Performing Honor: Seduction cases in Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico

This Master's Thesis analyzes early-twentieth-century (1902-1922) cases of seducción in Puerto Rico to study the tensions and negotiations between working-class Puerto Ricans, elites, and colonial officials’ ideas over family, honor, gender, morality, and marriage. It argues that although the Hispanic script of honor of nineteenth-century Puerto Rico was valuable and relevant, the new historical developments of legalization of divorce, U.S. imperialism, women’s entrance to the labor force, and anarcho-feminist movements opened new spaces for working-class Puerto Ricans to challenge the elite and colonial-promoted morality and mechanisms of sexual control.