Women, Bandits, and Power in the Brazilian Northeast: Rachel de Queiroz

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Notes

1 See Ligia Chiappini’s “Rachel de Queiroz: invenção do Nordeste e muito mais,” in Chiappini, Ligia and Maria Stella Bresciani, eds. Literatura e cultura no Brasil: identidades e fronteiras (São Paulo: Cortez, 2002): 157-176, 162 and ff., a discussion of various approaches to Queiroz's work.

2 Rachel de Queiroz, a special issue of Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira, 4 (September, 1977), lists 38 translation titles, published between 1940 and 1972, including Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, Dostoyevski's Brothers Karamazov; also Elizabeth Gaskell, John Galsworthy, A. J. Cronin, Vicky Baum, and Agatha Christie (118-19). Several are translations from translations.

3 Fred P. Ellison, Brazil's New Novel, Four Northeastern Masters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), 135.

4 “Grande sertão: mulheres,” (unsigned) introduction to Rachel de Queiroz, in Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira, 5.

5 That novel, João Miguel, was Queiroz's most politically engaged work, according to Elódia Xavier, but deemed insufficiently so by the party leadership. See “Trajetória ficcional de Rachel de Queiroz,” in Constancia Lima Duarte, ed., Anais do Quinto Seminário Nacional Mulher e Literatura--1993 (Natal: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte/Editora Universitária, 1995): 86-88, 86. Under the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, Queiroz, like Jorge Amado and Graciliano Ramos, was jailed (see Lúcia Helena Costigan, “Literatura e ditadura: Aspectos da ficção brasileira pós-64 em alguns dos escritos de Lygia Fagundes Telles e de Nélida Piñon.” Hispanic Journal 13, no.1 [Spring 1992]: 141-51, 141, also n. 4, 149).

6 Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda, “O éthos Rachel,” Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira, 4 (September 1997): 103-115, 112. Hollanda's report on various interviews with Queiroz discusses her roots in a rural aristocratic Brazilian culture more frequently deplored than examined. Hollanda notes that the “matriarchs” from whom Queiroz claims to descend—strong, authoritative, and competent—appear frequently in Brazilian fiction as cruel and destructive; she also notes that Queiroz's work fell out of favor among academics in the 60s: her politics and her anti-feminism frightened them (104).

7 See “Rachel de Queiroz: Literatura e política no feminino,” in Constancia Lima Duarte, ed., Anais … : 81-85, 85.

8 See Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira, 4.

9 See Carlos Alberto Azevedo, “Literatura e praxis social no Brasil: O Romance Nordestino de 1930,” Revista Iberoamericana, 48 (1982): 89-104, 91, quoting Rui Facó, Cangaceiros e Fanáticos (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1963), 194. Azevedo mentions Queiroz only briefly, concentrating on the men in the movement.

10 Ethos, 112. Cristina Ferreira Pinto (O Bildungsroman feminino [São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1990], 61) mentions other critics who declare that Queiroz writes like a man: her style is “virile” (Homero Silveira, “Mulheres romancistas,” in Aspectos do romance brasileiro contemporâneo [São Paulo: Convivio; Brasilia: INL-MEC, 1977], 275); she is the “manliest” of the writers dealing with social problems in Brazil (Olivio Montenegro, O Romance brasileiro [Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1953], 275).

11 Ibid. 113.

12 Benjamin Abdala Junior discusses the novel's depiction of self-fulfillment outside the domestic sphere in “Utopia e ideologia em O quinze de Rachel de Queiroz,” in Constancia Lima Duarte, ed., Anais . . . , 73-80.

13 Chiappini thinks it “curious” how some readings, in arguing that Queiroz describes—or invents—that most authentically Brazilian Northeast, point to her depiction of a “traditional” Northeastern man (bold in the original), rather than to her concern with the position of women (Chiappini, 166; see also Durval Muniz de Albuquerque, A invenção do Nordeste e outras artes [São Paulo: Cortez/ Recife: Editora Massangana, 1996], 144-145). Chiappini references several studies about Queiroz by women on the novelist's treatment of women (169-75).

14 Review of “As tres Marias,” Nov. 17, 1939, rept. from O Empalhador de passarinhos, 2. ed. (São Paulo: Martins, 1939), xxi.

15 Cristina Ferreira Pinto considers this novel a prime example of a Brazilian female Bildungsroman—she sees the hopeless ending as characteristic of the genre (60-75). Mário de Andrade thinks that As tres Marias ranks with Machado de Assis's work, and that it is “a very feminine work [that depicts] all the self-satisfied weakness of a woman's soul” (xix, xx). Oh, well.

16 An English translation was published by Avon in 1984.

17 In “The Problematic Heroines in the Novels of Rachel de Queiroz,” Luso-Brazilian Review, 22:2 (Winter 1985): 123-144, Joanna Courteau avers that Dôra achieves unambiguous fulfillment.

18 The epigraph dedicates the novel to Elizabeth I of England—Monica Raisa Schpun establishes parallels between the women: both exercised power over men and neither would, or could, take for her spouse any of her “favorites” (see “Lé com lé, cré com cré? Fronteiras móveis e imutáveis em Memorial de Maria Moura,” in Chiappini, Ligia and Maria Stella Bresciani, eds. Literatura e cultura no Brasil: identidades e fronteiras [São Paulo: Cortez, 2002]: 177-86, 177-79).

19 See A donzela-guerreira: Um estudo de gênero (São Paulo: SENAC, 1998), 33.

20 Galvão refers to Eric Hobsbawm's “Women and Banditry,” in Bandits, which mentions Brazilian warrior-women and distinguishes between warrior-consorts, who provide logistical support from outside the actual band, and women warriors proper, brave and knowledgeable about weaponry. Banditry provides Maria Moura with the means to settle her land, then to manage her property and her men: both warrior-woman/bandit, and matriarch-manager; also childless.

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Renata Ruth M. Wasserman

Renata R. M. Wasserman is Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University. Her books include Exotic Nations (1994), on literature and cultural identity in Brazil and the US, and, most recently, her translation of Raul Pompeia's novel O Ateneu (1888; The Athenaeum, 2015).

This essay has been adapted from “A Woman’s Place: Rachel de Queiroz,” chapter 2 in her book Central at the Margin: Five Brazilian Women Writers (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2007).