As Órfãs da Rainha – The Jamestown Brides – Les Filles du Roi: ressignificações literárias dos projetos de inserção da mulher branca na América

Abstract

In this study we analyze historical novels related to the theme of the white women's insertion in America, through information available on the marriage programs As Órfãs da Rainha, The Jamestown Brides, and Les Filles du Roi, to verify how literature reframes these colonialist actions. Such projects were put into practice by Portugal in the mid-16th century, by England in the early 17th century, and by France, starting in the second half of the 17th century. The study finds itself inserted in the research context of the Group "Reframing of the past in America: processes of reading, writing, and translation of hybrid genres of history and fiction – paths to decolonization", linked to the PPGL of Unioeste/Cascavel-PR. Based upon comparative literature, we highlight the experiences of female characters who crossed the ocean with the task of marrying colonizers and building a family in the "New World”. Our focus on this theme turns to the novels Desmundo (1996), by Ana Miranda, To have and to hold ([1900] 2016), by Mary Johnston, and Dear Canada: alone in an untamed land: the filles du roi diary of Hélène St. Onge (2003), by Maxine Trottier, which contemplate literary representations of the three programs. Our doctoral thesis turns to the question of how literature problematizes and reframes, in contemporary times, the marriage programs of the white European women insertion in the context of American colonization. In this intent, we seek to detect which mentality guided this monarchical action, confronting it with the reframing expressed in contemporaneity in the literary field, in order to reveal some "history from below" (SHARPE, [1991] 2011) and to evidence if the intention of maintaining the colonialist motto of "unity and purity" (SANTIAGO, [1978] 2000) is achieved with these programs. This is a qualitative and bibliographic-documentary research, therefore, it is restricted to the collection and analysis of some selected information. Regarding the historical novel, our study relies on the assumptions of Aínsa (1991), Hutcheon (1991), Menton (1993), Fernández Prieto (2003), Esteves (2010), Fleck (2017), among others. Authors such as Le Goff ([1978] 1988), Burke ([1991] 2011), Sharpe ([1991] 2011), and White ([1978] 2014, [1973] 2019), discuss the assumptions of new history and reinforce the current relationship between literature and history that we seek to address. Feminist criticism and female authorship literature are also cross cutting studies of our research, based on Showalter (1977), Branco; Brandão (1989), Guerra (2004, 2007), Zolin (2009a, 2009b), Funck (2016), among others. Our research reveals, thus, that through literature we see reframing of this theme coming to light today. Through the use, mainly, of the characteristics of the contemporary historical novel of mediation, the literary art reframes the insertion of these women in the colonization of America, by revealing in the analyzed novels other experiences of this contingent subjected to the conditions and precepts of patriarchy in history.