Review by Choice Review
Borges (Univ. of Pennsylvania) offers an interesting argument: Patriarchal families in the Brazilian northeast changed later and less than elsewhere in the Americas or in Europe, but "informal compensatory practices complicated the patriarchal main thrust" and thereby provided, outside the formal structure, a "style of life" and "mentalities" that could and did accommodate change. The formal institutions (throne and altar, liberal professions like medicine and law, the modern welfare state) had only an "ambivalent influence." For example, the Church opposed cousin-cousin and uncle-niece marriages but blocked divorce, while the law abolished entail and gave inheritance rights to illegitimate offspring but subordinated women and children. Nonetheless, Bahian society evolved from arranged to companionate marriages, from extended to nuclear families, from patriarchy to greater autonomy for wives and children without, however, abandoning informal marriages among the masses, concubinage among the castes, and deference rituals within and toward the old families. Borges's framing of the issue sets this work beyond Gilberto Freyre's focus on the patriarchal family but does not reach the desired new "synthesis" that would include "families in different ecological niches, different classes, or different milieus." Borges ably demonstrates his thesis that the "illegitimate" family often was (and is) a functional frontier alternative, making Freyre's patriarchal family either a deviant form or, more likely, just one choice among many. One can therefore overlook the occasional use of deconstructionist jargon in a generally well-researched, well-reasoned, well-written book. Graduate; faculty. T. J. Knight; Colorado State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
