Women and Art: figurations of feminine marginality in Adoecer by Hélia Correia

Abstract

In Hélia Correia’s fiction the marginalisation of women is treated with great sensibility notwithstanding the representation of the harshness of situations that push women to live on the edge, or at the edge, of social requisites, either because it is more comfortable or easier. In this regard, the protagonist in her novel Adoecer depicts a set of diverse situations in which women fight for the acceptance of their artistic value in the world of art and artists, specifically in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood period. The purpose of this study is to analyse the variety of circumstances in which women are in(ex)cluded from the artistic world as represented in the novel, to investigate how characters are used to represent different historical periods, and to analyse the symbolism associated with the different forms of resistance to this marginalisation. I will also focus on the way that characters are created with different layers that tend toward a body-mind duality, along with the tensions between the singularity and the complexity present and that through a hybridity of voices reveal different ideological positionings