“To write, to be useful to society”: An analysis of Myrthes de Campos’s intellectual output

• Autor(a) principal: Silveira, Mariana de Moraes
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Ibero-Americanos
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/index.php/iberoamericana/article/view/39891
• topic: Law; Press; Women intellectuals; Derecho; Prensa; Mujeres intelectuales; Direito; Imprensa; Mulheres intelectuais

Myrthes de Campos (1875-1965) is widely acknowledged as the first woman to have worked as a lawyer in Brazil. She received her law degree in 1898 and made her debut in a jury court the following year. Even though she often published in major newspapers and legal journals and presented contributions to academic conferences, her trajectory has received scarce attention from the point of view of intellectual history. This article presents an analysis of a group of texts in which she discussed the civil capacity of women, abortion, and jury courts. It argues that “the first woman lawyer” acted in ways that were more complex, contradictory, and challenging than depicting her as a pioneer or as an exceptional subject may suggest. By putting Myrthes de Campos’s writings in dialogue and in tension with her contemporaries, it aims to contribute to the study of women as intellectuals, as well as to the understanding of the changes legal practices and discourses underwent throughout the first decades of the twentieth century.