Maternidade e representações femininas em Lutas do coração, de Inês Sabino, Virgindade inútil, de Ercília Nogueira Cobra, e O quinze, de Rachel de Queiroz

Abstract

The central proposal of this thesis is to advance a discussion about maternity as carried out by transgressive women in three Brazilian novels: Lutas do coração, by Inês Sabino; Virgindade inútil, by Ercília Nogueira Cobra; and O quinze, by Rachel de Queiroz. Written in the period that goes from the end of the XIX century to the beginning of the XX century, these novels appear in the context of a bourgeois culture that defines the condition of women in terms of wife and mother. Maternity was an obligation of all women, even though bearing children was considered to be a privilege of honest women only, that is, those who had married as virgins. An opposite perception was directed to the bodies of women who were sexually active or prostitutes, viewed as sick and unable to bear healthy children to the State. Starting with this bourgeois representation of women, perceived as the angels of the home, fertile and pure, the hypothesis to be explored in this thesis is that, even though the condition of maternity in the protagonists of the novels may appear at first sight to be one of submission, it is possible to detect, in a closer look, signs of resistance to bourgeois discourse. Even though the protagonists became mothers, they do not have the profile of the ideal bourgeois woman. They fight for the possession of their bodies and against their submission to men.