Abstract
This article aims to analyze Lady Maria Callcott’s unfinished manuscript intitled Life of Dom Pedro and its representation of the violence suffered by Empress Maria Leopoldina in the palace. By comparing Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, published in 1824 by the same author, I argue that the Graham’s travel narrative in 1824 represents Dom Pedro as a politician and statist, while her unfinished manuscript, posthumously published, reveals the emperor’s cruelty, possessiveness and perversity through her description of his marriage with empress Leopoldina, who became a close friend of Lady Callcott’s. Disputing Regina Akel’s argument, in which she contends that the traveler’s memoir of Dom Pedro is a means of self-promotion, and comparing the 1834-1835 narrative to biographies of Dom Pedro I and Maria Leopoldina, I conclude that Callcott’s manuscript is a historical document that denounces the emperor’s ill treatment of his Austrian wife.
Key words
Maria Graham; Lady Callcott; Empress Leopoldina; Don Pedro I; travel literature