Reading for girls

The chapter ‘Os livros’ (‘Books’) in the Livro das noivas (1896) deals prescriptively with the reading education of women. Pigeonholing women as ‘infinitely tender, sensitive, vibrant, delicate beings, [who] are duty-bound to adore poetry’, considering that ‘the sacred mission of women’ is motherhood, the writer (imbued with the posture of a preceptor) advocated that women’s reading should ‘be healthy, well done’; as a consequence, ‘well-educated taste will be passed on unblemished and effortlessly to their children’.1 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Livro das Noivas (3rd edn, Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Alves, 1914), p. 39, <www.literaturabrasileira.ufsc.br/documentos/?id=131300> [accessed 6 Nov. 2023]. It should be made clear, however, that the text is not limited to this, that the normative tone coexists with a more descriptive angle, which observes the disobedience of daughters in the face of excessively strict rules imposed by their parents, for example, the ban on reading certain authors. Symptomatically, there is a grain of salt amid the apparent sweetness of the advice, in the observation that women are not only taught by their parents, nor by their preceptors.

In Lajolo and Zilberman’s analysis, ‘breaking with the obscurantist tradition and recommending contact with books, Júlia Lopes de Almeida nevertheless maintains the prescriptive discourse that restricts reading, censoring works that do not have a moral or pragmatic background and condemning so-called escapist texts’.2 Marisa Lajolo and Regina Zilberman, A formação da leitura no Brasil (São Paulo, Ática, 1996), p. 263. The authors emphasise the uniqueness of the advice given by a woman novelist. Almeida really was novelist: in the year of the first edition of Livro das Noivas (1896), she had already published her novels Memórias de Marta (1888–1889), A família Medeiros (1891), and A viúva Simões (1895) in serialised form, and the second of these had already been published in book form (1892).

The Livro das noivas survived the test of time: its second edition was published in 1905, the third in 1914, and the fourth in 1926. Bearing in mind the time that passed between the different editions and the social changes she experienced and witnessed, would the author endorse the same recommendations to the brides? Would she eternalise the same advice, edition after edition?

In the year in which the second edition of Livro das Noivas was published, Almeida’s chronicle ‘Leitura para moças’, published in O País, replied to a letter from an unidentified man from Rio Grande do Sul,

The letter writer asks for – and the columnist grants – a public response, which is elevated to the status of broad advice, aimed not at one bride, nor at all brides, but at girls in general. It should be noted that, in opting for the word ‘girls’ instead of ‘brides’ in the title (which can be translated as ‘Reading for Girls’), marriage to an extent loses its character as the defining element of female identity.

The columnist’s response is more conceptual than practical:

In search of ‘poison-free’ books that could be useful for training his future wife, the groom was looking for pragmatic or doctrinal teachings that reaffirmed his values and, hopefully, were accompanied by a book list. Among fiction books, he would certainly reject the naturalists, considered immoral because they dealt with sex, desire, and corporeality; he would also reject the realists, because they represented life without idealisation, in its pains, fevers, and sins. The groom’s search for ‘some lasting benefit’ is in line with the impression given by the Livro das noivas, according to which a woman’s supreme mission is summarised in motherhood and raising children, and reading should therefore be useful for the fulfilment of these functions.

For someone who wanted a guide, or a short list of books, the answer must have sounded evasive. The columnist could have replied with the same text signed in 1896; she could have recommended that the groom buy his future wife a copy of the recently released second edition of her Livro das noivas. Why did she not do that? Had the writer reconsidered her own recommendations? Might she, over time, have adopted a less prescriptive attitude? Or, in 1896 was the writer responding to an editorial demand of a more moralistic and pedagogical slant than the atmosphere in journalism in 1905?

It is worth remembering that her chronicles may have been largely fictional. The letters, fiancés, and pleas for advice may have been fictional resources for a new expression of an old theme.

Whatever the reason, the writer chose not to rehash the old text and not to advertise the Livro das noivas. Instead, she produced a new text centred on the relationship between art and morality, and she did so in an assertive manner. She based the difference between male and female readings on men’s independence; therefore, on a social issue, and not one intrinsic to the texts. Without mincing her words, without extenuating circumstances, but also without making a fuss, the columnist identified female dependence by describing the letter writer as independent precisely because he was a man: ‘Accustomed to his independent readings, man’s readings’. According to her, the difference between books for men and for women did not lie in the subject matter or the style, but rather in the tutelage exercised over women readers, who were not even allowed to choose their books. When she was invited to act as a preceptor, as an instrument to help the groom guide his bride’s readings, the chronicler responded under the guise of a lecture to defend an art that did not seek obedience to restrictive principles: ‘novels made with a concern for morality, as well as immorality, are always bad, flawed, unworthy of a writer and an intelligent reader’.5 Almeida, ‘Leitura para moças’, p. 1.

Nevertheless, some guidelines can be extracted from the text: ‘It is necessary to identify […] novels born pure, in which kindness does not deceive the conscience’.6 Almeida, ‘Leitura para moças’, p. 1. There is a hint of moralism in this quasi-selection, which does not prevent her from praising the reader’s intelligence and rejecting texts that ‘deceive the conscience’, naive texts or texts aimed at naive readers. Curiously, the chronicler no longer uses the word leitora, which is the word for ‘female reader’, when theorising about art and morality. Thus, once again, she refrains from distinguishing between art for women and art for men. This is a subtle but important detail.

Her conception of art, albeit brief and vague, approaches realism: ‘Life has no secrets; why should the book in which it is reflected have any?’.7 Almeida, ‘Leitura para moças’, p. 1. Aware of the social moralism to which her text speaks, the columnist includes it in the text in the form of an interrogation that materialises the voice of those in disagreement: ‘Does it [life] not have any secrets? What about the children? What about the virgins?’.8 Almeida, ‘Leitura para moças’, p. 1.

The social moralism of her time would have preferred, censoring certain titles and themes, to select books suitable for both children and girls, not by chance lumping childhood and a degree of naivety attributed to inexperienced young women together in the same bucket. At this point, the inclusion of discordant questions in the chronicle explicitly reveals the moral values of her time, which act like pressure to which she responds by reiterating her principle: ‘there is no immorality where there is beauty and art’. Despite frustrating the expectations of the groom and the ever-vigilant censors, the chronicler ended her text by reiterating her artistic convictions, in a less prescriptive tone than that adopted in Livro das noivas.

The gap between 1896 and 1905, therefore, is wide.