Kim Verba, Ericka, Cículo de lectura de señoras

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The Círculo de Lectura de Señoras [Ladies' Reading Circle] and

the Club de Señoras [Ladies' Club] of Santiago, Chile: Middle-

and Upper-class Feminist Conversations (1915-1920)

Ericka Kim Verba

Journal of Women's History, Volume 7, Number 3, Fall 1995, pp. 6-33

(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2010.0453

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Universidad de Granada (31 May 2013 13:29 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jowh/summary/v007/7.3.verba.html





The CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±oras [ladies'reading circle] and the club de seÃ±oras

[ladies' club] of santiago, chile:Middle- and Upper-class Feminist Conversations(1915-1920)

Ericka Kim Verba

This article shares two of the analytical premises underscoring muchrecent scholarship in what could be termed the developing field of "comparative feminisms." First, national feminist movements may best beunderstood within an international framework. Second, feminist move-ments, while by definition aimed at improving the conditions of womenin society, at the same time represent class-based movements. The value of these postulates to the historian is that they allow her to move beyond the

banner of "universal sisterhood" to explore the origins and developmentof a given feminist ideology or organization in all its complexity. This is

what I hope to accomplish in the following discussion of the first twosecular and autonomous associations of middle- and upper-class Chileanfeminists established in Santiago, Chile: the CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±orasand the Club de SeÃ±oras.

Founded within a month of each other in 1915, both the Circle andClub left an indelible mark on their women participants and, throughthem, on the larger Chilean society.Â· Their partially overlapping member-ships included some of the most reputable middle-class and aristocraticwomen of the epoch, many of whom went on to fill important andÂ—for

womenÂ—ground-breaking posts in both government and the private sec-tor. More impressive than the sum of their members' individual accomplishments, these institutions were among the first of what wouldeventually become many autonomous women's organizations focused on

promoting improvements in the political, social, and economic situationof Chilean women from the 1920s to the present decade. The names of founding members of both the Circle and Club appear on the rosters of these later organizations and their coalitions up until 1949Â—the year Chilean women finally won the voteÂ—and even beyond. As one woman

would write, upon the election of the first woman to the Chilean Senate in1950, and in homage to these early Circle and Club women:

It has only been a year since we received our political rights as if theywere a delectable morsel of bread already set on the table; but those

Â© 1995 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 7 No. 3 (Fall)



1995 Ericka Kim Verba 7

of us who for half a century have been kneading this morsel, strug-gling against all of the obstacles that men's opposition placed across

our path... know that this morsel was not served to us ready to beeaten, but rather that it was prepared through the titanic efforts of the pioneras [pioneers].1Ih fact, Circle and Qub women's organizational efforts, while perhaps

titanic, were not really all that pioneering. Autonomous organizations of working-class women predated the Circle and Club by at least threedecades. Working-class women founded their own mutual aid societies inValparaiso and Santiago as early as the 1880s and 1890s. After the turn of the century, they also founded anarcho-syndicalist unions with the radical

and twofold objective of improving their lot both as workers and women.On the other end of the class spectrum, aristocratic women actively partic-ipated in all-women charitable societiesÂ—albeit under the male andhierarchical leadership of the Catholic ChurchÂ—since the mid-nine-teenth century. Even the aristocratic Liga de Damas Chilenas [League of Chilean Ladies], founded in 1912 and devoted to a modern concept of charity or "Catholic feminism," preceded the Circle and Club, if only

by a few years.2

The CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±oras and the Club de SeÃ±oras were pioneer-ing women's institutions, however, in one specific and historically signif-icant sense: they were the first secular, all-women associations of womenfrom middle- and upper-class backgrounds organized around the gender-centered goal of promoting the cultural, social, and political uplift of women within Chilean society. This article offers an institutional historyof these two interconnected organizations and an analysis of the discus-sion that took place among their more articulate members over a brief yetformative period roughly from 1915 through 1920. Drawing from these

women's published works, I will attempt to reconstruct their diversecritiques of gender relations within Chilean society and the variousreforms they proposed to ameliorate their situation as women. In the

process, I hope to provide preliminary answers to two questions: whatinfluence did the participants' knowledge and contacts with feministmovements in other countries have on their efforts to forge a brand of feminism based on national conditions and experiences, and how wereissues of gender and class inextricably, if not always explicitly, linked inthe arguments of these middle- and upper-class "pioneers" of progressive

feminism in Chile?3



8 Journal of Women's History Fall

The CÃ-rculo de Lectura and Club de SeÃ±oras

The last decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth

century were years of great economic, political, and social upheaval inChileÂ—so much so that they have come to be known as the "Era of theSocial Question." At the national (and international) level, the "socialquestion" was the widely used heading given to the shifting and volatileclass relations and other social problems engendered by the transforma-tion of Chilean society from a traditional, rural-based society to an increas-ingly modern, urban, and industrialized one. During these crucial years of transition, displaced rural workers built a radical and mass labor move-

ment in response to the impoverished living conditions they encounteredin the rrrining regions of the North and the burgeoning cities of the CentralValley. The contemporary use of the phrase "war of the classes" was notrestricted to this often violent struggle between Labor and Capital. It wasalso used, somewhat exaggeratedly, to describe class-based antagonisms

between an entrenched aristocracy and a "rising" urban middle classvying for its own space in the political power structure and, as often as not,

basing its demands for reform on the claim that only through its leader-ship would the problems of the working class be resolved.4

In addition to the class-based movements it inspired, the moderniza-tion process and its social conflicts furnished both the context and justifi-cation for the formation of the first and, comparatively, minuteorganizations of Chilean women of means. The harsh side effects of modernization made the political and economic vulnerability of allwomen more visible, while the destitute living conditions of the poor andthe protest this poverty provoked within their ranks provided the moralrationalization for middle- and upper-class women to enter the publicrealm, first via charitable work and, later, via social reform. At the interna-

tional level, Chilean class- and gender-based organizations advocatingvarious answers to the "social question" were greatly influenced by globaltrends in socialism, anarchism, and feminism. Internal and external factorscoalesced in a generalized pressure coming from many fronts to democra-tize Chilean society, either via reform or revolution.

It was into the midst of this pervasive social unrest that prominenteducator and feminist Amanda Labarca H. returned to Chile in 1913 from

her studies abroad at Columbia University, New York, and the Sorbonne,Paris. Almost immediately, she held a series of lectures at the Universidad

de Chile on the topic: "Women's Activities in the United States." Thelectures, published in book form the following year,5 "initiated a greatmovement of female sociability" culminating in the inauguration of theChilean CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±oras on June 7,1915.6 On this historic day,




twelve women, responding either to Labarca's personal invitation or to anannouncement published the preceding month in the journal La Familia

met in session for the first time. There, they agreed to form a reading circle"constituted by Mmes. and Misses for the purpose of... contributing tothe culture of the Chilean woman, using all those resources at their dis-

posal."7 In contrast to the vagueness of the Circle's stated goals, its insti-tutional structure was specific andÂ—given the class origins of itsmembersÂ—unprecedented: the Circle was to be formed by and for womenand women alone, without Church patronage or any other form of malesupervision.

From the onset, it was apparent that the women in attendance at the

Circle represented two currents and, more importantly, two classesÂ—mid-dle-class and/or professional women and the damas distinguidas [distin-guished ladies] of the Chilean aristocracy.8 The women in the first group,Labarca amongst them, hoped to continue on as a reading circle open toall women with intellectual interests.9 The aristocratic contingent, led byDelia Matte de Izquierdo, wanted to establish a more "socially oriented"center, namely, one with a membership restricted to women from thehighest echelons of Chilean society. After the Circle's third meeting, itsmore "distinguished" members put the latter plan into motion and

formed the Club de SeÃ±oras.10 Thus, within the space of two months, thetwo first independent organizations of Chilean middle- and upper-classwomen were founded. By far the wealthier of the two groups, the Clubsoon moved into its own buildingÂ—a mansion across from the CongressÂ— where the Circle, still lacking its own site, arranged to rent two rooms onthe second floor. According to Labarca, these two institutions "founded,more or less by the same people, imbibed with a similar progressive spirit,lived a communal life for a time... until they had both grown to the pointof having each their own existence."11 Put another way, the members of these two institutions shared by and large the same reform agenda andwere able to work together in the short term despite their class differ-ences^Â—Labarca's implicit stress on the "more" in her "more or less" thesame people.

At first, both organizations bore the brunt of attacks from the media, particularly the Catholic press which denounced their secular nature.Another commonly voiced objection was to the use of the word "Club,"as it implied a politicalÂ—and therefore masculineÂ—association. Goadedinto action, Circle and Club members, who counted amongst their ranks

the most celebrated women writers of the day, fought back with their pens.Aristocratic author and Circle and Club member InÃ©s EcheverrÃ-a deLarraÃ-n chided those men who feared that women would desert their

homes with ignoring the fact that "the Club de la Union had emptied it




years ago... and that woman, fed up with sitting around the door waitingfor her absent husband, who usually came home drunk or in foul mood...

had also left."12 Labarca argued that it was desirable:for women, in addition to being wives and mothers, to have thefreedom to carry out their own aspirations as individuals and todevelop intellectually and morally as a collective, without requiringfor this that a man in a cossack be seated at the front of their meetingsoverseeing their activities.13Resistance to the Club and Circle, while virulent, quickly dissipated.

Within the space of a few years both institutions had earned reputationsas influential forums where distinguished and progressive women andmen, Chilean or foreign, could come and share their literary opinions and

political ideals with an all-women audience drawn from the finest of Chilean society. Labarca attributed this rapid shift in public opinion to thegenerally high educational levels of the women involved, especially thoseof the middle class;14 Club lady Martina Barros de Orrego claimed it wasdue to the "exquisite tact and extraordinary prudence" of the Club's"distinguished" leadership.15 Whichever the case, by 1917 the media hadchanged its tune, as the following statement from one prominent journalattests:

One thing has been made indisputably clear: that the Club deSeÃ±oras, and likewise the CÃ-rculo de Lectura, initiated amid tauntsand dubious jeers, stand today as two institutions with solid and

prosperous life. Little feminine minds, that the men folk so enjoymaking fun of, have proven themselves to possess two qualitiesoftentimes lacking in the latter: tenacity and an organizing spirit.16

If in 1917 these two organizations were at their pinnacle, the Circlesoon ran into difficulties when Labarca, commissioned by the Chilean

government to study the U.S. system of high school education, once againleft the country, thus creating a gap in the Circle's leadership. Upon her return in 1919, she and several other Circle members would go on to foundthe Consejo Nacional de Mujeres [National Women's Council] with theexpressed purpose of campaigning for women's civil and political rights.17For Labarca and fellow members, the council represented a step forwardfor Chilean women's organizations, from the narrower cultural focus of the CircleÂ—now subsumed into the councilÂ—to a more direct politicalactivism by and on behalf of Chilean women.18 That same year, another group of Circle members would form the Centro Femenino de Estudios[Women's Studies Center].19 These two new women's associations would

join ranks with the host of other women's organizations founded in thefirst half of the 1920s to campaign successfully for reforms favorable to




women in both the civil and labor codes.20 The Club de SeÃ±oras, meanwhile,continued to host lectures and classes, while expanding its activities to

include teas, dances, and even the screening of respectable movies.21 Itwould eventually shed its more reformist inclinations and devote itself exclusively to charitable functions and other "social" activities in thearistocratic sense of the term.

Compared with contemporary working-class men and women'sorganizations, middle- and upper- class male-dominated political parties,or even the more conservative female activism of the Catholic Liga deDamas, the Circle and Club were minuscule. Their historical significancelies not in their size nor their mass appeal, but in the fact that they were

the first independent associations of middle- and upper-class women toraise the "woman's question" in the nation's capital. Although they werelargely unsuccessful in placing this question squarely on the larger socialagenda in an era so devoted to public debate over the "social question,"they did help to lay the foundations upon which the more effectivewomen's movement of the 1920s and beyond would emerge. As Labarcawrote in 1925:

These minuscule societies have been a great field of experience.

Through them we have learned, much more surely than through anynumber of speeches or propaganda, that to make a truly collectiveeffort we have to begin by educating ourselves.22

This history of the short-lived CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±oras and therelatively more durable Club de SeÃ±oras hints at the multiplicity of aspira-tions of these two institutions' constituencies and the diversityÂ—up (or down) to a pointÂ—of their educational and class backgrounds. This same

brief outline, however, reveals almost nothing about the actual content of the gender critiques put forth by members of these organizations. The

official programs of both Circle and Club were exceedingly and, mostlikely, deliberately vague, as both groups tested the waters of publicopinion around this still innovative and therefore controversial endeavor of organizing women as women. But the ambiguity was also more than afacade, for the women involved were themselves just beginning to formu-late their respective positions on gender relations within Chilean societyand how these should be reformed. Rather than a defined political move-ment, then, these early organizations may best be understood as collec-tives of educated women of means who shared a common concern for

gender issues and were grappling as individuals with what these issueswere and how best to address them. The Circle and the Club served as

forums for the conversation initiated by these women, a conversation inwhich one participant often disagreed with another and even contradicted




herself at times. I will devote the remainder of this paper to the analysis of this discussion in early middleand upper-class Chilean feminism based on

the individual writingsÂ—speeches, articles, novels, plays, short stories andreportsÂ—of its "pioneers."

The Conversation

As strange as it would have seemed to our grandmothers, the ladies of Santiago have a Club. How was it formed? Above all thanks to the irrepress-ible currents of modern life... Chilean society has belatedly been swept upinto these currents and our ways are changing... P

InÃ©s EcheverrÃ-a de LarraÃ-n, 1917

In 1873, young aristocrat Martina Barros completed the first Spanishtranslation of John Stuart Mills' The Subjugation of Women and published itin her husband's Liberal journal, the Revista de Santiago.2i Forty years later,Amanda Labarca presented her lectures on women's activities in theUnited States. Both Chilean women hoped that these examples of protestand accomplishment by feminists in other countries would persuade their compatriotas [fellow countrywomen] to take up the cause of women's

emancipation. Their ground-breaking efforts demonstrate the fundamen-tal influence of European and U.S. feminist ideas and activities on theemergence and eventual contours of early Chilean feminism.

Circle and Club feminists and their opponents displayed a greatawareness of international feminism throughout the historic conversationI reconstruct in the succeeding pages. Many of the discussion's partici-

pants were world travelers with ample opportunity to witness the activi-ties of feminist movements in foreign lands, and all had access to periodicreports published in the Chilean press on the unprecedented participationof European and U.S. women in the production and relief efforts of their respective nations at war. Circle and Club women used the achievementsof their counterparts in other countries both as role models and as concrete

proof for their claims that changes in women's status could be made andthat these changes would work for the betterment of all society. Their admiration of the advances won by foreign women's movements wassincere; they manipulated their presentation of these advances, however,according to the specific projects or reforms they proposed within Chileansociety. International feminism thus represented both a source of inspira-tion and an ideological tool in the hands of those Chilean women intenton building their own feminist movement.

Labarca's well-attended 1913 lectures on women's activities in the

United States demonstrated this strategy at work. On the surface, Labarca




presented a fairly straightforward history of the North American women'smovement. The lecture's subtext, however, was specifically aimed at

Labarca's South American audience. Her detailed and optimistic accountof the evolution of U.S. feminism furnished both the justification and the blueprint for the soon-to-be-created Chilean CÃ-rculo de Lectura, as it hintedat the broader movement she hoped this organization would eventuallyinspire. Here is a synopsis of the history she presented over the span of four lectures:

In the 1870s, women formed reading Circles with exclusively culturalgoals throughout the United States. These Clubs gradually evolvedinto philanthropic and, subsequently, social and political reform

organizations of massive proportions. Reforms first advocated bywomen's Clubs eventually became local, state and even national policy; their successful implementation represented the victories of truly modem women. These women were actively organizing reformassociations not only in the United States, but in all of the civilizedcountries of the globe. And they were doing so without any form of masculine leadershipÂ—a detail that, while seemingly insignificant,had determined the happy evolution of these women's societies.

The argument embedded within Labarca's historical account was thatChilean women should form their own associations. First, "truly modern"women in "all of the civilized countries of the globe" were doing so.25Second, these women's organizations, initially focused on cultural issues,had naturally moved into the realm of social reform and politics andthereby earned their members a say in the governance of their respectivenations.26 And last but in no way least, the unique strength of these groupsresulted from the fact that they were formed by women and women alone"without any thought emanating from a man's brain intervening alongthe path of their aspirations."27 These women-only organizations, inLabarca's view, constituted the richest form of education for they allowedtheir members to learn from their own experiences. Thus, although shenever openly stated her intentions, Labarca clearly tailored her lectures onforeign women's activities to lay the groundwork for the first independentassociation of Chilean middle- and upper-class women: the CÃ-rculo deLectura de SeÃ±oras, founded two years after Labarca's conferences andupon her initiative.

Throughout the conversation that the reading Circle engendered, its participants resorted to this same tactic of evoking examples of women'sadvances in other countries to bolster their own arguments about Chileanwomen and what they should be doing for themselves and/or whatsociety should be doing for them. Circle and Club women's frequenthomage to global feminist advances, however, should not be misinter-




preted as their desire to follow unquestioningly the lead of foreign move-ments. Instead, the feminists in question were simultaneously internation-

alists and nationalists. While they acknowledged their debt to foreignwomen's movements, their goal was to convince their compatriotas of Chilean women's potential to build their own feminist movement basedon national realities. The founders of the Circle incorporated this interna-tionalist/nationalist perspective directly into their organization's statuteswhen they resolved "to establish a women's reading Circle, similar toforeign 'reading-Clubs/ " but with "its own rules and regulations, inkeeping with national needs and concerns."28

The internationalist/nationalist character of early Chilean middle

and upper-class feminism was a great source of tension for its proponents.On the one hand, as nationalists, these women had no intention of blindlytraveling down the path, inspiring as it was, already charted by foreignwomen in response to foreign conditions. On the other, Circle and Clubwomen were the target of Â„frequent allegations from their opponents thatthey were doing just that. Barros tried to make light of this charge byturning it around to women's favor when she lectured on the "Women'sVote" at the Club in 1917, After citing the pro-women's suffrage arguments

of Frenchman Maurice de Waleffe at length, she wittily concluded: "It pleases me to think that in our nation that lives in constant imitation of allthat is French, these ideas will infiltrate little by little and our politicianswill not be so afraid of granting us the simple right to elect."29 Fellow Clubmember and antisuffragist Adela Rodriguez de Rivadeneira, however,used this same propensity for foreign rriimicry to attack Chilean suffragistsin her reply to the Revista Chilena's 1920 survey on the topic:

I consider all of these questions about voting to be but the snobbismof a reduced group that, through their education, travels, and eruditeculture, and not through heartfelt sentiment, as they have livedabroad forget the uniqueness of their place of origin.30

Circle and Club women's routine citing of international feministachievements made them particularly vulnerable to the accusation thatthey were enamored with inappropriate and, according to some critics,even dangerous foreign fashions. Their vulnerability, in turn, helps toexplain a dramatic and somewhat contradictory statement in Labarca'slecture on women's activities in the United States. After informing her

audience that, unlikely as it may have seemed, feminism and suffragismwere not considered outlandish concepts in "the more advanced coun-tries," Labarca inserted the following parenthesis as to her personal

beliefs: "I am not a militant feminist and even less so a suffragist, because




above all else I am Chilean, and in Chile today there is no room for asuffragist question."31

Labarca's aside was clearly intended to assuage any fears potentiallyharbored by her public that she had become too radical or somehowforgotten her Chilean identity during her sojourn abroad. But this only

partially explains Labarca's statement. Beyond reassuring her public of her patriotic allegiances, Labarca's parenthesis came at the culmination of a complex argument on the relationship between women's emancipationand modernization or el progreso [progress], as it was referred to in earlytwentieth-century Chilean parlance. Labarca firmly believed, andexpressed this to her audience, that the emancipation of women was

directly linked to the "state of civilization" of a given society. Feminismwas an integral part of social progress and, as such, inevitable. In moreadvanced nations, the rapid movement of women out of the home andinto the work force made the expansion of their political rights a necessity.But whereas this evolutionary process was already well underway inindustrialized Europe and the United States, in ChileÂ—"half-a-century

behind the times"Â—it was just beginning. When Chilean society caught upwith the progressive world, "the feminist question would flow on its ownaccord," thanks to the "unavoidable and unalterable" laws of evolution.

Until then, there was no room for a suffragist question in Chile, for:In no country of the world do women ask for political rights just for the luxury of having them. They solicit their rights because theserights are indispensable to women given the conditions under whichthey live. These conditions do not exist today in Chile, therefore, itwould be premature and ridiculous to ask for that which is the resultof causes as yet unknown to us.32

Labarca's understanding of the evolutionary and social causes of

feminism was hardly original. Similar arguments were used by feministsthroughout the world to explain their own movements, as well as bycauses as seemingly diverse as social Darwinism, anarchism or Marxism.With the possible exception of Barros, Labarca's concept of evolutionaryor progressive feminism was one shared by all of the participants in thisChilean discussion on women's emancipation. EcheverrÃ-a, for example,claimed a strong correlation between the level of a given country's devel-opment and the degree of emancipation of its female inhabitants, stating:"those nations in which woman has not been oppressed nor suppressed

have progressed and the other nations have stagnated and entered intodecadence."33

Juxtaposed, Labarca and Echeverria's respective statements of theinterconnections between the progress of women and that of society as a




whole reveal what could be termed the "catch 22" of progressive feminismin Chile. Echeverria's assertion that the expansion of women's freedoms

contributed to national progress was a strong statement in favor of Chileanwomen's rights; Labarca's belief that these rights were the inevitableoutcome of larger social forces meant that Chilean women's emancipationcould be postponed. Catch 22: while el progreso could be and was used byChilean middle- and upper-class feminists to prod or shame progressive-minded Chileans into seeing the benefits of women's emancipation, itrobbed their cause of any claim to immediate redress, and to an extent,subordinated it to the seemingly more pressing class-based issues of the"social question."

Consistent with their adoption of evolutionary tenets, Circle and Clubwomen tended to emphasize the more long-term and culturally oriented project of preparing for the eventual emancipation of women as opposedto waging the more directly political battle of fighting for it in the here andnow. This moderation became the emblem of Chilean middle- and upper-class feminists. It proved that they were not swept away by internationalcurrents, but were instead forging their own brand of feminism appropri-ate to national realities. For ironically, and as with most nationalist argu-ments, Circle and Club feminists could only define Chilean feminism

based on its contrast, implicit or explicit, with other national feminisms, particularly those of the United States and England. As often as they praised its strengths, Club and Circle women were eager to point out whatthey considered to be the militant excesses of Anglo-Saxon feminism,which bore "the overly individualistic mark of its race."34 In order todistance themselves from their overly individualistic northern counter-

parts, Chilean middle- and upper-class feminists promised that in theSouthern continent "a new feminist gospel" would emerge, "more domes-tic, more tied to the future of the home, the family, the children" than that

of the Anglo-Saxon countries.35 This Chilean-style feminism would movewomen "gently," "step-by-step," "gradually" from their present inferior condition to the attainment of their full economic, social, and politicalrights. The tactics Chilean feminists would employ in order to achievetheir objectives would conform to the friendly and even-keeled tempera-ment particular to their race.36

What follows is an exploration of three salient questions raised byCircle and Club feminists in this ladylike conversation on the topic of women's emancipation: the question of Woman's37 personality, the ques-tion of the complementary relationship between men and women, and the"social question." Almost, if not, all of the reforms proposed by the Circleand Club women addressed either one or a combination of these key andinterconnecting issues. In my analysis, I will continue to pay close arten-




tion to the intersections and/or tensions between international and

national feminism. I will also attempt to answer the one question impor-

tant precisely because it was never explicitly posed by the Circle and Clubwomen themselves: What was the relationship between the middle- andupper-class women who formed these two early feminist institutions andworking-class women? Asked another way, how inclusively or exclusivelydid the women involved in the conversation define the category "woman"in their proposals for her uplift and emancipation, and did these defini-tions include or preclude the possibility of recognizing a shared conditionof women as women across class lines?

The Question of Personality

There are, beyond a doubt, two kinds of feminism; one ...ofthe "misses"that push their way into the ring to fight for the vote and the right to swigwhisky... and another that strives to win from men the right to study, to

become enlightened .. . and above all to mold one's own personality....This last feminism is what the lovely institution of the Club de SeÃ±orasrepresents in Chile today.. .Ï‡

Delia Matte de Izquierdo, 1917

While strolling through Santiago upon her return in 1913, AmandaLabarca was struck by two things. First, Chilean girls were immensely

beautifulÂ—comparable or even superior to the girls she had seen in NewYork, London, and Paris. Second, they all tended to look alike. In trying to

put these two rather incongruent observations together, she came to thefollowing conclusion: the raw material of Chilean women was "exception-ally rich both physically and morally," but the environment held them

back and compelled them to inhibit their "nascent personality."39

Women's "personality"Â—or their lack of itÂ—was one of the most popular topics in the Circle and Club women's discussion. As in Labarca'srecollection above, it could be raised by comparing the condition of women in Chile to that of women in other countriesÂ—always walking thatfine line between nationalist affirmation (Chilean girls were prettier) andsocial critique (they lacked personality). Personality was also a conceptrich in meanings. The term "personality" had legal implications: in theChilean civil code, women literally forfeited their "juridical personality"to their husbands upon marriage. Personality had a spiritual side as well,for its development was seen as part and parcel of the coming modern,more advanced stage in the evolution of human civilization.40 Finally, thetopic of women's personality was profoundly linked to the lived experi-ences of the conversation participants themselves. For these women who




aspired to and, to some extent, obtained it through their literary and/or professional activities, personality was both an abstract goal and a deeply

personal matter.It was around this theme, subsequently, that the women in questiongave veiled expression to the multiple frustrations that fed into their shared desire to transform gender relations within Chilean society. For aristocratic women, the quest for personality constituted a rebellionagainst their frivolous existence and demeaning situation as ornaments intheir fathers' or husbands' homes. For professional and/or middle-classwomen, it signified that they would finally be recognized and receive justremuneration for their hard-earned skills and labors. For artistic women

from both camps, it meant that their creative endeavors would be judgedon their intrinsic merits. And for desperate women like Circle member Delia RojasÂ—an abused and then abandoned wife and, consequently,economically strapped single motherÂ—it somehow promised the tools tosurvive in a hostile environment.

In the discussion, women in pursuit of their own personality facedtwo formidable obstacles: girls' frivolity, and the hastio [boredom andfrustration] of married women. Frivolity was a popular theme of discus-

sion at the time throughout Chilean society and particularly in the press,where it was portrayed as a strictly feminine vice of epidemic proportionsthat had already contaminated most, if not all, the daughters of Santiagohigh society. It was an equally popular topic among the women writers inquestion. While Circle and Club members joined the mainstream media indeploring young women's superficiality, their position on its causes wasunique. Most social commentators implied it was somehow the naturalcondition of feminine youth. In contrast, Chilean middle- and upper-classfeminists posited that girls' frivolous behavior did not reflect any inherent

defects in the girls themselves. Nor could it be attributedÂ—as some socialcritics didÂ—to the poor upbringing girls had received from their mothers.Instead, girls' frivolity and their mothers' inability to prevent it were thecombined result of an inferior education, a social environment ruled bystale conventions, and above all else women's total moral, social, andeconomic dependence on men. As Barros charged:

Those men who complain frequently that today's girls only knowhow to talk about fashionable rags and other trivialities ... ignorethe fact that this evil emanates from they themselves. Woman, as aconsequence of national customs, is a moldable being that liveshanging on to man's every demand. She lives for him. She lives to

please him. To the vacuous ideas of the male sex, corresponds thewoman flailing her arms around like some peacock... ."41




Circle and Club women's focus on frivolity was thus an integral partof their larger critique of gender relations within Chilean society. Those

same restrictive social conditions that produced the coqueta [coquette]would continue to have a negative effect on Woman's personalitythroughout the various phases of her life. Lacking all means of spiritualand, more importantly, economic independence, girls were forced to pursuewhat one author bitterly referred to as a "career in matrimony."42 Thesame dependency that fostered frivolity in young women thus shapedtheir unhappy adulthoods via the institution of marriage for interest.Frivolity, marriage for interest, married women's hastio and, some writersclaimed, even their infidelity, all of these social ills perpetrated by womenand, in turn, reflective in some way of their personality deficiencieswere explained by Chilean middle- and upper-class feminists, in moreor less forceful terms, as the combined product of centuries of women'sabsolute dependence on men. Labarca blamed Woman's defects on"years of moral, social and economic dependency... in which, only byexception, she has been treated as a companion and equal. . . ."43EcheverrÃ-a was more pointed in her criticism: "Who have been theworst enemies of the evolution of women? Those who feared theywould be deprived of their age-old domain . . . MEN, in their capacityas Clerics, Fathers and Husbands."44

Conversely, the way to rid Woman of all her failings was to "graduallyestablish her personality."45 In other words, these problems could beresolved through the ste-by-step attainment of women's civil andÂ—laterÂ—

political rights, and, equally essential, their social and economic indepen-dence from men. The question of personality thus reached outmultidirectionally towards the various legal and social reforms advocated

by one or another conversation participant, all in some way aimed at

achieving this transcendent goal.Changes in the Chilean legal system held priority on Circle and Clubwomen's reform agendas. In the Chilean civil code, based on Napoleoniclaw, married women fell into the same category as minors, criminals, andthe disabled or insane. This same code denied those married women

separated from or abandoned by their husbands any recourse to divorceand granted only minimal rights to single and/or widowed women. Theneed to reform this civil code was, understandably, the consensus of Circleand Club women. Many believed women's civil rights the prerequisite to

a future women's suffrage, for as Labarca noted, the vote "would be of little use to us if we have not already changed the legal statute that bindsthe married woman to absolute obedience to her husband and denies her

the rights of property."46 And one woman, Rojas, called for the immediate




passage of divorce laws as well to "protect" women married only in name by giving them back their freedom.47

Circle and Club women also agreed on the need to improve women'seducationÂ—a consensus surely arrived at thanks to their shared literaryaspirations and the fact that, as women writers, they were often made tofeel inadequate due to the inferior training they had received relative tomen's.48 The women divided along class lines, however, on what the goalof these improvements should be. Aristocratic women expressed a vaguedesire to develop intellectually, both in order to catch up to middle-classwomen and be able to converse and write on a par with aristocratic men.49More pragmatic middle-class participants promoted vocational and pro-

fessional training for women in order to both enhance their skills asmothers and wives and facilitate their entrance into the work forceÂ—

the "inevitable" economic future and rapidly increasing reality of thewomen of their class.50 Many Circle and Club women claimed thatwork itself or its aristocratic counterpart, voluntary community ser-vice, helped women to outgrow their frivolous concerns and achieve

personal fulfillment.51Finally, the CÃ-rculo de Lectura and the Club de SeÃ±oras were considered

in and of themselves important and unprecedented steps towards

women's progressÂ—at least by those women who made up their member-ships. Barros succinctly expressed this in regards to the Club. She claimedthat its greatest accomplishment was to have "granted woman her own

personality."52 She went on to simultaneously rebuke those who ini-tially criticized the Club de SeÃ±oras and praise those women who organ-ized it: "all of these women have dedicated themselves to [this] intenseand absorbing task while at the same time maintaining their homesintact, complying with all of their duties and raising irreproachabledaughters."53

Precisely because it was so closely linked to the individual lives of the women who raised it, the question of Woman's personality wasinextricably a question of class. As anyone familiar with turn-of-the-century Chilean society (or today's, for that matter) would know, thosewomen that Barros described as busily developing their personalitiesat the Club while simultaneously fulfilling all their womanly duties, or those women professionals or volunteers who, while serving their communities were also improving as mothers and wives, were onlyable to do so thanks to their maids. Rojas stated as much in so manywords when she fondly recalled the Circle and what it had meant to her and her fellow members: It had been a space "to get to know each other without being wrongly interpreted. . .. [and also to] momentarily forgetthe prose of the daily menu, the list for the washerwoman, and all of the




other small burdens of domestic existence."54 As Rojas' passing referenceto the washerwoman suggests, while Circle and Club women deeply

resented Woman's dependence on Man, they never questioned how their various proposals aimed at establishing Woman's personality depended,to a large extent, on other women not having any.

Question: Are Woman and Man Complementary Creatures?

My goal in campaigning for the independence and cultural uplift of womanwas not to make her into the rival of man, but to turn her into his worthycompanion. Man's superiority is indisputable in all that signifies effort,mental capacity and physical resistance. Woman, in contrast, possessesmoral strengths never surpassed by man, that constitute her merit and her

power?*Martina Barros, 1942

Bom in 1850, Martina Barros grew up amidst the great political battlesof the late nineteenth century between the Chilean Conservative andLiberal Parties. She herself contributed to the Liberal arsenal with her 1873

translation of Stuart Mills' Subjugation of Women. Not surprisingly, Barros

invoked Liberal tenets in her 1917 Club lecture on women's suffrage. Sheargued that women needed the vote based on the democratic principle of fair and equal representation. She then chided those Liberal men whowarned that women, if granted the vote, would use it overwhelmingly infavor of a certain (i.e., Conservative) party, declaring their fears both"unfounded and capricious."56 She went on to state that, even were thisthe case, it did not constitute a valid reason to deny women the vote for itundermined the great liberal spirit of the nation by giving primacy to"petty and transitory" political interests over the "exigency of the higher

cause of justice."57As one of the oldest Circle and Club women, Barros was both the onlyrepresentative of her generation in the middle- and upper-class feministdiscussion of the 1910s and its sole participant to invoke liberal principlesin her arguments in favor of women's rights. By the early twentiethcentury, Barros was outnumbered by a new generation of women raisedin a more modern, Progressive Era. These younger feminists, like their international counterparts, shifted the focus of Chilean middle- andupper-class feminism away from Barros's emphasis on the natural rightsof "mankind"Â—with her feminist claim that women be included in thiscategoryÂ—towards a stress on the natural evolution of "mankind,"namely the Progress of the Race. The combined and complementarycontributions of men and women were considered crucial to the success of




this larger evolutionary project.58 In keeping with the times, younger Circle and Club feminists made this same complementary relationship the

basis for their assertion of gender equality. EcheverrÃ-a explained thisconcept in her response to the Revista Chilena's survey on women's suf-frage: "With respect to the sexes there is no idea of superiority nor inferi-ority. Man and woman are two different beings, and as such, complementeach other."59

If, as EcheverrÃ-a claimed, there were in fact no idea of superiority nor inferiority with respect to the sexes within Chilean feminism, the distinc-tion between Barros's position and that of the younger feminists wouldhave proved inconsequential. After all, both generations of women could

agree on the fact that the men and women were different and both proclaimed equality between the sexes. But this was not the case. Instead,all of the conversation participants, Barros included, claimed that the coreof sexual difference lay in men's physical and mental superiority over women, and women's moral superiority over men. Proud of their hard-earned intellectual achievements, Circle and Club women passed lightlyover men's supposed mental superiority to rest squarely on women'smoral superiority over men.

The contrast between Barros's and the younger Circle and Club

women's positions on gender equality can be found in the different waysthe two generations dealt with these two key and sometimes clashingtenetsÂ—gender equality and male intellectual superiority/female moralsuperiority. Barros treated the two principles as both true and indepen-dent. She claimed that women and men were equal regardless of what shealso claimed to be women's relative moral superiority and mental inferi-ority to men. In the arguments of the younger participants, however, thesesame two principles were mtrinsically linked: Women and men wereequal precisely because they complemented each other in their respectiveintellectual and moral attributes.

The danger in this combination is that it often diluted the equalityside of the formula. Echeverria's answer to the Revista Chilena's poll isa case in point. After confessing her trepidation in responding to sucha complicated questionnaire, she stated that, in her humble opinion,Woman had the natural right to exercise the suffrage under equalconditions to those of Man based on their "mutual and corresponding"relationship. This right, she went on to say, "does not interest usmuch," however, for "in the education of our sons, we are actuallyforming the voters" and could therefore abstain from going to the electoralurns.60 Delia Rojas reached the same stalemate. She shared the belief thatsuffrage was the natural and complementary right of women; in addition,she argued that government would run more smoothly if it were in the




hands of women, as they were more loving than men and she concludedthat, for herself, suffrage held no charms, for "as a means of combat, we

have our influence over our sons."61As the above quotes suggest, younger Circle and Club women's claimto female moral superiority often outweighed their claim to gender equal-ity. This, in turn, led them to construct an argument in favor of women's

political rights based solely on moral grounds. Rojas's contention thatwomen, if given the vote, would have a moralizing effect on govern-mentÂ—they were more lovingÂ—was reiterated by Circle and Club womenthroughout the discussion. An area rich in foreign precedence, this claimcould be supported by a host of evidence of women's accomplishments

from the United States to New Zealand. It could also be posited as suffi-cient justification in and of itself for the extension of women's activitiesinto the political sphere.

The one-sided argument that Woman should be granted her politicalrights as Man's moral superior could prove even more unreliable than thevaguer claim that she deserved them as Man's complement. The unnerv-ing versatility of female moral superiority may be seen by comparing therespective arguments of militant suffragist Barros and antisuffragistRodriguez de Rivadeneira. In Barros' 1917 talk on "Woman's vote," she

declared that Woman's innate morality placed her above the petty politicalsquabbles of Man, and that her political participation would thereforehave the beneficial effect of "[distancing] man from this class of struggles,for woman would know how to pull him up to the lofty social sphere thatis her affair."62 Rodriguez de Rivadeneira, on the other hand, used thesame claim that women moved on a higher plane to deny them any placein the political realm: "The role of woman should not be that of a function-ary in political affairs, but that of directress of the conscience of men so asto give them the uprightness of their acts in the moral and political

sphere."63In the final analysis, the younger generation of Chilean middle- andupper-class feminists' position on the question of women's vote wastentative at best. While Barros could advocate the immediate passage of women's suffrage as both the means of redressing a grave injustice and of cleaning up politics, the power of her equality-based pro-suffrage argu-ment was in no way negated by her morality-based one. In contrast,EcheverrÃ-a and Rojas deemed themselves worthy of the vote as the naturalcomplements to men, but managed to talk themselves out of needing it

based on their loftier and complementary role as moral inculcator of thespecies. And this same role could be used by opponents of women'ssuffrage to argue that women were "above" and therefore outside of

politics altogether.




Neither of the gendered principles used by the women in question to promote or, in the case of Rodriguez de Rivadeneira, discourage the

expansion of women's political rights reached across class lines. Thewomen taking part in the conversation did not deem themselves thecomplementary equals of working-class men nor did they believe work-ing-class women necessarily moral. On the contrary, the same womenwho favored the gradual exercise of women's franchise and an eventualnational suffrage unrestricted by gender (Labarca, for instance) alsofavored a suffrage restricted by income and education, in other words, byclass.

By 1915, literate Chilean men could vote regardless of income and

male literacy rates were relatively high.64 The fact that poor men could anddid voteÂ—often for a price in the infamous system of cohecho [electoralfraud]Â—enraged the "cultured" women of both Circle and Club. It alsofueled their arguments in support of the expansion of women's politicalrights. Rojas angrily demanded: "the most remote country bumpkin ismore esteemed than we are, and while many of us are intellectuallyworthy, he is a social entity and we, not. Why?"65 Barros's response to theclaim that women were not yet ready for the vote echoed Rojas's incredu-lity: "What sort of preparation is this that the most humble male, with only

this fact in his favor, possesses and that we cannot attain?"66Poor men's "ignorance" clearly placed them outside of any comple-mentary relationship based on the intellectual superiority of Man and themoral superiority of Woman. Similarly, Circle and Club feminists' asser-tion that women were moral by nature blurred when it came down to classlines. Most of the discussion participants simply avoided the issue of poor women's morality altogetherÂ—an easy enough task as poor women,unlike poor men, did not have the vote and therefore failed to provoke theclass-inspired wrath of Circle and Club women. But while Chilean middle-

and upper-class feminists never explicitly denied poor women thefuture vote that they advocated for themselves, the implication of their request that suffrage be open to both sexes but restricted byincome and education was that female moral superiority was simul-taneously an attribute of gender and class. Educated women of means had it; poor women did not.




The Question of the "Social Question"

Modern Woman, the conscious and enlightened Woman .. .has the capacityto dissipate class hatreds and silence the clamorous protests of the proletariatmore efficiently and successfully than the repressive actions of any Govern-ment. Man only knows how to reason with his brain; Woman adds to thisher heart... and thus is able to smooth so many lumps as they pass throughthe sifter of her innate goodness.67

Elvira Santa Cruz Ossa, 1920

The linkages between the "woman's question" being discussedamong Circle and Club members and the class-defined "social question"

were extremely complex, for these two questions met in both the abstractand concrete realms. Class conflict, like the problem of Woman's person-ality, was simultaneously a malleable concept used by the feminists inquestion to bolster their elaborate arguments in support of women'semancipation, and the stark reality of the decade in which their conversa-tion ensued. At the abstract level of political discourse, middle- andupper-class feminists deftly manipulated class issues and the larger society's overwhelming concern for them to promote gender reforms thatwould benefit, if not all women, at least those groups of women with

whom they identified. At the concrete level of lived experience, these samewomen were not just outside observers to social change and its conflicts;their own lives were deeply affected by them. They participated, willinglyor otherwise, in the "war of the classes" between an entrenched aristocracyand a "rising" middle class. And they also felt the repercussions oÃ- thevery real class warfare being waged on the streets of Santiago betweenworkers and their bosses, a war that according to at least one discussion

participant had already invaded their homes via that class-conscious and"dangerous guild"Â—maids.68 In this next and final section, I will attemptto unravel this intricate web of intersections.

In the 1910s, Circle and Club women determined to pose the"woman's question" confronted an analogous challenge to that faced inearlier decades by class-based movements intent on raising and thenresolving the "social question." This was to persuade the larger societythat the problemÂ—either "woman's" or "workers' "Â—even existed. In thecase of the social question and despite the abject poverty of Santiago slumsand northern mining camps, arch-conservative politicians adamantlydenied that it did well into the twentieth century, daiming instead that

Chilean workers' protests resulted from the machinations of a handful of foreign subversives. If a handful of diehards still needed convincing thatclass conflict was real and not artificially induced in the 1910s, a much

broader segment of society needed to be convinced that the "woman's




question" was truly a question. This latter task was made even moredifficult by the fact that even those progressives sympathetic to feminist

concerns frequently held that the resolution of what they perceived as anacute crisis in class relations took precedence, while the problem of women's rights could be postponed.69

Chilean middle- and upper-class f eminists, wisely enough, did not tryto compete with the social question for room on the larger social reformagenda. Instead, they simply turned the notion that gender reform couldwait until class harmony had been restored to Chilean society on its head;they affirmed that only through Woman's participation would class antag-onisms be assuaged and that in order for her to contribute effectively to

this healing process for the good of all concerned, she deserved and societyneeded her to have social, economic, and political independence.This feminist position was built on the well-used tenet of female

moral superiority. Its implication for the social question was thatWomanÂ—as above class as she was above politicsÂ—possessed the innateability to resolve social conflicts, an ability arguably lacking in Man whoas yet had just made a mess of things.70 In professing this natural gift,Circle and Club women drew an imaginary line between "la mujer"[woman], somehow outside of class, and "el pueblo" [the people, namely,

the working class] by and large undifferentiated by gender. In her infinitecompassion, la mujer would lift el pueblo out of its poverty and convince itto march hand-in-hand with society's other classes towards the futuregreatness of the nation, just as she would pull Man up from partisan

politics to a higher realm.71Given the high level of anxiety that class issues provoked within

contemporary Chilean society, this schemaÂ—uplift Woman and she willuplift the PeopleÂ—made a compelling case for women's emancipation. Itwas thus, understandably, a favored argument in the Circle and Club

women's conversation. The promise that Woman, once granted the neces-sary tools, namely, her rights, would work towards eradicating classconflict within Chilean society was used to promote a broad spectrum of social and political reforms favorable to women. Chilean middle- andupper-class feminists buttressed their promise with concrete examples of how women's activism had greatly improved social conditions in thosemore advanced countries where women had already won their politicalrights.72 They also linked women's participation in solving the socialquestion to other key issues of their discussion. As la mujer tackled the

problems of el pueblo, she would simultaneously resolve the problem of her deficient personality, for, "this type of social service, at the same time as italleviates the extremely difficult situation [of our people]... offers the bestremedy for woman's own superficiality and selfishness."73 The concept of




gender equivalence entered in here as well, for in working for the greater good of society, Woman would simply be performing her natural function

as the complement of Man.74Besides promising that Woman, if emancipated, would forget her frivolous concerns and devote herself wholeheartedly to complementingMan's efforts towards remedying society's ills, the other way Circle andClub feminists turned the "social question" to their political advantagewas through comparison. This last strategy left intact the fictional line

between la mujer and el pueblo, but instead of placing the first above thesecond, drew the analogy between their respective and just demands.Rojas was particularly adept at this tactic. She devoted an entire essay tocomparing the frustration of "the worker," which led to him to drink, withthe boredom of Woman, which led her down the path of immorality,claiming that society could put a stop to both vicious cycles throughimproved education.75 And she drew a striking parallel between thedemocratic principles underlying workers' protests and her own cam-

paign for the passage of divorce laws by asking: "If today the worker demands his rights and many believe it just to grant them to him, whycannot the Chilean woman think of demanding her human rights andexpect that they will be granted her?"76

Both the discussion participants' frequent assertions that Woman,once attaining her rights, would solve the problems of el pueblo, and Rojas'more original woman/worker comparisons relied on the mutually-exclusive categories of la mujer and el pueblo. This particular treatmentof the social question mirrored somewhat that of less gender-consciousmiddle- and upper-class progressives who claimed that they, the moraland socially conscious podentes [leaders], needed to wrest power froma corrupt aristocracy in order to lead the ignorant pueblo away from

those dangerous ideologies of class hatred: anarchism and Commu-nism. Middle- and upper-class feminists shifted the focus of this top-down reform program from class to gender by arguing that the

participation of progressive women from the top was a necessary ingre-dient for its success and that they therefore deserved to share power with the men of their classes. In this new formula, la mujer substitutedfor los podentes while el pueblo remained intact. As it automaticallyrestricted which classes of women fit in the ideological category"woman," this mujer/pueblo device allowed Chilean middle- and

upper-class feminists to insert gender considerations into the progres-sive position on the social question debate without in any way diluting itsclass content. Their project was thus as explicitly feminist as it was implic-itly classist: its twofold goal, to advance their position as women while at




the same time enhancing (middle-class women) or preserving (progres-sive aristocratic women) their class positions within society.

Working-class women, as women, had no place in this particular feminist reform agenda. They also had no place within the Circle and Clubwomen's conversation. Circle and Club women, while willing to attemptto forge a coalition of progressive women from both the middle and upper classes in order to better promote their common cause, lacked the socialimagination to see below a certain class line. Taking Woman out of thePeople and then treating the two as separate and distinct categoriesenabled middle-class and aristocratic feminists to claim to speak for allwomen in their effort to transform gender relations within Chilean society

without ever having to envision what those reforms might entail werethey to address the specific needs and concerns of working-class women.

Endnote

When I first began researching this article, I set out to explore both theinternational influences and the class assumptions underlying the feministideology developed by the middle- and upper-class women who foundedthe CÃ-rculo de Lectura de SeÃ±oras and the Club de SeÃ±oras in Santiago, Chile,

in the 1910s. On the topic of the intersection between class and gender, Iexpected to find two things: first, that Circle and Club feminists wouldassert an inherent equality between the sexes; and, second, that theywould claim some form of shared experience (form of equality) of womenregardless of their class. My imagined goal was to discover if and howChilean middle- and upper-class feminists dealt with the contradiction

between the theoretical assertion of male/female equality and actual classinequalities between women.

In my subsequent (and on-going) investigation, I have found that,

while I could tackle the first international-oriented question much as I hadexpected, I have changed course considerably when broaching the issueof class within Circle and Club feminism. My original assumptions fell bythe wayside as I discovered that Circle and Club women neither assertedan unquestioned equality to men nor a sisterhood with women belowthem in the class hierarchy. Instead, the particular feminist ideology thatemerged from Circle and Club women's discussions in the 1910s could besummarized as follows: First, it was cautious and solicitous, both inkeeping with its evolutionary theoretical underpinnings and in order todistinguish itself from more militant foreign feminisms. Second, and aswith most feminist politics, it was deeply personal. It arose from the sharedfrustrations and hopes of the individual women who advocated it, emo-tions that, in turn, reflected each woman's specific gender and class posi-




tion within Chilean society. Third, it constructed its argument for women'semancipation on the complementary relationship between the sexes,

rather than on the principle of the innate equality of all individuals. Ittherefore did not demand women's inherent rights, but instead pro-claimed women's inherent morality and requested that women be grantedtheir rights based on the promise that women would then use their rightsas tools towards the betterment of society. Finally, its definition of thecategory "woman" was severely class-restrictive, for its creators wereeither unwilling or unable to extend their concept of women across theclass barrier that divided themselves, all women of means, from thewomen who served them.

Notes

The author would like to thank Ellen DuBois, Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, andthe two anonymous readers from the Journal of Women's History for their insightfulcomments. Research for this article was funded in part by dissertation grants fromthe Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright Program.

1 Esmeralda Zenteno de LeÃ³n (pseud. Vera Zouroff), "Una mujer in elSenado," Mujeres de AmÃ©rica 9 (1950). Cited in Felicitas Klimpel, La mujer chilena (El

aporte femenino al Progreso de Chile) 1910-1960 (Santiago: Editorial AndrÃ©s Bello,1962), 134. (This and all other translations are by the author.)

2 The comparative history of working-class feminism, Catholic feminism,and progressive feminism (the latter represented in this article by the Circle andClub women) in turn-of-the-century Chilean society lies beyond the scope of thisarticle and is the subject of my forthcoming dissertation for the Department of History at UCLA, "Where the 'Social Question' and the 'Woman's Question' Meet:Engendering Class Politics and Classifying Gender Politics in Chile, 1891 -1925."

For studies of working-class feminism in Chile, see Elena Caffarena de Jiles,

Un capÃ-tulo en la Historia delFeminismo (n.p.: Ediciones del MEMCH, 1952); RebeccaConte CorvalÃ¡n, "La mutualidad femenina: una visiÃ³n social de la mujer chilena,1880-1930," Masters Thesis, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, 1987; Edda GaviÃ³laArtigas and others, "Queremos votar en las prÃ³ximas elecciones" Historia delmovimiento femenino chileno, 1913-1952, (Santiago: Centro de anÃ¡lisis y difusiÃ³n dela condiciÃ³n de la mujer/"La Morada," 1986); Elizabeth Hutchison, Elfeminismo enel movimiento obrero chileno: la emancipaciÃ³n de la mujer en la prensa obrera feminista,1905-1908 (Santiago: FLACSO, 1992); AsunciÃ³n Lavrin, "Women, Labor and theLeft: Argentina and Chile, 1890-1925,"/Î¿ÎºÎ·Î¹Î±Î– of Women's History 1,2 (1989): 88-116;Cecilia Salinas, La mujer proletaria: una historia para contar (ConcepciÃ³n: EdicionesLAR, 1987).

For studies of aristocratic women's activism in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth century, see Actividades femeninas en Chile 1877-1927 (Santiago: LaIlustraciÃ³n, 1928); Klimpel, La mujer chilena; Teresa Pereira and others, Tres ensayossobre la mujer chilena (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1978).




3 None of the most important general works on this period in Chileanhistory (cited in footnote 5) mention either women's organization. Works in thenascent field of Chilean women's history place these two institutions within the

broader context of the development of Chilean feminism, but do not go into anydetail as to the actual content of either group's reform agendas. These works are:GaviÃ³la and others, Queremos votar; Faz Covarrubias, "El movimiento feministachileno," in CMe: Mujer y Sociedad, ed. Covarrubias and Rolando Franco (Santiago:Editorial Alfabeta Impresores, 1978); Julieta Kirkwood, Ser polÃ-tica en Chile: lasfeministas y los partidos (Santiago: FLACSO, 1986); Klimpel, La mujer chilena; Lavrin,The Ideology of Feminism in the Southern Cone, 1900-1940 (Washington, D.C.: TheWilson Center, 1986); M. AngÃ©lica Meza, La otra mitad de Chile (Santiago: CESOC,n.d.); MarÃ-a de la Luz Silva Donoso, La participaciÃ³n polÃ-tica de la mujer en Chile: lasorganizaciones de mujeres (Buenos Aires: FundaciÃ³n Friedrich Naumann, 1987).

4 See James O. Morris, Elites, Intellectuals, and Consensus: A Study of the SocialQuestion and the Industrial Relations System in Chile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1966). Other important histories of the period include: Alan AngelÃ-, Politics and theLabour Movement in Chile (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); M. Correa S.Aylwin and C. Serrano Gazmuri, Chile en el siglo XX (Santiago: Editorial EmisiÃ³nLimitada, 1985); Peter DeShazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile 1902-1927(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Alberto Edwards, La frondaaristocrÃ¡tica (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1982); HernÃ¡n Godoy Urzua,Estructura social de Chile (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1971); Julio Heise Gonzalez,Historia de Chile: El perÃ-odo parlamentario 1861-1925, 3 vols. (Santiago: EditorialAndrÃ©s Bello, 1974-1987); Brian Loveman, Chile: the Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Gonzalo Vial, Historia de Chile, 1891-1973, (Santiago: Editorial Sanvillana del PacÃ-fico S.A., 1981).

5 Amanda Labarca, Actividades femeninas en los Estados Unidos (Santiago:Imprenta Universitaria, 1914).

6 Actividades femeninas en Chile, 270.

7 Luisa Zanelli Lopez, Mujeres chilenas de letras (Santiago: Imprenta Uni-versitaria, 1917), 166.

8 See GaviÃ³la and others, "Queremos, 34; and Labarca, Â¿A donde va la mujer?

(Santiago: Ediciones Extra, 1934), 145.9 Delia Rojas (pseud. Delie Rouge), Mis memorias de escritora (Santiago: Casa

Nacional del NiÃ±o, 1943), 26.

10 Zanelli, Mujeres chilenas, 190.

11 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 145.

12 InÃ©s EcheverrÃ-a de LarraÃ-n (pseud. Iris), Cuando mi tierra fue moza (Santi-ago: Editorial Nascimento, 1943), 217-218.

13 From an article in El Mercurio (ValparaÃ-so), October 15, 1915. Cited in

GaviÃ³la and others, "Queremos, 34.14 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 141.

15 Martina Barros de Orrego, Recuerdos de mi vida (Santiago: Editorial Orbe,1942), 290.




16 Virgilio Figueroa, Diccionario HistÃ³rico BiogrÃ¡fico y BibliogrÃ¡fico de Chile,vols. IV and V (Santiago: Balcells and Co., 1931), 226.

17 The Consejo was inspired by, but never actually affiliated with, the Inter-national Women's Council.


19 Labarca, "El moderno movimiento femenino en Chile durante el aÃ±o de1919," Bulletin. Women's Auxiliary Committee of the United States of the Second PanAmerican Scientific Congress (Washington, DC, 1921), 9.

20 For studies on the Chilean women's movement in the 1920s, see thoseworks cited in footnote 3.

21 Barros, Recuerdos, 344.


23 "Â¿CÃ³mo se formÃ³ el Club de SeÃ±oras?" Silueta 1,2 (1917): 14.

24 Martina Barros, "PrÃ³logo a la traducciÃ³n de la obra de J. Stuart Mills, LaEsclavitud de la Mujer," Revista de Santiago 2 (1872-1873): 112-132.

25 Labarca, Actividades, 113-120.

2* Ibid., 52-87; 92-113.

27 Ibid., 141-2.

28 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 145. ("Reading-clubs" appears in English in the originalSpanish text.)

29 Barros, "El voto femenino," Revista Chilena 2,9 (1917): 397.

30 "Una encuesta sobre el sufragio femenino," Revista Chilena 4, 31 (1920):73-74.

31 Labarca, Actividades, 120.

32 Ibid., 122-1223.

33 "Una Encuesta sobre el sufragio femenino," Revista Chilena 4,31 (1920): 70.34 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 146-147.35 Ibid.

3Â« Ibid., 138.

37 I capitalize "Woman" and "Man" to express my belief that these areabstract categories within the context of my analysis.

38 "Ei Quo de SeÃ±oras. Lo que hace y lo que proyecta. Habla su Presidenta,SeÃ±ora Marte de Izquierdo," Silueta 1,6 (1917): 18. ("Misses" appears in English in

the original Spanish text.)39 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 156.

40 This spiritual focus on personality was inspired by various internationaltrends in vogue among Chilean progressives, both women and men, at the timeÂ—




Rudolf Steiner and Theosophy, William Walter Atkinson and Mental Science, toname but a few.

41 Figueroa, Diccionario, vol. Î (Santiago: Balcells and Co., 1928), 141.42 Elvira Santa Cruz Ossa (pseud. Roxane), La familia Busquillas (Santiago:

Zig-Zag,1918),5.


44 Cited in Klimpel, La mujer, 236-237.

45 Adela Rodriguez de Rivadeneira, cited in "Una encuesta sobre el sufragiofemenino," Revista Chilena 4,31 (1920): 73.


47 Delia Rojas, Helena (Santiago: Imprenta New York, 1915), 230.48 All of the women writers participating in the dialogue were invariably

subjected to lessons in grammar in reviews of their literary works by their conde-scending and male colleagues.

49 See, for example, Echeverria's candid and oft-quoted statement to thiseffect in: "Â¿CÃ³mo se formÃ³ el Club de SeÃ±oras?" Silueta 1,2 (1917): 15.

50 See Labarca, Actividades, 153; and Rojas, Helena, 131.

51 See Labarca, Â¿A donde, 158.

52 Barros, Recuerdos, 345.Â»ibid., 348.

54 Rojas, Mis memorias, 27.55 Barros, Recuerdos, 344.

56 Liberal fears were no doubt compounded in 1917 by the fact that a smallfaction of Conservative Party members in the Chilean Parliament actually pro-

posed granting women the vote that same year. Their motion, while creating araucous in the press both pro and contra, never made it past committee.

57 "El voto femenino," Revista Chilena 2,9 (1917): 393-394.58 See Labarca, Actividades, 42.

59 "Una encuesta sobre el sufragio femenino," Revista Chilena 4,31 (1920): 69.Ï‰ IWd., 69-70.

Â« Rojas, Helena, 59.62 "El voto femenino," Revista Chilena 2,9 (1917): 394.

63 "Una encuesta sobre el sufragio femenino," Revista Chilena 4,31 (1920): 74.

64 See J. Samuel Valenzuela, DemocratizaciÃ³n Via Reforma: La expansiÃ³n delsufragio en Chile (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del IDES, 1985).65 Rojas, Helena, 59.<* "El voto femenino," Revista Chilena 2,9 (1917): 393.




Î½ "Ideales femeninos," Familia GuI. 1920): 9.

68 EcheverrÃ-a, La Hora de queda (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1918), 110.

69 See, for example, Alberto Edwards' response to "Una encuesta sobre elsufragio femenino," Revista Chilena 4,31 (1920): 68.70 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 153; Barros, "El voto femenino," Revista Chilena 2, 9

(1917): 397; Santa Cruz Ossa, "Ideales Femeninos," Familia (Jul. 1920): 9-10.

71 Esmeralda Zenteno de LeÃ³n, Chile (New York: Union BenÃ©fica EspaÃ±ola,1922), 10; Santa Cruz Ossa, "Ideales Femeninos," 9-10.

72 See, for example, Labarca, Actividades, 112-114; 125-126.73 Labarca, Â¿A donde, 160. The contradiction between Woman's need to

improve her personality via community service and her inherent ability for thelatter was never addressed by Labarca or other dialogue participants.74 Md, 153; Santa Cruz, "Ideales femeninos," Familia (Jul. 1920): 9-10.

75 Delia Rojas, Mis observaciones (Santiago: Imprenta New York, 1915), 39-41.7Â« IMd, 13.

Documents

Kim Verba, Ericka, Cículo de lectura de señoras