A configuração das personagens femininas em a Rainha do ignoto, de Emília Freitas

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to investigate the breaking of paradigms, in confrontation with a literary tradition, in the configuration of female characters in the novel A Rainha do Ignoto (1899), by Emília Freitas. For this, we started with a bibliographic search based on the authors Gilbert and Gubar (1998), Showalter (1977), Todorov (2006), Bourdieu (2012), Verona (2013), Cavalcante (2008), Duarte (2003), Colares (1980), among others. From this, we found that there was a construction of the feminine in literature that, from a male perspective, based the image of the woman on two contrasting figures: the angel and the devil. So the figure of the angel referred to women who followed the pattern of the dominant male order and the figure of the demon to women who somehow transgressed that order. However, some writers managed to break away from this representation of women in 19th century literature, albeit intentionally veiled. For that, they made use of many stylistic resources, among which the supernatural; this is the case of Emília Freitas in A Rainha do Ignoto. In this novel, the writer uses this artifice as a way to circumvent the dominant male order and, thus, propose a new configuration of women in literary narrative, subverting the concept of women in the late 19th century in Brazil.