Crônica de uma morte anunciada e O amor nos tempos do cólera, de Gabriel García Márquez e a construção de personagens femininas na literatura e no cinema

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the construction of female characters in the novels Chronicle of a Death Foretold (2011) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), by Gabriel García Márquez, as well as their film adaptations directed by Francesco Rosi (1987) and Mike Newell (2007), respectively. The objective is to understand how literature and cinema represent the social role of women in socio-historical contexts marked by Latin American patriarchy. The research is based on the hypothesis that the comparative relationship between these novels and their respective films reveals distinct processes in the construction of female characters, highlighting the centrality of women’s social condition within the historical and cultural tensions of Colombian society. The study seeks to identify continuities, shifts, and reconfigurations in the representation of the feminine in both books and films. In the first analytical stage, the study contextualizes the literary, journalistic, and cultural trajectory of García Márquez, situating him within the Latin American Boom and within the historical transformations of Colombia between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It demonstrates that his work articulates fiction and social reality by incorporating historical, cultural, and political elements into the narrative structure. It is also shown that the author’s background – marked by journalism, political engagement, and the experience of a matriarchal genealogy – contributed to the creation of dense and symbolically structuring female characters. This trajectory establishes the theoretical foundations that support the analysis of the selected works, drawing on authors such as Fuentes (1974), Rama (1982; 2001), Sánchez (2009), and Monegal (1972). Subsequently, the study examines the social representation of women in both novels. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold (2011), the analysis focuses on the representation of honor as a mechanism of control over the female body, demonstrating how the female character becomes a symbol of patriarchal morality and reveals a society complicit in violence legitimized by tradition. In Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), the trajectory of female characters is investigated, highlighting the conflict between social expectations, bourgeois marriage, and emotional autonomy. Although subject to rigid norms, these characters develop strategies of resistance that produce symbolic shifts within the patriarchal order. In this process, authors such as Zolin (2009), Ruffinelli (1985), Mesa (1995), Gama (1995), and Segato (2016) contribute to the theoretical framework. Finally, the film adaptations are analyzed based on contemporary theories of adaptation studies, which challenge traditional notions of fidelity between literary and cinematic works. The analysis draws on theoretical principles formulated by Hutcheon (2013), Stam (2005), M. Martin (2011), and Xavier (2003). The study demonstrates that, in the adaptation process, directors make aesthetic and narrative choices that in some cases attenuate the critical complexity present in García Márquez’s novels. It concludes that, in the novels, the feminine assumes a structuring role in the representation of patriarchy and gender inequalities in Latin American literature. In the film adaptations, however, these representations are reconfigured according to the specificities of audiovisual language, revealing both continuities and transformations in the construction of female characters.