FEMALE DISCOURSE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND OPPRESSION IN JORGE AMADO

Resumo

Marie Gouze (1748-1793) lived in France and fought for the rights of the excluded: slaves, women. She adopted the name of Olympe de Gouges to be able to sign her protest pamphlets and wrote several petitions leading fronts of struggle for better conditions for women. On the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens in an attempt to compensate for the injustices to which women have always been subjected. How to accept that the French Revolution, based on the rational and questioning principles of the Enlightenment, still maintained differences between men and women? Therefore, she decided to expose her natural, inalienable, and sacred rights in a statement. Her words resonate with the voice of women relegated to the condition of inferiorization. Olympe de Gouges had her voice muted by the intolerance of men seeking “equality, freedom and fraternity,” being beheaded on a cold November morning. Since words have inherent ideological content, it is worth pursuing the ideological content present in the text written by this brave woman in a world dominated by men. “The word is always loaded with a content or an ideological or experiential meaning. This is how we understand words and only react to those that awaken in us ideological or life-related resonances” (BAKHTIN, 2003, p. 95). In Jorge Amado’s novels, violence against women appears as a constant that echoes centuries later. In Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Sinhazinha is murdered by her husband who catches her in adultery; in Tereza Batista: Home from the Wars, the protagonist is sold by her own aunt to a pedophile farmer while still a teenager. Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and Tieta of Agreste, despite having distinct tones, also portray the oppression and symbolic violence suffered by women in a patriarchal society. These literary narratives, written in the 20th century, echo the struggle of Olympe de Gouges in the 18th century.