Laureana Wright and the Reception of French Social Romanticism in 19th-Century Mexico

Abstract Laureana Wright (1846–1896), a prominent Mexican writer and intellectual, was born in Taxco and raised in Mexico City. Her essays The Emancipation of Women through Study and The Erroneous Education of Women and Practical Means to Correct It establish her as a pioneering theorist of women’s education in Mexico. However, her work reveals an ambivalent stance regarding women’s roles, as she simultaneously advocates for intellectual equality and traditional domestic responsibilities. In this paper, I argue that the ambivalence present in her essay The Erroneous Education of Women and Practical Means to Correct It is a direct result of her reception of French social romanticist theories about women, particularly those advanced by Eugène Pelletan.