Guadalupe Nettel e Eliane Brum: maternidades ambivalentes

Abstract

This dissertation is based on a comparative analysis of the novels A filha única (2022), by Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel, and Uma duas (2009), by Brazilian writer Eliane Brum. The focus of the analysis is the approach to motherhood and the numerous social pressures that affect women in contemporary society. In both novels, the authors prioritize the protagonism of women and the importance of female complicity in contexts of violence and oppression. Motherhood in the novels breaks with the romanticized thinking constituted by patriarchy, in that not all the characters choose to become mothers, and those who do don’t experience “perfect” motherhood. The relevance of women’s literary discourse is to demystify, through art, the imposition of roles historically imposed on women. For example, the conception of motherhood as a universal female path. The analysis dialogues with the research of scholars Elisabeth Badinter (1985; 2011), Flávia Biroli (2014) and Michelle Perrot (2011), who interpret the romanticized discourse of motherhood as a way for hegemonic groups to limit women’s freedom by fixing them in the domestic sphere, in the functions of the home and care. In this sense, in dialogue with feminist critical studies and feminist historiography, the works under analysis highlight how women, despite having conquered new spaces and opportunities, continue to suffer multiple forms of violence and oppression, whether within the family or in the public sphere, by conservative groups that perpetuate misogynistic ideologies.