Entre elas: figuração da homoafetividade feminina na velhice em Amora de Natália Borges Polesso

Abstract

This research aims to examine, through the reading of the short stories "Marília Acorda" (Marília Wakes Up), "As Tias" (The Aunts), and "Vó, a Senhora é Lésbica?" (Grandma, Are You a Lesbian?), which are part of the work Amora (2015) by Natália Borges Polesso, the multiplicity of figurations of lesbian women in old age, with an emphasis on affective and family relationships, as well as on the psycho-emotional dynamics of these relationships. To this end, the following specific objectives are outlined: to identify the processes of memory and resistance in "Marília Acorda"; to verify the traces of debate regarding same-sex marriage and property protection in "As Tias"; and to analyze the implicit intergenerational conflicts between Clarissa and her granddaughter Joana in "Vó, a Senhora é Lésbica?". The findings reveal that, in "Marília Acorda", love survives social isolation and senile dementia, reinventing itself through the smallest gestures of care; in "As Tias", the veiled non-acceptance of a lesbian couple within the family, the resistance of a love silenced for six decades, and the urgency of property-related issues as a guarantee of security in old age expose the wounds of a legal system that for a long time refused to recognize conjugal bonds between people of the same gender; and, in "Vó, a Senhora é Lésbica?", the generational differences in representations of love and desire reveal that the grandmother's serenity contrasts with the granddaughter's internal conflict, suggesting that true homoaffective maturity may reside less in the public naming of desire and more in the achievement of an intimate peace that old age can provide. The analysis of the data gathered by the research indicated that the three stories, each in their own singularity, subvert traditional representations of the aging body and female sexuality, reclaiming for elderly women a legitimate place of full affective existence, memory, and desire. The methodological framework was based on research and bibliographic review, as advocated by Prodanov and Freitas (2013), and on literary criticism anchored primarily in the perspectives of foundational female theorists such as Beauvoir (1970), Lorde (1980), Goldenberg (2015), and Navarro-Swain (2004), whose reflections on gender, aging, memory, and representation of the body constitute the central axis of the analysis; secondarily, contributions from authors such as Benjamin (1936), Candido (2004), Piglia (2004), and Seligmann-Silva (2003) were mobilized, which assist in understanding literature as an articulated system of forms and meanings, attentive both to the aesthetic dimension and to the social insertion of the text, without, however, occupying the center of the theoretical dialogue, which remains anchored in feminist thought.