Mulher, crime e loucura: o controle sobre o corpo feminino e as internações no Hospício São Pedro

Abstract

This course completion work came about through Scientific Initiation in the Project “Feminine Crimes and Control Institutions in Rio Grande do Sul” (1890 – 1940), coordinated by Profa. Dra. Maíra Vendrame, who is also the advisor of this work. This research is dedicated to the study of the medical records of women interned at São Pedro Hospice, with attention to Italian immigrants and descendants, mainly during the First Republic period. The female figure is adjusted to the image of a good wife and mother. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, these conceptions asserted themselves and helped to compose medicals diagnoses, placing many women, who had mood swings, natural to the female organism, or who refused to have children, as “crazy”. Thus, we will seek to analyze what were the main reasons that made women have this rupture with their ethnic and family group. The sources used will be the medical records of São Pedro Hospice and the criminal case of the Italian Ângela A., which is in APERS. The methodology used will be a quantitative analysis of these records, as well as we will pay attention to a record of the Italian Ângela and the criminal process in which she became a defendant. In this way, we will be able to better understand the causes that led to hospitalizations and the conceptions of madness during this period.