Frances Calderon de la Barca, a Scottish immigrant to the United States, became the wife of the first Spanish Minister to newly independent and politically unstable Mexico. Calderon de la Barca admitted to the "impatience which [she] felt to see Mexico" as she journeyed there in 1839. Edith O'Shaughnessy, wife of the American charge d'affaires in Mexico City, also approached Mexico with a "deep thrill of excitement" more than seventy years later, in the spring of 1911, when Mexico was deep in the midst of Revolution.
The experiences these two women had in Mexico compelled them both to edit, embellish and publish personal letters written during their posts. Life in Mexico, published by Calderon de la Barca in 1842, and A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico, published in 1916 by Edith O'Shaughnessy, won wide readership and acclaim in the US. Both books are still used today as valuable primary sources on Mexico at times of devastating political and social instability and violence. Both offer unique perspectives on Mexican politics, society, religion and relations with the US by well educated, upper class white women who served in a distinctive and "semi-official" but temporary capacity in Mexico. As diplomat's wives, these women represent a seldom studied and exceptional group of female travel writers. They were not merely observers, but participants with a distinct role to play. Their experience in Mexico, and the physical act of writing about it, made them more famous than their diplomat husbands and transformed them into widely recognized authors and "experts" on the fascinating and turbulent land of Mexico. Their position as "officials" in Mexico, as the wives of diplomats, gave them considerable authority in the eyes of the American public.
This paper will examine the striking similarities between Edith O'Shaughnessy and Frances Calderon de la Barca as female travel writers and as diplomats' wives. Their unusual position in Mexican politics and society constrained them from speaking publicly while in Mexico, yet the opportunity to write about their experience once they left Mexico gave them each a voice, a means of finally expressing pent-up opinions, interpretations and personal viewpoints. They both praise and criticize Mexico, trying to make sense of this place so different from the US. Their running political, social and cultural commentary reveals a complex process as they slowly recognize that there is no simple "stand" to take on Mexico, no one solid positions on a country striking in its natural beauty, full of "potential" yet stymied by its social and political backwardness. Mexico, they find, is full of contradictions and defies easy solutions. This conclusion, reached by both women, ultimately reveals even more about how the act of "telling this story" proved to be a life-altering event for each of these women.
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