O gênero da devoção: corpo feminino, sofrimento e testemunho na devoção a Isabel Maria, a Santa Protetora das Mulheres Agredidas

Abstract

The present study takes as an empirical perspective the devotion to Isabel Maria who, in 1929, in the city of Guaraciaba do Norte, in the region of Ibiapaba, hinterlands of Ceará, was stabbed to death in front of her son and thrown into an abyss by her husband, who felt jealous over his wife's haircut. After years, a devotion to Isabel was formed, and she became part of the pantheon of the so-called “popular saints”. Regarded for many years as a “miracle-worker saint”, she became known, as in the present days, as a patron saint of women who suffer violence. Such emphasis was especially placed when, in 2009, Maria da Penha Fernandes visited the chapel of the character under analysis. With that in mind, the researcher's role is directed towards listening and understanding the narratives of the devotees who seek her chapel for asking, thanking, and praying. The fieldwork for the research was carried out from 2016 to 2020, through wanderings and participant observation at the chapel built for Isabel, in Guaraciaba, particularly on the Day of the Dead, as well as through the meeting with twenty-five interlocutors, collaborators of the research. These encounters with devout women who ask Isabel Maria for protection for their marriage and not to be “beaten” were a real challenge to the theoretical-methodological toolbox, especially with regard to the theorizations concerning gender and religion. Thus, the thesis is based on five analytical dimensions: the first is to understand how the devotion process to Isabel Maria is constituted, in the context of the popular Catholicism, with emphasis on the devout women’s experiences and their ways of experiencing and managing the social relations of gender. The second one is to reconstruct the history of Ceará, with a look at femicides, based on criminal cases of the 20th century, most notably at Isabel Maria’s. The third dimension consists of reflecting on how the representations and practices of holiness, in the context of traditional Catholicism, merge with the devotional experience of the aforementioned character. The fourth one, to list the “popular saints” in Ceará, highlighting whether there is a relationship between a suffering body and the production of sanctity. The fifth dimension, finally, is aimed at understanding the relationship between testimony, emotion, and memory in this investigation. These proposed routes make it possible to understand a grammar of faith, with other ways of managing (MAHMOOD, 2006) in the conjugal relationships of devout women and allow us to glimpse at a delicate process of subject creation (DAS, 2011), interspersed with desires, norms, and languages. And in which the elaboration of a language – that of women protected by law and by faith – is updated/ritualized in prayer (REESINK, 2009, CABRAL, 2009) as an expression of pain and suspension of silence.