Roe Persaud
Brazilian History
IN DEFENSE OF REFRECING HONOR
The concept of honor has related directly to the idea of sexual purity in most of
the known world for more centuries then any human being can know. Whether the belief
was just a survival instinct or not is irrelevant, because the belief evolved into highly
organized systems of marriage, property rights, lineage empowerment, and court laws.
Over the centuries, many people and groups have come away form this ideology; to
question the value of virginity in making a better society and to argue against the often
one sided prosecutions that took place throughout Brazil in the late 1800’s on into the
1900’s. The shift to modernity has taken a considerable amount of time and to many is
still in progress.
Most of Brazil’s society has lived with the effect of being brought up as a
European colony, and as such, had impressed upon their psyche the idea’s and importance
of honor with in their country. The Brazilian people as a whole were ruled by monarchs
through what could be considered their golden age. In order to fully understand In
Defense of Honor we must realize that during the Napoleonic Wars, King Joãn VI fled to
Brazil. It was during this time that Brazil stepped out of colonial status and became an
empire; while many other South American and North American countries were becoming
republics. This evolution of the country actually put Brazil further back in their social
structure and belief. As other American countries were evolving on their own, Brazil had
its own Monarch straight out of Europe to push the political agenda of honor based
marriage. This is when Brazil began to take it’s view of what honor, scientifically and
politically and how to deal with it in their society.
