Women in the daily press

The use of the prefix ‘pre’ evokes the idea of something nascent or underdeveloped – something incomplete that precedes full blossoming. This notion of antecedence strongly reinforces the concept of one-directional, evolutionary linearity. This reading outlined interpretative lineages, which reveals how the division and organisation of the passage of time constitutes a historiographical act capable of establishing categories of understanding and readings of the world.1 Olivier Dumoulin and Raphaël Valéry, Périodes. La construction du temps historique (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1991). Indeed, for several decades now, the symbolic weight of 1922 has been questioned, and there has been a re-evaluation of works produced between the late nineteenth century and the famous Week.2 On this subject, see: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, Setor de Filologia (ed.), Sobre o Pré-Modernismo (Rio de Janeiro: FCRB, 1988); Sérgio Miceli, Poder, Sexo e Letras na República Velha (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1977); Sérgio Miceli, Intelectuais e Classe Dirigente no Brasil (1920–1945) (São Paulo: Difel, 1979); Nicolau Sevcenko, Literatura como missão. Tensões sociais e criação cultural na 1ª República (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983). For the purposes of this project, it is important to emphasise that, in addition to gender silencing, the authors investigated have also been subject to a disqualification of the period in general, making it all the more important to revisit them.

From its foundation until the early twentieth century, regular contributors included Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, who, between 1884 and 1889, submitted numerous chronicles from Portugal; Délia, who collaborated with short stories and the serial novel Angelina; Carmen Dolores, with chronicles and short stories; and Júlia Lopes de Almeida, author of short stories, a few series of chronicles and the epistolary novel Correio da roça.

As written above, the Portuguese writer appeared in the first issues of O País, which innovated by including a woman among its foreign contributors. In Chapter 1, Tania Regina de Luca shows how the theme of the feminine was the Ariadne’s thread, not only in the texts written for O País, but in all of Carvalho’s writings, which are tinged with a pedagogical tone. Her choice of subject matters and how she approached them would ensure her consolidation as a literary professional, sought after beyond Portuguese borders, at a time when conventions about the social roles of women and men were beginning to be contested in terms different to those she preached, which were distinguished by a lack of more intense criticism. Her chronicles in O País focus on the defence of the family, the role of wife and mother, taking care of the home, ways of dressing and behaving in society, the education of children, with particular emphasis on girls, the importance of honour and morality, (in)adequate reading, submission to the husband and condemnation of divorce, which had just been approved in France in 1884.

While Carvalho defended women’s submission to the patriarchy and attachment to religious morality, Délia, in her short stories and novels, subverted the gender roles and showcased the female condition in order to criticise it fervently. In Chapter 2, Alexandro Henrique Paixão and Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva examine Délia’s short stories, which are dominated by arranged marriages, unrequited love, extramarital or abusive relationships, the impossibility of divorce, situations that exposed the hypocrisies of bourgeois marriage and caused irreparable damage to her female characters. The authors start with a commentary and interpretation of the short story ‘Sensitiva’ through a literary-historical analysis that uses examples of the short stories of Luiz Nicolau Fagundes Varella, literary references such as the seventeenth-century ‘cult of passions’, and the nineteenth-century Byronian style. They also compare the short story to a case of hysteria analysed by Freud to reflect on the simultaneous treatment in literature and psychoanalysis of pathologies resulting from revolt against or disobedience to female resignation, which was so widely defended at the time, including by Carvalho in her chronicles printed in O País.

One detail that proves the newspaper’s success in its strategy of attracting a female audience to its pages through contributions by women, whether as chroniclers, short story writers or novelists, is the volume of work by Júlia Lopes de Almeida and Carmen Dolores. Almeida was a prolific writer, publishing novels, chronicles, short stories, plays, poems, children’s stories and manuals for young women. Two chapters are devoted to the various series and occasional contributions that Almeida published between 1884 and 1912. In Chapter 3, Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva examines the chronicles of the fashion column, ‘A moda’, signed with the pseudonym Ecila Worms. We know that from the eighteenth century onwards, it was common practice for women writers to adopt pseudonyms as a means of expressing their political stances and ideas. The examples of our female writers reveal that they used pseudonyms for various reasons, including adopting male pseudonyms in the hope of gaining greater acceptance in a predominantly patriarchal society. This disguise allowed them to express their ideas without facing gender-based prejudices. In cases like those of Délia and Carmen Dolores, the choice of female pseudonyms represented not only the concealment of an identity, but an act of (re)baptism. This decision reaffirmed the authors’ identity and was a conscious break with traditional female roles. The option represented a way of consciously challenging the social norms and expectations imposed on women in that historical context. In the case of Almeida, the pseudonym Ecila Worms was only used to publish the ‘A moda’ column, as an editorial or conscious strategy by the writer to create a closer connection with fashion content, justifying the prescriptive tone of her texts. Furthermore, the use of a pseudonym allowed the writer to maintain parallel series of chronicles in O País.

Despite her significant contribution, Almeida, as Milena Ribeiro Martins shows in Chapter 4, faced challenges to her acceptance into a predominantly male literary scene. Her work, often praised by contemporaries such as José Veríssimo, was characterised by thematic intensity and violence, especially in her short stories. Ribeiro suggests that her less aggressive style was strategically aimed at maintaining access to the mass readership and analyses her journalistic texts in search of traces of the pressures and conflicts she faced as a contributor to O País.

Unlike Carvalho, who sent her manuscripts by ship to be typed out and printed in the O País print shops, the Brazilian writers lived mostly in Rio de Janeiro, which allowed them to maintain a constant dialogue with their readers. Carmen Dolores and Almeida were probably the first spokespersons in the press for Brazilian women and even men interested in feminist causes. More progressive than Carvalho, but still a ‘half measures’ feminist,3 Eliane de Vasconcellos, ‘Carmem Dolores’, in Emília Moncorvo Bandeira de Melo (pseudonym Carmen Dolores), Carmem Dolores: crônicas, Eliane de Vasconcellos (ed.) (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Público do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 1998), pp. 11–20. Carmen Dolores mixed her opinions with those of anonymous readers. She was also the newspaper’s best-paid columnist, earning more than her male colleague Carlos de Laet.4 Gilberto Amado, Mocidade no Rio e primeira viagem à Europa (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1956), p. 46. In Chapter 5, Álvaro Santos Simões Júnior examines Carmen Dolores’ ‘virile’ and combative writing, in which she used her unbridled courage in defence of feminism, divorce, and her own literary interests. She had a distinctive, unique style, and some criticisms of her ‘masculinisation’ were countered by defenders of her frankness and strength of expression. Simões Júnior also discusses the difficulties the writer faced in the Rio de Janeiro intelligentsia, literary competition, and the importance of mutual support between writers and of sponsors in the struggle for literary recognition.

Rita Terezinha Schmidt sparks reflection on the material conditions that made it possible for these women writers to participate, albeit marginally, in the sphere of culture.5 Rita Terezinha Schmidt, ‘Nineteenth-Century Brazilian women writers and nation building’, in The Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature, I. Rodríguez and M. Szurmuk (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 117–132. Carmen Dolores seems to have been one of the few Belle Époque writers who did not rely on her father or husband to mediate her introduction into Brazilian journalism and the publishing market, as opposed to Júlia Lopes de Almeida, who made her debut in the Gazeta de Campinas newspaper thanks to her father’s support.6 Anna Faedrich and Angela di Stasio, ‘Júlia Lopes de Almeida e a crônica carioca’, in Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Dois dedos de prosa. O cotidiano por Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Angela di Stasio, Anna Faedrich, and Marcus Venicio Ribeiro (eds) (Rio de Janeiro: FBN, Coordenadoria de Editoração, 2016), pp. 9–19. Almeida was married to the Portuguese poet Francisco Filinto de Almeida, with whom she had six children, two of whom died at a young age. Her ‘conciliatory spirit’, as Michele Asmar Fanini explains, promoted the image of a successful professional writer, a public figure, a mother of a family, and a socially respectable woman whose views did not challenge gender asymmetry.7 M.A. Fanini, ‘Júlia Lopes de Almeida: entre o salão literário e a antessala da Academia Brasileira de Letras’, Estudos de Sociologia, 14, 27 (2009), pp. 317–338, <https://periodicos.fclar.unesp.br/estudos/article/view/1941> [accessed 28 Apr. 2022].

The convergence points between these women writers, however, go beyond the biographical, social, and cultural details that helped bestow their own voice and style on their writings. Like Carmen Dolores, Almeida denounced the contradictions of the Belle Époque that her readers discussed in letters or that, as a flâneuse-chronicler, she observed in her ventures through the new buildings and avenues and around the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities. One of her great battles was against the demolition of Morro de Santo Antônio, which she would contemplate, as a ‘sketch artist’ would, from her home in the Santa Teresa neighbourhood:

Like Carvalho, Almeida reflected on the advances of the feminist movement in Brazil, driven by the work of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress (Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino). Invited to deliver the opening speech at the Second International Feminist Congress, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1931, the writer confesses:

Carvalho expresses a similar stance in the article entitled ‘A mulher do futuro’, written on the same day, 4 July, that the International Women’s Congress was closing in London.10 Produced on 4 July 1889, ‘The Woman of the Future’ was originally published in the Jornal do Commercio between July and August 1899 and then reproduced in the magazine in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘A mulher do futuro’, A Mensageira 2, 31 (31 Aug. 1899), pp. 133–139, <https://digital.bbm.usp.br/handle/bbm/7766> [accessed 27 Jan. 2022]. Her opinion on the role of women in society changed with time and experience. Ten years after her final contribution to O País, the writer no longer condemns ‘the fragile sex’ that, for economic reasons, ‘valiantly battles to attain a profession that will safeguard her from all the temptations of misery’.11 Carvalho, ‘A mulher do futuro’.

Once again, acknowledging and accepting all the advances and discoveries brought by the turn of the century, and also highlighting the contradictory opinions she professed, Carvalho surprisingly foresees the gender equality that women of the twenty-first century continue to seek:

The contributions of Carvalho, Délia, Carmen Dolores, and Almeida in O País paved the way for, and most likely encouraged, many other women to take on the role of writers, whether as authors of short texts or of novels, who expressed their concerns and demands, shared with readers in the so-called Belle Époque. Rereading their writings is an invitation to re-evaluate women’s presence in the mainstream press and their role as intellectuals, cultural mediators, and opinion formers.

The chapters of this book focus on the four women who contributed more regularly to O País. They did not just write; they actively shaped public discourse, functioning as mediators, opinion formers, and participants in intellectual debates. Our focus in this volume is on these individual contributions, reflecting our commitment to presenting the diversity of women’s voices with breadth as well as depth, allowing each writer to be explored thoroughly. The aim was not to impose a monolithic narrative but to highlight the plurality of women’s roles in the press, including their contributions as authors of fiction and journalism, as well as their involvement in networks of sociability, solidarity, and intellectual disputes. However, what our survey has demonstrated (as shown in Table 0.1), and another important contribution of this book to Brazilian literary history, is a reassessment of the role of women in the formation of the Brazilian literary system. This role has historically been underexplored and marginalised in traditional literary historiographies, which have largely emphasised male contributions, portraying women only as passive consumers and readers. This neglect persisted until the late twentieth century. It was only with the pioneering efforts of researchers like Zahidé Lupinacci Muzart and initiatives such as the ‘A Mulher na Literatura’ research group that this situation began to change. Muzart’s work, particularly her three-volume anthology Escritoras brasileiras do século XIX, brought over 150 previously unknown or forgotten women writers into scholarly focus, rescuing them from historical obscurity and challenging the long-standing belief that women played a minor role in the formation of the Brazilian literary system.13 Zahidé Lupinacci Muzard (ed.), Escritoras brasileiras do século XIX: antologia (Florianópolis: Editora Mulheres; Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNICS, 1999). Our book contributes to this growing body of archival and interpretative research on these overlooked writers, proving their significant contributions as mediators, editors, critics, and translators within the literary system.

This book proves that Carvalho, Délia, Carmen Dolores, and Almeida were significant participants in the production of literature and journalism. Furthermore, they formed a network of writers who supported and inspired each other as they collaborated for the same newspaper. This network allowed them to share ideas, cultivate their writing skills and bolster one another’s voices in a predominantly male-dominated field. They nurtured a creative environment that challenged conventional narratives and fostered a sense of solidarity among women writers. Their collective efforts not only enriched their individual contributions to the newspaper but also laid the groundwork for future generations of female writers. However, their legacies as a group of writers with diverse voices have been widely overlooked. Despite their meaningful impact in the literary and journalistic spheres of the Brazilian Belle Époque, the contributions of these women have often been marginalised in traditional literary histories. The absence of women from the traditional literary narrative raises important questions about how the Brazilian literary system has been constructed and interpreted. Without the inclusion of women’s voices, as producers and not only as consumers of literature, this transmission remains partial and distorted, failing to fully reflect the diversity of Brazil’s cultural and social landscape.