Mulheres em narrativa: um olhar sobre as personagens femininas de A Viuvinha de José de Alencar e Dom Casmurro de Machado de Assis

Abstract

The female characters in "A Viuvinha" by José de Alencar and in "Dom Casmurro" by Machado de Assis show how the representation of women in 19th-century Brazilian literature changed over time. In Romanticism, women were portrayed in an idealized and often submissive way. In the realist phase of Machado de Assis, they began to have more complex and questioning profiles. The main objective of this research is to analyze how women are represented in the works of these two authors, and how, in creating these characters, they also criticize the role that Brazilian society reserved for women. The research was conducted through a bibliographic review, with a qualitative approach, supported by the studies of authors such as Louro (2004), Santiago and colleagues (2010), Schwarz (2000), Stein (1984), and others. From this study, it is possible to perceive that female characters began to have a more prominent role in the narratives of this period, especially in the works of José de Alencar and Machado de Assis. These authors created striking female figures within a patriarchal context. In short, Carolina represents the idealized and passive woman of Romanticism, whose virtue is her main quality. Capitu, on the other hand, is a more complex character of Realism, whose intelligence and behavior challenge the social and narrative expectations of the time, leaving a legacy of questioning the female condition and the role of men in Brazilian literature