From Damsel in Distress to femme fatale: female characters, sex and horror in the Brazilian literature of fear

Abstract

Sexual themes and the female figure are systematically exploited by the horror literature. Since the Gothic fiction in the eighteenth century, women are represented in frightening and deadly situations. The Damsel in Distress − a female character who is the victim of various types of violence − is a common tópos in these stories. In the nineteenth century, women’s representation in the literature become more diversified. In Romanticism, the Femme Fatale appears more frequently, and sex is seen as a conflict between soul and body. If during the Romantic literature woman is idealized and perceived as an emotional threat, in the fin-de-siècle narratives she represents a physical danger. In the late nineteenth, she embodies the search for independence, and challenges male domination as well. Therefore this paper aims at presenting an overview of this transformation in the Brazilian literature of fear from Álvares de Azevedo’s Noite na Taverna (1855), Bernardo Guimarães’s A Ilha Maldita (1879), Medeiros e Albuquerque’s “Palestra a horas mortas” (1898), João do Rio’s “O bebê de tarlatana rosa” (1910) and Gastão Cruls’s “Noites brancas” (1920).