Helena, de Machado de Assis: uma leitura feminista e póscolonialista.

Abstract

This research analyzes the novel Helena (1876) from one of the most important Brazilian writers, Machado de Assis, from a feminist and a post-colonial perspectives. This combination of perspectives has been used in the last decades in analysis of literary works aiming at establishing intersections between gender, race and class in (post)colonial contexts. It is important to highlight the pioneering aspect of this research, since we could not find works that analyze this novel from a post-colonial bias. Actually, the lack of studies of the national literature from such lenses is still rare, maybe due to the fact that Brazil was the only colony in the world to become the capital of the Empire that colonized itself, what made the national letters show the illusion of belonging to the Portuguese essence – it is in such context that Helena’s plot is located. However, with the political independence, the road taken by Brazil led it to a complete break with the old imperialist Metropole, and that made the local writers ―ignore‖ the colonial past and focus on the future. Thus, Helena reproduces the imperialist and patriarchal ideologies that dominated the social scene in the 19th century, being it portrayed as of total harmony with the colonial and slavery situation, in the case of the Brazilian characters (white and black), and of total female conformity with the patriarchal domination, either the white or the black women. This is a typical phallacy in colonial and patriarchal texts, that is, the lack of resistance and critical thinking from the subalterns characters.