Uma leitura feminista da construção de gênero e moralidade em Little Women.

Abstract

It is known that over time children’s literature has served as a model for the education of boys and girls, teaching them part of the culture and expectations of each society. At the same time, girls and boys were, and still are, imposed behavioral models related to their gender: the fact of being born a girl or a boy already implies certain expectations connected to their social position, personality and behavior. Consequently, this final thesis aims at analyzing questions about the construction of gender and morality present in Little Women (1868), a novel written by the American author Louisa May Alcott. For this analysis, it is necessary to portray the biographical aspects of the author as well as the context portrayed of New England in the nineteenth century. We will continue with a brief mention of feminism, focusing on Foucault's theory on power relations, but bringing to the analysis a feminist perspective as pointed by Deveaux (1994) and, at last, a reference to the gender construction as discussed by Beauvoir (1949) and Butler (1990), as well as the construction of morality mentioned by Gilligan (1982). Thus, for this bibliographical and historical research we will use the concepts addressed by these theorists for the basis of the analysis, as well as some allusions to other authors.