NEPOMUNCENO J. NAVARRO’S CRITICISM TO PATRIARCHAL SOCIAL IMAGINARY IN THE “THREE AGES OF WOMEN” (1860)

Abstract

In the 19th century, the New Granada patriarchal society intended that women, who they called «the beautiful sex», to act according to the «norms of good conduct» taught in the manuals for young ladies that proliferated throughout the nation. In order to conform to this ideal, their behavior had to be modest, submissive and domestic. However, each time a woman acted differently from the culturally imposed rules, she was treated as proud, flirtatious and gazmoña; social imaginaries that Nepomuceno Navarro severely criticized in "Las tres edades de la mujer" (1860), using the thought of a female character who expressed her reality in three letters that she wrote at different times in her life. Thus, the aim of this article is to show how these social imaginaries of women were perpetuated in the community and influenced the socio-cultural perception of the inhabitants of Nueva Granada, so that some liberal writers sought to modify them from the complaints they made in their works.