As guilty as Capitu: fiction, uxoricide and gender politics in the time of Dom Casmurro

Abstract

Dom Casmurro is one of the most important novels of Machado de Assis and it is part of the canon of Brazilian literature. Therefore, the attention of the critics frequently lays on the literary refinement of the novel, and not on its social critics. The purpose of this research is delineated from this observation, and its main goal is to read Dom Casmurro in conjunction with other sources (literary and periodic) written at the same period, in order to understand the novel as another chapter dedicated to reflect on the Brazilian society at the end of XIXth century. The intent is to insert the novel into a broader discussion in which it may have been involved, trying to recognize the literary text as a testimony of changes in gender relations in the Rio de Janeiro of that time. More specifically, it will be our concern to study carefully the violence of the narrator in situations in which this violence may be comprehended as ludic. In that way, it will be possible to relate the punitive actions of Bento Santiago towards his wife, to the risks and violence that other women as Capitu could suffer at the same time, trying, also, to comprehend how those women found ways to survive in that scenery. As a result, it is our intention to observe how the fictional text of Machado de Assis allows to know more about a female political culture developed in the XIXth century. (AU)