The College of São José: catholic femaly education in the nightth century northeast

Abstract

From the mid-nineteenth century, Brazil began to receive many European schools in its mais cities. A large part of them was devoted to teaching wealthy girls. Among these schools, we highlight the College of São José, which had italian origins and was linked to the order of Doroteias sisters that arrives in Recife in 1886, settling in the Soledade neighborhood. It was within this instituition that the whiter Magdalena Antunes (1880-1959) studied in her younger years, from 1891 to 1896. In her mature years, she whote a memoir and autobiographical work entitled “Oiteiro: memories of a Missy-girl” (2003) where, among other details of her life as a girl, the daughter of planters, Magdalena brought to the pages of her book records of the moment she was admitted as a student at the aforementiones school. The College of São José evidencced a pattern of female education idealized by the patriarcal society of the time, however, in another way, it allowed wealthy girls and women acess to formal learning at a time whwn illiteracy in Brazil was quite strong, especially among the women. In this way, from an interdisciplinary methodological perspective of bibliographic and documental analysis, our work aims to bring some aspects of the history of this educational instituition taking as source the aforementioned memoir in dialogue with other equally important sources souch as: the enrollment books (1866-1919) and the Statutes of the College.