Loucas e transgressoras: representações sobre comportamentos femininos desviantes na literatura no final do século XIX

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the issue of female alienation in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century, using the representations of madness in women and the behaviors considered deviant contained in the literature of the period, with emphasis on the novel O Homem, by Aluísio De Azevedo. This period of transition, as represented in the passage to a new century and changes in the political regime, it was marked by the ideais of sanitation and modemization of cities with emphasis on the discourses and practices of legal medicine in the country that intended to cleanse the society, physically and morally. This medicai concern also marked the beginning of scientific psychiatry in Brazil whose knowledge and practices attempted to promote the "civilization" and the "progress". The woman, after decline her "natural" role as a wife and mother, was seen as a dangerous obstacle to the "civilizing" effort of society. Thus, the refusal of the values of honor, domesticity and motherhood could refer the woman to the condition of alienated, removing the subjectivity and giving her the stigma of madness.