Este trabalho pretende, a partir da análise das obras literárias Casa de Boneca (1879) de Henrik Ibsen e Dom Casmurro (1899) de Machado de Assis, verificar a atualidade da crise representada nas personagens femininas Nora e Capitu. Trata-se de identificar a relação entre forma artística e a experiência, tendo em vista o jogo de espelhos entre arte e vida. Reconhecer, portanto, como a estrutura social, mais especificamente a familiar, está refletida no drama e no romance do século XIX. Desde a cisão entre esfera pública e doméstica traçar encontros e desencontros entre as personagens que estão inseridas na ficção presas na rede do patriarcado. A crise flagrada com a saída de Nora e o exílio de Capitu nos deixa a pergunta sobre que tipo de sociabilidade somos capazes de construir sob a exclusão inevitável proposta pelo sistema capitalista. / The aim of this study is to anylise two literary works: Casa de Boneca (Doll\'s House) by Henrik Ibsen (1879) and Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis (1899). The main idea was to verify if the crisis represented by the two female characters, Nora and Capitu, can be found nowadays. In other words, the objective is to identify the relationship between the artistic form and the real experience, focusing on situations as mirror games envolving life and art. Therefore, we will answer how the social and more specifically the family structure is reflected in the drama and in the romance of the 19th century. Based on the breaking of the social and the family actions, the profile of similarities and divergences between the characters that are inserted in the fiction, are captured and the domination of a patriarch emerges. From the crisis which made Nora leave home and provoked Capitus exile, a question arises: what type of social relationships are we able to construct under the inevitable circumstances of exclusion imposed by the capitalism society.

The diploma thesis deals with reflection of a picture of women- mothers in chosen hindu tales. Deals about motherhood in India on the base of literal characters of woman- mothers, analyses significant aspects of motherhood in India. Pays attention to influences of surrounding society and how they struggle with it. The thesis sources from original literature in hindi language and from other translations with taking account of original verses.

The female characters in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI and Richard III; Rowley’s All’s Lost by Lust; Fletcher’s The Tragedy of Valentinian; Rowley, Dekker, and Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton; and Brome and Heywood’s The Late Witches of Lancashire curse their enemies because, as women, they have no other way to fight against the injustices they experience. At once an extension of the early modern belief that words are “women’s weapons,” and dangerously beyond the feminine ideal of silence, the curse, as a performative speech act, resembles the physical weapons wielded by men in its potential to cause serious harm. Using Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative and J. L. Austin’s theory of performative utterances, this thesis argues that curses function as part of the cursing woman’s performative identity, and by using speech as a weapon, the cursing woman gains a measure of social agency within the social order even if she cannot change her place within it.

São poucos os estudos sobre as personagens femininas dentro de La Comédie Humaine, e estes se tornam ainda mais restritos quando tratam daquelas que aparecem no romance Le père Goriot. Nesse sentido, este trabalho pretende analisar como são construídas e organizadas dentro da narrativa, tendo em vista que sua composição é realizada de acordo com uma estratégia, bem como sua organização no texto. Outrossim, as personagens femininas são de grande importância na narrativa balzaquiana, apesar de aparentemente ocuparem apenas o segundo plano, pois são elas que, na maioria das vezes, vão auxiliar as personagens masculinas em seus projetos de ascensão social, a ponto de Rastignac, por exemplo, só ter conseguido sucesso por intermédio de sua tia, Mme de Beauséant. Isso sem contar a dona da pensão, Mme Vauquer, que é a primeira a ser descrita durante a narrativa e tem importância capital no destino de outras figuras hospedadas em seu estabelecimento. Por outro lado, a técnica mais conhecida utilizada por Balzac e que foi por ele desenvolvida é o retorno de personagens. No entanto, há outras de grande importância, e uma delas é o fato de que, para conseguir criar a quantidade de personagens existente dentro de La Comédie Humaine, foi necessário recorrer a um recurso de economia, ou seja, apresentar várias delas com características semelhantes, podendo ser ligadas duas a duas. Procuramos desenvolver esse aspecto ao longo deste trabalho, juntamente com as questões que permeiam o papel das figuras femininas, assim como o arrivismo e a sua importância para as masculinas. / There are few studies about the female characters in La Comedie Humaine, and these are even more restricted when they treat about those which appear in the novel Le Pere Goriot. Thus, this paper intends to examine how they are constructed and arranged within the narrative, considering that their composition is performed according a kind of strategy, as well as your organization in the text. Furthermore, the female characters are very important in Balzac\'s narrative, although apparently only occupying the background, because they are who, in most of the cases, will help the male characters in their projects of social mobility, until the point of Rastignac, for example, has only achieved success with the help of his aunt, Mme de Beauseant. This without counting the owner, Mme Vauquer, who is the first character to be described in the narrative and who has a capital importance in the destiny of other figures that are hosted on her property. Moreover, the technique most known and used by Balzac and which was developed for him is the return of characters. However, there are other techniques also very important, and one of them is the fact that, to achieve to create the amount of characters existing in La Comedie Humaine, it was necessary to apply a resource of economy, or, in other words, to present lots of characters showing similar characteristics and connected two by two. We were seeking to develop this aspect throughout this work, together with the questions that underlie the role of the female characters, as well as the arrivisme, and this importance for the male.

The rise of naturalism in American letters was born out of a reaction against romanticism by writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and Robert Herrick, who attempted to rid the American novel of romanticism by delving deeper into life's truths than did the realists Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James. The naturalists objected to the limited subject matter of the realists; they focused their attention on "slums, crime, illicit sexual passions, exploitation of man by man"2 and other actualities of the world. George Perkins outlined other distinctions between realism and naturalism in American literature.3 He describes nineteenth-century realism, 1870-1890, as represented by writers who created a world of truth by keeping actuality clearly in mind. The emphasis was on the following: 1. Using settings that were thoroughly familiar to the writer. 2. Emphasizing the norm of daily experience in plot construction. 3. Creating ordinary characters and studying them in depth. 4. Adhering to complete authorial objectivity. 5. Accepting their moral responsibility by reporting the world as it truly was.

This essay explores how adolescent girls in two pieces of children’s fiction are portrayed in children’s literature from the start and end of the 20th century to examine how they perform their gender in relation to expectations as informed by the Angel in the House discourse. Anne of Green Gables and the Harry Potter series were published at the start and end of the twentieth century, and both texts engage with the discourse. Using Judith Butler’s theory of Gender Performativity, this essay demonstrates that the Angel in the House discourse continues to influence expectations of how adolescent girls should behave, particularly with regards to being responsible for upholding the moral code to ensure the social standing of their family. However, they differ in regard to other aspects of the discourse, indicating that parts of the discourse appear to have lessened over the course of the 20th century.

The aim of this study is an attempt to provide examples of how women’s roles have been portrayed in Chinese film made in modern time about women in the 1920s through examination and analysis of the film Raise the Red Lantern《大红灯笼高高挂》by Zhang Yimo by using agency theory. The study delves into the portrayal of female characters' actions within traditional marriage and family dynamics as depicted in the film. Through the method of inductive thematic analysis, the research identifies categories, including rivalry, pregnancy, illicit affairs, and oppressive behaviour through punishment and violence. The study also addresses the expression of agency by female characters, identifying elements of agency within the constraints of the patriarchal system. The projective element, involving envisioning potential future events, and the practical-evaluative element, making judgments in response to changing situations, are recognized. However, the study concludes that the agency expressed by female characters primarily focuses on improving individual positions within the system rather than challenging the system itself.

Esta pesquisa tem como enfoque as personagens femininas de Graciliano Ramos em suas obras Caetés, São Bernardo, Angústia, Vidas Secas e Infância. Partindo dos conceitos de Antonio Candido sobre estrutura e função, busca-se analisar como a construção literária se relaciona com os dados sociais e históricos da época em que os livros foram escritos e/ou publicados, a década de 1930. A partir das análises feitas, desenvolve-se a ideia da importância dessas personagens que, mesmo deixadas em segundo plano, são essenciais para a construção dos textos literários. / The following research focuses on the female characters of Graciliano Ramos in his works Caetés, São Bernardo, Angústia, Vidas Secas and Infância. Thinking about the concepts of Antonio Candido on structure and function, we analyze how the literary construction relates to the social and historical life in the moment that the books were written, the decade of 1930. From the analyzes made, we realized the importance of these female characters, even when left in the background.

Esta tese traz a análise das personagens arrivistas femininas das obras romanescas de Machado de Assis e Marcel Proust. São elas: Guiomar, Helena e Sofia, de A mão e a luva, Helena e Quincas Borba, respectivamente, e Odette e Madame Verdurin de À la recherche du temps perdu. Em A Mão e a luva e Helena, Machado engendra as tramas no Rio de Janeiro dos anos 1850, período estável do Segundo Reinado. A trajetória ascensional de Guiomar e Helena, em uma época de pouca mobilidade social, justifica-se pelo fato de serem personagens singulares, dotadas de grande habilidade. Aqui, o destino repara o equívoco do nascimento desprivilegiado. Quincas Borba, por outro lado, ambientado entre 1867 e 1871, apresenta uma sociedade mais dinâmica e fluida. A mudança gradativa de classes operada por Sofia e Cristiano Palha se deve ao grande senso de oportunismo nos negócios e às ações pouco escrupulosas do casal. De todo modo, as narrativas brasileiras tratam predominantemente do desejo de pertencer à burguesia rica. Em À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust mostra uma sociedade complexa e estratificada, em que a burguesia e a nobreza, a despeito da Revolução Francesa, continuam divididas em várias subcategorias na Belle Époque. Por isso, Odette e Madame Verdurin têm de cumprir muitas etapas no decorrer de quatro décadas para conquistarem seu espaço no faubourg Saint-Germain. Considerando as diferenças históricas e espaciais dos romances brasileiros e franceses, analisamos a construção das figuras femininas citadas através do cotejamento de trechos das obras. Com isso, foi-nos possível apontar pontos de aproximação como o casamento, a maternidade e a importância dos salões, vistos sob os pontos de vista das condições sócio-culturais de cada país. / This thesis provides an analysis of female social-climber characters in the novels of Machado de Assis and of Marcel Proust. They are: Guiomar, Helena, and Sofia, from A mão e a luva, Helena, and Quincas Borba, respectively; and Odette and Madame Verdurin, from À la recherche du temps perdu. In A Mão e a luva and in Helena, Machado unwinds his plot in the Rio de Janeiro of the 1850s, a stable period of the Second Reign. The upwards trajectory of Guiomar and Helena during a time of limited social mobility is justified by the fact that they are singular characters, gifted with great abilities. Here, destiny corrects the mistake of underprivileged birth. Quincas Borba, on the other hand, set between 1867 and 1871, presents a more dynamic and fluid society. The gradual changes in class accomplished by Sofia and Cristiano Palha is a result of the couples enormous sense of opportunism in business and the relative lack of scruples in their actions. Regardless, the Brazilian stories deal predominately with the desire to belong to the wealthy bourgeoisie. In À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust shows a complex and stratified society where the bourgeoisie and nobility, in spite of the French Revolution, continue to be divided into various categories of the Belle Époque. As a result, Madame Verdurin has to pass through many stages during a period of four decades to conquer her space in the faubourg of Saint-Germain. Considering the historical and spatial differences between the Brazilian and French novels, we analyze the construction of the abovementioned female characters through a comparison of excerpts from the works. In so doing, it was possible for us to show points of similarity, such as marriage and maternity and the importance of salons, viewed through the eyes of each countrys sociocultural conditions.

A figura da mulher ocupa significativo papel nas novelas de cavalaria do Ciclo Bretão. Emergindo como um elemento que traz liga às narrativas do lendário artúrico, constitui-se adjuvante essencial e multifacetada na construção dos episódios, numa interação constante com o masculino representado, principalmente, pelos cavaleiros. O Medievo traz à tona uma imagem matizada do feminino: a mulher socialmente vista sob clivagens diversas é refletida na literatura de cavalaria, conforme se pode verificar em A Demanda do Santo Graal. A presença feminina é importantíssima na narrativa, sobretudo na sua tensa relação com a cavalaria, agora ligada ao elemento religioso - monastizada, celibatária e ascética. O objetivo precípuo de nossos estudos é investigar de que maneira a fôrma sociocultural medieva, na qual foi moldada A Demanda do Santo Graal, se relaciona com seu substrato: as narrativas provindas da cosmovisão inerente ao imaginário céltico. Desta feita, nosso viés analítico verticaliza-se no elemento feminino presente na obra. Mais especificamente, toma-se por escopo a imagem de personagens que refletem a ideologia clerical moralístico-didatizante do século XIII, mas, sobretudo, resgata-se a imagem de personagens imbuídas de singular dualidade; ambigüidade esta que é marca não só do medievo paradoxal concernente ao feminino, mas também de personas literárias concebidas entre dois mundos, dois pólos ideológicos distintos. Em outros termos, fala-se de personagens que são seres ficcionais bifrontes: personagens localizadas entre as herdades e as identidades. Foram tomados como corpora de pesquisa os episódios em que estas damas polidimensionais aparecem e se tornam adjuvantes na ação literária, seja para cooperar, confundir ou prejudicar os cavaleiros que empreendem a sagrada, inefável e venturosa busca do Santo Cálix que dará fim às aventuras do Reino de Logres / The figure of woman takes leading role in the novels of chivalry Cycle Breton. Emerging as an element that links the narratives of the legendary Arturo, it constitutes a vital and multifaceted adjuvant in the construction of the episodes in an ongoing interaction with the male represented mainly by knights. The Medieval brings up a nuanced picture of the female: the woman socially viewed under various divisions is reflected in the literature of chivalry, as it can be seen in The Quest for the Holy Grail. The female presence is important in the narrative, especially in its tense relationship with the chivalry, now linked to the religious element monasticated, ascetic and celibaterian. The main objective of our study is to investigate how the sociocultural medieval mold, in which was shaped The Quest for the Holy Grail relates to its substrate, the narratives originated of the worldview inherent in the Celtic imagination, thus our analytical bias uprights in the female element in this work. More specifically, it becomes a scope which the image of characters reflects the ideology of clerical didactic and moralistic of the thirteenth century. However it redeens the image of characters imbued with singular duality; that ambiguity which is not only a mark of the medieval paradoxical concerning the female, but also of literary characters designed between two worlds, two distinct ideological poles. In other words, it is about personas who are "bifront fictional beings". Characters located between the inheritances and identities. The research bases were the episodes in which these polidimensionals ladies appear and become adjuvants in literary action, either to cooperate, confuse or impair the knights who undertake the sacred, ineffable and "fortunate" quest for the Holy Chalice which will end the adventures of the Kingdom of Logres