Banca de DEFESA: CAMILA FERNANDES DA COSTA

CAPITÃES DA AREIA AND TEREZA BATISTA: TWO PHASES AND TWO FACES OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Capitães da Areia. Tereza Batista Cansada de Guerra. Rape narratives. Jorge Amado. Literature and Society.

Over the years, literature, as well as several other cultural expressions, has reflected and perpetuated stereotyped profiles of women, mirroring social relations and precepts of patriarchal society. These portraits often mold women into a model of submission, confinement and silencing that perpetuate the practice of sexual violence. With that in mind, this research proposes to analyze, from studies of Literature and Society, the novels by Jorge Amado, Capitães da Areia (1937) and Tereza Batista Cansada de Guerra (1972), taking as a guiding axis the analysis of the representation of sexual violence present in these literary texts, victimizing, in the first, a secondary character and, in the second, the protagonist. We will thus investigate how the violence that pervades rape is presented and reinforce stereotypes or criticize such values that surround sexual abuse. For this analysis to be possible, support from feminist criticism was essential, especially its focus on the study of the female gender and its representations in literature and the debates around sexual violence and its relationship with patriarchy. Therefore, this work dialogues with the studies developed by Federici (2017), Priore (2015) and Davis (1981) to understand the history of women in Brazil and in the world, the latter focusing on black women; by Millet (1970) and Brandão (2006), which establish the relationship between feminist criticism and literary studies; Brownmiller (1975), Davis (1981), Negreiros (2021) and Araújo (2022), with regard to the analysis of sexual violence. In addition to using critics of Amado's work as a reference related to gender studies, through the analysis of several developed studies: theses, dissertations, articles. The study aims to observe how the voices present in the narratives combine in order to represent this violence committed against female characters, with the purpose of examining how these resources help in the representation of the various violences that permeate the novels, taking into account that each narrative has its singularities that illustrate the different social, historical and cultural contexts. Thus, in order to understand these aspects, the literature was observed from a historical perspective and its relationship with gender studies. Through this study, in addition to the contribution to literary studies about female representations, there is collaboration for the analysis of the representation of sexual violence in fictional texts.