As personagens leitoras nos romances Madame Bovary e a Carne.

Abstract

The present study aims to understand the influence of reading on the development of the characters Ema Bovary and Lenita Matoso, from the novels Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, and A carne, by Júlio Ribeiro, respectively. From the analysis of the two literary works, I try to identify how the experience with the books influenced the attitudes of the young protagonists, as well as to understand the way in which reading is described in these literary works. To support this analysis, in the theoretical framework I appropriate the thinking of countless thinkers, among them Marisa Lajolo, Domício Proença Filho, Terry Eagleton, Antonio Candido, Carlos Ceia, Antoine Compagnon, Ana Maria Fabrino, Nádia Battella Gotlib and Salvatore D'Onófrio who help in the understanding of literature and its role. To understand the function and importance of the act of reading use the theoretical assumptions of Roger Chartier, Jane Thompson Brodbeck, Alberto Manguel, Ezequiel Theodoro da Silva, Aristotle, Helena Carvalhue Buescu, Antonio Candido, João Batista Cardoso, Iuri Lotman and György Lukács. I use Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, Rita Terezinha Schmidt, Michelle Perrot, Alison Jaggar, Sherry Ortner, Muriel Dimen, Georges Duby, Lucía Guerra, Françoise Héritier, Nádia Elisa Meinerz, Michele Zimbalist and Rosaldo Louise Lamphere to reflect on feminist theory. In order to analyze the relationship between literature, reading, characters and gender inequality, at the end of this work, I carry out the analysis process by comparing the literary works Madame Bovary and A carne. At the end of the study, I noticed that reading was seen as dangerous for women of the time, in the nineteenth century. By seizing knowledge and reading, elements that for years were linked to the male figure, the main characters, Lenita Matoso and Ema Bovary, were viewed with evil eyes by society. They were considered unbalanced because they could not control their emotions.