Tea and sympathy: a gender strategy in XIX century Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The A. initially sketches a picture of tea and tea ritual in England; the core of the Industrial Revolution, and calls altention to their meanings as a tool for women's liberation. Drawing especially on archaeological evidences supplemented by literary sources, she then directs her analysis to the periphery of capitalism and depicts the introduction of tea in Brazil. The tea ritual, clearly under female authority, according to the English model, particularly among the elite, exhibits however a singular middle class peculiarity in XIXth.century Rio de Janeiro, as it is served in a male space par excellence, the dining room. Such an ambiguity is examined together with other more recent rituais (which have dismissed the original tea etiquelte as a rite de passagel from the point of view of gender strategies.