In other people's costumes

The Antônia case, double rape and female culpability from the perspective of the Pernambuco press (1900)

Abstract

This article is a case study about a defloration crime widely reported in the press in the city of Recife at the beginning of the twentieth century. The case is that of ''double rape'' occurred on January 11, 1900, that had the young Antonia as victim and Nile Luiz de Aquino and Lourenço Clementino as the accused. The following research is based on understanding these events from the perspective of journals, highlighting the centrality of the use of the press as primary sources. From the search in several newspapers of Pernambuco, it was possible to find news of what initially seemed to be a case of defloration. However, in the following article, crime and its unfolding will be addressed, correlating them with the legislation of the time and the female issue, while making an inserted effort from the field of Women’s History and Gender Relations. In addition, there is the objective of understanding the reasons that led the press to treat the victim of the crime of defloration as guilty, by relating their guilt to their level of emancipation in relation to the expected patterns for women of the twentieth century.