ELEGANT LIFE: Ladies in the Belle Époque Carioca Society. Rio de Janeiro (1903-1914).
Belle Epoque Carioca – Fashion – Feminine Condition.
This dissertation has a main objective to identify and analize the social relations and hierarchies among the ladies of high society carioca. At the same time, historicize the senses, images and references that the Rio de Janeiro press, in the times Belle Epoque, attributed to these women. For this, the Belle Epoque in the context of Rio de Janeiro was focused, especially since the advent of the beggining of the Republic in Brazil. Simultaneously, I can identify and explore the senses attributed to the ladies and the relation with fashion. This last one, the fashion, will act as a social fator of fundamental change in collective life, besides possessing signification and social distinction, that is, it turned a problematic for society and for modernity. Therefore, this work articulated three themes, Belle Epoque Carioca, Fashion and Feminine Condition. To account for the above core objectives, gender as a category of analysis becomes reference. In this way, it´s possible to analyze the relations, hierarchies and tensions between the considered “masculine fashion” and the “feminine”, effects of social, cultural and historical relations. In parallel, I sought to explore conceptual analysis and discourse analysis of periodicals of the time, using as main source the magazine called A Vida Elegante – O Jornal das Senhoras. Thus, I inquire into the reason and why of the press, basically male speech, to produce material,references and images about the cariocas ladies, analysing not only the mean attributed to those women, but also questioning the conditions of production and circulation of periodicals and printing tecniques.