trend of marriage relationships and the societal view on these marriages. However, the author is writing about a social topic discusses in several other literature books, and does not seem to contribute anything new to the historiography. To begin, Robins first looks at concubinage and illicit relationships in Charcas. By using personal letters and court files, the complexity and difficulty for why spouses left their partners, the court's response to it, how illicit partnerships thrived, died or were forcibly removed, create a base for the book. Chapter 2 focuses on the Bourbon policies, under control by Charles III, and his desire to enforce morality and patriarchy into society while also pushing the Catholic Church out of social power. This attraction, achieved through the Pragmatics of 1776, regulated marriage and which took control away from the Church and into the hands of the husband and state. By providing the historiography of Charles …show more content…
Due to domestic abuse being legal, the author explores the concept of sevicia or extreme domestic violence that results in hospitalization, as these cases are the only ones that would be in court files. What he finds from these court cases of rape and sevicia, is the broader trends of social acceptance of violence against women. It also built off of the previous chapter by saying, that even if these cases of domestic violence and rape were taken to the courts, that the social stigma of divorce affecting honor and mortality, often encouraged the courts to insist that the couple stay together. The author uses this to build into the next chapter dealing with the few cases of divorce that did occur. By providing the reader with the extensive social and political background in the discouraging of separation from the Bourbon polices and ecclesiastical courts, the reader can see how drastic the process of getting a divorce was in Charcas. Divorce was near impossible, due to the violence the society condoned, and the intensive policies on marriage from both the Church and State. In the final chapter, the author uses the court files to showcase that many of these divorce appeals did not go through. This is due to the cost, the time it took and partners unwillingness to divorce. What he also …show more content…
Along with that, his secondary thesis of women having more agency then the histography might suggest, also seems to lose its strength in conjunction with this patriarchal structure. However, Nicholas Robins provides an easy to read narrative about the marriage life in the Colonial Andes, giving Gender studies, Latin American studies or the interested reader an insight into this social