The gender of essay: Gilda de Mello e Souza and Victoria Ocampo

This paper discusses the challenges experienced by women during the 1930s and the 1950s in order to be acknowledged as intellectuals. In this context, our aim is to understand how the Brazilian essayist and university professor Gilda de Mello e Souza (1919–2005) was able to succeed, despite her gender disadvantage, in a field then dominated by men. The article retraces Gilda’s trajectory and analyses her decision, made while she was still young, to abandon fiction writing in order to produce academic essays – located midway between art and science. Next it compares her decision with the one made by Victoria Ocampo. Both women privileged the essay as an expressive form. Comparing them allows us to contrast the possibilities of insertion and recognition of women situated in two distinct South American intellectual fields. The comparison also helps elucidate the differences and similarities between the cultural and intellectual landscapes of the cities of São Paulo and Buenos Aires with regard to gender, class and schooling51362382CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO - CNPQnão te