PARA ALÉM DE UM TETO TODO SEU: O CASO ELISA LISPECTOR

RESUMO: Elisa Lispector escreveu inúmeros romances e contos, recebendo prêmios por alguns deles. A escritora, embora tenha explorado a construção de uma subjetividade feminina, é quase sempre lembrada pelos escritos autobiográficos, principalmente o romance No exílio de 1948. A crítica esteve mais atenta às narrativas que iluminavam episódios da vida de sua irmã caçula, Clarice Lispector, do que às especificidades de sua escrita. A obra e a trajetória de Clarice Lispector causaram sombra não só à obra de sua irmã como às de outras escritoras do mesmo período. Neste artigo, questionamos o papel da crítica no apagamento do nome de Elisa Lispector na literatura brasileira que tomou o caso Clarice como excepcional, negando às escritoras, de um modo geral, um espaço para debater seus textos e subjetividades. Além da vinculação da obra da escritora à obra de sua irmã pela crítica literária, analisamos como a tradição literária falocêntrica contribuiu para este apagamento. Elisa Lispector contribuiu para o debate acerca do baixo número de publicações de escritoras, evocando Virginia Woolf e Simone de Beauvoir. Atuou para que as escritoras pudessem ter uma tradição em que se ancorar. Analisamos os romances O muro de pedras publicado em 1963, O dia mais longo de Thereza de 1965, A última porta de 1975, Corpo a corpo de 1983 e do conto “Uma outra temporada no inferno” de seu último livro O tigre de bengala publicado em 1985, demonstrando como a escritora explorou os processos de emancipação feminina e os conflitos comuns a esta fase de transição.BEYOND A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN: THE CASE ELISA LISPECTORABSTRACT: Elisa Lispector has written numerous novels and short stories, receiving awards for some of them. The writer, although she explored the construction of a female subjectivity, is almost always remembered for autobiographical writings, especially the novel No exílio of 1948. The criticism was more attentive to the narratives that illuminated episodes of the life of her younger sister, Clarice Lispector, than to the specificities of her writing. Clarice Lispector's work and trajectory cast a shadow not only on her sister's work but also on those of other writers of the same period. In this article, we question the role of criticism in the elimination of Elisa Lispector's name in Brazilian literature, which took Clarice as exceptional, denying writers, in general, a space to debate their texts and subjectivities. In addition to linking the writer's work to her sister's work by literary criticism, we analyze how the phallocentric literary tradition contributed to this elimination. Elisa Lispector contributed to the debate about the low number of writers' publications, evoking Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. It worked so that the writers could have a tradition in which to anchor themselves. We analyze the novels O muro de pedras published in 1963, O dia mais longo de Thereza of 1965, A última porta of 1975, Corpo a corpo of 1983 and the short story "Uma outra temporada no inferno" from her last book O tigre de bengala published in 1985, demonstrating how the writer explored the processes of female emancipation and the conflicts common to this phase of transition.Keywords: Elisa Lispector; feminist criticism; Brazilian literature.

Magic Realism and Experimental Fiction

In 1934, Argentinian editor and writer Victoria Ocampo commissioned Jorge Luis Borges the translations of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Orlando, to be published in 1935 and 1937, respectively, under the auspices of the intellectual circle ‘Sur’ (‘South’). These translations would inspire generations of writers, appealed by Woolf’s subversive strategies to trespass physical and psychological boundaries, and by her innovative conception of time, history, and gender, which anticipated what came to be later known as ‘magic realism’. This essay explores the ways in which Woolf’s influence affects the construction of alternative ontological realms that both coexist with and transcend identifiable historical sites in the work of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Michèle Roberts, and Jeanette Winterson. The chapter further examines the different strategies these writers use to unsettle received assumptions pertaining to history and to propose alternative rewritings of it in Woolf’s wake.

Allusion and Metaphor

This chapter demonstrates that Woolf’s allusive practice involved transforming and interrogating texts rather than invoking the authority of earlier texts or their scholarly interpretations. It shows how Woolf’s allusions are often supported by metaphors that draw attention to the longevity of past literature that is essential to the act of allusion. These include organic metaphors such as the growth of seeds, plants, and flowers; familial metaphors of conception, birth, and reproduction; and the ethereal metaphor of haunting. The chapter examines how Woolf uses allusion and metaphor to articulate relationships with the literary past in A Room of One’s Own and in her representation of characters who are female writers in Night and Day, Orlando, and Between the Acts.

The Essays

Woolf’s essays fall into many genres, including book reviews, literary criticism, biography, memoir, and occasional pieces. As a student of the essay and its history, she studied the form from Montaigne, Hazlitt, Pater, and Beerbohm and through their work she learned to make the essay her own, reinventing the genre to argue for a uniquely female and feminist perspective. Woolf’s deep understanding of the essay’s form, her drive to construct a female literary history and female narrative form, culminate in A Room of One’s Own (1929), where she employs a feminist rhetoric of affect and emotion. Woolf’s particular contribution to the essay includes a new kind of literary history that focuses on women, gender, and politics. Hers is a uniquely feminine and feminist voice created through a visceral and sensual rhetoric that addresses the body’s response to experience and exploits emotions in order to persuade her readers.

Woolf’s Feminism

The fullness of Woolf’s engagement with early-twentieth-century feminism has at times been overshadowed by the prominence given A Room of One’s Own, and by longstanding archival obstacles to accessing her extensive work in periodicals. This chapter aims to offer an overview of Woolf’s engagement with British feminism during her lifetime, and to promote a richer conversation about how Woolf’s fiction, journalism, and essays, as well as A Room and Three Guineas, reflect a sustained engagement with, contributions to, and wariness of the feminist concerns of her day. Her responses to women’s suffrage, worker’s rights, the legal status of married women, education, political power, economic parity, and pacifism were unified by her consistent endeavors to draw attention to patriarchy as structuring public perceptions of ‘women’s issues’. (125)

Mature Works II (1928–1932)

This chapter engages Woolf’s writings from the prolific years 1928–1932, with particular focus on her hybrid novels Orlando: A Biography (1928) and The Waves (1931) as well as her feminist essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) and 1927 manifesto ‘Poetry, Fiction and the Future’. Woolf’s literary journalism during this period evinces a persistent concern with the poetic and prosaic impulses of fiction, and frequently privileges poetic detachment from prosaic, socio-political causes. While recent scholarship has demonstrated how her aesthetic experiments undermine such distinctions between poetic and committed writing, we have yet to fully appreciate how the lyricism and formal-generic hybridity that lie at the heart of Woolf’s work in these years become the very site for her socio-political commitments. Taking this premise as its starting point, the present chapter illuminates connections between her fictional and non-fictional writings in this extraordinarily creative period.

Woolf and Education

This chapter braids together discussion of ‘education’ in Virginia Woolf’s life and works. It examines her own education (and self-proclaimed autodidacticism), her teaching experience, and the representation of school and higher education in her fiction and non-fiction. Drawing on archival material discovered in 2009 relating to Woolf’s extensive studies at King’s College London’s Ladies’ Department and new research on her teaching at Morley College, it assesses the transformation in our understanding of Woolf’s experience of formal education. Moving then to texts such as Jacob’s Room, The Years, A Room of One’s Own, and Three Guineas, the chapter argues that Woolf’s oeuvre offers a complex and multi-layered engagement with the inequalities and limitations of the education system particularly in relation to gender and class. Woolf’s alternative pedagogy also critiques the term ‘education’ itself, with literature at the heart of a rethinking of where and how education occurs.

Anónimo era una mujer

“Anónimo era una mujer”, escribió Virginia Woolf en su libro Una habitación propia. Recuperamos su cita con el objetivo de comprender cómo la literatura ha estado siempre ligada al hombre, mientras que la mujer permanecía en un plano invisible a lo largo de la Historia. Las escritoras firmaban bajo pseudónimo, escondiendo sus nombres por miedo, vergüenza o presión social; algunas permitían el intrusismo de sus maridos, quienes se otorgaban los méritos de sus obras, y otras simplemente caían en el olvido. Es necesario recuperar la memoria para darles el lugar que se merecen, especialmente en el ámbito educativo, donde los libros de texto están repletos de literatura masculina mediante la cual el alumnado aprende a amar, sentir o llorar como lo hacían Lorca, Neruda o Benedetti, aniquilando así una visión feminista en todos los planos en los que progresar signifique también conocer cómo aman, sienten o lloran las mujeres. "Anonymous was a woman," wrote Virginia Woolf in her book A Room of one's own. We recover her quote with the aim of understanding how literature has always been linked to men, while woman remained in the background throughout history. Women writers signed under pseudonyms, hiding their names out of fear, shame or social pressure; some of them allowed the intrusion of their husbands, who gave themselves credit for their works, and others simply fell into oblivion. It is necessary to recover their memory in order to give them the place they deserve, especially in the educational field, where textbooks are full of male literature through which students learn to love, feel or cry as Lorca, Neruda or Benedetti did, thus annihilating a feminist vision at all levels where progress means also knowing how women love, feel or cry.

From the female writer in A Room of One’s Own to the female reader in The Reader: feminist voices

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is the pioneers of the very first movement of feminism. Her work A Room of One's Own (1929) shows gender discrimination with discourse of feminism and of literary creativeness, and also thoughts for fighting for gender equality. For Woolf, a liberal writer is the one who has his/her own room to work and is adequately educated. Despite of the wide gap of generation, the novel The Reader (1995) by Bernhard Schlink (1944-) continued with feminism from the view of female readers. It also shows his view point of a liberal reader who has the right to participate in literary reception. As a continuation of Woolf, Schlink argues that the very basic step to all to become a free reader is to educate, to eliminate illiteracy and to foster cultural and social knowledge. It can be seen that the feminist voices in these two works have much in common, creating a deep feminist dialogue. We believe that link between them as well as between the works and the readers can evoke further feminist voices and discourses, contributing to the development of this approach.