Quero minha mãe: a representação da infância e da figura materna na obra de Adélia Prado

Abstract

The present research focuses in the representation of the childhood and the motherly figure present in the literature of the writer Adélia Prado, from Minas Gerais, seeking to understand how the integration of these elements happens in the literary project being examined. For this purpose, there has been done the reading of two pieces by the author which were strongly marked by the memorialist treat motivator of these two topics, the child’s book Quando eu era pequena and the novelistic narrative Quero minha mãe. Based on this corpus, some discussions related to matters such as the complexity of the child being, the simplistic character commonly linked to child’s literature, the constant recurrence of the childhood and the mother subject in this literature, the role of this in the development of subjectivity in Prado’s characters, among others. Methodologically, at first there has been done a study about the characteristics in Adélia Prado’s writing, mainly, based on her literary influences. Next, a summary of the topics of childhood in this piece is done, having as basis the narrative in Quando eu era pequena, to reach, then, the representation of the mother, a being who, in this piece as a whole, is linked strictly to this primary phase of the individual’s life and is represented, in a more present manner, in the book Quero minha mãe. The relevance in studying the childhood and the motherly figure, in a broader way, exchanging with the social context; provides an interdisciplinary approach, reaching out to philosophical, psychological, historical and sociological fundaments. For this purpose, as theoretical support, studies on childhood are referred (CHOMBART DE LAUWE, 1991; LAJOLO, 1997; ARIÈS, 2006; MATA, 2006; COUTINHO, 2012a, 2012b), on literary historiography, critics and theory (ARRIGUCCI JR., 1987, 2002; PERRONE-MOISÉS, 1990, 1998, 2012; BARTHES, 2003, 2011; NITRINI, 2010;), on the author (LUCAS, 1991; QUEIROZ, 1994; HOHLFELDT, 2000; FONTENELE, 2002), on the woman social history, the femininity and the daughter-mother relationship (BEAUVOIR, 1970; BADINTER, 1985; CAMPOS, 2005; DEL PRIORE, 1995; FREUD, 1931, 1932; ZALCBERG, 2003), among others considered pertinent to the discussion. Thus, the work of Adélia Prado is examined, demonstrating, above all, that, in such literary record, we see the occurrence of the deconstruction of the idealized images of both the childhood and the motherly figure, so recurrent in the western culture. Furthermore, it is pointed that the childhood and the mother are two topics which are umbilicaly linked not only in the two books which compose the corpus for this research, but comprehends the complete writer’s fictional production, creating for the work a net of communicating vessels.