“HIDDEN WATERFALLS” OR FIGURATIONS OF THE FEMALE IN SHORT STORIES BY ANA MARIA MACHADO AND DINA SALÚSTIO

Abstract

We propose a comparative reading of the short stories “Burrinho de presépio” by Brazilian writer Ana Maria Machado, “Mãe não é mulher” and “A oportunidade do grito” by Cape Verdean writer Dina Salústio, with the aim of bringing together female voices separated by an ocean but united by an experience marked by gender. In this sense, we will seek to highlight how women’s lives are represented in similar contexts, since they are built on the same Judeo-Christian patriarchal foundations. We problematize the role women learn in the performance of their social functions and the ways in which they are represented in literature, based on a theoretical basis arising from feminist criticism and gynocriticism. We consider concepts such as feminine, as marked by the conventions socially attributed to women; gender as an operational category to understand the social and cultural difference that permeates subjects; patriarchy, whose scope of family organization goes beyond the private sphere and reaches the political sphere, coining a term that represents the institutionalization of power and oppression, both socially and in the private sphere of families. In this way, the perspective starts with an intention to deconstruct the naturalized way in which gender differences resulted in the still-current exercise of oppressive and power over women, resulting in erasure and silencing. Thus, between screams and silences, we realize that the stories reveal an inner world inhabited by women, larger than the patriarchy would like it to be and ready to subvert the dam that contains it.