Le foyer de l’homme de bien : domestication et vie domestique dans la petite et moyenne bourgeoisie de São Paulo (1870-1920)

Abstract

Through the series of self-improvement books by Samuel Smiles and other normative texts that circulated between the middle and upper classes of São Paulo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we analyze the spread of a social discourse promoting bourgeois domesticity as an instrument of discipline, self-control, and the domestication of male and female pleasures.

Keywords

• bourgeois domestic life
• petite bourgeoisie
• São Paulo
• history of privacy
• 19th-20th centuries Brazil