Orgulho de anjo decaído: o romance Lucíola (1862), de José de Alencar, e a construção de um imaginário sobre o feminino no Brasil do século XIX

Abstract

José de Alencar's works are massively used for romanticism studies in Brazil and his writings are inserted in many layers of the literature teaching. In view of that fact, revisiting this author from a critical point of view is important for the comprehension of his work and the history carried within its lines. When choosing to study the novel Lucíola this very work aimed to build a brief overview about the dissemination of feminine imaginary in order to explore the conditions on what women in Brazil were represented. The aim was to contribute to the field of women's history through inserting the gender factor as a category of analysis in Alencar's work. The results show the construction of the dualism in the feminine imaginary where women were divided between the saint and the sinner and how such definitions ended up being elementary for the social division between men and women. When condemning a huge number of practices as undesirables for women, their social exile from public space was orchestrated. Thus, such construction is not made by chance, it is a discursive strategy for women repression. It is evident that such moralizing assumptions are still propagated into actual days social imaginary of women and, because of that, continues to be a relevant debate to be explored. Before what has been said it is important to highlight that the insertion of gender as an analytical category contributes for observation of new perspectives in face of old questions and historical artifacts such as literary records.