By Fabíola Hauch
Júlia Lopes de Almeida, a successful 19th-century writer from Brazil, was a rare phenomenon. Married to the Portuguese poet Filinto de Almeida, she was one of Brazil’s first novelists. As a best-selling author and intellectual who defended abolitionism and feminism, she helped create the Brazilian Academy of Letters — only to be excluded by the institution for being a woman.
Júlia Lopes de Almeida in the 1890s.
A 2005 study unveiled the Brazilian Academy of Letters’ greatest story of gender-based exclusion in the last 121 years. While working on her doctorate in Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo (USP), Michele Fanini found 12 writings by Lopes de Almeida that were long forgotten in an archive. Fanini says that while the author’s name was listed among founding members of the Academy, it was eventually erased.
Yet, Lopes de Almeida’s writing was extraordinary. In a dissertation about Spanish translations of her work, Ecuadorian journalist Sabrina Duque highlights the author’s use of mixed “words of African origin, French vocabulary, traditions of Rio [de Janeiro] society at the time, casually mentioned names of locations, and folk song lyrics.”
By the time the Brazilian Academy of Letters was created, Lopes de Almeida was already a “renowned author who collected good reviews and had the support of her readers,” according to Duque. However, she only had the support of four members as a member of the Academy.
Who was Júlia Lopes de Almeida?
Lopes de Almeida was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1862, the same year Brazil suspended diplomatic relations with Britain in a case known as the Christie Affair. Tensions were rising at the time as Brazil insisted on participating in slave traffic trade from Africa.
According to author Luiz Ruffato, Lopes de Almeida—daughter of Portuguese immigrants—enjoyed an elite liberal education, contrary to other women of her time. Her father was a physician who was later named Viscount of Saint Valentine (a nobleman).
Júlia Lopes de Almeida in 1930
Thanks to her father’s encouragement, she published her first crônicas (Portuguese to English “chronicles”) in a newspaper in Campinas (a city nearby São Paulo) when she was around 20 years old.
She met her husband when her family moved to Lisbon in 1886 and continued to write and publish in newspapers and almanacs, finishing her first book—Traços e iluminuras (Traces and lightings), a short story collection, published the same year.
A few years later, she moved to Rio de Janeiro and turned her house into a meeting place for “artists, intellectuals, and journalists.” In another text, Ruffato says: “Even if Júlia Lopes de Almeida had only written for newspapers and magazines, defending the importance of early childhood education and the recognition of the female role in society, she would already be among the most influential Brazilian women, but she didn’t stop there. Júlia wrote sophisticated novels, where she describes the troubles of the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century women with grace and precision without avoiding complex and scandalous themes.”
Her novel The Bankruptcy (A Falência, published circa 1919) is considered by many as her most important work, but she is also known for Memórias de Marta (Marta’s Memoirs), “the first Brazilian novel to take place in an urban tenement”.
Júlia died in Rio of malaria at the age of 72. Before the diagnosis, however, she traveled across the world to Europe, southern Brazil, Buenos Aires, Argentina and parts of Africa.
History repeats itself
Lopes de Almeida’s story—and that of other female authors—repeated itself on August 30, 2018, when Conceição Evaristo, the woman to become the Academy’s first black female author, was also neglected. Evaristo only received one vote despite the unprecedented popularity of her campaign.
By contrast, the Academy elected filmmaker Cacá Diegues with 22 votes followed by Pedro Corrêa do Lago in second place with 11 votes.
Founded on July 20, 1897, the Brazilian Academy of Letters took eight decades before allowing a woman to join their institution.
In 1977, author Rachel de Queiroz became the first Brazilian female to join the Academy as an “Immortal” with a lifetime membership. In the following decades, just seven women joined the Academy in this order: Dinah Silveira de Queiroz (1980), Lygia Fagundes Telles (1985), Nélida Piñon (1989), Zélia Gattai (2001), Ana Maria Machado (2003), Cleonice Berardinelli (2009), and Rosiska Darcy (2013).
Júlia Lopes de Almeida’s literary significance made an enormous impact on Brazillian letters — even if the Academy she helped found failed her. She should be on this list.
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Credit: Global Voices, https://globalvoices.org
