LITERATURE AND HISTORY IN LETICIA WIERZCHOWSKI’S A CASA DAS SETE MULHERES

Abstract

The novel A Casa das Sete Mulheres was published in 2002 by writer Letícia Wierzchowski (1972) and has an important episode in the history of Rio Grande do Sul, a Brazilian state as its background: Revolução Farroupilha (1835-1845). While powerful men from Rio Grande do Sul, a southern Brazilian state, like Bento Gonçalves, try to avoid abusive customs duties imposed by the Emperor, seven women from his family are locked up in a resort, patiently waiting for their husbands, children, and siblings and writing their insights whilst on the edge of the war, with their yearnings, dreams and most intimate thoughts and wishes. This novel, in particular, brings not the widely known “male warrior” point of view, but the side that was left without direct participation: those seven women’s. This change of perspective from female writers highlight the feminine gaze in literature that comes from the last decades of the twentieth century with the Feminist Criticism, also applied to a new look of historians towards literary discourses.

Keywords: Women in Literature. Literature and History. A Casa das Sete Mulheres. Letícia Wierzchowski.