Entre castas e voluptuosas: as mulheres no teatro rodrigueano

Abstract

This article proposes a work of textual analysis of the theater of Nelson Rodrigues, focusing on certain female characters of his dramatic work. The analysis developed here is based on two categories of female characters in the Rodrigue theater: chaste, cold and faithful women who repudiate female beauty and female sexuality; and voluptuous women, beautiful and transgressive, who do not fit the standards of a modest and faithful wife, experiencing their sexuality through betrayal or prostitution - and being violently punished for it. It is assumed here that d. Eduarda (from the play Senhora dos afogados) is an emblematic personage of the theater of Nelson, since it is constituted by an ambivalence that makes it possess traces of the two categories mentioned above, besides being a victim of punitive and tragic violence. It is also assumed that, through these characters and their tragic endings marked by gender violence, the Rodriguean theater reflects the macho and punitive treatment that Brazilian society exempts from women who leave the modesty of a modest wife / mother.