"Por Eu Ser Mulher": as estratégias patrimoniais das mulheres em Pernambuco no século XVIII.

Abstract

In the 18th century, the captaincy of Pernambuco was the scene of several political clashes and disputes, and was also the setting for the performance of a group of white women who, as "marriage heads", made several requests and established a channel with the Portuguese Crown. From a legal and religious perspective, the female sex was, by various instruments, regulated and controlled, due to a supposed incapacity of women and because they were always at the level of submission in relation to the man, be he father, husband or son. By making requests for guardianship and administration of their children, requesting permission to appoint them to positions that they owned, these women exercise a power and act in a paradoxical way to a historiography that for a long time let them live on the margins. Thus, we focus on discussing how the "socially disqualified" women used the laws as an instrument of exchange, which through justice promoted a space of conquest.