Family and Carnival in Brazil during the 19th Century

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Brazilian carnival is a typical urban festivity. There is no record of rural carnival in the long history of this entertainment in Brazil. This is why this particular form of leisure favorably permits the study of the evolution of Brazilian cities and the changes in the behaviour patterns of the high level urban families, whose members were the agents and main actors in carnival during the 19th century.Carnival is rooted in an old Portuguese entertainment called Entrudo, which was brought to Brazil by the Lusitanian settlers. Up to 1855 Brazilian carnival was the Entrudo. Careful analysis shows that:— It was a family affair from the time of preparation to its celebration.— The women were the most enthusiastic participants. They worked hard long before the Entrudo time, making the perfumed oranges and lemons out of wax, to be thrown at any passer-by.— The Entrudo water-battles always took place between social equals, when a merry-maker attacked someone inferior to him in the social scale. The latter always suffered the water or powder attack without reacting.— Negroes played the Entrudo games only among themselves and had to submit to the attacks of the white men, women or children. Negro women had a passive role during the Entrudo.After 1855, following artificial bourgeoisement of the urban higher society strata habits, probably related to the increase of circulating wealth provided by the flourishing coffee plantations, the entertainments of the season preceding Lent also underwent a great change, by copying the Venetian and French carnivals. New entertainments were added: magnificent parades through streets and plazas, as well as masque balls which took place at hotels, theaters and carnival club houses. This is the beginning of Brazilian carnival as it is know nowadays.By studying these changes in carnival we were able to detect a double transformation in urban Brazilian society of the 19th century: in the family mores and in the organization of urban habits.The female members of the upper class families were completly excluded from the new carnival. They became mere spectators of a mainly masculine form of entertainment. They was the “mondaine,” an expert in European habits, who became the ideal partner for the men in the new carnival activities. She was a kind of teacher of refined bourgeois habits for the coffee-farmers who had recently moved to town as well as the newspaper men, college students, writers and business men who had innovated carnival.By carefully studying the changes in a particular leisure activity, like carnival, over a period of a century, we could analyse:— The evolution of a Brazilian urban center during the 19th century.— The artificial adoption of European bourgeois behaviour patterns by upper class urban families.— The importance of the urban commercial sector in promoting, stimulating and bringing about the adoption of new European habits.We presume that a subsequent study of the popular festivities of Brazilian carnival, which appear at the end of the 19th century, would enable us to observe and analyse the behaviour patterns of lower class urban families patterns which, we suppose, be different from those analysed.