On the margins of the margin: normative genre, subversive genre and epochal context in Clarice Lispector’s female characters.

Abstract

This paper aims, on the one hand, to deepen the relationship between a number of cultural, sociologic and historic-symbolic factors and the existence of an effective gender normativity, traditionally linked to the imposition of statuses, roles and attitudes, albeit with hardly any biopsychic foundation. On the other hand, the status of Brazilian bourgeois, mostly urban, women during Clarice Lispector’s lifetime will also be addressed by analyzing her texts and finding therein traces of the normative and subversive genres, as refl ected on female characters living on the margins of society, within a social order clearly defined by masculine power and norms.