2 - The Educator

Summary

Throughout her work, Floresta's discussion of women's rights and responsibilities, condition and role in society is invariably founded on the question of education. In fact, it is on the subject of women's education that Floresta's participation and place in Brazilian Letters should first be established: her early works are almost exclusively devoted to the education of girls, and whilst later publications address a wide range of social issues, the question of education continues to pervade her work. In fact, Floresta's entire opus might be said to be didactic in its purpose, although for most of her writing career her ‘pupils’ are adult and by no means only women. In her discussion of the 1857 essay ‘A Mulher’, Duarte observes the text's ‘caráter nitidamente formativo, pois, mais que informar, pretende formar consciências’, and this claim can easily be extended to Floresta's writing as a whole. Moreover – and of immense significance in an analysis of Floresta's positioning regarding female education and for a wider evaluation of her vision of useful womanhood – she also transcribed thought into action through the Collegio Augusto, the school for girls that she ran for eighteen years in the Brazilian capital.

In this chapter I will therefore look at both Floresta's teaching career and the education she prescribed for women in her writing, and the prominent discrepancies between the two. I will also briefly identify the arguments used to defend women's equal education in Sophia's Woman Not Inferior and trace the influence of Floresta's translation through her own work.