The eternal angst, the violence, the silencing, and the grotesque in Os Porcos, by Julia Lopes de Almeida

Abstract

Julia Lopes de Almeida was an abolicionist in the 19th Century and one of the idealizers of Brazilian Academy of Letters. The aim of this study is to discuss about the abovementioned author by taking into account the process of silencing and violence that affects women inside and outside the literary scene. In Os Porcos, published in 1903, such phenomena are personified in the figure of Umbelina. The aforementioned work is not part of the canon, is not present in the most renowned manuals of literature, didactic books, nor has it ever reached a massive audience. However, it reflects the social ills resulting from years of submission and lack of acknowledgement, mostly due to its criticism that grotesquely exposes blindspots in the feminine writing in the historiography of literature. The dialog between ficctional violence which the main character suffers from and both symbolic and empirical violences that Julia Lopes de Almeida suffered from walk hand in hand with inumerous rights violations experienced by women these days. The theoretical framework is mainly based on Woolf (1982), Telles (1988), Perrot (2005), and Colling (2004). The representation of a woman who wishes to break free from the silencing, which is a form of violence, has been discussed in this study.