Writing Through Patriarchy in Contemporary Brazilian Literature
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Fading Fathers: Writing through Patriarchy in Contemporary Brazilian Literature by Rex P. Nielson B.A., Brigham Young University, 2002 M.A., Brigham Young University, 2004 M.A., Brown University, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2010 Copyright 2010 by Rex P. Nielson This dissertation by Rex P. Nielson is accepted in its present form by the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date _____________ ______________________________ Nelson H. Vieira, Director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date _____________ ______________________________ Luiz F. Valente, Reader Date _____________ ______________________________ Patricia I. Sobral, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date _____________ ______________________________ Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Rex P. Nielson was born in Provo, Utah, on April 29, 1978, and grew up in both Utah and Southern California. As an undergraduate he attended Brigham Young University, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2002 with a double major in Comparative Literature and Portuguese and an honor’s thesis, “Poetry of the River Tietê.” He subsequently received an M.A. from Brigham Young University in Comparative Literature with a thesis entitled, “Relation, Identity, and the Sertão of João Guimarães Rosa’s Sagarana: a Glissantian Reading.” He then continued his graduate education in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, earning an M.A. in 2007 and Ph.D. in 2010. In addition to teaching Portuguese language and Brazilian literature and culture at Brown University, he has taught Brazilian cinema at Harvard University and literary and cultural studies at Bryant University. He has published articles on Machado de Assis, Mário de Andrade, and Fernando Pessoa. Beginning in June 2010, he will assume the post of Visiting Assistant Professor of Portuguese in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Brigham Young University. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation and my professional development have been marked by a series of defining influences—individuals who have not only taught me the collaborative nature of all academic work but who have enriched my life through their friendship and generosity of spirit. To them I wish to express my sincere agradecimentos. First, I would like to thank my dissertation director, Nelson Vieira, for his friendship, time, insights, and unwavering encouragement through each stage of this project. I am equally indebted to Luiz Valente, the chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, not only for teaching me how to play squash but for his constant support and meticulous feedback. I am also grateful to Patricia Sobral for her enthusiastic example and for helping me to become a better teacher. Additionally I would like to thank the other members of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies who have taught and supported me throughout this process: Onésimo Almeida, Leonor Simas-Almeida, James Green, Jorge Flores, and Anani Dzidziyeno. Armanda Silva and Candida Hutter, the administrative staff of the department, deserve a special thanks for their patience in helping me navigate the bureaucratic ins and outs of university life. And I also want to thank Brown University librarian Patricia Figueroa, Laura Hess, the Associate Director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, and Andrew Ross, the Director of the Language Resource Center, for inspiring me to make connections between my research and teaching. I also want to thank my cohort of fellow graduate students, both old and new, in the department: Alexandra Montague, Marília Scaff Rocha Ribeiro, Guilherme Trielli v Ribeiro, Rachel Rothenberg, Robert Newcomb, Yi Liu, Ana Catarina Teixeira, Oscar Perez, Ana Letícia Fauri, Stephen Bocksay, Isadora Grevan Carvalho, Sandra Sousa, Thayse Lima, Lamonte Aidoo, Lauren Papalia, Daniel Silva, and Adi Gold. I want to thank in particular, however, my writing partner Sophia Beal, for her support and excellent advice and feedback. And I have reserved a special appreciation for Luca Prazeres and Brian Brewer, who both started graduate school with me at Brown in 2004, for their friendship and camaraderie during my entire graduate education. Finally, I wish to thank my parents Kerry and Nancy Nielson, who set me on this path many years ago by making me memorize poetry and teaching me to love all beautiful things, and especially Natalie, my best friend and wife, whose faith in me has never wavered and whose love and friendship give meaning to all that I do. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page.................................................................................................................... i Copyright page............................................................................................................ ii Signature page............................................................................................................. iii Vita............................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments....................................................................................................... v Table of Contents........................................................................................................ vii Introduction: Entering Patriarchy ................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Refracting Patriarchy ................................................................................. 21 Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura Arcaica and Carlos & Carlos Sussekind’s Armadilha para Lamartine Chapter 2: Anxious Assimilation and the Nation as Family......................................... 73 Moacyr Scliar’s O Centauro no Jardim Chapter 3: Violence and Silence in the Domestic Landscape ....................................... 119 Lygia Fagundes Telles’ As meninas and Adriana Lisboa’s Sinfonia em Branco Chapter 4: “O Pai Provisório”: Fatherhood and New Heterosexual Masculinities ........ 185 Cristovão Tezza’s O filho eterno Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 216 Works Cited................................................................................................................ 223 INTRODUCTION Entering Patriarchy The family has always been a significant social institution in Brazilian culture, and the nuclear family remains a richly idealized symbol imbued with powerful social expectations. Families demand commitment, yet in return family structures offer care, protection, affection, foundations for identity, and bonds of belonging—“os laços de sangue e de coração” (Holanda 146) [the bonds of blood and the heart].1 In Brazil’s cultural tradition and since the colonial period, the father has occupied a privileged position in his idealized role as patriarchal authority presiding over the family’s promised offerings of care, protection, and belonging. Yet in this family model the father is also the family’s lawgiver and authority who legitimizes its members. As a powerful and universal model, it is no wonder that the real and symbolic nature of family relationships have permeated the structures of governments and social institutions as well as the discourse of politicians, who in many cases have appropriated the metaphorical power of family, and namely of fathers, to consolidate, legitimize, and extend their authority. Brazilian culture presents a particular example of this type of appropriation. As Sérgio Buarque de Holanda famously expounded in Raízes do Brasil and Gilberto Freyre demonstrated in Casa Grande e Senzala, from the earliest colonial presence, patriarchal authority has structured Brazilian social and civic life. Freyre notes, “Em contraste com o nomadismo aventureiro dos bandeirantes—em sua maioria mestiço de brancos com índios—os senhores das casas-grandes representaram na formação brasileira a tendência mais caracteristicamente portuguesa, isto é, pé-de-boi, no sentido de estabilidade patriarcal” (42) [In contrast to the adventurous nomad life of the bandeirantes—the majority of whom were mestizos, part white and part Indian—the Big House gentry represented, in the formation of Brazilian society, the most typical of Portuguese tendencies: namely, settledness, in the sense of patriarchal stability] (xl).2 Freyre’s observation points toward two important effects of Brazil’s colonial formation: first, Brazilian patriarchy was initially centered in the casa-grande, a domestic space that established a rooted, stable hierarchy of social relationships, and second, from the beginnings of colonialism, and despite Freyre’s own argument to the contrary, patriarchy fundamentally and politically eschewed the model of miscegenation and established its authority by legitimizing and including some colonial subjects while excluding others. Both Freyre and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda agree, however, that this patriarchal structure fundamentally represents Brazil’s colonial period: “A casa-grande, embora associada particularmente ao engenho de cana, ao patriarcalismo nortista, não se deve considerar expressão exclusiva do açúcar, mas da monocultura escravocrata e latifundiária em geral: criou-a no Sul o café tão brasileiro