Amor y mujer: esponsales y dotes judías en el Coro del siglo XIX.

This paper deals with how Sephardic women in Coro, Venezuela, related to the transition toward the ideal of romantic love in the midst of cultural changes this immigrant group was undergoing. The study is based on the analysis of a number of key pre-nuptial documents of the Sephardic community found in the Coro archive: two betrothal and five dowry contracts. These documents exemplify three manifestations of the modern idea of love. The image of the Jewish woman shut in by her group is lost, giving way to one that coincides with the image of local women; both are caught up in the love values then in vogue in the Western world. In spite of the findings in these documents that hark back to the first five decades of Sephardic immigration to Coro, they only allow us to assert that romantic love was the exception rather than the rule among Coro's Jewish women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]