In 1923, the Rio de Janeiro public

prosecutor charged twentyfive-

year-old Portuguese immigrant

Maria de Jesus for the crimes

of both abortion and infanticide.1

Maria stated that she had miscarried

a five-month-old fetus at the Eunice

Hotel where she worked as a maid.

She then disposed of the cadaver by

cutting off its head, flushing the body

down the toilet, and throwing the

head into the backyard. The police

investigation found that Maria had

recently given birth and that the child

was full term. The prosecutor pressed

charges despite the legal discrepancies

inherent in accusing Maria of both

abortion, which implied the expulsion

of a dead fetus, and infanticide, which

required a live birth and then death.

“It is somewhat remarkable [in] a panel on queering feminism that there was no lesbian content,” Heather Lukes of Occidental College said in her closing remarks at the “Queering Feminist Theory” event at UCLA on October 1, 2009. “It is not a complaint,” Lukes continued; in fact, by not linking queer and feminist theory through the figure of the lesbian, the panelists “are working at a limit between what queer theory can think and what feminism can think.” The presentations of Jennifer Doyle and Carol-Anne Tyler attempted to historicize feminist contributions to queer theory by critiquing contemporary queer theorists’ negation of feminist influences, particularly in the work of Lee Edelman.

This article presents a case study of alleged infanticide in Rio de Janeiro in 1932. The discussion surrounding the case study interrogates the problems of maternity in Brazil during this time period compounded with immigration issues, poverty, and education.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, women across the Americas experienced increased public scrutiny of their reproductive lives. Modernizing states began criminalizing practices like abortion, while urbanization, immigration, and changes in women’s workforce participation pushed fertility control into the public consciousness. The Brazilian capital of Rio de Janeiro presents one crucial case study for understanding how the uneven process of modernization affected women’s reproduction, and, in turn, how women negotiated these changes. Early-twentieth-century Brazil experienced a shift from familial to state patriarchy during which women’s sexual honor—and reproduction—became public goods. During this time, the professionalization of obstetrics, changes in criminal law relating to abortion and infanticide, and the expansion of the city’s police force intersected with the inadequate development of health services and continued poor reproductive health outcomes.

This dissertation examines legal and medical policies towards women’s reproductive lives under the 1890 Penal Code (1890-1940), which bridged Brazil’s first foray into democratic governance (the First Republic, 1889-1930) and the early period of Get?lio Vargas’s populist regime (1930-1937). It argues that women’s reproductive lives became the object of increased state attention in post-abolition Rio de Janeiro. As the state began to take over patriarchal power from the family, women’s reproductive capabilities—their ability to conceive and raise future citizens—became central to state formation processes. Fertility control—which allowed women to break with patriarchal understandings of women’s proper sexual behavior, their gendered roles as mothers, and their subordination to male decision-making processes—was a direct threat to both individual and state patriarchy. In regards to reproduction, juridical-medical efforts to modernize Brazilian society worked in a paradoxical manner. The state intervened in women’s reproduction through the surveillance of fertility control but did not expand obstetric services or improve reproductive health outcomes. Ultimately, the state created a culture of condemnation around poor women’s pregnancy and childbirth that extended beyond elite discourses into the popular imagination. This project contends that state control over women’s bodies clashed with the everyday embodied experience of poor reproductive health.