Wages of Intimacy: Domestic Workers Disputing Wages in the Higher Courts of Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Abstract

AbstractExploring the legal context and arguments put forth by women who sued for their wages, this article illustrates how contested definitions of “work” and “intimacy” played a fundamental role in the arguments that both domestic workers and those whom they challenged in court made. It discusses a sample of legal complaints concerning labor arrangements (specifically, wage contracts, or contratos de soldada) from the Brazilian National Archives involving women working in the households of single men or widowers in nineteenth-century Brazil. Brought by both former slaves and Portuguese immigrants and other “free” women, domestic workers advanced demands for compensation, claiming wages and entitlements that clearly defined their connection to their masters as “work,” even when personal intimacy and sex were also present. The article also considers the place occupied by “free” domestic work in a slave society, relating it to the changing legal and social context of nineteenth-century Brazil.