“El más perjudicial contagio”. Reflexiones sobre el destino físico de las mujeres y las características del “depósito” en el Río de la Plata tardo colonial

Abstract

The article reviews a partial series of judicial proceedings that took place in the city of Buenos Aires, between 1777 and 1807, in which the physical fate of married women and their “deposit” was at stake, once they had sued their spouses. On the basis of this documentation, the article examines the arguments set forth in each case, the issues and attitudes that arose when deciding on the physical destination of the women, and, in line with this, how and to whom legal authority over the body and movement of married women who sued their husbands was granted. We are especially interested in advancing in the analysis of the ways in which female corporeality, its subjection, movement, and margins of action were conceived and expressed by the actors, and the manner in which that was put into tension at the judicial level.