Amateurs: transgressing gender roles in the feminine playwright during brazilian Belle Époque (XIX-XX)

• Grant number: 21/09296-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2022
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Theatre
• Principal Investigator: Larissa de Oliveira Neves Catalão
• Grantee: Sofia Fransolin Pires de Almeida
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/04645-8 - Amateurs: transgressing gender roles in the feminine playwright during brazilian Belle Époque (XIX - XX), BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project aims to promote a revision on the historiography of Brazilian dramaturgy during Tropical Belle Époque (XIX-XX). The research intends to bring to light life and works of two women playwriters of that time who were overshadowed by the Official Historiography of Brazilian Theatre as of one common element: amateurism. The term "amateurs" is being used here to subvert its hidden meaning: the place occupied by women in bourgeois society. Amateur for she cannot be a professional, amateur once it is women's duty to be a housewife, offering complete household watch and unconditional love supply for the family. From the analysis of life and works of Julia Lopes de Almeida and Guilhermina Johnson Rocha we seek to comprehend the effects of their act of insubordination in their plays, as they breach house walls to become professionals, exposing their progressive point of view about women's social role in fin de siècle bourgeois society. The plays chosen to be analysed are: A Herança (1908) e Quem não perdoa? (1909) by Julia Lopes de Almeida and Volúpia (1914) and Dominó Negro (1916) by Guilhermina Rocha. Those four works have something in common: a strong denunciation of women's roles and the violence inherent from this structure. (AU)