Runaway Daughters Summary

The book “Runaway daughters: seduction, elopement, and honor in nineteenth-century Mexico” is the first book in the works of Kathryn A. Sloan. Other works by Sloan include “Death in the City: Suicide and the Social Imaginary in Modern Mexico” and “Women's Roles in Latin America and the Caribbean.” In “Runaway daughters: seduction, elopement, and honor in nineteenth-century Mexico,” Sloan uses 212 cases to study thus illustrate the view of sexuality, parental authority, family honor and the intergenerational conflict in Oaxaca de Juarez, South Mexico’s capital. In these cases, young men were charged by the parents of their partners with “rapto,” which she defines as “the abduction of a woman against her will by the use of physical violence,

She further presents the cases as the source of empowerment for the young women to stand their grounds and marry against the wish of their parents (Sloan, 62). Besides, she explains that most girls presented “maltreatment at home” as their main reason for eloping with their prospective husbands, further challenging the authority of their parents. Sloan (122) narrates with evidence how the youth “alluded to a set of mutual obligations” within the members of a family, their suitors and the family of the partners so as to create rationale for their actions. Through the rapto cases, the youth slowly gained insight in the legal aspects and soon recognized “their status as individuals with rights and guarantees and could wield these concepts effectively in their dispositions and arguments before the judge” (Sloan154). Their understanding of their individual rights fueled them to stage allegations against the parents who either failed or were unable to meet the “end of the bargain” (Sloan 162). From several such cases, Sloan concludes that rapto was mostly an issues of the intergenerational conflict of social values and filial expectations as opposed to the defining aspects of coercion and sexual