Abstract
Diva (1864) is perhaps one of José de Alencar´s most disliked novels, treated early on as a minor thing: of “a condemnable sentimentality” (Machado de Assis), marked by “elephances of style” (Franklin Távora) or, still, “work that is worth little or nothing” (Antonio Candido). However, it introduced an important innovation for the Brazilian literature at the time, which is the discursive figure of the medical narrator in the first person, who is systematically rejected by the heroine in attitudes considered as extreme. A rereading made in the light of the pioneering studies on hysteria, developed by Charcot, Breuer and Freud, and later by feminist theorists (Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar) may help to understand this rejection. The somatization of psychic symptoms in the woman´s body, which would characterize the first approach to hysteria in the 19th century, represents a systematic refusal on the part of the heroine to accept the unprecedent power that the figure of the doctor was invested with throughout that time, in an attempt to preserve her private voice in the midst of a society for which women must give up their autonomy and identity. One should add to this the narrative level, since the medical narrator in Diva not only has the right to invade and clinicalize the body of his “patient” but also to expose her to the reader from his exclusive point of view. Anticipating the studies on hysteria, the serial novel in fact already represented the heroine, in Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue, as a threat to male power as a character and narrator (Queffelec). Binding himself to this singular literary tradition, Alencar makes Diva one of the most striking books ever written about the situation of women in the Brazilian society of the second half of the 19th century, culminating in a level of tension rarely seen until then.
Keywords:
José de Alencar;
Diva
; serial novel; medical narrator; hysteria