Based on the novel Infância, by Graciliano Ramos, we analyse the role of women in the process of teaching children to write and read during the first decades of the 20th Century, in Northeastern Brazil. Despite their secondary position in the patriarchal Brazilian rural society, the presence of women is expressive in the numerous educational models inherited from the 19th Century, be they in the public or domestic sphere. Working at the interfaces between cultural history, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, we focus both the practices and the locus these teachers, relatives, and friends adopted in the process of teaching children to write and read. We also analyse the meaning content of the educational tasks involving these women and children.
Reading; Writing; Literacy; Formal and informal education practices