Feminism, politics, and hats

The year can also be highlighted for being the last in which the writer used the pseudonym Ecila Worms (see Chapter 3). This end of cycle did not result in any reduction in the frequency of Almeida’s contributions to O País, nor did it cool her enthusiasm. Burning topics kept coming up, and tackling discrepancies remained on the agenda, sometimes indirectly and sometimes explicitly.

Two weeks after her final pseudonymous text, on 18 September 1901, Almeida published her chronicle ‘Para a morte!’, in which she treated feminism as something inherent to the present time (See Figure 4.1). The emotional intensity of this chronicle is suggested by the exclamation mark that crowns its title. The text opens with poetic-philosophical reflections on tradition and change, after which the columnist comments on the relationship between Emma Goldman’s anarchist lectures and the assassination of the US President William McKinley (1843–1901), which had taken place a few days earlier.1 Emma Goldman was an anarchist leader of Lithuanian origin who settled in the US. Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Emma Goldman’, Encyclopedia Britannica, <www.britannica.com/biography/Emma-Goldman> [accessed 4 Jan. 2024]. This text is a concrete example of how the writer does not shy away from political, philosophical, and social themes. She gives her opinion on a thorny subject, in the heat of events: she nominally deals with feminism and uses rhetorical resources in search of women’s unity, but she also directs the harshest criticisms towards the anarchist leader, whose ideas allegedly encouraged murder, according to the prevalent interpretation at the time.

Feminism did not appear frequently in Almeida’s chronicles. In this one, however, following a metaphorical introduction, she presents it unabashedly:

Moving into the realm of the ephemerality of life and the inevitability of change, the chronicler presents a point of view on feminism as a product of the times, which women and men would have neither the means nor reason to avoid. In the excerpt above, one can note the repeated use of ‘the woman’, in the singular, as one of the rhetorical resources employed in an attempt to identify with and gain the adherence of her readers, even though the chronicle begins by highlighting the singularities of women. As for timeless issues, such as the observation about the ephemerality of life, it is worth highlighting the absence of a religious explanation for life, or a Christian foundation that alludes to some divine explanation for events. There is none. On the contrary: one could argue that the formulation ‘Everything transforms, everything ends’ echoes the scientific discourse of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, which would not be surprising at that turn of the century. Whether the intertextual dialogue was intentional or fortuitous, it is noteworthy that (without leaning on religion and perhaps leaning on science) the writer is trying to convince her readers of the need to unite in order to engage in a social struggle for greater equality: men are characterised as occupying positions of power and responsible for women being banned from occupying those same spaces.

The feminist struggle is presented in this chronicle not as something that women would voluntarily join or refrain from joining, but as an imposition of the present time, and therefore unavoidable; and the goal of feminism would be ‘to storm the heights that men dominate and from where men repel them’ – repel women, if you will pardon the repetition. The expressive image of the ‘heights’, materialising social spaces of power, invites contemplation whether about Almeida’s position of prestige in the newspaper, or the recognition that men’s predominance in these spaces represented an obstacle for women, for those who occupied or aspired to occupy such spaces. It’s worth bearing in mind that, ‘precisely for being a woman’ (as Silva stated in Chapter 3), Almeida had been blocked from occupying a seat at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, founded a few years earlier in 1897.3 Michele Asmar Fanini, ‘Júlia Lopes de Almeida: entre o salão literário e a antessala da Academia Brasileira de Letras’, Estudos de Sociologia, 14, 27 (2009) <https://periodicos.fclar.unesp.br/estudos/article/view/1941> [accessed 4 Dec. 2023].

The writer recognises the complexity of the subjects addressed in the text and explicitly refers to the effect of such complexity on herself: ‘I, who am writing these confusing things, because I feel confused by them in my soul’.4 Almeida, ‘Para a morte!’, p. 1. Nonetheless, she does not shirk away from writing, enjoying the freedom to do so and exploring the flexibility of the chronicle genre, which is not subject to the constraints or pretensions of a scientific essay and which, for this very reason, allows seemingly disparate subjects to be intertwined: feminism, anarchist utopia, murder, work, social needs, and femininity, all of which are intertwined in this journalistic column.

Today, inevitably, we observe the simplistic representation of women from ‘the old days’, as if they were reducible to a single trait: the chronicler does not distinguish between times, spaces, or social classes. As for the women of her time, less simplification is applied: the final paragraphs of the chronicle are dedicated to a scenario of social crisis, misery, and, within it, working women, with demands that differ to those of her supposed readers, if we can even homogenise the readers:

For rich and poor alike, in the image crafted by the writer, the defining traits of femininity are or should be associated with kindness and pacifism, both linked to motherhood. Her ideal of femininity is conservative compared to other social spaces and times. The struggle she defends does not take up arms to ‘storm the heights’ occupied only by men, but assists in the creation of a collective consciousness, which also means a disturbance of the consciousness of her class, on issues that women were not invited to speak about. Despite the limitations, Almeida clings on to her space in the newspaper, working on a variety of topics. In this issue, anarchism, political assassination, and feminism; in the next, hats, theatre, and opera.

The next chronicle, entitled ‘Ah, os chapéus!’ (‘Ah, the hats!’), was published after just a five-day gap, which was unusual. As the title suggests, fashion had not left the writer’s radar, even though the ‘A Moda’ column had ended. In this text, however, the chronicler does not describe Parisian customs, she does not suggest fabrics, colours, or prints. Instead, she concentrates on analysing social customs, criticising the use of bulky hats in theatre shows in Rio de Janeiro, echoing a complaint by playwright Arthur Azevedo, also a contributor to O País, and joining the chorus of those who demanded that women stop wearing hats in the theatre, due to the accessory hindering the view of other spectators.

She describes the hats worn by the bourgeois ladies in a humorous, mocking tone: ‘a luxuriant and fertile bed of cabbage flowers’, ‘a straw lid’, ‘the abundant vegetation and violent poppies of a hat invented for the blonde Ceres!’, ‘a hat made of pigeon wing tips, thorny rose stems, tulle, diamanté buckles, feathers and other such things’. After the mocking, the analysis begins: after all, why do women wear hats in the theatre, ignoring the constant pleas and complaints about them? The columnist’s hypothesis is that individual choices are subject to traditional uses that are hard to change and social pressures that are hard to ignore:

The chronicler extends her exposition beyond the present day, and beyond Rio’s theatres: she travels through time and space to analyse how men and women adorned themselves to take part in artistic and religious ceremonies in ancient Greece and Athens. After presenting the historical and cultural backdrop, with which she gives the chronicle a veneer of erudition, our attention is abruptly directed back to modern times. There are two contrasting images: one of an Athenian woman returning from the theatre ‘eager to communicate the emotions of her pilgrim soul to the discreet sitar and the dreamy lyre’, and one of a Rio de Janeiro woman returning from the theatre eager to ‘get home, to take off her hat, which weighs like a world on our heads’.7 Almeida, ‘Ah, os chapéus!’, p. 1.

The contrast brings humour back to the text and prompts reflection on habits and customs. Whatever the reader decides about the accessories to wear on her next trip to the theatre, Almeida (as herself and not under a pseudonym) returns to the subject of fashion as if to declare her freedom to deal with whatever subject she sees fit, from the most serious to the most prosaic. Her tone is less prescriptive than analytical; the humour prompts reflection and suggests a change in customs, in line with the old Latin expression ‘ridendo castigat mores’ (‘one corrects customs/morals by laughing at them’). Starting with hats, the chronicle allows itself to make a historical digression through which it detaches itself from the demands of the present and begins to analyse, albeit lightly, the ritualistic function of clothing and the movement of women through public spaces.

Other aspects of female sociability and women’s political participation would appear in the following years, during the period of regular collaboration.