Marginal scriptures: fragments of memories of teacher Malvina Tavares (1891 – 1930)

Abstract

The study presents a teacher’s memories, and it aims at analyzing the personal diary of Julia Malvina Hailliot Tavares, written between the end of the 19^th century and the 1930s, and the notebook of her student Zilda Haussen, dated 1927. They enabled a confrontation between the personal, intimate and run-of-the-mill aspects of domestic life and historical facts and the educational context of an era. The personal diary is constituted by an autobiographic type of writing, thus the study looks at the distinct dimensions of the author’s life, establishing a parallel between private life, teaching as a female professional in the first years of the Republic and the context of education in the last years of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Since it is representative of an era, the relevance of her writings also enabled an interpretative exercise of the existence of many other women, many other common lives, that were Malvina Tavares’ contemporaries.