Vestígios de um Desmundo: o casamento na formação da ordem colonial da América Portuguesa, através do romance histórico de Ana Miranda

Abstract

Desmundo (1996) is a work by Ana Miranda from Ceará. This work is considered a historical novel of extreme importance for the historiographical reflection about the colonial period in Brazil, mainly in an emerging History of Women. Traditionally, historiography has silenced the voice of a large part of the women who lived through moments considered historic. As a way of contributing to the dissolution of this omission - mainly because its narrator is a woman considered "subversive" -, Desmundo is a work that deserves greater attention. The main objective of this dissertation is to understand that marriage in the colony was one of the main vernaculars of oppression, imposed by the State and the Catholic Church, to control women. For this reason, the story of Oribela, her husband Francisco de Albuquerque and Ximeno, the Moor, in present-day Pernambuco, can direct us to a latent problematization, which is marriage as a system of oppression for women, as part of the structuring of a patriarchal society. Important theorists for a better understanding of the relationship between History and Literature such as Linda Hutcheon, Italo Calvino and Hayden White were initially used. Then, to address a history of women in Brazil and the institution of marriage in the colony, Silvia Federici, Mary Del Priore, Jean Delumeau, Laura de Mello e Souza, Carla Pinsky and Ronaldo Vainfas, in addition to some specific articles on the work and other supporting readings helped to trace the directions of this research. This dissertation was based on a Scientific Initiation research (PIBIC 2018/2019), followed by the students of the History course Nathália Ourives Tavares and Nara Machado Gonçalves de Andrade, with guidance from Profa. Dr. Ana Claudia Aymoré Martins, who also supervised this monograph.