Marriage and the Family in Colonial Vila Rica
TRADITIONALLY the family has been viewed as the nexus of a constellation of social institutions which together comprised Luso-Brazilian society. While a number of studies have appeared describing contemporary Brazilian social organization, not until very recently has more than scant attention been paid to the colonial antecedents of present-day social phenomena. This essay is an effort to fill in that background, using Vila Rica, the capital of colonial Brazil's goldmining region, as a case study. Three major contentions will be advanced. First, the patriarchal, extended family, so often viewed as the predominant colonial family type, existed for only a handful of people. Second, in preindustrial Vila Rica a wide range of family types existed, with nuclear and matrifocal families predominating. Third, marriage was not a means of integrating the society but served instead to differentiate segments of the population. Foremost among earlier efforts to describe colonial social organization is the pioneering work of Gilberto Freyre, exemplified by his major works, Casa-grande & senzala and Sobrados e mucambos.1 In these studies, Freyre traced the development of the upper-class patriarchal family, then its displacement from the plantation "big house" to the city. In both settings, the patriarchal extended family was considered the central institution for transmitting culture. Freyre's observations had a great impact on other students of social organization. But, whereas he precisely identified the patriarchal,