Mestrado em Estudos Literários, Culturais e Interartes Ramo de Estudos Comparatistas e Relações Interculturais Sextualities: The Female body and Sexuality in Contemporary Portuguese Women’s Writing Lorna Marie Kirkby M 2016 Lorna Marie Kirkby Sextualities: The Female Body and Sexuality in Contemporary Portuguese Women’s Writing Porto June, 2016 Lorna Marie Kirkby Sextualities: The Female Body and Sexuality in Contemporary Portuguese Women’s Writing Dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Literary, Cultural and Interarts Studies, Comparative Literature branch, at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, under the supervision of Dr. Joana Matos Frias and Dr. Marinela Feitas. Dissertação realizada no âmbito do Mestrado em Estudos Literários, Culturais e Interartes, Ramo de Estudos Comparatistas e Relações interculturais, orientada pela Professora Doutora Joana Matos Frias e coorientada pela Professora Doutora Marinela Freitas. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto June, 2016 Sextualities: The Female Body and Sexuality in Contemporary Portuguese Women’s writing Lorna Marie Kirkby Dissertação realizada no âmbito do Mestrado em Estudos Literários, Culturais e Interartes, Ramo de Estudos Comparatistas e Relações interculturais, orientada pela Professora Doutora Joana Matos Frias e coorientada pela Professora Doutora Marinela Freitas. Membros do Júri Professora Doutora Marinela Freitas Faculdade de Letras – Universidade do Porto Professora Doutora Ana Luísa Amaral Faculdade de Letras – Universidade do Porto Professora Doutora Zulmira Santos Faculdade de Letras – Universidade do Porto Classificação obtida: 19 valores Sextualities: The Female Body and Sexuality in Contemporary Portuguese Women’s Writing Abstract This thesis aims at studying the portrayal of the female body and sexuality in the poetry of Luiza Neto Jorge and Maria Teresa Horta, and in the book Novas Cartas Portuguesas, collectively written by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa (the Three Marias). Using a comparative approach, this study focusses primarily on the relationship between sex, the body, language, and discourse in order to understand the political and social forces working against the free expression of body and sexuality (particularly during the 1960s and 1970s) as well as to analyse the literary strategies used by the Three Marias, Neto Jorge and Teresa Horta in order to subvert dominant patriarchal and phallocentric discourse in representation, knowledge, and politics. Key words: body; sexuality; eroticism; representation; écriture féminine; Portuguese women’s writing. Resumo Esta tese pretende estudar a representação do corpo e da sexualidade a partir do “feminino” na poesia de Luiza Neto Jorge e de Maria Teresa Horta, bem como no livro Novas Cartas Portuguesas, escrito conjuntamente por Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta e Maria Velho da Costa (Três Marias). Através de uma abordagem comparatista, este estudo chama a atenção para a relação entre sexo, corpo, linguagem e discurso, procurando, por um lado, analisar os mecanismos políticos e sociais que coarctam a livre expressão do corpo e da sexualidade sobretudo nos anos 60 e 70, e, por outro, compreender as estratégias literárias utilizadas pelas Três Marias, por Neto Jorge e por Teresa Horta de modo a subverter os discursos patriarcais e falocêntricos dominantes no que diz respeito a questões como representação, conhecimento e o político. Palavras-chave: corpo; sexualidade; erotismo; representação; écriture féminine; escrita das mulheres portuguesas. Acknowledgements I would firstly like to thank Dr Marinela Freitas for her patience with me and invaluable guidance and specialist insight throughout this project. I would also like to thank Dr Joana Matos Frias for her support during the process of writing this thesis. It has, without a doubt, been a privilege to study at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto for the last two years and I feel extremely lucky to have had the chance to benefit from the expert tutelage of such a vast range of academics in my time here. Of course, I could not have had this opportunity in the first place if it hadn’t been for Dr Rui Miranda and Dr Mark Sabine who encouraged me in my application to the University of Porto and have continued to offer support from afar over the past two years. Finally, I must thank my family for backing me all the way, always being in my corner, and for always encouraging me to pursue my education. James Wright also deserves a mention here for his infallible support and confidence in me, his patience and for just generally being wonderful. Having so many people rooting for me, even from a distance, has truly made all the difference. Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Part I: The Body ....................................................................................................................... 17 Chapter One: Deconstructing Dichotomies.......................................................................... 25 Chapter Two: Representations ............................................................................................. 42 Part II: Sexuality ...................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter Three: Jouissance and Sexual Pleasure .................................................................. 75 Chapter Four: Taboo ............................................................................................................ 91 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 110 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................... 115 Sextualities | 1 Introduction Voamos a lua menstruadas Os homens gritam: – são as bruxas As mulheres pensam: – são os anjos As crianças dizem: – são as fadas Maria Teresa Horta The plight of Portuguese women, oppressed by a strict moral and legal code for much of the twentieth-century under the 1933-1974 dictatorial regime of the Estado Novo, is unique not only in the way in which their lives had been controlled to such a large extent and until so recently, but also in the way in which women expressed their opposition to the regime and need for liberation. On the one hand, the politics of female liberation were linked to a large extent with the counter-regime struggle, with women playing a key role in opposition to the Estado Novo. On this side of the fight for women’s liberation, women’s social and political emancipation was inextricably linked with the opposition groups who fought against the dictatorial regime, often focussing on censorship, the colonial wars, education and workers’ rights.1 Although there were some groups created specifically with female emancipation in mind, such as the Conselho Nacional das Mulheres Portuguesas [The National Council of Portuguese Women] (1914-1947) and the Associação Feminina Portuguesa para a Paz [Portuguese Feminine Association for Peace] (1935-1952), they were dissolved by the Estado Novo regime and never managed to recover any large underground participation, thus the political participation of women against the dictatorship became integrated into the more successful movements of the political left such as the Movimento de Unidade Democrática [Movement for Democratic Unity] (1945-1948) (MUD) and the Partido Comunista Português [Portuguese 1 Vanda Gorjão’s 2002 study Mulheres em Tempos Sombrios provides a complete study of feminine opposition to the Estado Novo regime and emphasises the large role of women in oppositional politics coming from a vast number of backgrounds including liberal, republican, socialist, communist, anarcho-syndicalist, feminist and pacifist. Introduction | 2 Communist Party] (1921-) (PCP).2 The principal exception to this trend, the Movimento democrático de mulheres [Women’s Democratic Movement] (1968-) (MDM), was created with heavy participation from the PCP (although without official affiliation). What is particularly interesting about the MDM is that they identify themselves principally as a political entity rather than a ‘feminist group’ as such3 and, unlike the earlier women’s groups that were dissolved, the issues that MDM engaged with were not exclusively ‘women’s issues’ – for example, the MDM launched a protest against the colonial wars in the early 1970s. This means that on the political side of Portuguese feminism, there were no successful feminist groups to foreground feminist issues as such, but that women’s presence in politics was more of a women’s voice on current affairs and some women’s issues with very little emphasis on a specific feminist politic. On the other hand, women were also fighting their own ideological battle for freedom of sexuality and of sexual expression that lay outside of the political manifestos of left-wing political groups. It is this second struggle that renders the Portuguese women’s cause so unique in the context of global women’s liberation. Although feminist movements from other national backgrounds, in particular French and Anglo-American, were also concerned with achieving sexual liberation, the expression of Portuguese sexual liberation was articulated on very different terms. Ex-Prime Minister Maria de Lourdes