ABSTRACT
The problem for women like Paula Llorens was how to carry on their business activities without the loss of honor. In this chapter, the author examines how businesswomen coped with this problem by analyzing the textual representations of women from Barcelona, one of the most active commercial centers in the Spanish empire. The written legacy of women entrepreneurs reveals their efforts to cloak their uncertain position as businesswomen with the identity of respectable women, mothers and widows. Yet a considerable number of women who played an active part in business presented themselves simply as the widows of merchants, entrepreneurs or factory owners. This is especially true among widows of Barcelona's businessmen involved in the thriving trade of calicoes, by far the most important of the new trades of eighteenth-century Spain. After her miraculous recovery, Rosa learned about her husband's death. Soon the widow of Francesc Fraginals began her transformation as a successful businesswoman.
