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FashionNation: The Politics of Dress and Gender in 19th Century Argentine Journalism (1829-1880) by Susan Hallstead B.A. in Spanish, University of Pittsburgh, 1997 M.A. in Hispanic Literature, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2005 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Susan Hallstead It was defended on December 12, 2005 and approved by Mabel Moraña, PhD, Professor Gerald Martin, PhD, Professor Jerome Branche, PhD, Associate Professor Susan Andrade, PhD, Associate Professor Dissertation Director: Mabel Moraña, PhD, Professor ii Copyright © by Susan Hallstead 2005 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 2. Forced Traditions, Forged Equality: Dress and Fashion, “Rosista” Style 31 2.1. Entering a New World Order: Of Essence, Appearance and Peinetones 33 2.2. The Brute of all Brutes, the Tiger of all Tigers: Rosas, the Rosista Dress Code and the othering of the Lettered City 66 2.3. Rosas and the Afro-Argentine: The Relationship of Race and Dress in the Rosista Era 92 3. Challenging Barbarism and Waging Wars of Images: Argentina’s Men of Letters find Fashion (1829-1852) 113 3.1. Early Argentine Journalism and National Politics: The Challenges of the Post-Independence Period 118 3.2. Fashion’s Appearance at the Intellectual Round Table: Consumption, Citizenship and the Ideal Unitarist 130 3. 3. The Foundational Parameters of Argentine Nationalism: Fashion, Civilization and Barbarism 183 4. After Caseros: Women Write on Fashion, Nation and Politics 206 4.1. Public Opinion and Subaltern Counterpublics: City Life after Rosas 209 4. 2. The Politics of Frivolity: Argentina’s Women of Letters find Fashion 238 4. 3. Fashion as Modernity: The Face behind the Mask of the Domestic Angel 256 5. Fashionable Desires: Consumption and Gender in Post Caseros Argentina 285 5. 1. Las Grandes Tiendas: Department Stores and Consumption 289 5. 2. Identity Crises: Men Dressing like Women, Women Dressing like Men and the Rise of the Immigrant 302 5. 3. Fashionable Desires: Fashion, Luxury and Women 322 5. 4. Disease and Immorality: Scientific Approaches to the Problem of Dress 340 6. Conclusion 357 7. Bibliography 361 7. 1. Literary texts / periodicals 361 7.2. Critical texts 363 iv 1. Introduction In September of 1877 María Eugenia Echenique, at the time a well-known woman writer of the second half of the 19th century, offered some “reflections” on the state of Argentina. In a rather pessimistic tone, she lamented her country’s failed attempt to achieve the progress promised by earlier generations of liberal intellectuals who, eager to eradicate Argentina’s perceived barbaric past and its vast expanses of desert (the pampa), hastily looked outward to Western Europe and the United States for solutions to the nation’s ills. Unfortunately, even as the great 19th century drew to an end, Argentina was still asleep and had yet to reach its elusive dreams: ¡Cuan léjos estamos, empero, de la realidad de tan bellos sueños, de tan risueñas ilusiones! Comparando nuestro progreso con el de otras naciones de fuera, quedamos inmensamente atrás, dormimos aun el sueño de la inercia y de la indolencia, estamos muertos! Echenique continues her lamentations, and she relies upon an old, but nonetheless striking metaphor: Argentina is still a child unable to care for itself and unable to dress itself without looking to foreign models for help. She explains: Todavía somos niños que no podemos vivir por nosotros mismos. Aun necesitamos del concurso extraño para vestir y hacernos de los objetos más necesarios á la existencia. Ninguna medida que saque al país de la postración en que se encuentra y haga vislumbrar un porvenir más risueño, menos desesperante que el presente. (“Algunas reflexiones sobre la actualidad”, La Ondina del Plata, Year III, No. 36, September 9, 1877) Why would Echenique refer particularly to dress in her description (and lamentation) of Argentina’s problems? How would this example prove useful in persuading her reading public? Just what sort of importance could dress possibly have in the national imaginary? The following study will show that quite from occupying a trivial place in women’s magazines, fashion and national dress habits had occupied an important and strategic place in the Argentine lettered city since the early 19th century. (Masiello, Between Civilization and Barbarism; West, Tailoring the 1 Nation) It seems that, since the independence war, Argentina was obsessed with its appearance. Echenique was, therefore, merely capitalizing on an entire discourse of fashion and an entire history of fashion narratives1 that had long been in use and that had long been useful in defining the nature of Argentine politics. Indeed, beginning in the early 1830s—stemming from an increasing conflict that would culminate in the infamous civil war between Unitarists and Federalists—and spanning to national consolidation in 1880 with the federalization of Buenos Aires, writings on fashion became useful tools in the hands of the lettered elite. Interestingly, fashion narratives were often used to metaphorically discuss topics ranging from nation formation and politics, to the changing role of both men and women in the public sphere, to modernity and the role of consumption in 1 Fashion narratives, as I will refer to them throughout this study, are written commentaries in 19th century Argentine periodicals that deal with the topic of fashion and that are usually found in a special fashion column of any given publication. While many periodicals of the period contain several descriptive fashion articles (i.e. what to wear to parties, what to wear in the rain, how to fix one’s hair) fashion narratives are much more than mere detailed descriptions of the fashionable clothing and/or behavior of the period because they move beyond the descriptive and into the ideological. While no study of fashion can ignore that fashion functions as a system of signs (as shown by Roland Barthes’ pivotal text The Fashion System) this study will not attempt a structuralist reading of 19th century fashion narratives. However, Barthes’s distinction between fashion as a discourse—as represented in the realm of the visual where a “simulacrum of the real object must be created” (xii)—and a discourse of fashion—which emerges in the written description of the visual representation—is central to this study. While I will refer to both, “image clothing” and “written clothing”, the majority of this study will focus on written clothing because of the limitations of image clothing. Barthes explains: “The importance of the written garment confirms the fact that specific language-functions exist which the image, whatever its development in contemporary society may be, could not possibly assume. […] Thus, every written word has a function of authority insofar as it chooses—by proxy, so to speak—instead of the eye. The image freezes an endless number of possibilities; words determine a single certainty.” (The Fashion System: 13) Additionally, although this study will not elaborate upon the semiotics of fashion narratives as Barthes explains in The Fashion System, it will occasionally consider certain instances where the color of clothing articles and/or positioning of bodies in pictorial representations relay specific political messages. In this sense this study of Argentine fashion history will consider the semiotics involved in the image. For additional information on fashion as a semiotic system see also Baudrillard The System of Objects. 2 creating an ideal sense of citizenship and finally to public health, hygiene and women’s immoral participation in the public sphere through prostitution.2 The years encompassed in this study—1829 to 1880—witness many significant developments and foundational moments in Argentine political, literary and social history. With the wars of independence over, the region in the early 1830s would experience a protracted struggle for self-definition. What type of government would the region have, what role would Western political and cultural powers play in this form of government and in this process of self- definition, who would be the major actors in the establishment of an Argentine nation, what place would society’s others (Afro-Argentines, the indigenous, women, the poor, the uneducated, to name only a few) have in this newly liberated region, what relationship would the central port city of Buenos Aires have to the rest of the region? These were just some of the many questions facing politicians, wealthy landowners and liberal intellectuals entering into what would become one of 19th century Argentina’s most violent and bloody periods: the Rosista dictatorship (1829- 1852). The fall of Rosas at the battle of Caseros (1852) however left only more unanswered questions for the ruling elite. Again, after the longstanding power of local caudillo rule, urban intellectuals faced some of the same pressing questions that had been postponed by Rosista politics. How could the region be united, what place would the port city of Buenos Aires have in this unification, how would Argentina become a modern nation, who would belong to this 2 Fashion narratives, in this sense, function as metaphoric devises and the concepts of construction and articulation are central features in the use of metaphor. Laclau and Mouffe ([1984]1999) point to the idea that metaphorization is a process whereby the metaphor does not add an additional element to a “primary, constitutive literality of social relations”, but rather it forms part of the “primary terrain itself in which the social is constituted.” (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 110) That is, metaphorization doesn’t occur between identities that are already constituted but rather it constitutes them. This is an important consideration and one that this study will keep in mind through the pages that follow.