La melancolía de Francisca Paula de Azúa: Rastros de la biografía emocional de la esposa de un hombre privado del uso de la razón. Chile, 1774-1784

Abstract

Francisca Paula de Azúa requested in 1780 the interdiction of her husband Ramón Cortés, claiming he was incapable of administering his patrimony on account of a madness caused by his constant drunkenness. At the same time, she turned to the ecclesiastical court to request divorce based on the same reasons. Both records constitute the documentation explored by this article to propose a biographical exercise that traces the experience of a woman from the Chilean creole elite society from the late colonial period marked by the melancholy and pain caused by the repeated abuse her husband inflicted on her. Her story is presented as a case of feminine agency in a context particularly adverse, that of cohabitation with a husband whose constant drunkenness and consequent violent conduct was understood by those surrounding him as a mental illness. This article aims at exploring the different layers of Francisca Paula’s story to search for the traces of her emotional biography: it examines what she might have felt, how she and the people surrounding her signified those feelings, and how these emotions were represented and instrumentalized in the judicial procedure. By resorting to the biographical lens, the article intends to rescue her individuality and subjectivity, but also to reflect on the feminine experience in the late colonial period.

Keywords

• women
• biography
• justice
• emotions
• madness