The feminist fight in Brazilian ditatorial period: Woman’s representations in Ave de Paraíso and Colheita by Nélida Piñon

Abstract

Due to herearly membership in the feminist movement, Nélida Piñon uses her writing to address various aspects of women. We will analysethe short storiesAve de Paraísoand Colheita, which are part ofSala de Armas(Piñon 1973),relating them to the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s in Brazil, the period of publication of herwork that corresponds to the final part of the Brazilian dictatorial regime, in order to understand the analysis of the construction of the female characters of these tales as images of criticism of the condition of women in the given context. To this end, we will unravel the growing appreciation of the feminine –key point of Colheita–and the extremely passive characterization of the feminine –key point of Ave de Paraíso. We will use the perspectives of feminist critique, such as Casagrande eZolin (2007) and Cheri Register (1989) to reflect on the traditional aspects surrounding these representations. In addition, we will draw a parallel between the Brazilian feminist guidelines in the given period, through the theories of Céli Pinto (2003),Joana Maria Pedro (2006, 2012),Constância Duarte (2003), among others.We conclude that Nélida Piñon glimpsed fuzzy aspects of the condition of the woman of her time that would be taken as guidelinesby the feminist movement years after the publication of theseshort stories, showing her contemporaneity (Agamben2009) transfigured into literary mastery.