1 - The ‘Translator of Wollstonecraft’

Summary

Floresta's literary career, her engagement with the discourse of women's emancipation, and her subsequent canonisation as Brazil's first feminist, begins in Recife in 1832, and it begins with a bang. Her first published text, which appeared under the full title of Direitos das Mulheres e Injustiça dos Homens, por Mistriss Godwin. Tradusido livremente do Francez para Portuguez, e offerecido às Brasileiras e Academicos Brasileiros por Nisia Floresta Brasileira Augusta, is the first known work to be published in Brazil dealing directly with the issues of women's intellectual equality and their capacity, and right, to be educated and participate in the active processes of society on an equal footing with men. Moreover, it is without doubt amongst the most radical and forceful in the claims it makes for women of any such text published throughout the nineteenth century, original or in translation. The title alone is direct and combative and its contents amount to a firm and succinct deconstruction of the traditional arguments for male supremacy and female submission, concluding that women possess all the attributes necessary to play a full and equal role to men in spheres as diverse and elevated as the teaching of the sciences, government and military employment. Furthermore, the text maintains a consistently caustic tone, belittling men's actions and ridiculing their irrational thought processes. With her name attached to such a revolutionary piece of writing, it is not surprising that Floresta has been hailed by many of her commentators as the precursor of women's emancipation in Brazil.