REFLECTIONS UPON EDUCATION, FAMILY, MARRIAGE, AND WOMEN STATUS IN UM DIVÓRCIO, BY SARAH BEIRÃO

Abstract

ABSTRACT:

This study does an analytical reading about the novel Um Divórcio (1950), by Sarah Beirão aiming, mainly questions regarding the female condition under the educational issue. The focus consists in the impositions about the marriage into the model of the bourgeois traditional family in the 50’s of the last century, in which the choice of the husband was not still entirely a right of the woman. The position of the novelist about the rights of women, with active participation in portuguese associations, – for instance, the National Council of the Portuguese Women (NCPW) – became her outstanding in the defense of causes in favor of the minority class, more precisely of woman’s condition in the 20th century. Leader of magazines which aimed to consolidate the feminism in Portugal, her actions reflect in the elaboration of female representations which showed as the oppression much as the accession of the new values, such as the protagonist who insists in the divorce. Even though, it is a conservative and patriarchal society, it is necessary to emphasize the contributions of the female representations into this novel, rising up questioning of this ambit mainly taking into account that the most of female readers of the epoch still did readings of novels of the 19th century. This brief essay has resorted to the theoretical basis about the gender studies specifically the feminist criticism. In this context, there are, however, names such as: Anália Cardoso Torres (1996); Constância Lima Duarte (2003); Cecil Zinani e Salete Santos (2015); Fátima Pais (2012); Lúcia Osana Zolin (2009); Maria Elisa Cevasco (2009); Simone de Beauvoir (2016); amongst others.

KEYWORDS: Um Divórcio, Sarah Beirão, Female Character, Eduaction, Family and Marriage, Woman Status.