THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN COLONIAL BRAZILIAN SOCIETY: CHRISTIAN IMAGINARY, PATRIARCHAL CONTROL, AND PRACTICES OF RESISTANCE

Abstract

The history of women in colonial Brazil reveals a complex network of social, cultural, and religious controls that conditioned their bodies, their sexuality, and their possibilities for participation in society. This article aims to analyze, from a historical perspective, how the dichotomy between the woman-Eve and the Marian ideal, constructed in the medieval Christian imagination and updated in colonial Brazil, is prolonged and reconfigured in contemporary Brazil, functioning both as a mechanism for legitimizing gender norms and as a symbolic repertoire reinterpreted by women and groups seeking greater autonomy. Methodologically, this is a qualitative research, of a bibliographic and documentary nature, based on reference works on the History of Women, the History of the Imaginary, and the Middle Ages, such as Barros (2004), Duby (2009; 2013), Le Goff (2006; 2013), Macedo (2002), Priore (2004), Zierer (2017), in addition to the First Visitation of the Holy Office to parts of Brazil (1935). This analysis reveals how the medieval dichotomy between the sinful woman (Eve) and the holy woman (Mary) was updated in colonial Brazil, legitimizing a patriarchal model of control over sexuality, marriage, and motherhood. It also shows that, despite strong repression, resistance practices emerged, such as female homosexual relationships and ambiguous appropriations of religious and magical discourses. It concludes that the Christian feminine ideal, elaborated in the Middle Ages, was transplanted and reinterpreted in the colonial world, remaining as a device of memory and gender normalization to the present day.