A portrait on the wall of the Second Reign

the image of family and ofmarriage in “A mulher de preto”, by Machado de Assis

Abstract

The family representation in novels that are contextualized in the colonial era looks distinct from that one seen in fictional texts from the 19th century, especially because the urbanization of the cities elects a new kind of sociability, which nurtures the domestic privacy. On a more authoritarian, extense and of nitid political interest, the patriachal family leaves as inheritance to this bourgeois group the notion of the masculine authority. The representation of this patriarchal-bourgeois family, within very conventional moulds concerning the male and female roles, will be frequently presented in the narratives of Machado de Assis, from which many are constructed around the topic of marriage, having the feminine figure a prominent place, justly for constituting itself as an element of balance/unbalance in the domestic peace. In this study, we examine how the representation of family happens, constituted through marriage, in the short story “A mulher de preto”, narrative published on the Jornal das Famílias and Contos Fluminenses (1870).