Brazil today and tomorrowJoyce, L. E. Elliott (Lilian Elwyn Elliott)
History
Brazil today and tomorrow
Joyce, L. E. Elliott (Lilian Elwyn Elliott)
Brazil; Brazil -- Economic conditions
In Brazil there is no such equality of numbers. The list of men is
always much longer than that of women, chiefly because of the stream of
male immigrants who arrive in the country without families, and, earning
good wages, set about the acquisition of a home. The predominant classes
of such immigrants are Portuguese, and these men, speaking the same
language and with close affiliations to Brazil, readily seek wives among
the Brazilian families to which their status gives them entry. Little
social adjustment is needed in such unions, much less than in the case
of the marriage of Brazilian girls with foreigners of a totally
divergent origin.
The Brazilian girl is said to be precocious, and she is certainly the
possessor of tactful manners and distinct aplomb in her early teens. If
she is a member of a wealthy family she has generally spent some years
in French schools, and it is not unusual to find beautiful young women
of nineteen or so who have been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland
and England, and who speak four or five languages fluently. All educated
Brazilians speak and read French, most of them understand but will not
speak English, and nearly all those from the more southerly parts of
Brazil have learned German for commercial reasons or have been partly
educated in Germany. Educational affiliations with the United States are
new, and apply to young men more than to girls; technical training in
engineering or trading is sought increasingly in North America for
business reasons as commercial exchange develops, but the closely
guarded, often conventual training of the girls has a very different
aim. The young Brazilian girl is frequently a good horsewoman, for life
on a farm is almost sure to be included in the tale of her early years;
she is often also a good swimmer. Music is an invariable part of her
education on which stress is laid, and I have heard some brilliant
executants among Brazilian women. Dressed in the height of Parisian
fashions, chic, demure outside her family and full of gay camaraderie
with her endless lines of brothers and sisters inside the home, the
Brazilian young girl is a very charming creature. She has the loveliest
dark eyes in the world, and often possesses a very fine clear pale skin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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