“Éramos uma família sem palavras”: a relação mãe e filha em dois romances: Uma Duas, de Eliane Brum e a Luz da Noite de Edna O’brien

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the conflicts in family relationships, more specifically between mother and daughter in the novels Uma duas, by Eliane Brum and The light of evening, by Edna O'Brien. We will start from the observation of the limitations of communication on the part of these characters, as we understand these limitations as determining factors for the distance between them. From this point of observation, we will also analyze the consequences that these problematic relationships have brought to these women's lives, as well as writing, which has become an elusive resource to face and overcome problems. Therefore, this research is divided into four chapters: in the first, we analyze the structure of the novels from the voices that support the narratives of both, because it is through this polyphony that we have contact with the inner traumas and subjectivity of each. of the narrators and we can observe the movement of the existing conflicts. Furthermore, we realize that the elaboration of the protagonists' subjectivity appears conditioned to the aspect of form, the more we go into the complexity of the relationship and situation of the characters, the more we observe the fragmentations in the structure of the text. In the second, we outline an overview of psychoanalytic studies involving the mother- daughter relationship, as this is the area of knowledge that offers us the most support to seek to analyze in greater depth the relationship between the protagonists of the novels that make up this study. In the third chapter, we will analyze the novel Uma duas, seeking to understand the traumas and their consequences in the lives of the protagonists. At this moment, we also thought a little more closely about the relationship between body and writing and how this resource works in the transformation of the protagonists. In the fourth and last chapter, we focus on the analysis of the novel The light of evening, passing through the historical and social context of Ireland during the period of the novel, as well as the conflict between generations that marks and compromises the relationship between mother and daughter. The texts that make up the corpus of this study can be analyzed comparatively as they expose family relationships, marked by conflicts and latent incommunicability. We aim to understand a little better the complexity that surrounds this relationship between mothers and their daughters, and how it resonates within each one of them and in the unfolding of their lives.