Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies

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José Mármol’s Amalia (1851, 1855): The Politics of

Consumption and the Limits of Liberalism

Susan R. Hallstead

To cite this article: Susan R. Hallstead (2019) José Mármol’s Amalia (1851, 1855): The Politics of
Consumption and the Limits of Liberalism, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 28:1, 23-41,
DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2019.1605983

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1605983

Published online: 07 Jul 2019.

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Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2019
Vol. 28, No. 1, 23–41, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1605983

Susan R. Hallstead

M ARMOL’S
JOS E
AMALIA (1851, 1855): THE
POLITICS OF CONSUMPTION AND THE
LIMITS OF LIBERALISM

Praised for its value as a political and/or historical romantic novel, Amalia is also one
of the first and most detailed novels of the period to offer modern readers a snapshot of
how consumption in literature – in a very broad sense, from clothing to decorative
items – played a central role not only in mapping the transition from a pre-capitalist
to a capitalist order, but also in exposing the key ideological and aesthetic tensions of
the time (such as the rift between Unitarian and Federalist camps as well as gender
and class tensions that continued in post-colonial Argentina). Keeping this in mind,
this study considers how Jos
e M
armol’s treatment of luxury items in Amalia changed
from the 1851 version (written before the fall of the Rosas dictatorship) to the 1855
one (written afterwards, in a much more conciliatory tone). While only 4 years had
passed between these two editions, the changes in the descriptions of consumptive
patterns point to the fact that consumption was not merely a colourful background in
which to situate the novel’s political goals. Rather, consumption was political and, for
M
armol, it was part and parcel of constructing a modern, liberal, romantic subject.

Keywords: Latin American politics; Argentina; cultural studies

And Daniel went into the study, picked up a lamp from a corner table, went on into another
room, which was his cousin’s bedroom, and from there into a pretty little bathroom, and then
invaded the dressing room, staining the porcelain and crystal flagons and jars with the blood
and the mud on his hands. (2001, 21)1

Consumption practices occupied a significant portion of Argentina’s liberal dis-

course throughout the long nineteenth century. The consumption and the subse-
quent display (both in public and in private) of luxury items, together with the
narrative descriptions that often accompanied these highly visible practices, pro-
vided a strategic discursive arena whereby notions of identity were negotiated,
challenged, disavowed, and oftentimes consolidated. An all-encompassing phenom-
enon, consumption served a key role in positioning the liberal project of renounc-
ing Argentina’s colonial past in an attempt to join, culturally and economically, in
# 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
24 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

the experience of Western European capitalist modernity. Just how consumption

practices figured in discourse offers insight into where the liberal project stood at
any given historical or political moment: gender roles (and the specific, or perhaps
limited, ways of inhabiting a gender in the nineteenth-century context), race rela-
tions, political allegiances, the civilising (or corrupting) role of commerce, and
even the role of civil society in constructing notions of identity are merely some
examples of the topics that, in different political scenarios and time periods, found
themselves intertwined with the topic of consumption.
The fate of the young unitario in El Matadero, by Esteban Echeverr
ıa is a fictional
account of just what was at stake in the consumption choices made during Juan
Manuel de Rosas’s reign. After all it was his consumption practices and his fashionable
appearance (marked by his elegant dress and his pistols, his saddle, and his haircut)
and not his words or his actions that identified him as the enemy of the federales, as a
delusional savage traitor and ultimately as the target of abuse and murder.
Argentine liberals seemed, on first analysis, eager to promote an idea of an
Argentine society that embraced Western patterns of consumption and, in general,
they seemed eager to support an idealised notion of an Argentine society shaped
by the civilising forces of the free market. For early-nineteenth-century liberals,
through the imperatives of reliable exchange, a free market would, at least in the-
ory, produce a law-abiding, peaceful, educated, democratic, and cohesive society:
hence the limited role assigned to government, as either redundant or distortive.
Additionally, consumption (as an individual act of participation in a free market)
would link Argentina, both economically and culturally, to North Atlantic econo-
mies. This, at the time, was a desirable step towards overcoming the obstacles
attributed to Argentina’s colonial past. Thus, on the surface, consumption was not
to be understood as an activity that was carried out by individuals within societies,
but rather as an activity that created, and therefore constituted, individuals and
societies collectively.
In this essay I examine how this conviction plays out in M
armol’s ([1851],
1855) Amalia. On the one hand, my reading will show that for Jos
e M
armol (and
his generation) consumption practices and liberal ideology were deeply inter-
twined. One of the most notable emblems of this conviction is the author’s
description of Amalia’s sophisticated boudoir: it is not only the very embodiment
of Western modern material culture, but it is also an oasis vis-a-vis the barbaric,
entropic forces that ruled Argentina at that time.
This aspect of the novel has been highlighted and analysed before (although to
some extent in a cursory fashion). However, my initial consideration of the
dynamics of consumption practices will serve to underscore a larger issue. A
deeper reading of Amalia, especially when both versions of the novel are read
together, exposes a deep-set ambiguity, perhaps even anxiety, regarding consump-
tion. I argue that this ambiguity is intentional and it points to the limits of liberal
thought at the time, particularly in terms of the cultural and gender divides faced
in the region as Argentina moved from the excesses of Rosas’s authoritarianism to
the excesses of a truly consumer-driven society.
The ambiguities I intend to examine are of two orders. First, in Amalia, the
market place is not a neutral medium whereby consumers are merely defined by

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 25

the act of consuming, their ability to consume or their taste. Rather, consumption
as an identity-making force is constantly overridden by the distinction drawn
between ‘good’ consumers, that is, the right kind of consumers, and ‘bad’ ones, the
wrong kind. M
armol’s mark of this distinction is fixed on the body, such that the
fictional liberals (Amalia, Eduardo, Daniel) are represented as already worthy con-
sumers. The fictional federales, on the other hand, in spite of excessing spending,
in spite of donning the consumer goods indicative of taste and distinction, cannot
shake the hideousness they seek to cover with their possessions. In this respect,
the workings of consumption in the novel do not follow the ideals of liberal
thought (i.e. that consumption would collectively create and constitute individuals
and societies). Rather it harks back (perhaps in ways that M
armol did not espe-
cially appreciate) to colonial patterns whereby consumption was based on an
already established notion of a defined station, of a defined identity, in society.
Second, there is an added layer of ambiguity regarding the role that consumption
has forming notions surrounding gender and gender roles. The fictional Amalia is
initially the model for civilised (and civilising) consumption (this is especially true
for the parts of the novel that were written before the fall of Rosas). But this is
not always the case. Once M
armol completes the novel, which occurred in a com-
pletely different cultural and political environment, there is a noticeable change in
the relationship Amalia has to and with her possessions. There is, therefore, evi-
dence of an entirely new anxiety born out of an emerging figure in the second half
of Argentina’s nineteenth century: the female consumer.

II

One of the first scenes whereby the narrative ‘enters’ Amalia’s bedroom is mem-
orable, particularly because of the contrasts it proposes: the protagonist’s delicate
porcelains and crystals, her finely wrought ornaments are smeared with blood and
covered in filth. Nevermore, it seems, will Amalia’s boudoir be a peaceful retreat
from the political hostilities ravaging Buenos Aires. Amalia begins with these images
as they coalesce around a metaphor that circulates, on different occasions, through-
out the rest of the novel. The scene of a violated domestic space is the aftermath
of a violent encounter between Eduardo Belgrano, Daniel Bello (the one character
who seamlessly moves between opposing spaces in the novel, be they ideological
or physical), and Rosas’s paramilitary corps, the Mazorca.2 This is not a mere con-
trast to add dramatism to the plight of the heroes. It establishes a major theme
that M
armol, his contemporaries, and subsequent generations of literary and cul-
tural critics have highlighted, debated, and problematised. A clear symbol of
refined taste and distinction, Amalia’s porcelains and crystals – which would have
been imported3 – are either tainted by the savagery and violence born out of the
political and cultural conflicts of the period or, perhaps, consecrated by the right-
eous blood of a favourite son of the nation, since it is Eduardo’s blood that stains
the objects. In short, this opening scene is the fictionalised encounter, perhaps
most famously articulated by Domingo F. Sarmiento in Facundo, between the civi-
lised culture of the lettered elite and the barbarism of the Federalist horde.
26 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

The Rosista period was not only one of the most productive moments from
which many of Argentina’s canonical, national literary texts emerged,4 but it was
also one that gave rise to an enduring, and at times contradictory, intersection
between print culture (literary magazines, journals, newspapers, novels written for
consumption in periodicals, as was the case with Amalia) and consumption. As the
region struggled through the protracted process of national consolidation and
beyond, this intersection, in distinct political conflict scenarios and contexts, would
become a productive discursive arena for Buenos Aires’ lettered elite whose major
task was to build a national narrative ex nihilo based on strategic inclusions and
exclusions with regard to ideology and politics, as well as gender, class, race, eth-
nicity, and national origin.5
For those familiar with the canon of nineteenth-century Argentine literature,
Amalia, a romantic/political novel6 written by Jos
e M
armol during, and immedi-
ately after, the long regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas, is most likely one of the
first examples that brings this intersection between literature, consumption, and
politics to mind.7 At the time in which the novel takes place, 1840 (and at the
time when the novel was being written – the first version appeared serially in La
Semana in 1851) – the acquisition of particular imported goods such as European
finery, exotic Asian goods, even luxury items imported from other Latin American
countries, or, on the contrary, the vehement rejection of such goods in favour of
items associated with the local, pointed to the political, ideological, and aesthetic
tensions that dominated the early postcolonial period. These tensions varied pri-
marily between a liberal ideology (or ideologies)8 that promoted the expansion of
an incipient capitalism in the region as well as liberal values based on the US and
French revolutions (an ideology that not coincidentally, in Latin America, found an
ideal literary venue of expression in Romanticism) and a form of nineteenth-cen-
tury conservatism(s) that was thought to resuscitate many practices and socio-cul-
tural norms inherited from the region’s corporatist, colonial past, mixing them
with a sui generis experiment in radical republicanism.
Throughout the novel, detailed, lengthy, extravagant, and even exaggerated
descriptions of consumer goods and Argentina’s early postcolonial material culture
– or perhaps the possibilities of a future material culture – abound. Yet, in spite
of the obvious presence that consumption has throughout the narrative (all of the
many descriptions of furniture, textiles and clothing, books, decorations, and por-
celains were acquired through consumption acts), there has been little critical
attention given to the meaning of this consumption. Is there a difference between
the descriptions of the items that have been consumed in the novel and what was
actually consumed by the porte~no elite? How and where would such items have
been consumed and by whom? Do the historical realities of the period match
M
armol’s literary descriptions? What could it mean if they do not?
The consumer items detailed in the novel could be treated as part of the novel’s
decorative backdrop, as manifestations of a colourful, costumbrista penchant, or
even as symbols that merely serve to underscore the civilisation/barbarism divide,
but not the place where that distinction is forged. In other words, they could be
treated as descriptions that merely frame or situate the novel’s more urgent polit-
ical goals. Yet, consumption – and I refer to consumption in a very broad sense,

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 27

from the acquisition and display, both public and private, of items ranging from
clothing to decorations and furniture, to behaviours (whose rules were learned/
consumed through the etiquette manuals popular at the time), to even the con-
sumption of literature itself – is at the centre of the novel’s (and the author’s)
presentation of the Rosista era cultural/political divide. While Amalia is one of the
first and most detailed novels of the period to offer modern readers a snapshot of
how consumption played a central role in conceiving the early transition from a
pre-capitalist (colonial) order to a capitalist one, it more importantly exposes the
anxieties and inconsistencies that this transition produced in the political arena,
even in its seemingly most ardent supporters.
Through the lens of this romantic novel and through an analysis of how the two
versions of the novel and the conflicting views on consumption that they expose
compare – the 1851 version left unfinished as Rosas’s government was crumbling
and the final version from 18559 – it is possible to reconstruct the intricate rela-
tionship that existed in the period between literature, consumption, and the spread
of capitalism, political identity, and the key ideological and aesthetic tensions of
the period. Amalia should not be read as an open call to consumerism or an out-
right celebration of its civilising effect, but rather as an example of the limitations
and contradictions of the early emergence of a liberal political model.
Throughout many of the emerging Latin American nations in the nineteenth cen-
tury, consumption played a key role in reflecting and more importantly reconfiguring
social status at a moment when the previous colonial order – one in which lineage
weighed heavier than the potential for social mobility – was in redefinition. Orlove
and Bauer (1997) highlight that consumption was at the centre of one of the main
cultural conflicts born out of the political separation of the Independence Wars:
[ … ] how could individuals, families, groups, and classes resolve the tension between the
evident hierarches within their societies on the one hand and the impulse toward equivalence
as fellow citizens on the other, implied in their new national identities, in that membership in
what Anderson (1983) has famously termed imagined communities? (1997, 7)

Consumption offered some possible solutions to many of these challenges and it

was, or could be, the answer to the many uncertainties that the political separation
from Spain brought to the fore. Perhaps it could be the suture to the many socio-
cultural divides left over from the colonial period. Perhaps it could have the demo-
cratising effect of resolving – superficially at first but more profoundly over time
– the hierarchies that maintained class distinctions and that could thwart the gener-
ation or the coming together of a national citizenry. Perhaps consumption, by
extension, could even stimulate democracy in politics (especially in the context of
an Argentina, at that time, under the control of the Rosista government).10
For M
armol and his contemporaries, beyond this civilising, democratising effect,
consumption would become a key feature in consolidating political identities at a
time in which the rift between the Unitarian/liberal and Federalist camps took on
increasingly violent dimensions. (M
armol should not be considered a Unitarian: the
novel itself makes a clear distinction between the ‘new generation’ – that of
Daniel and Eduardo – and the old Unitarians of the Rivadavian era, who were
mostly middle-age male exiles in Montevideo.) The periodicals that emerged as a
28 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

revolution in print culture was taking place (and the literary texts that were pub-
lished in them) were key venues of expression for this rift.11 Not coincidentally,
the arrival of Romanticism in the River Plate region and the heterogeneous form
that the movement took in the Americas were particularly suited to the rise of
consumption in the region. As one of the first aesthetic responses to the Industrial
Revolution and the aftermath of the wars of Independence, Romanticism not only
served as a movement to promote the political goals of the lettered elite (that is,
in resolving or maintaining the racial, regional, religious, and ideological rifts that
plagued the region, in the vein of Sommer’s Foundational Fictions), but it also
served to express elite reactions to the spread of capitalism across the region.
Goldgel (2013, 211–213) reminds us that while in Europe the Romantic move-
ment could be perceived as rejecting materialism and the faith placed in consump-
tion, in Argentina it was a movement that promised to ‘leave behind the past’ and
‘enter into sync with the necessities of the present and the future’ in large part
through promoting materialism and celebrating the new.
It was this marriage of consumption and Romanticism that made Amalia’s dress-
ing table – the same one smeared with blood and dirt – the stage from which
M
armol’s ideal version of a liberal, national project would be projected. It was
also this marriage between consumption and Romanticism that made M
armol’s
political project so highly visible in her home and even on her body. The fabrics
that adorned her body and the textiles that surrounded and caressed her (her cur-
tains, her carpets, the upholstery on her furniture), the careful placement of the
decorations on her dressing table, her books, her furniture, her flowers, all under-
score Amalia’s ability (and by extension that of her peers of similar political per-
suasions and socio-economic standing) to choose the markers of civilisation with
which to surround herself. But more importantly they underscore her ability to be
the embodiment of it. In doing this, M
armol takes the relationship between con-
sumption and identity politics a step further than his peers: the way in which con-
sumption is presented in the novel suggests that rather than civilising from the
outside in, the consumption of luxury items (which, in the novel, has already
taken place) is merely the outward expression of an already superior, already civi-
lised individual. Thus, Amalia’s consumption and the consumption of her deserving
peers (Daniel, Florencia, and Eduardo)12 bespeak not only learned discerning
natures (their taste in Bourdieu’s sense), but the very essence of their identities:
tasteful consumption is second nature to them because it is an intimate part of an
already consolidated identity.
This is evident from even the early descriptions of Amalia’s home: it was,
indeed, to use M
armol’s own words, a ‘temple of beauty’ and there is a complete
balance between Amalia’s inner self and the exterior expression of it. There is no
dearth of lavish materials/textiles mentioned: various types of velvet, satin, batiste
and crepe, damask with golden fringe, embroidery in silver thread, Chambray
lace, French, Italian, Indian textiles, elaborate furniture and porcelains, furniture
made of mahogany and walnut, decorative white marble (2001, 26–27). This dis-
play is carefully constructed within the confines of the domestic space, thus estab-
lishing parameters and values that were also gender-specific (and appropriate).
M
armol is also careful to mention the origin of her many possessions: while

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 29

Amalia most likely chose them (because she was the one with discerning taste), her
husband, before his death, made the arrangements for the objects and textiles to
be shipped from abroad.13 By doing this, M
armol is careful to balance what could
have been considered the uncontrolled, unbridled passions of a frenetic female con-
sumer outside of male control (a common motif in many a literary text at the
time) with an appropriate and necessary passion for consuming civilisation, largely
because Amalia’s possessions are nothing more than the exterior expression of her
exceptional moral qualities.
After all, M
armol reminds us, Amalia was born in the Edenic gardens of
Tucum
an, ‘as a lily or a rose is born, abounding in beauty, freshness, and fra-
grance’ (2001, 145–146) and ‘Amalia was not a woman; she was a goddess resem-
bling those invented by the mythological poetry of the Greeks’ (2001, 148).
While comforted by her possessions (due to the tranquillity they bring to her and
her guests in the face of Rosas’s public brutality), Amalia nonetheless does not
express uncontrolled greed, nor a desire for continued consumption nor even
interest in her possessions. She easily parts with her effects and is ‘amused’ (2001,
301) by the power that possessions have over other women. When visited by
Agustina Rosas de Mansilla (Rosas’s sister, whose narrative description provided
for a most interesting real-life melodramatic rift between M
armol and Lucio V.
Mansilla, Agustina’s son), Amalia was quite entertained by her guest’s seemingly
uncontrolled acquisitiveness. Indeed, Agustina was awestruck by Amalia’s posses-
sions especially because Agustina seems to have been deprived of the ability to
consume, in her own words – referring to the French blockade of the city –
because there was literally ‘nothing to buy’ in Buenos Aires since the shops were
all empty (2001, 228). The narrative then explains that Agustina was incapable of
reciprocating in kind:
Nonetheless this amused Amalia, and without the least reluctance she gave Agustina all the
things that she saw had most impressed her. In exchange for all this, Agustina had sent an
enormous porcelain rooster to Amalia. But three days after having given it to her, she wrote
to her asking to have it back, maintaining that she was lost without it. (2001, 301)

In public, Amalia’s clothing selections, her mannerisms and etiquette and the
exterior projection of her merits through dress – a topic to which M
armol, again,
dedicates numerous pages – bind her political allegiances (the proper political alle-
giance to the Unitarian cause) to her innate superiority, something that fellow
Unitarian women identify in her as well. Consider a conversation with a certain
Se~nora de N … with whom Amalia was acquainted at a Federalist ball (which she
hesitantly attended). In this conversation, Amalia’s Unitarian interlocutor referen-
ces the footwear of the men attending the ball, suggesting that their political alle-
giance to Federalism could immediately be seen in their physiology (i.e. their wide
feet) and their inability to dress properly for the occasion. The Se~nora de N …
begins by asking Amalia:
(Se~nora de N … ) Are you acquainted [ … ] with certain physical qualities in
men that reveal their good or bad breeding?
(Amalia) Perhaps.
(Se~nora de N … ) Look at these men’s feet for a moment.
30 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

(Amalia) I’ve looked. What about them?

(Se~nora de N … ) What do you notice?
(Amalia) What do I notice?
(Se~nora de N … ) Yes; tell me frankly.
(Amalia) Nothing.
(Se~nora de N … ) That can’t be so.
(Amalia) Well then, se~nora, I don’t understand.
(Se~nora de N … ) I will explain. They are men with wide feet and short boots;
what you are laughing at?
(Amalia) At your remark, se~nora.
(Se~nora de N … ) Well, this is the first sign of the class to which these men
belong. Oh, there were certainly none of that sort at our balls in the past! Boots
at a ball! (200–201)
Turning to women, the same Se~nora de N … explains to Amalia that it was
easy to separate Unitarian women from Federalist ones, based on their
graces alone:
Yes, you se~nora, you. The ladies of today’s Federation do not have faces like yours, do not
display manners likes yours, do not use language like yours, do not wear gowns like yours.
You are one of us, like it or not. (2001, 206)

Although she feigns ignorance of this, Amalia already knows exactly to which
characteristics the se~nora is referring. But her education and moral superiority –
and perhaps her trepidation about discussing politics in public – allow her to pro-
fess her ignorance.
Amalia’s cousin, Daniel, also merits some attention. Unlike Amalia, however,
Daniel’s character is defined most notably, although not unsurprisingly, through his
public appearances (less detail is given to his domestic space) and by his ease oper-
ating in the Rosista public sphere. While Amalia detests venturing outside of her
home Daniel seamlessly moves between the two worlds and he does this especially
through his dress habits. Daniel masterfully assumes a Federalist identity while
truly a Unitarian faithful and he transitions between Unitarian and Federalist attire,
from the frock coat to the poncho and back, with ease. It is, however, very clear
to the reader that the dress of a gentlemen is his true look and the one that best
suits his inner, moral superiority. Consider, for example, the following description
of Daniel as he walks through the centre of Buenos Aires:
[ … ] Daniel had turned onto the Calle de la Reconquista and was walking along with that
carefree but elegant air that Nature and breeding bestow upon young men with wit and
delicate tastes, and that those who endeavour to imitate their innate elegance never manage to
reproduce. With his black frock coat buttoned to the neck and his white gloves [ … ] Daniel
was the most deserving of the admiring gaze of women and the scrutiny of men of wit, who
could not help but recognize their equal in that young man whose fine eyes gleamed with
intelligence, and whose half haughty and half debonair manner revealed the poise and the self-
assurance that is the exclusive hallmark of privileged natures. (2001, 126)

Nature, breeding, wit, delicate tastes, eyes gleaming with intelligence, poise, a
privileged nature: these are all descriptions that turn inward to Daniel’s inherited,

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 31

genetic advantage. In this scene, one imagines the romantic hero walking through
the streets of Buenos Aires, almost floating above the spectators, as if he were
some visitor from a possible (liberal) future, fitted with the markings of the ideal
citizen, a citizen who also holds ideal political views. Daniel’s frock coat and white
gloves innately mould, together with his intelligence, his talent and his vision. But
more importantly, Daniel’s performance creates a clear sense of community (perhaps
even a sense of belonging) if only for those with the wit to acknowledge the
meaning of this performance. Men of the correct ‘spirit’ (that is, the correct political
allegiance) recognise themselves in him and they all, for a fleeting moment, share
in this sense of a virtual, possible, future belonging. In describing Daniel in these
terms, much like he did in Amalia’s description, M
armol solidifies the relationship
between appearance (what should have been constructed through consumption)
and Nature: they are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin, each consti-
tutive of the other.
In spite of the novel’s attention to the material culture surrounding the protago-
nists, what should have been constructed through consumption isn’t actually constructed
in this way. There is little real consumption taking place in Amalia. The two main
characters most specifically described in relation to their patterns of consumption,
Amalia and Daniel, have already consumed their most conspicuous (or ideologically
charged) possessions. And in spite of consumption’s place in the narrative, the
reader isn’t afforded the pleasure of vicariously participating in what would have
been the civilising effects of the acts of consuming.
Perhaps this has to do with the time frame during which the novel’s events take
place: 1840 was one of the most violent and repressive years of the Rosista era
and it was also the last year during which the French blockade of the city
(1838–1840) stagnated trade. M
armol could have simply intended to recreate the
difficult political and economic conditions experienced at this time. Therefore, it
could be that no one was consuming imported luxury goods because there was
nothing imported or luxurious to buy.
But this doesn’t seem to be the case entirely. Through smuggling, imported
goods were still reaching the city from Montevideo, although in lesser quantities
(Graham-Yooll 2002, 83). And there is mention in the novel that in the later
stages of the blockade (1840), mistakes made by the French significantly weakened
its negative effects on mercantilism (2001, 45).14 There is also mention in the
novel of the ability to obtain French goods given the proper connections. As
Agustina explained to Amalia, ‘Gowns from France arrive only by special post.
But one must have someone who will send them off from there [ … ]’
(2001, 229).
Overall, in spite of the blockade, the Rosista years were still quite dynamic in
terms of commerce and there were surprisingly diversified patterns of consumption
beginning already in the early 1830s. A quick look through the many gu
ıas, a sort
of yellow pages, which span from the early part of the Rosista years to 1851, as
well the periodicals just after the fall of Rosas that auction off the items of exiled
Federalists and foreign dignitaries, and even recorded wills and dowries of the
period all attest to this dynamism.15 For example, the Gu
ıa de la ciudad y almanaque
de comercio de Buenos Aires para el a~no 1833 notes that there were 221 tiendas (stores
32 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

that may or may not have sold textiles to make clothing, most of which were
located in the Recova),16 27 tailors, 7 modistas (stores owned by women dedicated
to female fashions), 16 shoemakers and there were even 2 fabricantes de peinetas (a
decorative comb used by fashionable women at the time) and 1 almac
en de abanicos
(handheld fans used by women during warm months) as well as upholsterers (4),
hat makers (26), jewellers (3), and watchmakers (6) among other comerciantes. By
1851 the volume of commerce seems to have increased: according to the Gu
ıa de
la ciudad de Buenos Ayres y Manual de Forasteros from that year, there were even
more tiendas, furniture stores, shoemakers and jewellers than in 1833 and the com-
merce dedicated to clothing became more specialised into roper
ıas (clothing stores
that would sell the textiles and materials for daily use or for certain professions),
sastrer
ıas (tailors for higher-end men’s clothing), and modistas (fashionable, higher-
end dressmakers). According to this guide, by 1851 there were 76 roper
ıas, 42
sastrer
ıas, and 10 modistas.
This market dynamism was a central feature in redefining class and race relations
as well as social status in this early post-independence period, as an effect (among
other factors) of changing patterns of consumption since wider access to goods and
a more fluid interaction with the city’s material culture created the impression of
a more democratic public sphere. A bustling post-colonial trans-Atlantic mercantile
exchange (The British Packet and Argentine News among other periodicals kept accur-
ate records of maritime commerce and, with the exception of 1838–1840, do
indeed provide evidence of a bustling mercantile economy) and a marked increase
in domestic goods of all sorts originating from the interior provinces converted
Buenos Aires’ markets into bustling centres of commerce and social interaction.
These changes were significant even for the city’s inhabitants: poor urban workers
and racial minorities (most of whom supported Rosas’s government or at least
didn’t overtly oppose it, out of either fear or indifference) marvelled at and even
purchased cheap imported goods from Europe (these goods were previously much
more expensive and obtainable only by elites due to colonial sumptuary laws17),
and the cheap, raffled luxury goods of exiled Unitarians afforded a certain – even
if only superficial – form of upward mobility theretofore impossible for Buenos
Aires’ subalterns (Salvatore 2003, 27–31). This resulted in an entirely new phe-
nomenon: it was now civil society that was left with ‘[ … ] the task of redefining
the new boundaries of class as “distinction”’ (Salvatore 2003, 22).
That Daniel and Amalia do not consume points to one obvious issue regarding
the physical, public spaces in the novel and the relationship these characters would
have had to this changing landscape of the city. Their refined sensibilities would
have compelled them to elude the public spaces where the consumption that was
giving form to this ‘savage democracy’ was taking place. While there were prod-
ucts to consume, and while those products might have even been the right types of
products (imported luxury goods and fabrics), the physical space where this con-
sumption was taking place, in particular the public markets and the stalls at the
Recova, was invested with a particular political and cultural meaning. The condi-
tions of early nineteenth-century Buenos Aires also certainly did not permit a type
of public circulation and consumption that would have been appropriate for urban
elites, especially for females. First, the political conflicts (and violence) coupled

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 33

with the increasing migration from the provinces to the city of Buenos Aires –
between 1810 and 1859 the number of immigrants from Europe and migrants
from the provinces increased dramatically – made the public sphere a dangerous
and a dirty place for the gente decente of Buenos Aires (Szuchman 1988, 104;
Bernaldo de Quir
os 1999, 150).
However, that Daniel and Amalia do not consume points to something else that
goes beyond the physical conditions of the city or even the meaning assigned to
public spaces of consumption at that time. The fluidity brought about by this savage
democracy and the destabilising effect that it would have had on Buenos Aires’ trad-
itional elites could explain why liberal consumption in Amalia is presented as stag-
nant, inflexible, and as already having happened. M
armol fuses a moral and class
superiority and (from M
armol’s political perspective) a proper, more civilised, lib-
eral political identity to the already consumed possessions that surround the charac-
ters in the novel. This representation of consumption in the novel suggests that
M
armol’s position on the relationship between consumption, the spread of capital-
ism in the region, and political affiliation and/or identity was initially more
nuanced than simply a superficial attempt at trying to cover up local
‘backwardness’ with the markers of imported civilisation. Consumption was clearly
an active identitary politics for the followers of Rosas. For Federalists, consumption
was a means of belonging to a new social order, the Federation, either through
acquiring and displaying Federalist dress (such as the Federalist uniform, the pon-
cho, paisano dress, all of which was accentuated by the colour red or even any art-
icle stamped with the image of Rosas himself ranging from porcelain and
dinnerware to ladies’ gloves – many of these commodities imported from England,
or commissioned for production in Europe) – or through being able to access
(through textiles, articles of clothing, the purchase of luxury goods, lotteries) a
realm that had theretofore been impenetrable. M
armol’s representation of con-
sumption in the novel therefore fixed a particular type of consumption, active pub-
lic consumption, to a political identity that supported Rosas’s Federation. (I will
return to this point below.) It is for this reason that consumption couldn’t be an
active identitary politics for Daniel and Amalia (or the enlightened others in the
novel) in the same way that it was for the Federalist horde: the bearers of the lib-
eral project didn’t need to be portrayed as active consumers in the present to
solidify their identities because they were already members of that impenetrable
realm known as civilisation. Since the exterior manifestations of this, their con-
sumption, naturally fell into line with their ideology, they needn’t actively con-
sume to belong and they couldn’t consume if they wanted to remain distanced
from Federalism. Amalia’s and Daniel’s consumption had already occurred because,
for M
armol, rather than constructing identity, consumption – which most later
theorists, from Veblen to Baudrillard to Bourdieu, would agree is one of the defin-
ing features, the entire point of consuming – pre-existed or pre-dated the novel’s
characters because it was part of an already consolidated identity, both politically
and socio-culturally.
This is why the Federalists in the novel are described as active consumers (or as
consumers who desire to acquire new possessions) and also why even when they
try to aspire to be the likes of Daniel and Amalia through their consumption they
34 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

are depicted as hideous, deformed, ridiculous, and even childish in their behaviour.
Consider, for example, the description of Rosas’s military officers at the same ball
previously mentioned who seem to have recently purchased their attire and who
were ‘[ … ] about to burst in their jackets buttoned to the neck, their hands aching
from the pressure of their tight-fitting gloves, sweating from the pain of their
recently broken-in dress boots’ (2001, 194). These sweating Federalists, stretching
the limits of their attire – even perhaps offending the original intent of such
articles of clothing meant for different bodies and different identities – draw a
stark contrast to the way in which the same items of dress suited Daniel, who
wore them with ease. The reader is reminded of M
armol’s earlier description of
Daniel strolling through the streets of Buenos Aires whereby those who hoped to
imitate the ‘inner elegance’ of the likes of Daniel never quite managed to do so
(2001, 126). Unlike Daniel (and Amalia), the Federalists, especially the military
men at the ball, have superficially covered themselves with elegant clothing in a
haphazard attempt to rise to an occasion in a context (an elegant ball to which
they did not belong) that was ill-suited to their politics. This had the effect of cre-
ating a sense of alienation for those who remembered what the balls were like
before Rosas came to power, for those ‘whose politics were ever so democratic
and whose tone and manners were ever so aristocratic’ (2001, 193–194). The nar-
rator explains:
There was, however, something indefinably alien to the place in which the ball was held, and
alien to the party itself; that is to say, there was an overabundance of those new faces, those
hard, rigid, and silent men who frankly betray the fact that they are out of place when they
find themselves mingling with a society to which they do not belong. (2001, 193)

One could also consider the descriptions of Agustina Rosas de Mansilla: while
her beauty and penchant for fashionable clothing is acknowledged, M
armol is quick
to characterise her as out of place. Described as a ‘federalist beauty’ she was none-
theless ‘not in harmony with that poetic beauty most admired in the nineteenth
century’ (196). She was ‘[ … ] too pink-cheeked, with arms and hands that are too
big, too common for refined tastes and her manner too scatterbrained in the com-
pany of people of wit and discernment’ (2001, 204). In terms of her behaviour, it
isn’t at all a coincidence that Agustina is represented as the insatiable female con-
sumer.18 Immediately after meeting Amalia at the ball, she ‘plied Amalia with
question after question about her gown, her ribbons, her bows, her lace, and so
on’ (2001, 228) and soon after declaring her fast friendship with Amalia, asks
where she might buy a pearl similar to the one that graced Amalia’s hair (2001,
22). After expressing her angst at the limited access to French imports, Agustina
eventually invites herself to visit Amalia’s dressing room at a future date.
Agustina’s later visit proves to be a true diversion for Amalia:
For Amalia, circumspect by nature, it was a diversion to see Agustina rummaging through
chests of drawers, taking out one by one all of the things contained therein and looking at
them, and insisting that Amalia tell her story of each one, from the place where it had been
made to how much it had cost; immediately trying on each cape, each shawl, each bit of lace,
each trinket, and each jewel that the beautiful widow from Tucum
an kept in her drawers, and
then going to look at herself and waggle her hips in the full-length mirrors in the dressing

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 35

room; it being a real curiosity to Amalia to see that woman, with such a pretty face and
figure, absorbed, like a little nine-year-old girl, in pleasures of the most childish sort and not
at all appropriate at her age. (2001, 301)

M
armol’s description of this event underscores the role of consumption in con-

structing the political identities of the novel’s female characters. Once again,
Amalia’s reaction to this performance, her distance from the passions that overcome
Agustina and her curiosity bespeak of her natural relationship to consumption and
the acquisition of goods. Agustina’s actions, on the other hand, clearly draw a con-
trast: her identity, her happiness, and her activities are all clearly defined by active
consumption practices that nonetheless do not elevate her to the level of a truly
civilised woman. She is merely only still a frivolous child revelling in the delights
and possibilities of acquiring new belongings.
The character descriptions and consumption patterns are consistent in both the
1851 and the 1855 versions of the novel up until part IV, the point at which
M
armol resumed the novel after the fall of Rosas. In these last chapters there is a
dramatic change in the description of consumption and the relationship that the
characters have to it. This is especially true for Amalia (for reasons I will explain
below): as she is about to marry Eduardo, the reader notices a marked change in
her attitude towards her possessions and in her behaviour. In an opening scene,
her hair undone, falling in disorder around her, she is haphazardly surrounded by
an abundance of lavish textiles and dresses:
[ … ] the young woman was in her dressing room with her little Luisa, in a world of laces, of
luxurious fabrics, and of dresses laid out, some on the sofas, others on the chairs, and still
others hanging on the mirrors of the wardrobes. [ … ] Everything about her was strange.
(2001, 592)

In this scene, it is noticeable that the serenity, the balance, and the order of
Amalia’s toilette have been disturbed. What had once been a comforting oasis is
now scattered with goods. Everything about Amalia, her actions and her appear-
ance, is different, strange. Even her treasured birds have noticed the abrupt change
and they no longer sing. If at the beginning of the novel this space had been conta-
minated with the intrusion of Rosas’s violence, it now appears to have been
invaded by a different sort of violence (leaving the impending death of several
characters aside, the order and tranquillity of her toilette has been turned upside
down by her feverish attempts to find the right look).
More problematic still, once Amalia dresses, something even more uncharacter-
istic of her happens: she falls victim to the excesses of luxury. The once discerning
Amalia, amused by Agustina’s childish impulses, suddenly becomes capricious,
whimsical, indecisive, hesitant, insecure. Amalia now acts like a child as she strug-
gles to choose her attire:
Amalia was no longer Amalia; she was a young woman enamoured of the puerile pleasures of
luxury and good taste. She looked at herself, clasped her waist with her hands, turned her
precious head around to look at her back in the great mirror, or else positioned herself
between the two wardrobes. [ … ] But suddenly Amalia shook her head, made a disapproving
gesture with her lips, and said: “No; I don’t like it.” (2001, 593)
36 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

After an exasperating back and forth banter with her servant, and several
changes of clothing, Amalia exclaims: “It doesn’t matter; I’ll chose as I please.
This is a delirium like any other, and today I want to be overcome with it, for the
first time in life and doubtless the last” (2001, 593).
What has changed along with Amalia’s attitude and behaviour? Buenos Aires
now seems to have been flooded with goods and Amalia is engaging in an active
politics of consumption. She appears to have inundated her boudoir with new
things (the textiles and dresses that she would wear for her wedding would most
certainly be new) and yet, in the novel, the time frame is still the same. It was
still supposed to be 1840.
But clearly for M
armol it was not 1840: by 1855 everything in Buenos Aires
had changed. The ‘savage democracy’ in consumption that began under Rosas was
unfolding even more rapidly in Buenos Aires: legal reforms promoting free trade
fostered an even more drastic revolution in transatlantic commerce, therefore
resulting in a boom of commerce and access to an even more diverse market of
consumer goods (Adelman 1999, 281). This can be assessed, again, by taking a
look at the Gu
ıas published after 1852. The initial pages of the Diccionario de Buenos
Aires
o sea Guia de Forasteros compiled by Antonio Pillado (1864) show the focus
that was now placed on commerce and imports. The first 33 pages offer specific
details related to customs and port exchange (la aduana): the guide explains how
the customs house was organised, how merchandise was unloaded, how it was
transported to markets, where it was stored, it offers information about inter-
national commerce, and it lists all the employees associated with the custom house
among other operational details. (No such information had ever been listed in
these types of guides prior to this period.) In this same Diccionario, the increase in
establishments dedicated to the sale of clothing, especially for women, is notable.
While the number of ‘roper
ıas’ dropped dramatically to 41 (this could be due to a
tendency towards specialisation whereby clothing confectioners moved towards
custom tailoring or dressmaking), the number of tailors and dressmakers for
women (modistas) grew markedly: there were now 131 tailors (up from 42) and
46 dressmakers (up from 10 in 1851).19
Many of the periodicals of the period also provide evidence of an expanding
market. The Revista del Plata (a publication dedicated to the ‘material interests of
the R
ıo de la Plata’, edited by the renowned engineer and architect Carlos E.
Pellegrini), which began its first publication in 1853, was dedicated almost exclu-
sively to the zeitgeist of the moment: industry, progress, production, expansion,
infrastructure. (And one need only look at a list of the periodicals published during
this period to get a sense of the importance that commerce had in public dis-
course: from 1852 to 1855 there are 27 publications in the city of Buenos Aires
alone dedicated to progress, commerce, and industry.) As Pellegrini explained in
the second number of Revista, work and industry were the new passions of the
day, together with accumulating wealth: ‘we are all marching in the same direc-
tion: to produce, to enrich ourselves.’20 Revista dedicated numerous articles and
supplements to the need to restructure the city and to create the proper infra-
structure so that streets and sidewalks could adequately foster commerce, so much
so that he suggested there be a tunnel running under the city from the port to the

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 37

fashionable shops so that goods could reach stores more quickly and without has-
sling or endangering pedestrians.21 Others even complained that too much atten-
tion was being paid to commerce while the city had yet to adapt itself to
the changes:
We don’t have paths, nor cobbled streets, nor bridges, nor public water, nor
schools under the protection of the Government, no lodging for the poor or
orphaned, no promenades, no spectacles to promote meeting, fraternising, distract-
ing, civilising, we don’t have anything … except hairdressers from Paris and tai-
lors who rush about collecting what they are due.22
There is also a noticeable shift in focus towards changing gender roles of women
in public life after 1852. For example, there are frequent advertisements for
seamstresses needed to work in the many new stores that were emerging after
1852 (El Nacional, for example, had a long-running advertisement for such posi-
tions in 1853) as well as a marked boom in periodicals and magazines published
for women, often by women, many of which centred on female fashion consump-
tion, its benefits and its pitfalls (La Camelia,
Album de Se~noritas, La Flor del Aire, La
Siempre-Viva, El Pica-Flor to name a prominent few). Eventually, terms like tienda-
mania (a new mental illness provoked by shopping) begin to emerge (that is, con-
sumption becomes fused with mental illness) and female consumers are even
referred to as whales (orcas) swimming through the streets of Buenos Aires, block-
ing passage and creating chaos.23
All of this suggests that not only was there increased consumer demand, but
also that consumption was increasingly becoming an activity from which a new
relationship between women and women’s place in public was being reconfigured
and reconceptualised. The figure of the female consumer, above all others, occu-
pied a prominent and problematic position in the cultural imaginary of the period:
she was the primary figure located in the crossroads between the new pleasures
and the new freedoms that consumption made possible – above all else because it
was a public activity that was not directly associated with work (either official
work that lower-class women had been doing well before 1852 or unofficial work,
such as prostitution) or with religious devotion or charity (public activities that
were considered acceptable in the Rosista era) – and the many fears and anxieties
that these pleasures and freedoms provoked.
So while only four years had passed between the two editions of Amalia, the
changes in the descriptions of consumer items and/or patterns of consumption
point to the fact that, for M
armol, consumption was not merely a colourful back-
ground in which to situate the novel’s political goals. With the collapse of
Rosismo and with M
armol’s political goals for having initiated the novel achieved,
the relationship between consumption and political identity that was originally
established in the 1851 version was dissolved. Left in the wake of Rosismo was an
ambiguous future and an uncertainty about how and what consumption acts would
communicate. In question, as well, was who would be the new social actors in
this transition? Consumption now took on a different role entirely in identity con-
struction, particularly for new public figures, such as women.
It is for this reason that the narrative attention is focussed on Amalia’s new atti-
tudes and behaviour. Amalia is at the centre of this uncertainty and that the
38 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

novel’s female character should experience the most dramatic change in the 1855
version isn’t at all a coincidence. Before, her dressing room was the place where
M
armol’s liberal utopia lived, although it was under siege, and her consumption
was for her (and her guests’) domestic pleasure. But now, with the fall of Rosas,
that liberal utopia was opened to new practices, new spaces (both literally and
metaphorically), and most importantly it was opened to the female consumer who,
with increasing frequency, will go out to buy, socialise, buy on credit, and exhibit
her acquisitions publicly, talk about and even write about fashion and
consumption.
This points to a contradiction in the stance typically attributed to M
armol and
his contemporaries (in particular Domingo F. Sarmiento and Juan B. Alberdi) vis-
a-vis the ‘backward’ nature of Rosismo (‘backward’ because it rejected the refined
civilisation embodied in the consumption and display of luxury items). The true
attitude, the true ‘political, aesthetic and philosophical response’ (Segu
ın and
Sabau) expressed in this romantic drama towards the spread of capitalism in the
River Plate was, in the end, one of anxiety, trepidation, and concern that it just
might actually foster what Rosas’s savage democracy had already initiated. Rather
than an outright, unfettered celebration of the civilising power of luxury imported
goods or as a superficial attempt to cover the barbarism inherited from Argentina’s
colonial past with the markings of a modern nation-in-the-making, Amalia should
be understood as a testament to the uneasy tension that rested between identity
and possessions. In this sense Amalia offers an example of how literary
Romanticism in Argentina also reflected the limitations and contradictions of the
early emergence of a liberal political/economic model and the uncertainties that
it produced.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. For the English translation of Amalia, I am relying on Helen Lane’s 2001 version.
2. This scene has been analysed elsewhere. Laera (1998, 105) explains that it establishes
Daniel as the point of contact between the ‘signs of official terror and the intimacy of
the domestic sphere’. And while Torre (1998, 85) doesn’t reference this scene directly,
she does explain how, throughout the novel, the colour red (punz
o), the preferred colour
of the Federalists, synecdoche for the liberals of the blood spilled by Rosas, invades
Amalia’s domestic space whereby her finery is soaked with ‘blood, sweat and death’.
Unless otherwise stated, all translations in this article are mine.
3. For more on the history of porcelain in the city of Buenos Aires, see ‘Vajilla y
costumbres de mesa en la antigua Buenos Aires’ (Sch
avelzon, Zorzi, and Igareta, 2017).
4. Vi~nas (1964, 4).
5. Myers (2005, 38–39).

M AR
JOSE
M O L’ S A M A L I A 39

6. For a superb analysis of the relationship between politics and fiction in Amalia, see
Laera (1998).
7. Amalia was by no means the first, nor the last, of many publications from the early
postcolonial period to highlight the relationship between consumption and identity. For
more on this topic with regard to fashion consumption see Goldgel (2013), Hallstead
(2004, 2008), Masiello (1992), and Root (2010).
8. As Meyers explains, just as one can speak of the many forms that Romanticism took in
the region (or of the many romanticismos that existed), so too can one speak of the
variations of liberalisms that emerged in this tumultuous period (2005, 27).
9. I would like to thank Juan Pablo Canala, Director of the Tesoro at the Biblioteca Nacional
in Buenos Aires, for providing me a copy of the 1851 version and for offering brilliant
insights into the differences between the 1851 and 1855 versions.
10. With hopes of highlighting the relationship between consumption (in this case the
consumption of attire) and democracy, J. B. Alberdi and D. F. Sarmiento – M
armol’s
contemporaries and interlocutors – often equated democracy in dress to democracy in
politics and they both looked to the example of the United States to explain. In La Moda,
a publication that used the façade of fashion to promote liberal ideals, Alberdi reflected
on how democracy was weaved into all elements of US life, from dress habits to the
political constitution of the states, for which reason he declared that his own magazine
would enthusiastically celebrate fashions that were the most ‘democratic in their essence’
(1837, no. 3, p. 3). Similarly, Sarmiento, in Educaci
on popular (1849), warned that there
was no bigger threat to the civilisation of a country than poorly dressed inhabitants. This
was especially true for the lower classes of Latin America who, in Sarmiento’s words,
suffered from ‘spiritual immobility’ and ‘limitations in aspirations’ due to their
inappropriate and backward attire. In the United States, by comparison, he explained that
the ‘spirit of progress’ triumphed, in large part, because the country’s inhabitants, from
the lowly woodcutter to the banker, were one and the same in dress and in their
consumption of furniture and domestic utensils, with the obvious exception of difference
in the quality of the materials (in Halper
ın Donghi 1995, 251–252).
11. Tracing this legacy back to the colonial period, Palti (2002, 174) explains that periodicals
were the fundamental space from which a ‘tribunal of opinion’ (a ‘tribunal de la opini
on’)
emerged. He explains in more detail that journalism was a way of discussing and doing politics
and that ‘the press sought not only to represent public opinion but that it had the mission of
constituting it as such’ (2002, 177). Although Palti’s analysis focuses on the post-Rosista debates
between Bartolom
e Mitre and Vicente Fidel L
opez, his observations on the relationship
between politics and journalism speak to the dynamics of the previous period as well.
12. Even Eduardo consumes: even though he doesn’t leave the confines of Amalia’s sanctuary
and even though he isn’t described in terms of his attire or his own possessions or
patterns of consumption, he still consumes culture in the form of the literary texts that he
and Amalia share. Not coincidentally they read some of Europe’s leading Romantic
authors: Byron and Lamartine (2001, 302–305).
13. In a conversation between Amalia and Agustina Rosas de Mansilla (referenced below),
Agustina comments, ‘How fortunate you were to have the husband you did! People say
you had everything you own sent from France. [ … ] Oh, what bliss!’ (2001, 229).
14. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be until several months later (November) that merchant ships
would return to the port city. When they did, Buenos Aires was flooded with, to name
the most prominent examples, British, American, French, Belgian, Swedish, German, and
Spanish merchandise (The British Packet and Argentine News, November 7, 1840).
40 J O U R N A L O F L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

15. For more on this topic see Hallstead (2015), ‘Modas y m
ascaras de la civilizaci
on’.
16. The Recova was an arched edifice constructed in the early nineteenth century that divided
the city’s two main plazas, Plaza de la Victoria and Plaza del Fuerte, and which was
dedicated to commerce. It has since been removed.
17. Andrews (1980, 45).
18. As Felski (1995, 62) explains in the European context, in nineteenth-century literature
the consuming subject was almost always represented as a female and the female
consumer become one of the primary threats to the family unit and traditional values – a
la Madame Bovary – given that her participation in public life placed her outside of the
traditional parameters (and spaces) of appropriate conduct for females. See also Loeb
(1994) and Merish (2000) for other national contexts.
19. It’s worth highlighting that clothing wasn’t the only consumer item that experienced
increased demand. This same guide evidences an extraordinary increase in furniture
stores (p. 283), hatters (p. 336–337), shoemakers (p. 348–350) and general stores
(tiendas) offering a variety of products (p. 341–343).
20. Revista del Plata, no. 2, October 1853, p. 23
21. ‘Puerto de Buenos Aires’, Revista del Plata, no. 3, November 1853, p. 26–30.
22. La Ilustraci
on Argentina, no. 11, December 13, 1853, p. 32
23. El Correo del Domingo (1864–1865), no. 5, January, 1864.

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Susan R. Hallstead received her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and is
currently a faculty member in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the
University of Colorado-Boulder. Her current research focuses on fashion discourse,
consumption and identity politics in 19th century Argentine literature and journalism.
Her most recent publications include Pasado de moda: expresiones culturales y consumo
en la Argentina (Ampersand: Buenos Aires, co-edited with Regina Root) as well the
articles “Modas y ma
scaras de la civilizacio

n: Juana Manso frente al consumo” (2016)
and “De hombres afeminados a los peligrosos: la pol
ıtica identitaria de las modas y la
vestimenta masculinas en la literatura Argentina decimono
nica” (2018).