The political, social, and economic changes effected by emancipation in Brazil were not attended with violent disturbance as was the case in the United States. Generally, the act was favorably received, although great hardship was caused to many individual slave owners. So far as this measure has affected Brazilian women, the result may safely be assumed as making for their uplifting. Woman has been stimulated to greater activity, intellectual, domestic, and social.
Of the emancipated race it can hardly be doubted that they are in better state. In the large cities where the negroes constitute a large proportion of the population, as in Bahia, their condition betokens relative material prosperity and physical content. A most characteristic picture is presented on a holiday by a Bahian negress, when the occasion permits of the racial indulgence of lavish display. Her deckings are dazzling in color and bewildering in variety,--dress ornaments and air of self-satisfaction offer a moving picture that cannot well be forgotten. In the many industries of Brazil where manual labor still holds relatively great preponderance over mechanical, the negroes furnish a very considerable part of the labor, as also in the work of the great haciendas. What may almost be termed a general industry is the preparation of manioc or mandioca, the cultivation of which was considered of such importance in colonial days as to be obligatory. It is an article of almost universal use in Brazil, and the free negroes of to-day are no less skilful in cultivating and preparing it than were their forbears in slavery days.
Since the inauguration of the republic of Brazil there are but few women of whom notable mention has been made. It has been a period of transition and adjustment in which woman's activities, though constantly exercised in patriotic endeavor and toward social progress, have not found the record that they merit. Nevertheless, we get a glimpse of the character of the later womanhood of Brazil in the words of Senhora Campos-Salles,--the wife of a recent president,--addressed to her husband on the occasion of a political revolution in the State of San Paulo: "You must forget to-day that you have a wife and children and remember only your duty to your country."
The social and domestic life of woman in Brazil is still largely influenced by European customs. The senhorita's chaperon is still regarded as a conventional desideratum, and courtship, if not quite as much a "long distance" communication as among the Puritans of New England when the "courting-stick" was in vogue, is yet largely regulated according to the customs of the mother country, and generally involves the presence of the family. As in the political, so in the social world, however, the spirit of the New World has entered and the Brazilian woman is very gradually throwing off restraints which European convention has put upon her, and is participating more generally and prominently in intellectual, social, and political affairs. In social progress and amelioration, in educational and charitable activities she is taking place as an accepted leader. In the elementary schools for girls the instruction is entrusted exclusively to women, who, on the other hand, are also found in charge of those for boys. There are special institutions provided for the education of girls in "all womanly arts," and in addition to this the State provides them with a dot for the purchase of a wedding trousseau and a suitable housekeeping equipment.
In art and literature the names of Brazilian women have gained honor,--among painters, Senhoras de Andrade and Bertha Worms,--and among writers, Senhoras de Bivar, de Almeida, and de Azeredo. Senhora de Almeida has established and edited a paper devoted to the feministe movement in Brazil.
While the list of notable and noted South American women is far from exhausted by these names, enough has been said to show that below the equator as well as above it there has been advance and change. Yet it must be confessed that in South America the march of feminine progress has thus far been very slow and is still confined, as already said, to individuals rather than manifested in national or racial movement. It may yet broaden into this; but the omens are hardly propitious. The restraining and clogging influence is rather of racial than masculine nature; it is less that the men look upon the advanced woman as a lusus naturæ, though this also is broadly true, than that the women are not racially capable of working out their own salvation in this line. Thus far the movement has been almost entirely productive of leaders only; there is no rank and file to give it strength and continuity. There is ardent enthusiasm; but it is confined within narrow limits. Yet he would be a rash prophet who should foretell that these circumstances will continue to prevail, and it may well be that the signs may develop into conditions and South America prove a close follower, if not a pioneer, in the march of feminine advancement and culture.
CHAPTER IV
THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT
We have now reached the point in our consideration of the women of our own land where we are free to turn to the story of the American woman as she is generally known the woman of the United States. Of course scientific ethnology recognizes no such nomenclature, giving the title of "American" only to the aborigines of this continent; but we who write and read this work are not concerned to be scientific but rather perspicacious on the one side and perspicuous on the other, and the generally accepted nomenclature will be adopted here and the woman of the United States and the mother-colonies spoken of as being, by right as well as acceptation, the American woman to all other lands and ages.