A construção da identidade feminina no conto “Uma galinha” de Clarice Lispector

Abstract

Women have been gaining important social spaces and positions in society. Despite some rights won through feminist struggles faced in a few decades ago, man still remains more privileged in the social environment in relation to women. Based on the patriarchal traditions imposed on women and families during the last century and comparing them with those of postmodernist society, we proposed to analyze the cultural transformations that took place between the different societies, Patriarchal and modern, Verify how the process of construction of the feminine identity took place, in the middle of a society as macho, capitalist and violent as the Brazilian one. With this aim in mind, in Lispector’s short story “A Chicken”, we observed how women came to be seen and treated in modern period, analyzing female cultural values related to the family role, maternity, the social condition of women in everyday life, and in space of the house, besides the subordination to man, if the is still conserved in the present day. As a theoretical framework, we used the studies about the origin of the short story genre and about the creation of the literary fiction characters, from Gotlib (2006), Cortázar (2008), Candido (2007), Brait (1985) Elódia Xavier (1998) and Heleieth Saffioti (2004) focused on the construction of patriarchal family relations and violence against women. We call attention in this context to the fact that the Studies of the construction of feminine identity contribute to demonstrate that the domain of patriarchalism remains alive in modern society and places women at different social levels in relation to men.