Dialogue about woman among than Madam Chrysanthème and Afrânio Peixoto in the 1930s – Boundaries

Abstract

This work analyzes the images of women in the literary works Eunice or A Educação da Mulher, written by Afrânio Peixoto (1936), and A Infanta Carlota Joaquina, written by Madam Chrysanthème (1937). In our perception, the authors issue competing views on the on the women’s status in society, both stress modes of conduct distinguished models that imprint or denounce, calling into question educational models to women moving the discussions on what to sanction. Although listening to what the other says, they do not dialogue to each other directly, but to their age, each one trying to intervene, from their own assumptions, in the ongoing changes. The images about women produced by the authors bring together possibilities of expressions that capture the female practices in the society of that period. While Afrânio Peixoto is committed to the permanence of women’s allocation in the spaces traditionally intended for them, Madam Chrysanthème is dedicated to cause discomforts for these naturalized spaces. Taking into consideration that all speech implies the possibility of destructuring-restructuring networks the ways through which they are established, putting into cause the meanings generated, we made the two authors converse, observing the ways how they organize their speech, tensioned by institutional mechanisms that surround them. Thus, we analyzed the scope of the discursive arrangements forged by them, the elements they trigger against and the ones they direct their efforts towards. In this way, we seek to identify dialogues, interferences, institutional, educational, interpersonal and social ways of presence, which are in game in the negotiations about the representations of women in that period, in order to reflect about the clashes operated by the authors.

Keywords: Afrânio Peixoto, Madam Chrysanthème, image of woman, 1930s.