ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on “women of means” or the women of the propertied class of the colonial town of Santana de Parnaíba. Mediterranean societies inherited this tension between women’s rights to property and patriarchal values from Roman society. The women of means came from the propertied class of Santana de Parnaíba, a modestly affluent group of families by the standards of colonial Brazil. Women in Portugal and Brazil had specific legal rights to family property set out in the Portuguese legal code. The majority of the men and women who married in Portugal and its dominions married by a charter of halves and became the co-owners of the community property. The location of Parnaíba on the edge of a vast frontier gave women roles to play in the management of the family business. The dowries of women of means involved more than the property, both real and symbolic, that women needed to set up their households.
