Don Quixote in a skirt
Between 1906 and 1912, Júlia Lopes de Almeida had a fixed weekly slot in the newspaper. As one may imagine, her constant presence allowed her to deal with the most varied subjects, especially cultural aspects of life in Rio de Janeiro (visual arts, theatre, literature, flower and art exhibitions), children’s education, nurseries, low income housing, modernisation and urbanisation projects, animal abuse, tuberculosis, public health, travel, feminism, and a multitude of other topics, which are intertwined in the apparent unpretentiousness of the genre.
Beyond the themes, we are interested in emphasising a structural aspect of the chronicles of this period: how the columnist’s voice intermingled with other voices, forming more plural than individual arguments. This interweaving of voices is built up, for example, by the creation of fictional characters who bring some diversity to the text, by the use of short quotations, and also by the direct and extensive expression of third-party speeches.
Through characters who discuss the routine of marital relationships (in dozens of fictional sketches, published alongside the chronicles), Almeida embeds both sexist and feminist opinions into the newspaper’s mosaic, sometimes reiterating, and sometimes challenging, the status quo. A husband, for example, limits his wife’s belonging to the private sphere, while comparing her to objects and functions:
My wife is as indispensable to me at the table as bread, a salt shaker, a bottle of wine, or a napkin. […] No matter how much I try to disguise it, I feel a deep, almost repulsive disappointment when I do not find mine – similar to the feeling a methodical, self-indulgent old man with painfully calloused feet might experience when he cannot locate the familiar, comforting pair of slippers by his bed, precisely when he needs them most. For her, perhaps, the husband is something more intricate; for the husband, however, the wife is above all a habit. As for me, I cannot live without mine, not even when I think about the others.
1 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Reflexões de um marido’, O País, 22 Jul. 1907, p. 1, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/14624> [accessed 14 Dec. 2024].In contrast, a female character who is interested in cheating on her husband offers more generalised reflections that, while not diminishing the importance of men, endow women with humanity and criticise the social structures that limit them:
In consciousness, there are no men or women. There are beings with equal natural rights, the same difficulties and equal responsibilities …
But there is no way for men to accept similar truths. They have woven society with meshes of two sizes – large for themselves, so that their sins and faults pass through without leaving a trace; and extremely small for us. The slightest of our ‘flirts’ is quickly caught in the meshes as irrefutable proof of a grave crime! And the most striking thing is that we’ve convinced ourselves of this!
2 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Reflexões de uma esposa’, O País, 18 Feb. 1907, p. 1, <http://memoria.bn.br/DocReader/178691_03/13432> [accessed 14 Dec. 2024].Through this collection of male and female characters, Almeida added voices to the ‘polyphony’ that defines the newspaper – to use Marie-Ève Therenty’s expression. According to the French researcher, the newspaper is ‘un lieu authentique de la polyphonie’ (‘an authentic place of polyphony’).
3 Thérenty, La littérature au quotidien, p. 62. Some of its textual forms, such as the interview, make the newspaper a space for ‘collection de toutes le voix de la nation’ (‘the collection of all the voices of the nation’).
4 Thérenty, La littérature au quotidien, p. 69. In a country as unequal as Brazil, with extremely high rates of illiteracy, no-one is under the illusion that all voices were represented in the press, but there does seem to have been some movement, albeit small, towards a greater plurality of voices, as evidenced by the inclusion of women as columnists, and also as characters full of irreverent ideas.
We shall, therefore, see how Almeida intersperses even other voices with her own, starting with two chronicles, both entitled ‘Women-club’. In the first, the chronicler reproduces a letter from a friend (whose name she does not reveal) who reacts to jocular comments made against a text of hers. In short, the author of the letter is also a journalist and had defended the training of women for work. The Portuguese journalist João Luso (pseudonym of Armando Erse de Figueiredo) had reacted sarcastically by advocating the training of women only for domestic chores. The letter reiterates the defence of professional training and lays bare the indigence of single women (maidens, orphans, widows, or those abandoned by their fathers or husbands). From exposing the lack of basic rights, based on financial dependence, the letter writer broadens the scope of her argument and goes on to defend the right to vote:
I must confess, however, that I cannot help but smile when men express the opinion that women voters would corrupt the ballot box … The seriousness with which they perform the ‘sacred duty of voting’ perhaps authorises this idea which, after all (it pains me to get this off my chest!), is not fair at all. If a woman can run her own business, as so many do, give her name to commercial companies, have current accounts in banks, be a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, if a woman can govern a country as queen – and history proves that nations prosper under the rule of women – why should she not be capable of choosing the men who should govern her country?
5 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Women-club’, O País, 4 Feb. 1906. pp. 1–2, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/10824> [accessed 4 Dec. 2023].After having surrendered practically the entire space of the chronicle for her friend’s text, the chronicler closes by simply agreeing with the adjective used by the critic: ‘Indeed, João Luso is right. This friend of mine is a dreamer!’ Nonetheless, it is clear that she alters the sense of the word ‘dreamer’, stripping it of sarcasm and turning it into a compliment. After all, the financial instability of unmarried women, the lack of formal education, and the limited participation of women in the labour market had been and would continue to be the subject of some of her journalistic and fictional texts.
Just over a year later, in her second chronicle entitled ‘Women-club’, Almeida interlaces a few different texts: a book she is reading, two anonymous letters she has received, both dealing with the creation of ‘feminist clubs’, and also the memory of a visit she had received over a year earlier, when a lady had defended the same subject. Almeida highlights the engagement of wealthy women, in ‘five o’clock teas’ and in the press, to defend the rights of the ‘oppressed’:
If the elegant woman, the lady who lounges in the salons and only takes to the streets in the wings of a motor car or on the cushions of a carriage, is already interested in women’s rights in the liberal professions, the conquest of divorce and other stirring laws, then we have made it!
‘Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut’. We must be patient. These are the women who will get anything done. The cry of the oppressed has reached the heights; from there the word of justice will come down. It even sounds like a verse from the Bible.
6 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Women-club’, O País, 29 Jul. 1907, p. 1, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/14684> [accessed 4 Dec. 2023].Who are the oppressed to whom the columnist refers? She likely means the women mentioned above who are the most deprived of their rights due to a lack of financial resources for their upkeep (among other things). The correspondent’s argument was that the lack of professional training prevented these women from earning a decent living on their own. Furthermore, although the chronicler and her friend refrain from mentioning it, women in general were also oppressed, even the ‘elegant’ ones in the salons and even the journalists. Analysing the situation of French women, Marie-Ève Therenty considers:
[T]heir status as minors in the eyes of the law still inscribes women in a relationship with the world that is totally different from that of men. The abrogation of a certain number of essential rights, especially in the case of married women – freedom of choice of métier, independence of resources – puts a real brake on an activity such as journalism, where one needs a certain freedom, but more generally and in an undoubtedly more insidious way, it also entails a totally different worldview.
7 Maria-Ève Therenty, Femmes de presse, femme de letres, De Delphine de Giradin à Florence Aubenas (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2019), p. 11.It stands to reason that the same dependency was perceived and felt by Brazilian journalists like Almeida and her friend, and that this perception made them sensitive to the demands of other groups and willing to defend them. In other words, defending the rights of marginalised social groups seems to be part of a movement to make an unequal, unjust society explicit, in which the journalists recognise the limitations suffered by themselves and their equals, but put the spotlight on the limitations suffered by other groups.
Almeida sometimes takes a cautious stance, refusing to assume a leading role in the social struggles explained in her column, even seeming to put the brakes on other people’s initiatives:
However, I don’t know why, but this idea of a women’s club, designed just for feminist debates, frightens me. We have abused subversive words so much that they no longer have much suggestive power. It seems to me much more practical and, above all, much more pleasant [instead of founding women’s clubs], to continue with these one-off ‘five o’clock tea’ sessions, precursors of great transformations and which are reported extensively and with sympathy in the press …
Let’s contemplate this, ladies: it’s easier and more certain for us to impose our opinions on men by pretending to allow them to take possession of them, than it is for us to assume the imperative attitude of someone who wants them to be accepted by force. A club is a dangerous challenge. It is worth reflecting on.
8 Almeida, ‘Women-club’, 1907.While adopting a cautious stance in these two paragraphs, the writer dedicates the rest of her chronicle to the audacious ideas of others, who propose actions in favour of education, health, diet, professionalisation, art, support networks for poor mothers and teachers … the list goes on. The columnist describes one of the formulators of this action plan as ‘Don Quixote in a skirt’, who ‘had too many ideas to be understood’:
It was a very broad fantasy, very varied as a whole, which I’ve hastily summarised in these short lines, and which should be maintained in Rio de Janeiro with the resources of Rio women, without distinction by class, age, race or name. It was the feminine soul in the face of all the problems and calamities in which humanity finds itself, acting without discussion, seeking to perfect the future without insulting the past …
Nobody took this Don Quixote in a skirt seriously. We all knew that reality is to these dreams what a puff is to a soap bubble. Sometimes a soap bubble looks like a star, lit up by the colours of the prism, and yet is no more than ether.
9 Almeida, ‘Women-club’, 1907.The quixotic lady is probably the one mentioned in the first chronicle entitled ‘Women-club’ in 1906. Without stealing the ideas of others, the chronicler still presents the inspiring plans of other ladies, describing them positively, and revealing a certain melancholy at the difficulty of executing them.
The quixotic ideas would return once again in the chronicle ‘Um pouco de feminismo’ (‘A little bit of feminism’), in which Almeida reacted to the derision, irony, and violence with which Brazilian men responded to women’s struggle for the right to vote:
It would be wise not to laugh too much at women’s claim to vote their country’s men into the highest offices of public administration, lest they later experience the disappointment of realising that they’ve wasted their precious time battling against a cause that moves forwards and will reach its desired destination regardless.
It would be better to leave happiness for happy things, irony for bitter or ridiculous matters, and to observe with impartiality and tranquillity the movements that shake society nowadays, seeking, in order to understand them well, to study their fundamental causes. The mocking laughter that greases the face of the selfish bourgeoisie in this case is not only offensive, but also pointless. Pointless, gentlemen, pointless.
10 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Um pouco de feminismo’, O País, 13 Jan. 1908, p. 1, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/15096> [accessed 7 Jan. 2023].The repetition of the adjective ‘pointless’ is one of the resources used to build up the indignant tone of the text, directed against the superficial and irrational male reaction, which disregarded the achievements of the feminist movement. Another resource is the belittling and ridicule of the male incredulity, against which the chronicler rises as the voice of reason, shielding herself in foreign conquests. In England, she reports, the suffragette movement had received official support:
It is a strong breath, blown by thousands of mouths, heated by thousands and thousands of interests, that has been overturning the most deep-rooted and centuries-old prejudices and has now dictated to a man of prestige in the old and very powerful England, a conservative, traditionalist, unsuspecting country, the declaration that it is impossible to refuse women the right to vote any longer.
It is not, of course, through fear of women that British politics has afforded them this frank and formal revelation of support from the mouth of its minister of war, but because their cause seems worthy of attention, absolutely clear and just.
11 Almeida, ‘Um pouco de feminismo’.The columnist broadens the scope of the Brazilian feminist movement, reinforcing it with English news and by alluding to the ‘thousands of mouths’ that took part in overthrowing prejudice and building a fairer society. On a discordant note, however, she reveals her personal lack of interest in voting, although she then diminishes the importance of individual positions in favour of a greater interest:
For me, with my eyes set on other aspirations, the right to vote does not seem to be worth much sacrifice; but my humble personality disappears in the growing outcry demanding the creation of a law that gives both sexes the right to choose the government of their common country.
12 Almeida, ‘Um pouco de feminismo’.Self-declared humility forms the columnist’s public image; in statements of this kind she reveals some detachment from feminist struggles. The title of the chronicle, ‘A little bit of feminism’, is a nod to the game: it is about feminism, but only a little bit! Should one believe in this detachment? After all, the declaration about herself is small, punctual, in a text that is almost entirely explicitly engaged.
We understand that this image – sympathetic to the feminist movement, but free of radical commitment – may represent her personal position on feminism, but we cannot rule out the possibility that it was a survival strategy for the columnist in the predominantly male world of journalism. This strategy includes the use of some (to say the least) modest statements about herself, when her text dares to venture into explicitly political issues. For example: when defending the cause of housing for workers, the chronicler diminishes her own importance by declaring herself a ‘poor, busy housewife’ who ‘doesn’t understand these things’.
13 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘O pão e o lar’, O País, 18 Mar. 1906, pp. 1–2, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/11076> [accessed 15 Jun. 2022]. In another chronicle, she reiterates at greater length her incompetence as regards politics:
I don’t think it will be difficult to have everyone who knows me believe that I know absolutely nothing about politics!
At my age, this ignorance is no longer a natural peculiarity of the sex, but a notable defect of intellectual capacity, which I regret more than anyone else.
14 Júlia Lopes de Almeida, ‘Da Bahia a Minas’, O País, 22 Apr. 1907, p. 1, <http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/178691_03/13858> [accessed 17 Jul. 2022].One may note that she expands the scope: ignorance of politics concerns not only herself, but the female sex as a whole. Why would she say that when she delves into political issues, whether everyday local issues or affairs of international interest and reach? Returning to Virginia Woolf, it is possible that this self-image and, even more so, the supposed dissociation between the female gender and politics, were strategies through which the chronicler responded to criticism, minimising her power, belittling herself, insisting on the association between woman and home. Underneath the self-attributed label of incompetence in the public sphere or lack of interest in the conquest of rights such as the vote, there is a writer who is engaged in public aspects of women’s lives and who participates in extending the reach of the female voices of her time, even if she does so within socially accepted limits.