Eva Luna e Cuentos de Eva Luna: da fascinação da palavra à representação da mulher

Abstract

The practice and study of literature, in general, were developed by men, who establish the concepts about the position of the woman in the society, bringing on the determination of the roles of the women´s subordination in relation to the men´s power. The woman´s writing rejects the divisions of gender and, as the female writers start to appropriate the discourse, they promote, through traditional values questioning, the desconstruction of the patriarchal model, opening the possibility of the woman to become the subject and act effectively in the society. It means that analyzing the cultural situation of the woman becomes fundamental, because it is possible to perceive how she sees the other and how she is seen by the dominant group and by herself. Isabel Allende, in Eva Luna and Cuentos de Eva Luna, narrates the story of a woman who is composed from the word. In this sense, this dissertation has as goal to ponder not only the revaluation of the literature written by women, but also to propose a discussion about the representation of the woman´s role in both: the private and the social spaces, based on the possibilities of modifications of their destinies through the social subversion of the patriarchal power. The writings also keep a dialogue with Venezuela´s history, making it possible to read it relating to interdisciplinary studies, that justify itself in both: the construction of the multiple senses proposed by a literary fiction, and the possibility of demonstrate the role of the historical reconstruction in the identity construction of the people and the societies in general, permitting a critical thinking about the history of the Latin-American continent. The writings thematize the transforming power of the language while it narrates the life of a female character who, using her tales, transforms herself and the environment where she lives. The analysis is based on the appropriation of concepts of the feminist theory, like notions of gender, associated to the analysis of the regionalism and intertextuality, to the study of the borders established between history and literature and to the tale. Theoretical aspects about the silence which the woman was submitted to and the roles represented by her in the literature were referred with the intention of proposing a discussion of the identity construction of the narrator herself, Eva Luna, who, in spite of having her existence programmed to be submissive, overcome her fears and modify her destiny, becoming a writer and, as her characters, can reconstruct the female power, just because, as Eva Luna, the other female writers, make themselves free of the domination, subverting and reinventing patterns through the writing, owning the power over the narrative and the fascination of the word.