As representações da mulher em Minas Gerais no século XVIII: uma percepção histórico-social

Abstract

Under a common and traditional conception, women in Minas Gerais in the 18th century were always subject or necessarily subject to a male figure, be it their father, husband, or some other man. Despite this interpretation regarding the woman's history, I saw reports that they owned several assets, and were therefore more independent as a result. It is based on this dissonance between women's subordination and their autonomy that the present work was based on the hypothesis that these differentiations were due to purchasing power, marital status, and race. For that, I used public records and studies about that period, as a kind of materialization of reality, based on the study of Martineau's things, which have them as good historical-social search mechanisms to understand the analyzed society. Also, I used the “Archaeology of Knowledge” and the “Microphysics of Power” by Foucault; “Male Domination”, by Bourdieu; and Sousa Santos's “emerging and dominant paradigms”. In this scenario, through Foucault's archaeological method, I observed the details of this feminine independence, because, while white women, who conquered independence from widowhood, lived off the inheritance left by their deceased companions running the inherited businesses, women black women were forced to autonomy due to post-slavery freedom or pregnancies resulting from non-consensual relationships. Thus, it is evident that characteristics such as race and marital status were, in fact, directly related to women's independence, which occurred in a limited way, as demonstrated. Keywords: Woman. Minas Gerais. XVIII century. Female independence. Brazil-colony.