A casa das sete mulheres: um artefato cultural e suas convenções de gênero

Abstract

This dissertation was developed in the Postgraduate Program in Science Education: Chemistry of Life and Health (UNIPAMPA), in the research line “Implications of scientific practices in the constitution of subjects.” It has as main target: to discuss the representations of gender and sexuality in the book A Casa das Sete Mulheres (The Seven Women’s House), by Letícia Wierzchowski. It has as specific objectives: to identify the naturalization of gender, to recognize and to discuss the representations of gender and sexuality and analyze the gender conventions present in the work A Casa das Sete Mulheres, by Leticia Wierzchowski, considering the categories: romantic love and female waiting. It uses as foundation the theoretical field of Cultural Studies and Feminist Studies, in its Post-Structuralist strands; the research was developed based on male and female authors who are consistent with the topics discussed. By this bias, gender conventions are understood as social and cultural constructions and not as a merely biological determination. It is known that cultural artifacts through their pedagogies establish and (re)produce discourses that can be accepted as unique. These discourses also point, justify and naturalize behaviors, social positions, skills and behaviors. So, the target of this research was A Casa das Sete Mulheres, author Letícia Wierzchowski’s book that, being a cultural artifact, teaches and reinforces behavioral, social and cultural patterns. Two categories were selected to be analyzed because they appear in the author’s discurse as natural behaviors of the female universe: romantic love and female waiting. The discourse presented in the work challenges and dictates what means both to be a woman and to be a man, reinforces how femininity and masculinity should be lived, justifying these differences by the biological bias, imprinting on the subjects differences that ratify the unequal relations between genders. Since these discurses regulate, normalize, establish knowledge and make up truths, they must be analyzed and discussed.