The social and domestic life of woman in Brazil is still largely influenced by European customs. The senhorita's chaperon is still regarded as a conventional desideratum, and courtship, if not quite as much a "long distance" communication as among the Puritans of New England when the "courting-stick" was in vogue, is yet largely regulated according to the customs of the mother country, and generally involves the presence of the family. As in the political, so in the social world, however, the spirit of the New World has entered and the Brazilian woman is very gradually throwing off restraints which European convention has put upon her, and is participating more generally and prominently in intellectual, social, and political affairs. In social progress and amelioration, in educational and charitable activities she is taking place as an accepted leader. In the elementary schools for girls the instruction is entrusted exclusively to women, who, on the other hand, are also found in charge of those for boys. There are special institutions provided for the education of girls in "all womanly arts," and in addition to this the State provides them with a dot for the purchase of a wedding trousseau and a suitable housekeeping equipment.
In art and literature the names of Brazilian women have gained honor,--among painters, Senhoras de Andrade and Bertha Worms,--and among writers, Senhoras de Bivar, de Almeida, and de Azeredo. Senhora de Almeida has established and edited a paper devoted to the _feministe_ movement in Brazil.
While the list of notable and noted South American women is far from exhausted by these names, enough has been said to show that below the equator as well as above it there has been advance and change. Yet it must be confessed that in South America the march of feminine progress has thus far been very slow and is still confined, as already said, to individuals rather than manifested in national or racial movement. It may yet broaden into this; but the omens are hardly propitious. The restraining and clogging influence is rather of racial than masculine nature; it is less that the men look upon the advanced woman as a _lusus naturæ_, though this also is broadly true, than that the women are not racially capable of working out their own salvation in this line. Thus far the movement has been almost entirely productive of leaders only; there is no rank and file to give it strength and continuity. There is ardent enthusiasm; but it is confined within narrow limits. Yet he would be a rash prophet who should foretell that these circumstances will continue to prevail, and it may well be that the signs may develop into conditions and South America prove a close follower, if not a pioneer, in the march of feminine advancement and culture.