From weight to release: two views of sexual violence in contemporary literature written by women

Abstract

Socially constructed binary logic, in addition to stereotyping female and male bodies, which must be strong, virile and dominating; and the one who is weak, submissive and fragile often causes violence against women, addressed in a symbolic or physical way, to be treated as belonging to the order of things. The concern for this proposal arose after realizing that the theme of violence against women, although persistent at an epidemic level in Brazilian society, is not a frequent theme in the contemporary literary sphere. Added to this is the fact that when such a theme appeared in canonical literature, which was essentially male, the times when it was treated in a stereotyped and naturalized way were not uncommon. Therefore, our objective is to investigate how the contemporary novel of female authorship has articulated visibility in the conquests of women, having as main focus the violence against women in the novels O peso do pássaro morto (2017), by Aline Bei and Eu me possuo (2016), by Stella Florence. For this, an interpretative and qualitative analysis of sexual violence will be made in the aforementioned works. To this end, The theoretical contribution to thinking about violence against women focuses mainly on the studies of Heleieth Saffioti (2015) and Carlos Magno Gomes (2014); on silences by Orlandi (1997) and Solnit (2017), in addition to the symbolic violence of Pierre Bourdieu (2014). It is concluded that contemporary literature written by women has contributed to the fight against violence against women.