Scraps of women's lives

Abstract

Developed to shelter women in vulnerable conditions - due to temporary separation from the male element, orphanhood or widowhood - women's retreats, cloistered spaces without the need to take religious vows, proliferated during the Modern Period in Portugal. In the city of Porto, there were five such places between the 17th and 19th centuries. The Recolhimento do Anjo and the Recolhimento das Órfãs, institutions with the same objective - to preserve female social honor - although with different administrations, are examples that illustrate the presence of social boundaries, distinction and selection of the female public they supported. However, the intermingling of women from different social backgrounds, the examples of the solidification of some careers within these spaces and even the networks of sociability established between them and convent institutions, particularly in the north of Portugal, demonstrate the permeability of the apparent boundaries existing in cloistered institutions. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore the dimension of permeability and mobility in women's retreats, by applying a comparative methodology that has allowed us to analyze some fragments of the lives of women in retreats.