Abstracts
The present article discusses the rising and consolidation of one of the most expressive pioneer zones of the State of Sao Paulo, the northwest, accentuating the importance earned by regional press on the first decades of the 20th century. Amongst several topics lined daily by local newspapers, women's issues were one of the most recurring ones, as women were becoming the target audience of an educational and "civilizing" process, perpetrated by local press, as demonstrated over this text.
gender; press; Northwest of São Paulo
O artigo discute a emergência de uma das zonas pioneiras mais expressivas do estado de São Paulo, a Noroeste Paulista, destacando a importância adquirida pela imprensa regional no ordenamento daquele espaço nas primeiras décadas do século XX. Evidencia que dentre os inúmeros assuntos pautados cotidianamente pelos jornais locais, a temática feminina foi uma das mais recorrentes, num mesmo movimento em que as mulheres se tornavam o público-alvo de uma espécie de processo educativo, "civilizador", perpetrado cotidianamente pelos impressos, conforme o texto pretende demonstrar.
gênero; imprensa; Noroeste Paulista
ARTICLES
Press and women's education on a pioneer zone: the case of the northwest of São Paulo (1920-1940)
Professor of History and education Historiography, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU). raqueldiscini@uol.com.br
ABSTRACT
The present article discusses the rising and consolidation of one of the most expressive pioneer zones of the State of Sao Paulo, the northwest, accentuating the importance earned by regional press on the first decades of the 20th century. Amongst several topics lined daily by local newspapers, women's issues were one of the most recurring ones, as women were becoming the target audience of an educational and "civilizing" process, perpetrated by local press, as demonstrated over this text.
Keywords: gender; press; Northwest of São Paulo
THE ARARAQUARENSE SERTÃO: AN EXPANDING PIONEER AREA
Travelling through the interior of São Paulo state in the 1930s and 1940s in search of data for his doctoral dissertation, the French geographer, Pierre Monbeig (1908-1987), then a professor in the recently created University of São Paulo (USP), identified the pioneer zones in the state as places of real economic, cultural, ethnic, and social 'tumult:' "the transformations are so rapid that everything that can be written enters quickly into history," the author said, very impressed by the rate of development of that part of the state (Monbeig, 1984, p.19).
This was a geographic space in a region of relatively recent colonization, such as Ribeirão Preto, for example, which was called the 'old West' at the time of the geographer's trip, and where 'new wests,' in other words, new pioneering zones emerged with great economic strength. About this the professor stated:
It frightens the european when he hears a city such as Ribeirão Preto called old, somewhere which has existed for less than three-quarters of a century; he will find it difficult to understand that 'yore' signifies 1910 or even 1920, if the person to whom he is speaking is young. everything happens as if this country experienced in seventy-five years, a century at the most, what took millennia in europe. Certainly it is this: the birth and formation of the rural landscape, the foundation and growth of cities, the construction of a communication network, the mixing of races, the preparation of a regional mentality, such as the immense work which is still going on before our eyes. (Monbeig, 1984, p.23)
While the city that was the symbol of the 'old west' was Ribeirão Preto, without a doubt the icon of the 'new west,' from those times and afterwards, was São José do Rio Preto, identified in the maps reproduced in Figure 1.
There the author observed the great flow of migrants and immigrants to work in the new plantations and cities, the intense racial miscegenation, and the rapid development of the means of communication. He also noted the destruction of the forests which had previously existed in the name of capitalist progress. This progress, in fact, rapidly came to be the order of the day for those who Monbeig called the pathfinders and pioneers of the Paulista sertão.
Settlers were suddenly transformed into ranchers, grileiros (squatters) who assured their possession of the land with their Winchesters, small and large land holders, planting not just coffee, but also cotton and corn, as well as subsistence crops in general. It was also those who raised cattle and muares (mules) who created the fame of the city and the region, owners of unstable fortunes, which sometimes changed hands due to the international situation of the agricultural products grown.
It is interesting here to highlight that in the middle of the deforestation and the creation of plantations and farms, small villages became towns, and small towns became large urban agglomerates which took shape, as is the case of the emblematic São José do Rio Preto, known in the region since the 1920s as the "princess of the sertão."
This moniker revealed at the same time the distance from da capital, São Paulo, and the inexorable process of transformation through which the cities in the pioneer zone were undergoing. However, it also hid the more obscure and much less noble sides of the 'princess' in question: the high levels of illiteracy found in the region, the absence of school at all levels for those who could not pay for studies in the existing confessional institutions, the high rates of mortality among the poorest parts of the population especially child mortality amongst others (lodi, 1967; Campos, 2003; Carvalho Jr.; Mahl; Campos, 2011).
A sign of the contradictory development then underway, the city housed various types of schools, school groups, the gymnasium, and the 'normal' school, used by the children of the urban middle classes who had come to reside there. It also housed a santa casa (a Catholic charity), vocational schools, clubs, bars, a theater, cafés, brothels, a railway, banks, medical and dentistry clinics, small and large hotels, taxi ranks, cinemas, shops, and an uncountable number of establishments for entertainment, health, teaching, and services, which rotated around a newly born urban lifestyle.
However, this style little extricated itself from the rural world which was ultimately the driving force of local development. enrollments between 1927 and 1928 give us a panorama of the city's economy at that time. Album Illustrado da Comarca de Rio Preto, a work published in 1929 with the aim of giving greater visibility to the city and to Araraquarense in the national context, provides an unofficial survey of this.
The publication of albums and almanacs was the fashion in the cities of the Paulista interior in the first decades of the twentieth century. Data from this type of publication, therefore, have to be read taking into account the propagandist intention of their artifices. Moreover, when analyzing them it is worth thinking about how many professionals and commercial establishments remained outside the published lists, for not having paid to appear or for not having connections with those involved in the publication.
Evaluating Table 1, it can be perceived that in the middle of the 'cinematographs' and "billiard,"bars and cafés,' town spaces par excellence, there stand out the activities with a strong connection with the rural universe: the spaces concerned with processing cereals, the sale of firewood, the manufacture of guns, the sale of hardware, etc.
After all, it was this interconnection between the urban and rural universes, between an archaic sertão and at the same time modern, that made the pioneer zone of the Paulista Northwest.
It is also interesting to note that the places and professions listed and which seek to demonstrate the local 'strength' are almost exclusively occupied by men, with the exception of 'family boarding houses.' of the 14 listed, eight were commanded by women. It is also notable that a large part of the surnames of the professionals were or Italian, Spanish, or Arab origin, revealing the strength of immigration in the composition of the local population: Capatti, Pacci, Angerami, Nicoletti, Cambiagui; estefan, Duarte, Tarossian, Navarro; Callil, Cury, Daher, Jammal, Barbor, Mansour, Chacon, Saad and many others.
THE PRESS AND CIVILIZATION
Amongst the numerous urban enterprises existing in the region in the first decades of the twentieth century, as listed in Table 1, above all, there stand out the means of mass communication which multiplied in those decades, not just in São José do Rio Preto, but in a heterogeneous manner all over the western world: the radio, cinema, magazines, and most especially, the newspaper, urban symbols par excellence.
Social researchers of the press are unanimous in stating that the newspapers of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as transforming themselves into a product of the then newborn cultural industry, also converted themselves into the great public tribunals of the time. Famous in this respect are the national campaigns carried out against illiteracy, leprosy, tuberculosis, and various other subjects deemed to be important by the elites and the Brazilian middle classes. Moreover, the newspaper became spaces of sociability among the educated who idealized them and circulated them (Sevcenko, 1999; luca, 2006).
As demonstrated by Cruz (2000), the press at the period was an extraordinary personality in the construction of the experience of urbanity, since it was a foundational element of the urban social fabric. It gave visibility to the process of inventing public spaces, at the same time that it projected over cities the demands of different social groups. Irrespectively of being formed by newspapers and magazines with large or small print-runs, it was in itself a historic agent of capital. Also according to the author, the press and the city emerged amalgamated in the western world, thus the intrinsic relationship between one and the other, or in other words between journalism and urban life.
In the case of the publications of José do Rio Preto and the surrounding region, it was no different. In this pioneering zone of recent occupation, it was through the pages of Correio de Mirassol, A Notícia, O Município and A Cidade, published in Mirassol, São José do Rio Preto and Catanduva, respectively, where all the questions deserving of being discussed appeared, as believed by those who wrote in the press in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, the regional educated culture was connected through their newspapers, the modern was now interiorana and constructed in them projects and disputes for the city.
For this reason, they now constitute precious sources for the historian who proposes to interrogate them looking for answers to various questions: gender, environment, education, society, politics, literature, etc. In fact, the historian may never completely exhaust the documents, and they can, as Antoine Prost demonstrated, "always question them again, with other questions, or use to express other methods" (Prost, 2008, p.77). Moreover, while the document "is at the same time true and false," it is always necessary to "shed light on the conditions of production and show to what extent the document is an instrument of power," in accordance with the classic proposition of Jacques le Goff (2003, p.525), what can be said about the press, multifaceted sources par excellence?
In the case of the newspapers considered, it has been shown through their systematic analysis that they reveal cultural and social practices of the educated groups which rapidly occupied that time/space, in other words, the first half of the twentieth century in the Paulista pioneering region. Furthermore, the newspapers uncovered the ways of living and thinking of those who sought to daily educate the inhabitants of this zone through the intermediation of various institutions, such as schools, beneficent institutions, religious congregations, and especially newspapers (Campos, 2003 and 2009).
Doctors, politicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and intellectuals of various types of renown were concerned with the construction of the local press. As well as these groups, as the 1930s came to an end the figure of the journalist was also strengthening. The more the press sought to appear as a product and less as an opinionative broadsheet, the more the figure of the press professional was strengthened an individual supposedly exempt in relation to the various interests present in the social world.
It is impossible to understand the urban dynamic of the region at those times without taking into account the circulation of the daily newspapers, which commented on the daily life of Rio Preto and other cities, but which beforehand echoed the news from Brazil and the world, while at the same time re-signifying this. They provided the agenda for local public debate and the social life of readers in general.
Newspapers from the interior of São Paulo did not only inform. Rather, they sought to order things and people in the pioneer zone being constructed. As a result, the pretensions of the men involved in this practice were truly Promethean: "The press from the interior is and if it is not, can be, a gigantesque force, capable of constructing or demolishing institutions, making or unmaking administrations, and establishing or dissuading political creeds or conventions" (A Noticia, 1932).
THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PAULISTA WOMEN
If we think, similar to Norbert elias, of a process as an 'unplanned path,' and a civilization as the 'transformation of human behavior,' undoubtedly we can state that the Araraquarense press sought to play a role of 'civilizing the customs' of the inhabitants of that region (Elias, 2006, p.36).
Among these inhabitants the figure of the woman stands out, depository of the most noble responsibilities of that pioneering zone: taking care of her husband and children, 'adorning' the social life which they were part of, providing charity to the poor, taking care of the sick, the old, and the helpless in general, and also being beautiful, healthy, and strong in all ages of life.
Therefore, it is not by chance that in the middle of the numerous subjects raised by the newspapers from the pioneer zone in those times, the feminine was one of the most recurrent.
As the historiography dedicated to the theme has shown, at that period the women of various ethnicities, generations, and social classes became the target public of a clear normatizing process, perpetrated by a myriad of authorities, notably the medical, legal, and religious, amongst others, which sought on a daily basis to discipline them through the intermediary of various practices: counselling, legislation, prohibitions, awards, etc. (Rago, 1985; Perrot, 1992; Matos, 2003).
This process occurred in the wake of the complex and heterogeneous reconfiguration of the social role of women which, at the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was gradually transformed in an irreversible manner, causing at times admiration and at times the estrangement of all those involved.
Women occupied political and professional spaces that until then had been exclusively masculine, thereby becoming the protagonists of their own history. At the same time, their existence within the home was overvalued, in accordance with the consolidation of the bourgeois family canon, built, above all, on the euphoria of maternity and childhood.
It is important to highlight that in this absolutely nuanced and contradictory phenomenon they were at the same time subjects, because they actively operated in the construction of the refusal of the stereotypes linked to their public and private identity, and objects, because they were the targets of normatizing intentions that were in the majority masculine but also feminine.
Similar nuances and contradictions can be observed in various parts of the world. In the case of the Paulista Northwest they erupted on a daily basis in the press, the so decanted 'mirror of local society.' In accordance with a shared belief it was necessary to civilize the sertão. However, before this, it was necessary to civilize the Paulista woman, the real constructor of those regions because they were the bulwark of the family of the modern bandeirantes.
When our little hearts do not entirely belong ... we fall asleep without knowing where; and when we awake we receive in our faces the sacrosanct kiss of a doting mother. (A Cidade, 1934)
To the contrary of the Bolsheviks, the fascists understand, and with reason, that the social building could only have a solid foundation in the properly constructed family, whose members are caught in solid ties which are like those of the Roman republic. The national festival of maternity and childhood will be celebrated throughout Italy on 24 December, under the invocation of the Virgin, and will have an ideal type of manifesto, aimed not only at the protection of the mother and the child, but also the preparation of a race that would be physically and morally stronger. (A Noticia, 1933)
One night in the month of August, when everyone was in a profound sleep, the Mother inclined over the cradle in which her little child was in agony. Her heart bursting with pain. (A Noticia, 1937)
Moreover, from the analysis of the printed pages there emerges all types of articles, news, short stories, and discussions, sometimes serious, sometimes jovial, about subjects linked to female conquests of the public space. It is interesting to note here the heterogeneity of concepts about what the Paulista woman should be like. Based on research carried out by an english journalist, for example, we are led to believe that a great concern of women at that time was predictably marriage. even though the content of the research was, after all, that of criticizing husbands.
The journalist had the patience to consult 15,000 ladies and organized a list of capital offenses, with the following classification. 1. Husbands who with an exa-ggerated frequency sought the advice of their mothers (the mother-in-law case). 2. Husbands who snored while sleeping. 3. Husbands who went out at night without saying where they were going. 4. Husbands who criticized the cooking of their wives. 5. Grumpy husbands at breakfast time. 6. Husbands who after twenty years of marriage began to go out with single women. 7. Husbands who read the newspaper and (?) 8. Husbands who think that the household expenses are exaggerated. 9. Husbands who pull all the blankets in the bed onto themselves...
We would like to see the result of an inquiry among husbands. Perhaps their complaints would not be so easy to resolve, as in the case of women, which is actually just a question of a little ability... (A Noticia, 1937)
Nevertheless, the counter-discourse to the status quo, albeit non-hegemonic, was present and very well articulated in an attack on a type that was pejoratively called the mulher prendada (the domesticated woman) and which composed the "plains of the majority." Found on these 'plains' were those whose only aim was to marry, as the columnist sought to show. It is not by chance that an article published in 1932, a year in which women, whether or not they were domesticated, definitely secured the right to vote.
The majority are young domesticated ladies, a type of spiritual cripple who learns French not to read, because French literature is immoral, plays the Sonata Pathétique to the torture of her neighbors' ears and paints to show that painting is not an art but rather an ability. She often recites in charity parties bad verses, chosen by her father, a citizen who fears the Police Chief and the Vicar. Marriage is still the solution. She buys in it a lottery ticket with 90% chance of being unhappy, because the family, church, the opinion of friends, an even the state, all interfere there to proclaim her inferior, in relation to the prerogatives of her husband in the question of paternal power and head of the conjugal unit. (A Noticia, 1932)
It is interesting to note the attack on the rudimentary education of women at the time, as well as the elegy about the financial independence of the young women, who consciously chose not to marry, a clear feminist act at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is also noticeable that she gave herself the luxury of leaving the 'plains' of waiting from her husband because she was economically independent. Intelligent, supposedly free, and "useful to the collectivity" of the sertão, as the author intends.
Personified here is one of the most important themes in the recent history of Brazilian education: she is a teacher and supports herself by teaching. This is another type of marriage. one that is apparently perfect, women and teaching (Souza, 1998; louro, 2002).
One of the most beautiful female souls that I have met told me a short while ago that after reflecting much, she had unhappily decided to remain single. A live spirit, subtle and agile, after 20 years as a teacher she had managed to achieve her economic independence. Due to her physical beauty, acute intelligence, culture, and education, this young women could have found an easy marriage when she wanted. Men of apparent virtues and well-off, a common aspiration of the domesticated young lady, disputed her in matrimony. In her Ivory Tower where she cultivates the personality made from independence, pride, a delicate self-love, loving life intensely, and not understanding vulgar souls. It is supposed that she is waiting from Prince Charming, she who does not want anything but to be free, to have the right to her opinions and carry out her life producing something useful to the collectivity. (A Noticia, 1932)
However, the questions dear to contemporary studies of gender, such as feminism, the right to vote and to divorce, and the need for access to education, divided space in the morning papers with other subjects, more accustomed to the belief in the existence of a type of universal feminine. This had to be accompanied very closely, due to their supposed 'natural' instability, as the educated people from the interior highlighted. From this hypothetical 'universal feminine' their teemed advice aimed at embellishment and body health, fashion and decoration advice, and recommendations of films and plays, amongst other amenities.
In fact, it was through this gate, of 'amenities' that women entered pressrooms as writers, in other words, speaking principally about fashion, beauty, and 'life in society,' the beginnings of current social columns. With a perspective always concerned with the local daily routine, they also observed what was happening in the rest of the world, notably in Brazilian state capitals, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as well as european, such as london and Paris. During the 1930s, with the consolidation of the US film industry, the modern bandeirantes of the sertão were also civilized by the stars of Hollywood.
For now we will turn to the masculine opinions of the women from Araraquarense. The new civilization required 'très chics' or 'elegant' women, depending on the origin of the reference. If possible increasingly cosmopolitan and less 'caipira.' In the following extract, it is the masculine observer who weaves, with the fascination of someone who knows european fashion very well, particularly French, comments about costumes from the state capital, sometimes adopted by women from the Araraquarense regional elite.
If it were not for the reference to colleretes and manteaus, we could at first sight believe that this was a naturalist observer, such as the travelers of the nineteenth century, who took great pains to describe the Brazilian fauna and flora. A description with smooth touches of misogyny, as we will see:
It is almost winter. This uncertain beginning of the season, in which certain re-nards, long forgotten, will once again caress warmly and strongly, with tenderness and perfume, the chilly necks that emerge from the last summer dresses. With the hurried parade of fourrures, along the grey pavements sprinkled by the so typical São Paulo drizzle: petit-gris, otter, vison; exiguous colleretes, enormous renards argentés, the exquisite and luxurious fauna which bring to the streets an intimate odor of the boudoir and the muffled perfumes.
Similar to what the observer of fur coats, though with an antagonistic style, another name, who wrote a column under the French pseudonym Jean Jacques, present in A Noticia in 1936, taught women one of the most recurrent values of those times regarding women: it was imperative to please not only oneself, but, principally the other the husband, the children, society in general.
In the weekly column Para você, senhora... (For you, Miss) J.J adopted a much milder tone than that of the observer of visons, but nonetheless one that was no less prescriptive in relation to women. like a type of 'friend counsellor,' as he himself presented to the readers, the teacher of 'good taste' taught them as follows:
We return today to the delicate subject of the home. From the visitors room, which we describe in accordance with the aesthetic requirements of fashion, we shall move on the dining room. An important enclosure for the entire house. In this room, more than any other place, her good taste and gifts as a good housewife are shown. While the visitors rooms is predisposed to please, the dining room decides in the majority of cases, the opinions which are formed. (A Noticia, 1936)
Numerous example can be listed in the attempt to demonstrate that, in the middle of all sorts of contradictions and dynamics, women in the pioneering zone were the target of a singular education process, because it was characteristic of those regions. It was equally a plural process, found in other parts of the world, as shown by the contemporary historiography. In the characteristic case of Araraquarense, the daily press, understood as a cultural practice of the elites and the educated middle classes of the pioneering zone played an educational role that is difficult to measure in precise terms, but which is still today present in our daily life, particularly in relation to daily teaching about women's ways of being.
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
24 July 2014 -
Date of issue
June 2014
History
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Received
14 Mar 2014 -
Accepted
19 May 2014
