Female education at the beginning of the Chilean Republic: public debate, archetypes and tensions in times of transition

Abstract

The nineteenth century constituted a fundamental period for the education of women in Chile, which progressively moved from the privacy of the domestic world to educational spaces and levels defined by the State, with a public and political vocation. Although this process became evident from the second half of that century onwards, some legislative and press archives of the period of the independence and formation of the Chilean Republic (1810-1830) account for a gradual rhetorical resignification of female archetypes and the role of women in society and constitute relevant antecedents to understand the changes that, in practice, would materialize for women’s education in the following years. The article considers this period as a transitional stage between the colonial and the republican world, during which the leaders of the new Chilean order understood the relevance of having an illustrated social base, which would not only include men, but also women on the basis of a new political definition of their situation.