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Feminism, Women's Rights, and the Suffrage Movement in Brazil, 1850–1932

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

June E. Hahner
June E. Hahner*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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For too many years, women have been missing from or misrepresented in Latin American history. Like women elsewhere, they have not received proper credit for the role they played in their nations' development. Even with the increasingly scholarly attention now focused on women in Latin America, historical research lags far behind that on their counterparts in the United States or Western Europe. Many questions of approach, methodology, and sources, among others, remain to be answered and much labor must be expended before we can know the history of women in Latin America. But if we wish to have the necessary monographs and accumulated data before attempting to write syntheses, we must explore diverse aspects of women's lives, roles, and experiences, often concentrating on women in a single country or time frame.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1980 , pp. 65 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Latin American Research Review

References

Notes

1. The most complete bibliography on women in Spanish America is Meri Knaster, Women in Spanish America: An Annotated Bibliography from Pre-Conquest to Contemporary Times (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977). An extensive bibliography on women in Latin America appears in Ann Pescatello, ed., Female and Male in Latin America: Essays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), and a selected bibliography in June E. Hahner, ed., Women in Latin American History: Their Lives and Views (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976). In addition to Pescatello, other collections of articles on Latin American women can be found in the May 1973 issue of Journal of Marriage and the Family, the Spring 1977 issue of Latin American Perspectives, and the November 1975 issue of the Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs. The latter also contains a review essay by Susan Soeiro analyzing recent work on Latin American women. Pescatello has attempted a general history of women in the Iberian peninsula, the Iberian colonies in Asia and Africa, and in Latin America; Power and Pawn: The Female in Iberian Families, Societies, and Cultures (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976). Asunción Lavrin and Susan Soeiro discuss questions concerning the history of Latin American women in “Approaches to the History of Women in Latin America,” in E. Bradford Burns, Eduardo Hernández, and Mary Karasch, eds., Teaching Latin American History (Los Angeles: Office of Learning Resources, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977), pp. 18–25.

2. Few comparative historical studies of women's rights movements have been attempted, such as the recent scholarly effort by Richard J. Evans, The Feminists: Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Australasia, 1840–1920 (London and New York: Croom Helm; Barnes and Noble, 1977); the documentary reader with introductory essays by William L. O'Neill, ed., The Woman Movement: Feminism in the United States and England (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969); and the well-illustrated essay by Trevor Lloyd, Suffragettes International: The World-Wide Campaign for Women's Rights (New York: American Heritage Press, 1971). But Latin America remains apart, and little work has been done on women's rights or suffrage movements. See, for example: Ward M. Morton, Woman Suffrage in Mexico (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962); Elsa M. Chaney, “Old and New Feminists in Latin America: The Case of Peru and Chile,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (May 1973):331–43; Morris J. Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy: The Politics of Women in Brazil” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1976), chap. 4.

3. For a helpful discussion of feminism and women's rights, see Gerda Lerner, “Women's Rights and American Feminism,” The American Scholar 40 (Spring 1971):235–48.

4. Information on individual nineteenth-century Brazilian feminist newspapers can be found in June E. Hahner, “The Nineteenth-Century Feminist Press and Women's Rights in Brazil,” in Asunción Lavrin, ed., Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), pp. 254–85.

Just as standard histories of Brazil basically ignore women, so do books on the Brazilian press overlook the nineteenth-century feminist press. Nelson Werneck Sodré, A história da imprensa no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilisação Brasileira, 1966), the most complete study of the Brazilian press, mentions more than one thousand journals, but ignores all of the feminist periodicals considered in this paper. Fanny Tabak, “O Status da mulher no Brasil—Victorias e preconceitos,” Cadernos da PUC, No. 7 (Aug. 1971):165–201, mistakenly claims as the “first feminist periodical” Nosso Jornal, founded in 1919 (p. 180). Nor does Heleieth Iara Bongiovani Saffioti, in A mulher na sociedade de classes. Mito e realidade (São Paulo: Quarto Artes, 1969), perhaps the best study of women in Brazilian society, refer to any of the feminist newspapers or cite any nineteenth-century feminists other than Nísia Floresta Brasileira Augusta, who is confined to a footnote. Saffioti holds that “feminist manifestations had their beginning in Brazil” with Bertha Lutz in the second decade of the twentieth century (p. 270).

5. While the nineteenth-century Brazilian feminist newspapers may well not be unique in Latin America, the known periodicals tended to be edited by men, not women, and were designed to provide entertainment or moral uplift, not to change women's lives. Although Latin American journals intended for women have received virtually no attention, Jane Herrick has described several “Periodicals for Women in Mexico during the Nineteenth Century” in The Americas 14 (Oct. 1957):135–44; however, with one exception, El Album de la Mujer (1883–1893), they were edited by men. Herrick does not indicate that this one periodical differed in any major respect from the general run of those concerned with home medicine, cooking, poetry, and pictures. Nor does she consider the fact that a woman owned and edited a journal to be a matter of interest.

6. John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Parts of Brazil taken during a residence of ten years … 1808–1818 (London: S. Leigh, 1820), p. 111.

7. The Reverend Robert Walsh, chaplain to the British ambassador, traveling through Minas Gerais in the late 1820s, observed that “the wives of fazendeiros are frequently left widows, manage by themselves, afterwards, the farms and slaves, and in all respects assume the part and bearing of their husbands.” Robert Walsh, Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, 2 vols. (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 1830), 2:28.

8. For a concise study of the family in Brazil, see Antônio Cândido, “The Brazilian Family,” in T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant, eds., Brazil: Portrait of Half a Continent (New York: The Dryden Press, 1951), pp. 291–311. The history of an elite family is given by Darrell Erville Levi, “The Parados of São Paulo: An Elite Brazilian Family in a Changing Society, 1840–1930” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974). Under the existing civil law structure, an extension of the Philippine Code of 1603, which basically remained in effect in Brazil until the Promulgation of the Civil Code of 1916, women were perpetual minors under the law. (See Tristão de Alencar Araipe, Código Civil Brazileiro, ou Leis civil do Brazil dispostas por ordem de matérias em seu estado actual [Rio de Janeiro: H. Laemmert & C., 1885]). Moreover, the new Civil Code of 1916 did not really change matters.

9. Johann B. von Spix and Karl F. P. von Martius, Travels in Brazil in the Years 1817–1820, trans. H. E. Lloyd (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1824), 1:159.

10. James C. Fletcher and Daniel Paris Kidder, Brazil and the Brazilians Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches, 7th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1867), pp. 163–70.

11. Herbert H. Smith, Brazil. The Amazons and the Coast (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879), pp. 50, 122–23.

12. Lígia Lemos, “Pioneiras do intelectualismo feminino no Brasil,” Formação (Nov. 1947):51–52; Ivan Lins, História do positivismo no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional, 1967), pp. 19–26; Saffioti, A mulher, p. 270; Tancredo Moraes, Pela emancipação integral da mulher (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Pongetti, 1971), pp. 88–90; Ignez Sabino, Mulheres illustres do Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Paris: H. Garnier, [1899]), pp. 171–77.

13. For general studies of the empire see: Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, ed., História geral da civização brasileira, vols. 2–7, O Brasil monárquico (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1962–72); Manoel de Oliveira Lima, O Império Brasileiro (1821–1889), 4th ed. (São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos, 1962); João Camillo de Oliveira Torres, A democracia coroada. Teoria política do Império do Brasil, 2nd ed. (Petrópolis: Editôra Vozes, 1964).

14. For discussions of social and economic changes during the last decades of the empire see: Richard Graham, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 23–50; Octávio Ianni, Industrialização e desenvolvimento social no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilisação Brasileira, 1963), pp. 75–114; Emilia Viotti da Costa, Da senzala á côlonia (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1966), pp. 428–41.

15. For education under the empire see the studies by Primitivo Moacyr, A instrução e as provincias, 3 vols. (São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional 1939–1940) and A instrução e o império, 3 vols. (São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional, 1938). The best and only extensive study of women's education, but just for São Paulo, is Leda Maria Pereira Rodrigues, A instrução feminina em São Paulo. Subsídios para sua história até a proclamação da república (São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia “Sedes Sapientine,” 1962).

16. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatistica, Recenseamento da população do Império do Brazil a que se procedeu no dia 1° de agosto de 1872, 21 vols, in 22 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Leuzinger, 1873–1876), 21 (Quadros gerais): 1–2; 61.

17. Rui Barbosa, Reforma do ensino primario e varias instituições complementares da instrução pública, vol. 10, tomo 1 of Obras completas de Rui Barbosa (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Saúde, 1947), pp. 9–11.

18. Luccock, Notes on Rio, p. 111.

19. Fletcher and Kidder, Brazil, p. 164.

20. Louis Agassiz and Elizabeth C. Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868), p. 479.

21. Saffioti, A mulher, pp. 202–10; Reynaldo Kuntz Bush, O ensino normal em São Paulo (São Paulo: Livraria Record, 1935), pp. 41–43; Rodrigues, A instrução feminina, pp. 151–62.

22. O Jornal das Senhoras (Rio de Janeiro), 1 Jan. 1852, p. 1; 11 Jan. 1852, pp. 12, 14; 8 Feb. 1852, p. 42; César H. Guerrero, Mujeres de Sarmiento (Buenos Aires: Artes Gráficas Bartolomé U. Chiesivo, 1960), p. 79; Innocêncio Francisco da Silva, Diccionario bibliographico portuguez, 22 vols. (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1858–1923), 10: 144; 11:275. See also Jim Levy, “Juana Manso: Argentine Feminist,” Occasional Paper No. 1 (Bundoora: La Trobe University, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1977).

23. Luccock, Notes on Rio, p. 114.

24. O Jornal das Senhoras, 1 Jan. 1852, p. 5; 11 Jan. 1852, p. 12.

25. Ibid., 11 Jan. 1852, pp. 12, 14.

26. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1852, p. 6; 11 Jan. 1852, pp. 13–14.

27. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1852, pp. 1, 2; 11 Jan. 1852, p. 14; 8 Feb. 1852, p. 44.

28. Ibid., 4 July 1852, p. 1; da Silva, Diccionario 7:450; Augusto Victorino Alves Sacramento Blake, Diccionario bibliographico brazileiro, 7 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1883–1902), 2:182–86; 7:386–87; First Secretary of Conservatório Dramático Brasileiro to Violante Atabalipa de Bivar e Vellasco, Rio de Janeiro, 3 July 1850, Biblioteca Nacional, Secção de Manuscritos, 1, 2, 725; Olímio Barros Vidal, Precursoras brasileiras (Rio de Janeiro: A Noite, 1955), pp. 121–31.

Following a family crisis and the fall of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1853, D. Joana and her two daughters returned to Argentina, where she achieved a distinguished but difficult career as an educator and follower of the educational principles of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. She also edited a periodical for women, Album de Señoritas (Guerrero, Mujeres de Sarmiento, pp. 81–101; Levy, “Juana Manso”).

29. O Jornal das Senhoras, 19 Sept. 1852, pp. 89–90; 3 Oct. 1852, pp. 106–7; 5 June 1853, p. 177; Barros Vidal, Precursoras brasileiras, p. 131.

30. O Bello Sexo (Rio de Janeiro), 21 Aug. 1862, pp. 1–2; 12 Sept. 1862, p. 1.

31. Barbara J. Berg argues this position, perhaps to excess, in The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism. The Woman and the City, 1800–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

32. O Bello Sexo, 7 Sept. 1862, pp. 2–4; 21 Aug. 1862, p. 2; 7 Sept. 1862, p. 2.

33. A pioneering study of voluntary associations in Brazil is provided by Michael L. Conniff, “Voluntary Associations in Rio, 1870–1945. A New Approach to Urban Social Dynamics,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 17 (Feb. 1975):64–81.

34. For the abolition movement see Robert Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972); and Robert Brent Toplin, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (New York: Atheneum, 1972).

35. Ignez Sabino, Mulheres illustres do Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Paris: H. Garnier, [1899]), pp. 251–57; Jornal do Comércio (Rio de Janeiro), 5 Oct. 1880, p. 2; Gazeta da Tarde (Rio de Janeiro), 3 Nov. 1880, p. 2; Evaristo de Moraes, A campanha abolicionista (1879–1888) (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Leite Ribeiro, 1924), p. 24.

36. José Jacintho Ribeiro, Chronologia Paulista; ou Relação histórica dos factos mais importantes ocorridos em S. Paulo desde a chegada de Martim Affonso de Souza em S. Vicente até 1898, 3 vols. (São Paulo: n.p. 1899–1901), 2, Part 1, 59; Galeria Nacional. Vultos proeminentes da história brasileira. 6° Fascículo (Rio de Janeiro: Jornal do Brasil, 1933), pp. 562–63; Mello Barreto Filho and Hermeto Lima, História da polícia do Rio de Janeiro. Aspectos da cidade e da vida carioca, 3 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra A Noite, 1944), 2: 148; Richard M. Morse, From Community to Metropolis. A Biography of São Paulo, Brazil (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1958), p. 147; Gazeta da Tarde, 5 Oct. 1885, p. 1; Moraes, A campanha abolicionista, p. 41.

37. Sacramento Blake, Diccionario bibliográphico brazileiro 6:225; A Familia (Rio de Janeiro), Special Number 1889, p. 3; 31 Dec. 1889, p. 7.

38. Novo Correio de Modas (Rio de Janeiro), 1:3 (1852); p. 37.

39. Otelia Cromwell, Lucretia Mott (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 47–49; 67–71; Alma Lutz, Crusade for Freedom. Women of the Anti-Slavery Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 21–22. An 1851 photograph of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society depicts five women and seven men (reproduced in Judith Papachristou, ed., Women Together. A History in Documents of the Women's Movement in the United States. “A Ms. Book” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976, p. 19). See also Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex. Feminist-Abolitionists in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), unavailable at time of writing.

For the women's rights and suffrage movements in the United States see: Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle. The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959); William L. O'Neil, Everyone Was Brave. A History of Feminism in America (Chicago: Quadrangel Books, 1969); Keith E. Melder, Beginnings of Sisterhood. The American Woman's Rights Movement, 1800–1850 (New York: Schocken Books, 1977); Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage. The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978); Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965).

40. In A história da imprensa no Brasil, Nelson Werneck Sodré presents a wealth of detail on the role of the press in Brazil.

41. O Sexo Feminino (Campanha, Minas Gerais), 27 Sept. 1873, p. 1; 8 Nov. 1873, p. 2.

42. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatistica, Recenseamento do Brazil realizado em 1 de setembro de 1920, 5 vols, in 18 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. da Estatistica, 1922–30), 4, 4a parte, pp. xii, xvi.

43. O Sexo Feminino, 27 Dec. 1873, p. 4; 28 Jan. 1874, p. 4; 25 Apr. 1874, p. 2; O Domingo (Rio de Janeiro), 18 Jan. 1874, p. 2; 19 Apr. 1874, p. 2.

44. O Sexo Feminino, 7 Sept. 1873, p. 1; 14 Sept. 1873, p. 2; 20 Sept. 1873, p. 1; 25 Oct. 1873, pp. 1–2.

45. Ibid., 14 Sept. 1873, p. 2; 14 Jan. 1874, p. 2.

46. Ibid., 8 Nov. 1873, p. 2; 29 Nov. 1873, p. 2; 14 Jan. 1874, p. 2; 22 July 1875, p. 2; 29 July 1875, p. 2; 5 Sept. 1875, pp. 1–2; 10 Oct. 1875, p. 3; 31 Oct. 1875, pp. 1–2; 12 Dec. 1875, p. 1.

47. Ibid., 7 Sept. 1873, p. 1; 20 Sept. 1873, p. 1; 18 Oct. 1873, p. 2; 8 Nov. 1873, p. 4; 7 Apr. 1874, p. 1; 2 May 1874, p. 2; 18 July 1874, p. 4; 22 July 1875, p. 2; 29 Aug. 1875, p. 3.

48. O Domingo, 14 Dec. 1873, p. 3; 21 Dec. 1873, p. 3; 28 Dec. 1873, p. 3; 18 Jan. 1874, p. 3; Echo das Damas (Rio de Janeiro), 18 Apr. 1879, p. 1.

49. O Sexo Feminino, 15 Nov. 1873, pp. 2–3; 29 July 1875, p. 3; 14 Aug. 1875, p. 2; 29 Aug. 1875, p. 3.

50. Ibid., 7 Sept. 1874, p. 1; 22 July 1875, p. 1.

51. Recenseamento da população do Império do Brazil … 1872 9 (Minas Gerais): 1070.

52. O Sexo Feminino, 15 Nov. 1873, p. 4; 8 Aug. 1875, p. 1; 21 Nov. 1875, p. 2.

53. Ibid., 2 Apr. 1876, p. 1; Primaveira (Rio de Janeiro), 29 Aug. 1880, p. 1; O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino (Rio do Janeiro), 15 Dec. 1889, pp. 3–4.

54. Recenseamento do Brazil realizado em 1 de setembro de 1920 4, 4a parte, p. xiii.

55. O Domingo, 22 Mar. 1874, p. 1; Barros Vidal, Precursoras brasileiras, p. 138.

56. O Sexo Feminino, 9 June 1889, p. 1; O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 30 Sept. 1890, p. 2; 6 Dec. 1890, p. 1.

57. O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 6 Dec. 1890.

58. O Jornal das Senhoras, 11 Jan. 1852, p. 14. The man would remain the head [chefe] of the family according to Brazilian law until the 1962 modification of the Civil Code. See Ruth Bueno [Maria Barbosa Goulart], Regime jurídica da mulher casada, 3rd ed. (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: Forense, 1972).

59. A Familia, 14 Nov. 1889, p. 4.

60. Josephina Alvares de Azevedo, A Mulher moderna. Trabalhos de propaganda (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Montenegro, 1891), pp. 116–17. Many of her newspaper articles and speeches, and her prosuffrage play were reprinted in this volume.

61. O Sexo Feminino, 16 June 1889, p. 1.

62. Josephina Alvares de Azevedo, Galeria illustre (Mulheres celebres) (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. A Vapor, 1897).

63. Joaquim Manoel de Macedo, Mulheres celebres (Rio de Janeiro: H. Garnier, 1878), pp. 18–19, 83–86, 93.

64. O Domingo, 30 Nov. 1873, p. 1; 14 Dec. 1873, p. 1. Efforts to expand education and to emancipate women were closely interwoven in upstate New York. The educational fate of women at Cornell University is surveyed by Charlotte Williams Conable, Women at Cornell: The Myth of Equal Education (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).

65. O Domingo, 1 Mar. 1874, pp. 1–2.

66. Aurora Brasileira (Ithaca, N.Y.), 20 Jan. 1874, p. 28.

67. O Sexo Feminino, 28 Jan. 1874, pp. 3–4.

68. A Mulher (New York), Apr. 1881, p. 26.

69. Ibid., Jan. 1881, pp. 2, 6; Feb. 1881, p. 16; Mar. 1881, pp. 18, 22; Apr. 1881, pp. 26–30.

70. Ibid., Apr. 1881, p. 27; June 1881, pp. 43–46.

71. Aurora Brasileira, 20 May 1874, p. 57; 20 June 1874, pp. 66–67.

72. Gazeta da Tarde, 1 Oct. 1885, p. 1; 3 Oct. 1885, p. 2.

73. A imprensa e o Lyceu de Artes e Officios. Aulas para o sexo feminino (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Hildebrandt, 1881), pp. iii, 5, 25.

74. Echo das Damas, 4 Jan. 1888, p. 1.

75. Alberto Silva, A primeira médica do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Irmãos Pongetti, 1954), pp. 51–52; Francisco Bruno Lobo, “Rita Lobato: A primeira médica formado no Brasil,” Revista de História 42 (Apr.–June 1971): 483–85.

76. A Familia, 30 Nov. 1889, p. 6.

77. Brazil, Informações apresentado pela Commisão Parlamentar de Inquerito ao corpo legislativo na terceira sessão da decima oitava legislatura (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Nacional, 1883), p. 138.

78. O Domingo, 30 Nov. 1873, p. 11; Barros Vidal, Precursoras brasileiras, pp. 69–74, 167–80.

79. Joaquim José da França Júnior, As doutoras. Comedia em 4 actos (Rio de Janeiro: Sociedade Brasileira de Autores Theatraes, 1932). Information on the play, its performance, and its author is given by Luis Gastão d'Escragnolle Doria, “Cousas do passado,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 71, pt. 2(1908): 295–97. Additional biographical information can be found in Sacramento Blake, Diccionario bibliográphico brazileiro 4: 163–65. The dramatic work of França Júnior is ably and engagingly analyzed by Roderick J. Barman, “Politics on the Stage: The Late Brazilian Empire as Dramatized by França Júnior,” Luso-Brazilian Review 13 (Winter 1976): 244–60.

Some of the strongest opposition in the United States to women entering the professions also centered on medicine (Flexner, Century of Struggle, p. 119). The problems of women in medicine in the United States and the opposition to them are treated in Mary Roth Walsh, “Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply.” Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835–1975 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977). See also Judy Barrett Litoff, American Midwives, 1860 to the Present (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978).

80. A Familia, 14 Nov. 1889, pp. 2–3.

81. Revista Illustrada (Rio de Janeiro), 9 Mar. 1889, p. 7.

82. A Mensageira (São Paulo), 15 Oct. 1899, pp. 169, 174; 15 Dec. 1899, pp. 201–4; 15 Jan. 1900, pp. 217–21; O Sexo Feminino, 16 June 1889, p. 2; A Familia, 30 Nov. 1889, p. 6.

83. O Domingo, 14 Dec. 1873, p. 1.

84. Echo das Damas, 18 Apr. 1879, p. 1.

85. O Sexo Feminino, 20 Dec. 1873, p. 3; 14 Jan. 1874, p. 2; 7 Mar. 1874, p. 4; 11 Apr. 1874, pp. 3–4.

86. O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 6 Apr. 1890, p. 2.

87. Echo das Damas, 7 Aug. 1886, p. 2.

88. Azevedo, A mulher moderna, pp. 28, 78.

89. O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 6 Apr. 1890, p. 1.

90. A Familia, 6 July 1889, pp. 1, 2, 8; 3 Oct. 1889, pp. 1, 3–4; 30 Nov. 1889, p. 1; 31 Dec. 1889, p. 1; Azevedo, A mulher moderna, p. 124.

91. Barros Vida, Precursoras brasileiras, p. 165; A Familia, 6 July 1889, p. 8; 23 Nov. 1889, p. 3; 31 Dec. 1889, p. 2; Azevedo, A mulher moderna, p. 14.

92. A Familia, 23 Nov. 1889, p. 3.

93. O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 6 Apr. 1890, p. 2.

94. Azevedo, A mulher moderna, pp. 23, 25, 30–73.

95. A Familia, 19 Oct. 1889, p. 1.

96. Azevedo, A mulher moderna, p. 20.

97. Tito Livio de Castro, A mulher e a sociogenia. Obra posthuma (Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves & C. [1894]). He believed in the possibility of future female mental evolution through education, which he favored, to benefit the species.

98. Brazil, Câmara dos Deputados, Annaes do Congresso Constituinte da República, 2d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional 1924–1926) 2: 544. Session of 14 Jan. 1891.

99. Annaes do Congresso Constituinte 2: 456. Session of 12 Jan. 1891.

100. Similar antisuffrage arguments were employed in the United States. See: Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement; and Mara Mayor, “Fears and Fantasy of the Anti-Suffragists,” Connecticut Review 7 (Apr. 1974): 64–74.

101. See Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, A mulher. Sua preeminência social e moral, segundo os ensinos da verdadeira siencia pozitiva, 4th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Igreja Pozitivista do Brazil, 1958). For studies of positivism in Brazil see: Ivan Lins, História do positivismo no Brasil; João Cruz Costa, O positivismo na república. Notas sobre a história do positivismo no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional, 1956); João Camillo de Oliveira Torres, O positivismo no Brasil (Petrópolis: Editôra Vozes, 1943). Also useful is João Cruz Costa, A History of Ideas in Brazil. The Development of Philosophy in Brazil and the Evolution of Natural History, trans. Suzette Macedo (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964).

102. Annaes do Congresso Constituinte 2:478. Session of 13 Jan. 1891.

103. Azevedo, A mulher moderna, p. 109.

104. Annaes do Congresso Constituinte 2:543, session of 14 Jan. 1891; 3:356–57, session of 29 Jan. 1891.

105. Ibid., 1:276, 1:439, 1:438.

106. A Familia, 2 Feb. 1889, p. 4; 25 May 1889, p. 5; 6 July 1889, p. 4; 14 Nov. 1889, pp. 4, 6; Echo das Damas, 31 Jan. 1888, pp. 1–2; 26 Aug. 1888, p. 2; O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 6 Dec. 1890, p. 2; A Mensageira, 15 Oct. 1897, p. 3; 30 Nov. 1897, p. 58; Sacramento Blake, Diccionario bibliographico brazileiro 3: 279–80; 5: 241–42; 6: 231; José Brito Broca, A vida literaria no Brasil: 1900 2d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1960), p. 252.

107. A Mensageira, 15 Oct. 1897, pp. 3–5; Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Livro das noivas, 3rd ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Companhia Nacional Editôra, 1896), pp. 13, 38, 205. Addressed to prospective wives, this book combined the sentimental and the practical, with both household hints and moral exhortations.

108. Alice R. Humphrey, A Summer Journey to Brazil (New York: Boswell, Silver & Co., 1900), p. 46; Clayton Sedgwick Cooper, The Brazilians and Their Country (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1917), pp. 125, 276–77; Alured Gray Bell, The Beautiful Rio de Janeiro (London: William Heinnmann, 1914), p. 192.

109. Reis Carvalho (Oscar d'Alva), “A questão feminino,” Kosmos (Rio de Janeiro), Jan., Feb., Mar., and Apr. 1904 (unpaged).

110. Eunapio Deiró, “A mulher perante as religiões antigas e o christianismo,” Kosmos, Dec. 1904.

111. Salvador de Moya, Culto á mulher (Tem a mulher, naturalmente, perante a sociedade, os mesmos direitos do homem?) (São Paulo: Imprensa Methodista, 1912).

112. Article from O Jornal do Comércio reprinted in A Mensageira, 31 Aug. 1899, pp. 113, 137.

113. Article from Gazeta de Petrópolis cited in A Mensageira, 15 Dec. 1897, pp. 70–71.

114. Tribuna Feminina (Rio de Janeiro), 25 Nov. 1916, pp. 1–2.

115. Tabak, “O status da mulher no Brasil,” p. 180. The most important statement of this nationalism is Olavo Bilac, A defesa nacional (Discursos) (Rio de Janeiro: Liga da Defesa Nacional, 1917).

116. The only part of the long history of feminist activities in Brazil during the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century to receive any scholarly scrutiny is the women's suffrage movement, covered in part by: Saffioti, A mulher na sociedade de classes, pp. 267–90; João Batista Cascudo Rodrigues, A mulher brasileira. Direitos políticos e civis (Fortaleza: Imprensa Universitária do Ceará, 1962), pp. 43–90; Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” pp. 112–65; Rachel Soihet, “Bertha Lutz e a ascensão social da mulher, 1919–1937” (M.A. thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1974). Documents for the study of the movement are found in Diva Nolf Nazario, Voto feminino e feminismo. Um anno de feminismo entre nós (São Paulo: Monteiro Lombato & Comp., 1923), and Antônio Austregésilo, Perfil da mulher brasileira (Esbôço acêrca do feminismo no Brasil) (Paris and Lisbon: Livrarias Aillaud & Betrand, 1923).

117. Tabak, “O status da mulher no Brasil,” p. 182; Brazil, Câmara dos Deputados, Commissão de Estatuto da Mulher, O trabalho feminino. A mulher no ordem económico e social. Documentação organizada por Bertha Lutz, presidente da commissão (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1937), p. 20; “A mulher na bureaucracia e no magisterio,” Nosso Jornal (Rio de Janeiro), 30 Apr. 1920 (unpaged); Lina Hirsh, “These New ‘Amazons,‘” Independent Woman, Feb. 1935, p. 72; Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” p. 134.

118. School teachers and educators figure prominently in different women's rights movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, from Susan B. Anthony, perhaps the most famous suffragist in the United States, to María Jesús Alvarado Rivera of Peru, to Amanda Labarca Hubertson, who pioneered the suffrage movement in Chile. On the latter two women, see Chaney, “Old and New Feminists in Latin America: The Case of Peru and Chile,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (May 1973): 331–43.

119. O Sexo Feminino, 4 Oct. 1873, p. 3; 22 July 1875, p. 4; 7 Nov. 1875, p. 1; Voz da Verdade (Rio de Janeiro), 28 May 1885, p. 4; O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, 15 Dec. 1889, p. 4; Sacramento Blake, Diccionario bibliographico brazileiro 2:371; Sabino, Mulheres illustres do Brazil, pp. 247–50; Adalzira Bittencourt, Dicionário bio-biográfico de mulheres ilustres, notáveis e intelectuais (Rio de Janeiro: Editôra Pongetti, 1969), 1:116–17.

120. Nosso Jornal, 15 Oct. 1919; 30 Apr. 1920. The older general accounts of the British women's suffrage movement, such as Roger Fulford, Votes for Women. The Story of a Struggle (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), do not attain the same level of scholarship as Andrew Rosen, Rise Up, Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903–1914 (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974). Well-edited selections from contemporary accounts and documents of the suffragettes together with abundant photographs are found in Shoulder to Shoulder. A Documentary by Midge Mackenzie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975).

121. Revista da Semana (Rio de Janeiro), 28 Dec. 1918.

122. Nosso Jornal, 15 Nov. 1919; Roy F. Nash, “The Brains of Brazil's Woman Movement,” The Woman Citizen, 25 Mar. 1922, pp. 9, 16–17; Mary Gray Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt. A Biography (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1944), p. 360; John W. F. Dulles, Anarchists and Communists in Brazil, 1900–1935 (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1973), p. 274. For views and statements of Bertha Lutz, see Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” pp. 114–22; 137–38.

123. Carrie Chapman Catt, “The History of the Origin of the International Alliance of Women,” unpublished typescript, New York Public Library, Carrie Chapman Catt Collection, Box 5; Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt, pp. 121–23; 137–67; Flexner, Century of Struggle, pp. 235–38; Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck Press, 1908), 3:1244–47; 1315–28. A brief discussion of the international movement is given by Edith F. Hurwitz, “The International Sisterhood,” in Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible. Women in European History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), pp. 327–45.

124. Catt, “The History,” New York Public Library, Carrie Chapman Catt Collection, Box 5; Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt, pp. 347–61.

125. See the interview given by Bertha Lutz upon her return to Brazil, reprinted in Austregésilo, Perfil da mulher brasileira, pp. 130–42; and the statements she made in the United States, reported in “The Latin Point of View,” The Independent Woman, Oct. 1922, p. 21.

126. Carrie Chapman Catt, “Busy Women in Brazil,” The Woman Citizen, 24 Mar. 1923, pp. 9–10, and “Summing Up South America,” The Woman Citizen, 2 June 1923, pp. 7–8, 26; Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt, pp. 373–76; Nazario, Voto feminino e feminismo, pp. 60–68; Austregésilo, Perfil da mulher brasileira, pp. 145–46; Boletim da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino, 1 (Feb. 1935): 2; Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” pp. 128–36.

127. Hirsh, “These New Amazons,” Independent Woman, Feb. 1935, pp. 46, 72; Austregésilo, Perfil da mulher brasileira, p. 146; Boletim da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino 1 (Feb. 1935): 2, 4; Nash, “The Brains of Brazil's Woman Movement,” The Woman Citizen, 25 Mar. 1922, pp. 9, 16.

128. Before 1945, women gained national voting rights only in Uruguay, Cuba, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic, in addition to Brazil and Ecuador. Paraguay, the last Latin American country to extend the franchise to women, did so only in 1962.

129. See, for example, articles by and about her in: The Woman Citizen, 25 Mar. 1922, pp. 9, 16–17; 5 May 1923, p. 8; Equal Rights, 22 Aug. 1931, pp. 230–31; The Independent Woman, Feb. 1935, pp. 46–47, 72.

130. Tabak, “O status da mulher,” p. 181; Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” p. 142.

131. Rodrigues, A mulher brasileira, pp. 55–91; Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” pp. 139–65. In Mexico, too, action by one state governor could provide a striking contrast with events elsewhere. Salvador Alvarado, appointed governor of Yucatán in 1915, introduced important women's rights legislation during his three years in office (Anna Macías, “The Mexican Revolution Was No Revolution for Women,” in Lewis Hanke, ed., History of Latin American Civilization: Sources and Interpretations. Vol. II The Modern Age, 2d ed. [Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973], 2:459–69).

132. See Rosen, Rise Up, Women!

133. The establishment of the Estado Nôvo in 1937 ended electoral politics, and women's participation in them, until 1945. For a discussion of the subsequent political behavior of women in Brazil, voting and the holding of political office and government service positions, see Blachman, “Eve in an Adamocracy,” pp. 64–111, 166–82.

134. Brazil, O trabalho feminino, pp. 65–75; Boletim da Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino 1 (Feb. 1935): 4; O Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 23 Dec. 1922; Hirsh, “These New ‘Amazons,‘” Independent Woman, Feb. 1935, p. 72; Saffioti, A mulher na sociedade de classes, pp. 271–81.