CORTEM AS CABEÇAS: A CONSTRUÇÃO DOS ACESSOS E DIREITOS DA MULHER NO OITOCENTOS

Abstract

The historiography has built a certain image of women in the nineteenth century as being docile, fragile, tied to the family and subjected to the domestic obligations. This century was responsible for accentuating the rationality of harmonious sexual division. It would be up to man the command role in social spheres while the woman should be satisfied with the submission. However, these assertives do not show the search of the women, even in the nineteenth century, for accesses and rights. The women went to fight together with men for better working conditions, higher wages and led to food riots. In other words, women moved spaces whose occupation was predominantly female. In Brazil of the nineteenth century is possible to find women who, like the "men of letters," wrote stories for newspapers, participated in abolitionist clubs or simply denounced their violent husbands to the police. The roles of submission, weakness and docility of women can not be verified in practice without the necessary resistence and irresignation wich marked the authoritarian impositions. This is what was found in a survey of the criminal cases and police matches involving women in the District of Vitória /ES, recorded between the years 1850 and 1871. Even without the knowledge of the juristical orders
these women showed that inequality should not be tolerated and received from the society, through the decisions of the judging instances, certain support and sympathy for their situation. From the evidentiary method and qualitative analysis of the sources was perceived as ordinary women drove to the police and judicial authorities to require the application of laws in resolving their disputes.