Between calculations and conveniences: the representations of women and marriage in Machado de Assis' short stories

Abstract

Many of Machado de Assis' short stories bring, in their central plot, pertinent problems to the bourgeois society of the 19th century, exposing and discussing them throughout the narrative. “Confessions of a Young Widow” and “The Fortune Teller” are two of Machado's short stories that point critics to the institution of marriage and present striking, non-idealized female figures. In view of this context, the purpose of this text is to analyze Machado's representations of marriage and the female characters in the selected short stories - taking into account the moral values prevailing at that epoch -, also taking as reference the manner that the narrator of each story conducts the plot of the narrative. For this analysis, it was used part of the studies already done about Machado de Assis' writing, texts of literary theory and criticism, besides the study of other Machado de Assis' works. Some of the references used were works by Bergamini (2008), Eagleton (2017), Gotlib (2006) and Ribeiro (2008).