Becoming a writer in Lésbia (1890), by Maria Benedita Câmara Bormann (Délia)

Abstract

In the novel Lésbia (1890), by Maria Benedita Câmara Bormann (Délia), the protagonist Arabela becomes a famous writer in Brazilian nineteenth century. In order to understand how this female character ascends socially in a period of deprivation, we did a bibliographical research on the life of elite woman in Brazilian eighteenth century (VERONA, 2013), outlining the relationship between women and literature (HAHNER, 2018) and the panorama of publishing market in the nineteenth century (DUARTE, 2017; HALLEWELL, 2017). The present article aims to trace a brief history of female’s life during the Brazililian Imperial age, in order to understand how the bond between women and literary writing was established in our nascent book market. For this, we analyze the plot of the novel, highlighting the difficulties faced in the protagonist's writing career, caused mainly by her condition as a woman in a largely patriarchal field. Finally, we notice that the narrative blends History and fiction into meaningful descriptions of literary life from the perspective of woman writer in the nineteenth century. Moreover, in this work, we intend to value literature made by women in the nineteenth century and thus contribute to the non-erasure of Bormann (Délia), one of the first Brazilian female writers.