| Abstrakt: |
"I've been writing a lot and I still have much to write" has professed D. Augusta Franzini in a letter to her father. This phrase could have been uttered or written by many other Portuguese authoresses from the early XIX century. These women were not the first ones to write, but they've done so despite male desire to keep them in the house. Their designated place was the home and its private functions. Writing was a deviation of that. Still, many women have put their pens to paper and leaving behind their intimate thoughts and poetic or prose creations. This thesis inserts itself in the area of Women's History as well as that of Social and Cultural History. It attempts to find women who have written and published in Portugal from 1800 to 1850. Portuguese, Brazilian and French women, as well as an Argentinian, have left their opinions of the world in a great variety of works. Ninety-five names and ten anonyms have been found in Brazilian and Portuguese libraries and archives. Their names are mostly unknown. Some have been completely erased from History despite their rather large volume work since only initials and pseudonyms remain. Others, more accepted by their contemporaries, have been added to the Literary History which allowed some information from their daily lives to have survived. Others still have left little, but enough information, to permit some knowledge of who they were, but not much. Feminist Literary Criticism, specifically Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert's concept of Anxiety of Authorship, allows the understanding of the fear these women have felt of being accepted by their male pears and the general public as well as that of seeming like a bluestaking. These ladies have written in plenty of different styles and formats: from poetry, to romance (both as books and as feuilleton), to newspapers. Through these they have become part of the Portuguese literary culture, slowly finding their space, which would become much greater in the second half of the century. The themes they chose to write about are also part of the focus of this thesis that wishes to comprehend what they wished to say and how they decided to do so. Subjects revolved around the revolved female day-to-day life (maternity, love and marriage) were extremely common. But these writers have also used their texts as critics to Society and its treatment of women, especially in regards to seduction and rape. History, slavery as well as the supernatural are themes that can also be found in the works of women writer from this period, despite not being labelled as feminine. Even though many of their names have disappeared, their work has been read and even defended by some of their male colleagues. Others opposed their talents completely. But still books written by women have been sold and read even across the ocean, where they were accepted and printed even in Brazilian lands. An extensive list of authoresses and their books accompanies this work, that has the principal objective of making these names known to Portuguese history and literature. Be them better or worse books, more or less productive writers; all of them deserve to be remembered by women's history, by literature and Social and Cultural History since society and cultures are protagonized both by men and women being a product of their lives and desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
