Maria Amália and the dynamics of cultural circulation

Her texts had a target audience, as she herself made clear in her first piece, which is important because it reveals the terms under which she was invited:

The chronicler remained faithful to the mission assigned to her, so much so that she made a point of engaging in a dialogue with her audience, often referred to as ‘dear (women) reader(s)’. She would ask questions: ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken to you before …’, ‘you know who I mean …’; and anticipate reactions: ‘At this point, you, the reader, stop, somewhat surprised and somewhat upset, don’t you? And ask me in amazement: What on Earth? You are of this opinion …’; or she reaffirmed the objectives of the long lectures, ‘almost exclusively devoted to the moral, sentimental and intellectual interests of the sex to which we both belong’. There is, therefore, an evident strategy of adopting a colloquial tone, that of someone who advises and teaches, in an effort to establish bonds of trust, affection and closeness, objectives that are already made explicit in her opening chronicle:

In the layout of O País, chroniclers’ texts were preceded by the word colaboração (collaboration), in bold capital letters, followed by the name of the column, which is how Maria Amália was presented, appearing on the first or second pages, alongside articles of varied content. Her contributions were not constant: sometimes they were published at short intervals, sometimes over a long period of time. Longer absences would be justified upon resumption of the section: ‘Long time no see, my dear (woman) reader. Sickness, persistent sickness […] has taken me, against my will, away from you!’.4 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Conversas Lisbonenses’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 241. The immediately preceding contribution was dated 23 October 1885. The most pronounced absence was between 13 June 1886 and 11 April 1887.

As far as the name of the column is concerned, it was only from 1887 onwards that there was an explicit reference to female readers in ‘Cartas femininas’ (‘Female Letters’), unlike the previously favoured title ‘Conversas Lisbonenses’ (‘Lisbon Conversations’), soon adjusted to ‘Conversações Lisbonenses’ (‘Lisbon Conversations’), which emphasised the geographical space, ie the city of Lisbon. The name was also adapted when the columnist was travelling, reverting to ‘Cartas do Campo’ (‘Letters from the Field’) when she was away from the Portuguese capital. Also noteworthy are the titles ‘Cartas a Luiza’ (‘Letters to Luiza’) and ‘O romance da viscondessa’ (‘The Viscountess’ romance’), which internally organic texts were published over several editions. The column ended on 14 June 1889, with no formal farewell or explanation from either the newspaper or the columnist. Still in the same year, it reappeared on three occasions on the pages of O País, twice in August and once in September, but these isolated texts were not part of the previous set, hence why they were given specific titles.

There is no doubt that the theme of women was the Ariadne’s thread, not just in the texts of O País, but in all of Dona Maria Amália’s work, which was always laced with a pedagogical tone. Her choice of and approach to subjects became hallmarks in her affirmation as a professional writer, in demand beyond the Portuguese borders, at a time when conventions about the social roles of women and men were beginning to be challenged in terms different to those she had heralded in her contributions to the Brazilian newspaper, which were distinguished by a lack of greater combativeness in the face of women’s social situation.

One can highlight in the chronicles her defence of the family, her insistence on the role of wife and mother, good housekeeping, ways of dressing and behaving in society, children’s education, with particular emphasis on girls, the importance of honour and morality, (in)appropriate reading, submission to one’s husband and condemnation of divorce, which had just been approved in France (1884). She argued that with divorce,

In line with the stance that restricted women’s actions to the private sphere, she insisted on the importance of organisation of the home. Upon entering this space, the visitor should immediately be able to judge the qualities of the person in charge, as can be seen in the excerpt below, which contains recommendations and advice repeated in similar terms on several occasions:

The much-defended female education, another theme that is constantly revisited, did not speak to emancipation, but rather was aimed to instil an awareness of the high duties that nature and society imposed on the gender. In her view, inadequate education was even more harmful, as exemplified in her analysis of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. The father’s efforts to provide his daughter Emma with a refined education turned out to be the cause of her fall from grace:

Literature provided her with a rich source of information on the subject. Thus, she meticulously analysed the Alexandre Dumas character Francillon,8 Alexandre Dumas Filho, Francillon. Pièce en Trois Actes (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1887). whose fate differs from Bovary’s tragic end thanks to the prudence of the heroine who, faced with her husband’s betrayal, did not follow his example: ‘she stopped herself in time, stepped back from the edge of the abyss, still remembering the advice her mother had given her’.9 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Cartas Femininas’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 315. Meanwhile, Sabina’s journey in the Octave Feuillet’s novel La Morte10 Octave Feuillet, La Morte (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1886). warns of the dangers surrounding scientific education, jealously supervised by her devoted uncle. Maria Amália, although disapproving of the character’s attitude, was indignant at the results imagined by the novelist, who subordinated Sabina’s attitudes to the application of Darwinist precepts, with which the chronicler disagreed and considered the book ‘truly disconsolate to the point of the most intimate and profound desolation’.11 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Conversações Lisbonenses. O Último romance de Feuillet. O Problema do Casamento e o Problema da Educação’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 276.

Throughout the chronicles, she would call on various circumstances and arguments, using examples from real life and from literary works in order to clarify and defend her point of view, according to which education should be adapted to the designs inherent to the functions that women should perform. In these terms, the aim was to make her ‘understand and subject herself to the fatality of things’, considering as educated those who ‘have refreshed their spirit, strengthened their understanding, and fully understood the destinies of the family’.12 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Conversações Lisbonenses. As Crises do Casamento. Problemas Insolúveis, Atenuantes Possíveis’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 136. Acceptance, submission, and attachment to religious morality were among the constantly prescribed remedies. At the time, her struggle did not include the

It is contradictory that she uses herself as an example to advise against investing in the intellectual field, as can be seen in the following passage:

These conformist-based positions had the corollary of dialogue with the transformations that marked the late nineteenth century. Technical innovations, scientific progress, novelties in the field of transport and communications, the perceived acceleration of time and shrinking of space, the invasion of everyday life by artefacts that mediated the reading of the world were, at once, a source of admiration and pride, but also of distress at the social consequences of a world that was increasingly secular and based on rationality. Carvalho avoided discussing these issues, oscillating between the pride of belonging to a century that accumulated ‘discoveries made in order to improve the destiny of man, from the humblest applications of industry to the highest syntheses of philosophy!’, and regret: ‘So many contradictions hurt us today! So many moral deformities sadden us, so many inconsistencies bewilder us, so many contrasts between what is thought and what is practiced tear our hearts apart, dull our conscience!’.16 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Conversações Lisbonenses’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 123. Tension ran through her reflections, whether on women and politics, the female characters in novels, the neurosis of modern life, without ever losing sight of the audience at which her chronicles were targeted.

In 1909, long after she had stopped writing for O País, she expressed a more nuanced position while clarifying her removal from feminism: ‘I’m not one of those people who unconditionally approve of the sudden and violent invasion of women in all the regions where just a short while ago only men ruled, sovereign and exclusive’, which did not deter her from also declaring: ‘I like many things about the feminist movement’, making a point of specifying:

In her pieces published in O País, the author did not limit herself to tediously repeating the ideals she defended at the time. While it is true that the general theme remained constant, the content of the chronicles dealt with the most diverse subject matters: literary works, the political situation, faits-divers, free will, determinism, art exhibitions, theatre premieres, book launches, adultery, divorce, modern pessimism, to name but a few. Thus, the reader would come across texts relating to the passing of illustrious figures, whether from the field of culture, such as the writer Vitor Hugo and the Portuguese actor António Pedro, or royalty, such as D. Ferdinand, D. Alfonso, and Emperor Frederick. Attention was paid to various events, whether Queen Victoria’s jubilee or a new tour by Sarah Bernhardt, and to the profiles of prominent intellectuals, such as the Portuguese Alexandre Herculano and Camilo Castelo Branco or the Spaniard José Zorrilla y Moral, as well as fires, earthquakes, and epidemics.

Although the essayistic tone predominated more often than not, she did resort to fiction in the series entitled ‘The Viscountess’ Romance’. To support her arguments, she engaged literary, pictorial, musical, theatrical, philosophical, historical, anthropological, legal, and medical references, demonstrating her vast culture, up-to-date understanding and mastery of production in different fields of knowledge. The chronicles mentioned a diverse range of novelists, playwrights, philosophers, jurists, and doctors, with precise references to works and quotations of excerpts, which attested not only to her extensive culture, but also to her commitment to always be up-to-date, especially in relation to French publications.

This profusion of authors and cited works deserves special attention. The development of systematic indexes of works and individuals she references in O País takes up several pages and includes authors from Classical Antiquity to the latest Portuguese and French editorial releases. The chronicler did not just quote, she presented, commented, reproduced excerpts, evaluated and positioned herself in relation to philosophers, writers, scientists, and artists. Among those most frequently referenced were Dante Alighieri, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Jules Michelet, Hippolyte Taine, Arthur Schopenhauer, Molière, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Émile Zola, the Goncourt brothers, as well as Portuguese names such as Camilo Castelo Branco, Eça de Queiroz, Ramalho Ortigão, and Oliveira Martins.

It should be borne in mind that Maria Amália’s column was published, for years on end, in a leading newspaper in the capital of the Brazilian empire, which had a significant circulation during that time. It is quite likely that her references and comments on theories and authors were not part of the repertoire of the vast majority of her female, and indeed any male, readers. It should also be considered that the morning paper did not circulate only in select circles, but rather reached a wide and heterogeneous audience, which was (in)formed by its writings. On the other hand, by subscribing to the dominant ideology regarding the role of women, Maria Amália’s positions were echoed in the Brazilian economic and cultural elites and gained legitimacy because they were expressed by a renowned foreign contributor, in clear and direct language, in the tone demanded by the newspaper medium, which did not prevent her from using sophisticated analyses that covered different fields of scientific and cultural production and contributed to the circulation of cultural goods between the two sides of the Atlantic. Nor is it irrelevant that she occupied the pages of O País between 1884 and 1889, that is, while slavery was still in force, before it was abolished in May 1888, and prior to the Proclamation of the Republic in November 1889.

The chronicler, who could be considered an intellectual mediator,18 On this concept (intelectual mediadora, in Portuguese) see: Angela Maria de Castro Gomes and Patrícia Hansen (eds), Intelectuais mediadores. Práticas culturais e ação política (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2016). shared her discoveries, as she explained in a chronicle dedicated to the Spanish poet Adolfo Bécquer, ‘for the consolation of my vanity, I dare to hope that the reader does not know him too, and I come to recommend him, bringing you some information on the genre of his poetry’.19 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, ‘Conversações Lisbonenses’, in Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Conversas Lisbonenses e Outros Escritos (1884–1889), Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Tania Regina de Luca (eds), p. 189. Her translation skills were evident in her Portuguese versions of some poems, as well as her concern to place the poet in a broader setting:

On several occasions, Carvalho endeavoured to present letters, poems and excerpts from novels in Portuguese. For example, we can cite the verses of the German poet Heinrich Heine, translated from French, or the attention paid to the production and correspondence of Jules and Edmond Goncourt, from which she quoted excerpts. It is worth noting, in the case of the Goncourts, that the chronicler was in tune with the journalistic practices in vogue at the time, which focused not only on the works, but were also interested in the figure of the writer, themselves characters in modern life. This led to a growing interest in writers’ daily lives, the way they worked, the intimacy of their office, their personal dramas,21 Marie-Ève Thérenty and Alain Vaillant (eds), Presse et Plume. Journalisme et Littérature au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2004). as can be seen in the excerpt from a letter sent by Edmond to Zola:

She presented recently published letters from Charles Darwin, always with the declared aim of awakening the reader’s desire to read and get to know authors, the same attitude that comes through in a chronicle dedicated to the Russian novelists, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. After talking about the authors and recognising the importance of their works, she concluded:

In addition to introducing Brazilian readers to deceased writers, such as those mentioned above, in her almost 100 columns, one can identify some that are dedicated to commenting on or reviewing specific books, whose title and/or authors were often printed in the subtitle of the column, as can be seen in Figure 1.2. This work of presenting editorial production alongside the translations and the abundant quotations, reinforces her role as a mediator between cultures that were very close, but nonetheless diverse.

While she was a columnist at O País, she published Cartas a Luiza. Moral, Educação, Costumes (1886),25 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Cartas a Luiza. Moral, Educação e Costumes (Porto: Barros & Filha, 1886). Alguns Homens do Meu Tempo (1889),26 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Alguns Homens do Meu Tempo: impressões literárias (Lisbon: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, 1889). and Crônicas de Valentina,27 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Crônicas de Valentina (Lisbon: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, 1890). published in 1890, with a prologue by Ramalho Ortigão dated October 1889, an indication that the volume had been prepared the previous year, when she was still writing for the Brazilian newspaper, or immediately after she left it. In the following decades, her output continued to grow, with more than a dozen titles published, several of which were reprinted successively. Given that the first editions did not always specify the date of publication, it is difficult to establish a precise chronology. This is the case, for example, with Contos Para os Nossos Filhos,28 Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and Gonçalves Crespo, Contos Para os Nossos Filhos (Porto: Editor Joaquim Antunes Leitão, 1880(?)). organised with Gonçalves Crespo. Most references indicate the year 1886, that is, after her husband’s death, while other sources mention 1882. It is possible to find lists of her works, although they are not exhaustive, and neither are they devoid of errors.29 See, for example, Antero de Figueiredo, Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Speech Delivered at the Solemn Session Held at the Lisbon Academy of Sciences on the Evening of 17 March 1918 (Lisbon: Livrarias Aillaud e Bertrand, 1918), pp. 56–59.