DA VIDA PELA METADE À PERENIDADE DEVIDA: JOSEFA DE SANTO ALEIXO E MARIA MOISÉS

Abstract

The title aims to elucidate the figurative paths that led to the literary and artistic wealth of Josefa de Santo Aleixo and Maria Moisés of the tale ‘Maria Moisés’ of Novelas do Minho, published by Camilo Castelo Branco between 1875 and 1877. In the gender studies perspective, the ‘incomplete’ life featuring both existential paths refers to the part of the individual history inherent to the female identity construction that these paper beings never materialized due to the current patriarchal universe. According to Nathalie Einich in États de Femme. L’identité dans la fiction occidentale (1996), women identity states, in the cultural context of the eighteen hundreds, are the ‘daughter, wife and mother’, but neither Josefa nor Maria Moisés gather them in full. Balance and consistency of the being woman are far from materialising on this fictional universe. In semio-narrative terms, incompleteness becomes the distinguishing sign of the both mongering sign of the assumption of multiple pathways to their figuration, to their fair perpetuity. On the other hand, regarding the characters’ survival (Reis: 2015), it should be underlined the reinterpretation of the tale by Paula Rego through five compositions, Maria Moisés and other stories, exhibited at Gallery 111 in Porto, in 2000-2001 (Lima 2002). The topics covered by the artist are, once again, those time insists to subsist: passion, unwanted pregnancy, family and social misunderstanding, loneliness.