Disappearance of the Dowry

Examining the practice of dowry in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and its surroundings for nearly three centuries, this book locates patterns of change that explain the dowry's virtual disappearance by the beginning of the twentieth century. In the seventeenth century, 91 percent of the sample of propertied families gave their daughters dowries; in the nineteenth century, only 27 percent of the families did so. Furthermore, of those families who still gave dowries in the nineteenth century, many gave a dowry to only one or two of several daughters. In the seventeenth century, daughters were favorer over sons, for they received dowries that were much larger than what their brothers would inherit later on. By the nineteenth century, parents were spending much money on their son's education while giving their daughters smaller dowries or no dowries at all. A seventeenth-century dowry included land, houses, cattle, and Indian and African slaves, so that the bride contributed most of the support of the newlyweds. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bride contributed little to the support of the married couple. As the practice of dowry declined and disappeared, it was accompanied by an ideological change. From viewing dowry as something that ensured their daughters' well-being, people came to see dowry as a way men sold themselves for easy money instead of supporting their families with hard work. Why did a practice that had been considered a duty stop being a duty? Why did property-owning families modify their behaviour regarding sons and daughters? And what were the consequences for the women of these families? Although the dowry declined and disappeared elsewhere - in most of Europe, in England, and in Mexico - this is the first book to study and document its disappearance. The author argues that the practice of dowry altered because of changes in society, the family, and marriage. Brazil changed from a hierarchical society in which status, family, and patron-client relations were primarily to a more individualistic society in which contract and the market increasingly reigned. The family changed from being the locus of both production and consumption to being principally the locus of consumption, while 'family' and 'business' became formally separated. m arriage was transformed from predominantly a property matter to an avowed 'love' relationship. At the same time, the strong authority of the patriarch over adult sons and daughters was greatly diminished.