SEDUCTION, MATERNITY AND MARRIAGE: THE CASE OF YOUNG ANNA MARIA DE SOUZA (MARIANA, 1750)

• Autor(a) principal: Sales Dias, Beatriz
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Mosaico (Goiânia)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.pucgoias.edu.br/index.php/mosaico/article/view/13526
• topic: História das mulheres; Maternidade; casamento; Minas Gerais; Brasil colonial; Women; Maternity; Marriage; Colonial mines

The objective of this work is to understand, through a criminal process of deflowering, from 1750, in the city of Mariana, Minas Gerais, some aspects of the situation of women seduced and pregnant in the colonial period. We believe it is fundamental for understanding motherhood in this period, to perceive the reality of women who became single mothers after promising to marry, considering that this was, precisely, a resource of the Catholic Church to train the female population. When working with a legal source, we tried to observe how this female character presented herself and how she was judged by the judicial apparatus. We tried to establish a comparison between the arguments she evoked in her favor and those raised by her adversary — in this case, the father of her child — before the courts. Analyzing the process in detail, we seek to better understand what this woman's objectives were when she went to court and how she benefited from the resolution of this dispute.