O tema mais poético do mundo: mulheres e suas mortes em contos de Júlia Lopes de Almeida

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the representation of women in five short stories by Júlia Lopes de Almeida from the perspective of the death of female characters. The chosen stories are considered exemplary of what is assumed here as “Gothic literature in Brazil”, and this aspect is taken into consideration throughout the work. Furthermore, the research engages with Roberto Reis's (1987) perspective regarding issues of Brazilian patriarchalism and the death of female characters in national narratives. Therefore, to conduct the analysis, the necessary conceptualization is first developed through bibliographic research in the two fundamental areas of study: women's history and Gothic literature. The work is then divided into three fundamental parts. The first part is dedicated to discussions about the situation of women, through theorists such as Gerda Lerner (2019), Michelle Perrot (2005; 2007), Simone de Beauvoir (2009), and Pierre Bourdieu (2012), as well as Mary Del Priore (2011) and Gilberto Freyre (2013), to address the historical situation of Brazilian women. The second section deals with aspects of Gothic literature, essential for understanding the stories, through authors such as Andrew Smith (2007), Elisabeth Bronfen (2009), and Fred Botting (2024), as well as Júlio França (2016; 2022; 2023) and João Pedro Bellas (2021), who discuss the existence or not of Gothic literature in Brazil and its specificities. It is important to point out that, in this work, Gothic literature is understood as an aesthetic that emerged in England in the 18th century with writers such as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, but that this literature was appropriated and updated by various writers throughout the following centuries up to the present day and in different locations. These appropriations still maintained the essential characteristics of the aesthetic, which are addressed throughout the chapter and the analysis. It is understood, therefore, that, starting from the emergence of the Gothic aesthetic, inserted in a particular context, this aspect in the selected short stories is related to this adaptation and appropriation of the original to the Brazilian context of the 19th century. Finally, the third part comprises the analysis, which is based on recent studies about Júlia Lopes de Almeida, such as the research carried out by Ana Paula Pereira Dias (2019) and Ana Paula Araújo dos Santos (2017). It is concluded that each of the stories presents diverse women, to some extent inadequate to the standards of the society in which they are inserted, therefore considered deviant, and who, in the outcomes of the narratives analyzed, share the same fate: death. It is also observed that the author, writing about female characters from a female perspective, expressively and revealingly exposes the condition and experience of women in 19th-century Brazilian society. In short, the study demonstrates both the need for representation in literature and the need to study marginalized authors within the societies in which they are embedded.