Um olhar oblíquo: as representações do feminino no texto literário machadiano (1876-1881)

Abstract

Between 1876 and 1881 machado de assis published the novels helena and memórias póstumas de brás cubas, in a fragmented way in the periodicals of his time. Being the first in o globo: organ of the interests of the commercio, the farming and the industry, and the second in the magazine brazileira, from 1880. In this dissertation, we seek to highlight the representations of women through the machadian characters, articulating with the problematics of the time as conditioning factors that crossed their literary art and therefore, the oblique gaze under which women were subjected in rio de janeiro from the post-independence and second half of the nineteenth century. We highlight in our analysis the reflection on literature as a fertile source that articulates with society, since the individual (author) is inserted in it. With this, we use the dialogical perspective to understand the very constitution of the novels of the time of machado, in order to perceive how our author positions himself and where he differs from those of his time. In view of the way society moved, the issues present, and the processes in which they circumstantiated the existence of women in the formation of national identity of brazil and its ideals of modernity, it is impossible not to identify in the women of machado de assis the cunning as a strategy of existence in a society that conditioned them to good standards of conduct. It is from this perspective that our work starts, understanding that in machadian novels the dissimulation is na aspect of human character, and that as far as possible, it is also a strategy very well used by women, not only being “the purest faces”.