Regulation and transgression: free and slave women and sexual offenses in the nineteenth century (São Paulo 1830-1888)

Abstract

The research project proposed aims at analyzing the relationship between the established norm and the transgressions recorded, judged and punished about crimes of sexual nature in which the women were involved and were defined as criminals or victims in the city of São Paulo under the Criminal Code of the Empire of Brazil. In order to carry out such an objective, in addition to the study of specialized historiography, we intend to: a) understand and interpret, from a study of the nineteenth century legislation, the place given to women in relation to sexual practices considered as transgressions to be punished by the State; b) analyze, from the study of the crime cases, how they were constructed in the daily, of police stations and courts, zones of tolerance or of more rigor in the treatment of the crimes practiced against and/or by the women in São Paulo in the eighteenth century; c) evaluate, in particular, how slave and freed conditions affected the fate of women in the analyzed processes when compared to free women involved in crimes of a similar nature. The study focuses on the main urban nucleus, as well as the rural areas of São Paulo during the nineteenth century, the province's headquarters, administrative center and an important element of the backbone of an internal supply economy. Over the course of the century, São Paulo has become an exportation center, a place marked by the presence of a significant number of women who, due to being the wives of merchants, widows, slaves of miserable lords, among other circumstances, ended up acting as chiefs and/or family providers'. The main documents and sources that will be analyzed are crime cases, records of police occurrences and "terms of well-being" produced in the imperial city of São Paulo, that can be found in the collection of the Public Archive of the State of São Paulo. (AU)