Eva Luna e a resistência: deslocamentos, narrativos e transgressões

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to understand the articulation between resistance and literature presented in the work Eva Luna (1987), by the Chilean Isabel Allende, primarily according to Alfredo Bosi's perspective in Literatura e Resistência, 2002 (Literature and Resistance). Resistance is understood as an ethical aspect that, in literature, implies a reaction that is contrary to any ideological element in a given society. In analyzing Eva Luna's experiences—the protagonist-narrator—the reflections developed here aim to understand the contributions of female-authored literature as a form of women's resistance. In this sense, due to the helplessness that the protagonist's early orphanhood imposed on her, the study explores the deterritorialization process that she consequently experienced. Moreover, the analysis problematizes the transition from orality to writing, which limited women's involvement in literary activity for centuries, particularly since Eva Luna was illiterate until the age of fifteen. In learning to write, the character increased her possibilities to resist the limitations tied to the intersectional oppressions of gender and social class. Once she had developed her skills, she used them to resist the underlying exacerbated authoritarianism of the oppressive government and patriarchal culture. In regards to the writing of book, the socio-historical contextualization was carried out mainly by drawing on the perspectives of Ruy Mauro Marini (2019) and Juliet Kirkwood (1983), who foreground the effects of the Military Dictatorship. The concept of patriarchy is here defined, specifically in resonance with Pierre Bourdieu's thought (2019), as a means to analyze some of the consequences of the symbolic system of women's oppression, with an emphasis on the asymmetry that exists between the public and private spheres, as well that between speaking and remaining silent. Taking the ethical aspect of the literary work into account, the theories referenced in the analysis dialogue with the relationship between literature and society described by Antonio Candido in Literatura e Sociedade (2014), and Ria Lemaire's studies (1994) on the influence of access to writing in the process of women's emancipation, to then highlight the potential of women's literature along the course of resistance to symbolic gender violence, for which Lúcia Osana Zolin's (2005) studies are fundamental. The subjective, descriptive and interpretive analysis of the work made it possible to identify the hierarchical patriarchal relations as the organizing system of the society on which Eva Luna's subversive reactions are based. The continuous displacements between other people's houses and the street, experienced during her youth, led her to cross the boundary between the public and the private. The entry into literary territory allows one to go beyond the boundaries between speaking and remaining silent. Finally, the claiming of a voice by way of writing demonstrates the link between literature and resistance as a means to counter the oppressive systems with which she is confronted.