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Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera’s last novel, El conspirador: autobiografía de un hombre público (1892), offers a rich examination of the author’s views on gender inequality, morality, and Positivism in late-nineteenth-century Peru. This article examines how Cabello employs orphan discourse, a rhetorical device characterized by the adoption of the orphan as protagonist and the widespread use of metaphorical orphanhood, to critique Positivist rhetoric on gender relations and put the challenges and needs of men and women on equal footing. This study expands on previous analyses of Cabello’s incorporation of the emotional into Positivist discourse by examining how orphan discourse addresses the deficiencies of purely rational approaches, but argues distinctly that Cabello problematizes the idealized fate for both men and women, giving their experiences equal attention, and eliminates the subtle embrace of the angel ideal at work in her previous novels.
