Eugenia Rodríguez’s book is a fine addition to gender, demographic, and family studies straddling the end of the colonial period and the first half of the nineteenth century. The book is a study of changing definitions of marriage, gender, and family in Costa Rica’s Central Valley at a period of increasing demographic growth, agricultural expansion (coffee), the early stages of Costa Rica’s agrarian capitalism, and the rise of a centralizing, secular state. The end result of this process, the author argues, was continuity with a Spanish patriarchal family model rather than change in gender relations. In contrast to what scholars have found in New Spain and Brazil, considerations such as emotion and individual choice would become important but only for the upper classes. However, in the name of social harmony and under the aegis of reason, the republican state would attenuate the harshness of the old model by expanding its...

You do not currently have access to this content.