Gênero e literatura: representações do sujeito feminino na contística Drummondiana

Abstract

This study analyzes how madness is represented in the Drummondian tale A doida (The mad). It is a bibliographic study comprising the following steps: a survey and readings on the subject, identification of gaps in the field, a cutout of the investigative instrument and verification of the intended objective. This is a relevant research, as it is configured as a possibility to focus on literary art and to give representativeness to the mad subject, especially the madness manifested in the female subject, who is historically marginalized, ratifying the exclusion image impregnated in said subject. Several pejorative opinions are conceived about madness, and this marginalization is accentuated when the person is female. The mad person, by him/herself, already suffers in the midst of social exclusion; when this person is a woman who also acts in a subaltern position, she suffers in double. Therefore, studies applying this perspective should be increasingly encouraged so that minority groups become representative and emerge from the silencing in which they were placed. Thus, such studies assume a denunciation character with regard to uncovering problems that have existed for a long time, as demonstrated by the historical research discussed throughout the study and reveals that madness was not always seen as a pathology and, thus, hidden. The analysis reveals that madness became a label of the feminine condition, as perceived in much of western literature. The study concludes that the mad person is configured as an individual as attached to power relations and stigmas, and is, therefore, a means of revealing human cruelty, noted in the protagonist treatment by the plot characters, whose nickname names the story.