Mulher e cidade: a representação feminina no espaço metropolitano em Quarenta dias, de Maria Valéria Rezende

Abstract

The present research focuses on the novel Quarenta dias, by Maria Valéria Rezende, signaling the female perspective in the metropolitan space and reiterating the representation of women in society. We seek, through the work in question, to identify the social space, the experience in big cities and the anguish of social inequality in everyday life. To do so, we resort to references on female authorship, contemporary narrative, literary theories about culture, society, as well as theses and dissertations, in order to identify the different perspectives on Quarenta dias. We also add to the study a critical fortune of the work and representation of women linked to contemporaneity through Maria Valéria Rezende. The analysis contemplates the “urban space” as an environment, one of the traits of contemporary Brazilian fictional narrative, testifying to the opportune book for contemporary studies. We analyzed the work comparatively, based on the ideas of Tânia Carvalhal (2006) and Ilva Boniatti (2000), with another book by the author, Outros cantos, delimiting the symbolic representations, religiosity and the Brazilian narrative of female authorship as resistance, reiterating identity aspects of the geographical environment depicted in the work. We also chose Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, relating it to the character Alice, from Quarenta dias, punctuating the impositions of female molds, the discoveries of other places and the sudden change to the new environment, requiring curiosities and behavioral adaptations, in yet another comparative cut. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze the representation of women in the literary production of female authorship in Quarenta dias, by Maria Valéria Rezende, whose reflections and ideas about female authorship are based on the contribution of História das Mulheres: o século XIX, by Genevive and Fraisse (1991), and the studies by Isabel Maria Luclktenberg (2013) and Silvia Cunha (2013), in A Mulher na Literatura e Outras Artes, the result of communications presented at the I International Congress of Contemporary Lusophone Culture. In the contemporary context, studies carried out by Regina Dalcastagnè (2012; 2015; 2018), Lúcia Zolin (2012; 2018), Leyla Perrone-Moisés (2016) and Juliana Santini (2017; 2018a; 2018b) contributed to our investigation and analysis. In society, culture, literature, authorship and novel, we list Alfredo Bosi (2002; 2015; 2017), Antonio Candido (2014a; 2014b; 2017) and Humberto Eco (2007; 2014).