A interdição do feminino no nascimento da burguesia brasileira e alemã no romance burguês

Abstract

Eighteenth-century Germany and nineteenth-century Brazil experienced the reflexes of the rise of the bourgeois class and the appearance of their new values, based on extreme modesty and the overvaluation of the family. The woman's social function, particularly restrictive when compared to the role played by men in this social context, was restricted to the household sphere and their intellectual urges were highly discouraged. Naturally, the task of a female writer configured a great challenge, as they lived in a society engendered by men for the benefit of the male sex. It is in this period that the novels Agnes von Lilien (1798), by Caroline von Wolzogen, and Lésbia (1890), by Maria Benedicta Bormann or Délia, whose protagonists struggle against the social norms imposed by their time, although each does so in opposite ways. The plots of Bela/Lésbia and Agnes are permeated by the existing incongruity between the demands of bourgeois norms and their own aspirations and values. Those who also find themselves in a conflict between their inner demands and the outside world are the protagonists of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Elective Affinities (1809) and José de Alencar's Lucíola (1862). Though Ottilie and Lúcia/Maria da Glória inhabit distinct universes, the theme of bourgeois morality is highly present. This research aims to comparatively analyze the novels in question based on a historical-cultural context of the phenomenon of reconfiguration of social roles caused by the bourgeois rise and its implications for the female sex and the way in which literature reflects this issue in writings provenient from the female pen and in writings of male authorship. In the foreground, the novels by Wolzogen and Bormann will be focused on, forming the core of this study. The works of Goethe and Alencar configure background comparison points. The cultural-historical point of view is also guided by the outline of a political, social, and literary panorama of Germany in the 18th century and Brazil in the 19th century. This has the objective of justifying the proximity of the themes of the works by the aforementioned authors, even if the chronology distances them