How Women Resisted Patriarchy in Colonial Spanish-America - Essay Example

Looking into confined life in Spanish-American societies reveals that religious convents were an all-encompassing place in which women exploited the opportunity to grasp the actual opportunity of adjusting to the then prevailing male-dominated conditions. Women residing in these isolated but developing into public facilities, for instance, the Santa Clara convent in Cuzco or Mexico’s Saint Jerome convent, while keeping up with consolidation of male domination, sometimes created some influence around them.

This enabled these women to manage their individual lives and resist the patriarchy, as the practice was raw in the general society. An overview of the issue According to Martin, Agranoff and Wasserman (2011), Spaniards played a pivotal role in relieving the women of patriarchy by setting up religious facilities which took care of the women through their entire life. And by dedicating their existence to spiritual causes by joining these facilities, to also acquire education, women’s minds could be influenced t the better from childhood.

At the convent, these young women were also taken through Hispanic and Christian cultures by these lessons and vows, establishing “actual” females out of their local groups and dissociating them from other dishonest individuals (Santiago, 2011). Meanwhile, women who were not out of the public domain were manipulated and restrained by the society patriarchs and urged to uphold the conventional traditions, some of which would not work in a liberal and dynamic society to which the culture was advancing.

Several elite would advisedly send a close kin to the convent in order to grasp the opportunity and establish significant economic connections through the institution, as convents were a source a percentage of the revenue during the majestic Latin American culture. Nevertheless, once the women were inside, they deviated from male machinations to achieve full self control. Marriages of young women who failed to profess were also employed as ties to improve and establish patriarchy upheld. Eventually, monastic culture set in among the women.

Education in convents Even though, convents provided room for repression of women, which could take place in several methods and further tighten Spanish dominance in Latin American society, these religious facilities also became centers for women’s defiance (Santiago, 2011). The haven that became of Saint Jerome and Santa Clara provided females with new authority and control. The new authority some women believed they had achieved following professing initiatives in such facilities had several features.

Securing a place within a convent society enabled women the opportunity to learn and become professionals themselves, a chance that a large percentage of Latin American female fraternity could not cash in on. Women such as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz seized the only chance to secure an academic life, while she was serving in Saint Jerome. Through the religious institutions, she managed to write and publish several literatures ranging from plays, short stories and poems. These scholarly materials revolved around the need to guarantee the society of women empowerment and autonomy.

Marriage restructuring opportunities Residing in convent offered some women opportunities to restructure their marriage and establish their own families. Nuns transformed the convent environment and their residences into places where they could cultivate richly