Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Oaxaca City, Kathryn Sloan analyzes rapto trials--cases of abduction and/or seduction of a minor--to gain insight beyond the actual crime and into the reality that testimonies by parents, their children, and witnesses reveal about courtship practices, generational conflict, the negotiation of honor, and the relationship between the state and its working-class citizens in post colonial Mexico.

Unlike the colonial era where paternal rule was absolute,...