Sertão das “muié séria”? Convenções de gênero e rebeldia feminina em processos judiciais em Jacobina (BA)

Abstract

Historically, gender representations linked to the semi-arid regions were permeated with stereotypes that associated the masculine with hard work, virility and bravery, while the feminine was associated with the idea of submission, seriousness and de-eroticization. This article aims to engage with some of these representations that appear crystalized in cultural manifestations produced in the Brazilian Northeast, seeking to confront them with discourses and practices that emerge from the analysis of specific historical sources. Based on the analysis of judicial proceedings for crimes against customs and municipal newspapers from Jacobina, Bahia, in the 1940s and 1950s, it is possible to observe that, while patriarchal values were predominant in the discussions, they were constantly subverted in the everyday experiences of men and women from the semi-arid region. It is noteworthy that gender binarism, which instituted strict opposition between men andwomen, although traditionally associated with a “backwards” worldview typical of rural sociabilities, was constructed and legitimated as a project of conservative modernity, based on European science. Saidproject established marriage as a norm and justified the imprisonment of sex to marriage. In Jacobina, the dissemination of this ideal occurred precisely in a period of great economic development, due to the rediscovery of gold in the city. In this context a project of sanitization and policing of moralsemerged, which associated anideal of modernity to that of morality. Against this project, which reinforced the ideal of feminine purity and normative conjugality, young women from Jacobina dared to defy paternal authority and lived their desires, withoutbeing imprisoned by the model of chaste, sweet and resigned femininity propagated by the dominant classes and relatively shared within their social environment.