A persistência medieval no espaço-tempo e nas representações das mulheres da obra o remorso de Baltazar Serapião, de Valter Hugo Mãe

Abstract

In most of Valter Hugo Mãe's fictional works, the theme of the feminine is present and is often associated with a vision of the negative condition of “being a woman”. In addition, the representation of the female condition in his works is closely linked to pain and suffering, proposing various appearances of women from an often macho family and religious environment. Based on this, the current research aims to investigate how the representation of women in the work o remorso de baltazar serapião [2006]/(2018) presents the set of challenges, issues and specific difficulties that women face in different contexts, be they social, historical or cultural, in order to highlight the author's critical position on the condition of women, loaded with negative and pessimistic symbolism from a scenario marked by barbarism and allegorical to the Middle Ages. To do this, we investigated the debates about being female and focused on the representation of female characters based on their stereotypes, as well as the narrative resources and strategies in the presentation of the plot, paying attention to the symbolism that Mãe's writing elaborates to criticize views that still remain about the different experiences of “being a woman”. In our discussions, in order to understand the inseparable relationship between space and time, we worked with the concept of chronotopia by Michael Bakhtin (2014) and heterotopia by Michael Foucault (2013). On the subject of the status of women, this theoretical framework includes studies by Pierre Bourdieu (2024), Michelle Perrot (2005), George Duby (2011) and Duby and Perrot (1994). In order to discuss the representation of women, we relied on the theoretical contributions firstly of Stuart Hall (2016) with the concept of stereotyping and then Duby and Perrot (1994) and José Rivair Macedo (2002), among other authors. In order to deal with Valter Hugo Mãe's writing, which in its own textual weaving is in agreement with the representation of the female subject, we brought to the theoretical scope the studies on the work of authors Maria de Lourdes Pereira (2016), Isabel Cristina Mateus (2016) and Rafaella Teotônio (2016). In the end, our proposal is to reveal, from the novel studied, that the writer lays bare and seeks in literature a review that aims to trace the mechanisms of patriarchal domination responsible for subjugating and oppressing women. In view of this, proposing a debate on Valter Hugo Mãe's male perspective is justified as it seeks to understand women from the perspective of male writing, which configures a past where literature by men about women has always prevailed.