Aurelia Camargo: a female subject of law and language – the legal speech in the novel "Senhora", by Jose de Alencar

Abstract

This article aims at problematizing what the fictional legal discourse in the literary narrative Senhora reveals about the apparent empowerment of Aurelia Camargo, who is, in a tense relation of subjection, the protagonist of the novel, a female subject of law and language. To do so, it is necessary to identify elements of legal discourse existing in the novel through the legal institutes and the gender roles in force at the time José de Alencar lived. The study uses hermeneutics and discourse analysis in a phenomenological and epistemological method. As a theoretical framework, the article is based on the relation that Foucault established between discourse and power and the premise that the legal and literary phenomena constitute fictional discourses, from the Theories of the Imaginary and of Poiesis / Poetics of Law, as well as the Law and Literature movement, under the theoretical postulates of Guerra Filho, Cantarini and Trindade, in addition to Bakhtin’s contributions. It concludes by recognizing a juridical discourse in the novel Senhora, with a strong patrimonialist and patriarchist bias, which unveils expectations of behavior of the 19^th century society. In addition, it demonstrates the protagonist as a female subject of law and language, whose constitution in these categories occurs from a male perspective with frustrated female empowerment.