Uma análise comparativa das "esposas" em contos de autoria feminina da literatura norte-americana, brasileira e indiana

Abstract

This work presents a comparative analysis of the characters 'wives' in the short stories of the female authors from American, Brazilian and Indian literature and selected following stories: "The Story of an Hour" (1894) and "Athenaise" by Kate Chopin (1897); "Disappearance" and "Ultrassound" by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1995); "Para quem ninguém a quisesse" (1986) and "Porém igualmente" (1999) by Marina Colasanti. The choice of these tales is justified by the focus given to the female character, specifically, to a married women within a specific society and culture. As the choice of the texts show, we do not limit ourselves to a specific period. A careful reading of these stories, integrating with the proposed study reveals how on the one hand, these characters present different cultural aspects and on the other hand, they present similarities as they present a "wife" and the marriage system. As the method of research we have used the qualitative method. For the theoretical support we found support in comparative theory and feminist literary criticism with the critics such as Mary Anne Fergurson (1977), Elaine Showalter (1989), Susan Bassnett (1993), Elodia Xavier (2007), Virginia Woolf (2012) Cecil Zinani (2013), Pierre Bourdieu (2014), Michelle Perrot (2015) and others. We present a critical-literary reflection about the condition of women outlined by the figure of wife, under the assumption that the woman as a wife suffers both psychological and physical violence. This helped us to address relevant gender issues, involving the female subject as "wife." Our goal is to show the importance of the literary text as a means of visualization of the silenced and battered married women, because we believe that the selected narratives are a significant vehicle capable of promoting social and cultural critical consciousness, which is the main objective of this dissertation.