As filhas de Maria: uma história social da Pia União

Abstract

The object of this dissertation is to make a study of the construction and redefinition of the identity of women belonging to the Pious Union of the Daughters of Mary in Juiz de Fora and neighbor cities, in the time between 1907 and 1954, during the process named Romanization initiated by the Catholic Church in Brazil. The first chapter offers a view on the origin of this laic catholic group in Europe and Brazil. It discusses the roll performed by the Pious Union organization inside the context of the Romanization and the clergy's speech on the social roll of women. The second chapter relates the functioning of the association and the internal rules which govern the lives of the associated and also the moral control inflicted upon the Daughters of Mary. In the third chapter the relation between normative and life is approached in order to search for evidences on how the rules of the association were internalized and put on relativity by the members of the Pious Union of the Daughters of Mary.