Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil, 1889-1999 / Sônia Roncador.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roncador, Sônia, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brazilian literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Brazilian literature.

Household employees in literature.

Household employees--Brazil.

Household employees.

Master and servant in literature.

Brazil--Social life and customs--20th century.

Brazil.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

ix, 240 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

This book demonstrates the symbolic centrality of servants in Brazilian intellectual discourse (fiction, memoirs, conduct literature, and journalism) over the course of one century-from the aftermath of the abolition of slavery (1888) to late twentieth-century maids' testimonies. It explores the spectrum of demeaning images of servants to examine the ways intellectuals reconciled the burdened legacy of servitude with Brazil's road to modernization. While the first chapters examine the discourse of "the servant problem," revealing the elite's power anxieties vis-à-vis post-abolition transformations of domestic social contracts, later chapters explore new nuances of cross-racial conflicts facing contemporary servants' grassroots movements and the increase in female white-collar employment. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Júlia's Maids: Servants in the Cultural Imaginary of the Tropical Belle Époque 23

2 "My Ol' Black Mammy": Childhood Maids in Brazilian Modernist Memoirs 69

3 "How to Treat a Maid?": Misencounters with Servants in Clarice Lispector's Journalism 117

4 Writers in Aprons: Brazilian Servants' Testimonios 153.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137353795

1137353791

OCLC:

858610634