"Da mãe e amiga Amélia": cartas de uma baronesa para sua filha (Rio de Janeiro-Pelotas, na virada do século XX)

Abstract

Amélia Hartley de Brito Antunes Maciel – Baroness of Três Serros – wrote 151 letters between 1885 and 1918. Most of them were sent by Amélia after becoming a widow and being moved to Rio de Janeiro, to her oldest daughter Amélia Aníbal Hartley Maciel, known as Sinhá, who remained in Pelotas (RS) in her family’s manor. Our analysis of these “writings of herself” – which are shown in this work – provides valuable information about how Amélia kept her family links and made them closer, about how she ran her properties and her household budget, about her feelings towards her illness, death and old age, her politic positions, her readings and social life, as well as her beliefs and spirituality.

However, more than reconstructing her life, these writings show us the shades of the way-of-life of privileged people in the beginning of the 20th Century focusing on the private and personal aspect, which is of little interest in historiography. In this perspective, we believe that our investigations contributes in a inn