Intellectuals, maternal authority, and the participation of women in the creation of Portuguese children's literature at the end of the 19th century

Abstract

This article aims to investigate gender markers in the European matrices of children's literature and in the participation of women writers and publishers in the creation of Portuguese children's literature in the nineteenth century. The underlying hypothesis is that, in contrast to other fields of literary and didactic production, women found in this literature an area of activity that was less hostile and in which sex and the qualities attributed to the female gender could be seen as advantages. For women intellectuals, this type of production made it possible to address mothers and children as agents of social transformation, while at the same time giving their production a political character and the recognition of their place of authority in debates about education.