Ana de Castro Osório and the Portuguese Republican woman: vehicle of regeneration of the nation and of preservation of the national identity.

Abstract

In the beginning of the twentieth century, women in Portugal were granted very few rights as citizens; however, women served an important role in maintaining a strong sense of national identity and the purity of the Portuguese race, both of which were major concerns for Portuguese identity at the time. Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935) — writer, women´s rights advocate, and a prominent personality in Luso-Brazilian culture at that time — is intimately related to the history of this national agenda. This Master´s thesis aims to demonstrate that in her writings Castro Osório urges the development of an education system to all women. Educated, bourgeois women would be able to be better companions for their husbands and educate their children. In addition, single and women of the lower classes could work and be economically independent. Castro Osório emphasizes the role of bourgeois women being the educators of the future generations and being able to maintain the nation´s identity by preventing racial and distinctive national traits from deteriorating. In her view, this would ensure that strong, healthy republican citizens of the future would better represent the nation. Specifically, Castro Osório argues that bourgeois mothers should organize campaigns against illnesses, illiteracy, and crime in order to save the poor by imposing bourgeois values on them. In this regard, her writings reveal interesting findings concerning a “campaign for the health of the race” (Foucault 1979: 146). iii Abstract In the beginning of the twentieth century, women in Portugal were granted very few rights as citizens; however, women served an important role in maintaining a strong sense of national identity and the purity of the Portuguese race, both of which were major concerns for Portuguese identity at the time. Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935) — writer, women´s rights advocate, and a prominent personality in Luso-Brazilian culture at that time — is intimately related to the history of this national agenda. This Master´s thesis aims to demonstrate that in her writings Castro Osório urges the development of an education system to all women. Educated, bourgeois women would be able to be better companions for their husbands and educate their children. In addition, single and women of the lower classes could work and be economically independent. Castro Osório emphasizes the role of bourgeois women being the educators of the future generations and being able to maintain the nation´s identity by preventing racial and distinctive national traits from deteriorating. In her view, this would ensure that strong, healthy republican citizens of the future would better represent the nation. Specifically, Castro Osório argues that bourgeois mothers should organize campaigns against illnesses, illiteracy, and crime in order to save the poor by imposing bourgeois values on them. In this regard, her writings reveal interesting findings concerning a “campaign for the health of the race” (Foucault 1979: 146). Her novels show that this national agenda was not limited to Portugal but extended to new Portuguese immigrant communities that had been established in Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century. Castro Osório was particularly concerned with avoiding miscegenation among Portuguese people in these communities and other European men who arrived in Portugal´s ex-colony at the time. Thus, I conclude that Osorio’s writings were “a mobile discourse of empire” (Stoler 1995: 58) that extended beyond Portugal’s national borders and were a clear part of contemporary concerns to keep the Portuguese race pure around the world. Castro Osório´s speech enlightens a nationalistic and republican agenda that wishes to make Portugal a stronger European country to the world.