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The Lady Has a Price: Charity and Gratitude in Alencar's Diva
Author(s) -
De Almeida Cardoso André Cabral
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00635.x
Subject(s) - gratitude , ideology , bourgeoisie , aesthetics , power (physics) , expression (computer science) , sociology , construct (python library) , art , law , politics , psychology , social psychology , political science , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
In his novel Diva , nineteenth‐century Brazilian romanticist José de Alencar re‐articulates the sentimental notions of charity and gratitude, investing them with new ideological contours, different from the ones they assumed in European sentimental fiction. In Alencar's text, charity and gratitude cease to be an expression of bourgeois ideology in order to function as instruments to support patriarchal power. While in European sentimental discourse they paved the way for the establishment of the contract as an ideological construct that was seen as the basis for modern social relations, in Alencar's nineteenth‐century Brazil they appear as elements that resist the idea of contractual social relations.