See, «Political Economies», in Dunkerley, Americana, 339-41.

Knight, «Britain and Latin America», 127.

Note, for example, Verlaine's appraisal of Lucio V. Mansilla, Eduarda's brother: «Anoche comí con un general de la República Argentina [...] Ha vivido en la pampa. Ha escrito un libro indiano que me va a mandar. Habla muy bien el francés y es un elegante, nada falta en él: sombrero inclinado, guante lila, monóculo, boutonnière fleurie, levita larga color té con leche». These sartorial details were all signs of modernity. Quoted in Luis Gusmán, «Introducción», in Lucio V. Mansilla, Estudios morales. El diario de mi vida [Buenos Aires 1888; Paris 1896] (Buenos Aires: Perfil Libros, 1998), xiii-xvii; xvii.

Coverture was also the norm in Britain and the United States at the time. With reference to Latin America Socolow writes: «Unlike men, women's legal rights were affected by their marital status, for marriage deprived women of separate juridical personality, transforming them into the legal wards of their husbands. Married women needed their husband's permission to do what single women were free to do -buy, sell, give away their property, and draw up a will» (The Women of Colonial Latin America, 10). Women reached the legal age of majority at twenty-five.

Karl Marx, Capital, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 1990), I, 165; 163; 167.

Sab, 55.

Brushwood, Genteel Barbarism, 143-44. Quoted in Lindstrom, xviii. The technique of describing women's dress in great detail is a feature of most nineteenth-century Latin-American novels, most notably José Mármol's Amalia (1855) and Jorge Isaac's María (1867).

The problem at the centre of Aves is a microeconomic one, resulting from the exploitation of the Indians focused through a woman's perspective and the domestic sphere: Marcela Yupanqui accrues debts and Lucía Marín pays them off. Yet critics seem not to perceive this. For James Higgins, echoing Cornejo Polar, one of the limitations of the novel is that «it concentrates on the superstructure of Andean society and almost completely overlooks the economic reality underpinning it», and it «focuses attention on the abuse of authority without taking account of the powerful economic interests which authority serves» (James Higgins, A History of Peruvian Literature [Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1987], 76). I would argue that the concern of the novel is precisely the detrimental effects of the land tenure system.

It is ironic, then, that in 1910 Matto was infamously labelled a literary seamstress, «costurera literaria», by writer and critic Ventura García Calderón, for whom she was «el genio de la vulgaridad que remedaba en prosa doméstica, epistolar, novelas -novelas como de todas las institutrices inglesas- hasta que la muerte cortó el carrete de hilo y detuvo la máquina». Quoted in Kristal, The Andes Viewed from the City, 160.

El médico, 77.