“O discurso soletrado no feminino”: o engajamento de mulheres no movimento abolicionista na cidade do Recife (1884-1888)

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the female participation in the abolitionist movement in the city of Recife, between the years 1884 and 1888. For this, we investigated how abolitionism used public spaces in order to attract the adhesion of various social groups, thus changing the forms political participation. With newspapers of the time and historiographical studies, we analyzed how this process made possible the insertion of female militants, emphasizing the relevance of this participation in the associations created in the context after March 25, 1884, when the abolition of slave labor in Ceará is consummated. In the capital of Pernambuco, we highlight the activities of the female society Ave Libertas, which was created and composed only by women. We brought here some documents left by the members of this female group and journalistic publications related to the activists, which we investigated in order to explain the ways in which the female activists act. From the analysis of these records, we found that female engagement provided a greater discussion about the political skills of women in the 19th century, thus breaking social rules constructed by the expectations of gender roles. Therefore, the investigation uses gender as a category of historical analysis, in addition to the precepts of Social History and microanalysis, observing through the concept of historical experience, the characteristics of different social groups and making interpretations about social and historical changes. In this sense, we verify how the activists for the abolitionist cause collaborated with the studied social movement, contributing in a primordial way to the political changes effected at the end of the empire.