structural:scholar_edition, structural:summarization, structural:reformatting
The New Women's Movement in Brazil

The new women's movement that took place in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Brazil, was a movement built around a woman's ability to gain access to public spaces in Brazil. Among middle-class women, new opportunities and possibilities opened up for women allowing them professional positions in the workforce. Some women also found the acting profession to afford them freedom and independence. The theatre offered women an environment relatively free of social constraints. The profession of an actress held a controversial opinion within society. On one hand, high society embraced women who appeared in plays or opera representing a high culture. While on the other hand, female performers could suffer public scrutiny and gossip for leading unconventional lives.

"The Eternal Feminine" was published 16 January 1886 by Revista Illustrada in Brazil six months before the first visiting of Sarah Bernhardt. "The Eternal Feminine" discussed advances of middle class and elite women in Brazil, citing expanding educational opportunities, acknowledging that women were capable of entering many new professions and industries that had previously been restricted to primarily men. "The Eternal Feminine" stated that "The bello sexo", as journalists so often called women, may move into new occupations, but their beauty, elegance, and eternal femininity needed to remain in place."

Bernhardt's performances in Brazil had lasting effects in the sense that they encouraged new notions of possibilities for women in a patriarchal and traditional society and in theatre. Bernhardt made use of an array of tropes assigned to women to create a public personality that afforded her freedom, independence, and immense popularity at home and abroad." Even her famous cross-dressing roles such as Hamlet intervened in the tension between the traditional woman and the New Woman. Bernhardt's ability to own her own theatre also speaks to the ways in which she embodies a new form of women.

The article Sarah Bernhardt's Knee read:

"In an era of debate about gender norms, Bernhardt's star image presented a similar fantasy scenario that fulfilled a need on the part of her public for unity, resolution, and reassurance. To her more socially conservative fans, Bernhardt appeased fears concerning the threat of the New Woman and the demise of female seduction as an everyday pleasure. She transcended the perceived conflict between the independent New Woman and the séductrice...he was a living example of Marguerite Durand's contention that a woman need not lose her femininity to compete in a man's world."