Madness as a Critique of Patriarchy in Celeste by Maria Benedita Bormann

Abstract

This article analyzes the novel Celeste (1893) by Maria Benedita Bormann (Délia), focusing on the representation of madness as a social critique of the prevailing patriarchy in 19th-century Brazil. The research proposes a reevaluation of the work in light of Foucaultian theory on madness as a social construct, articulated with the moral and gender norms imposed on women. The analysis seeks to understand how the protagonist's psychic instability symbolically stages a rupture with idealized standards of femininity, functioning as a device of resistance to hegemonic models of subjectivity. Considering the context of the time in which the novel is  set  and  the emergence of medical and legal discourse on the female body, the article highlights how the marginalization of the author and her character reveals the tension between desire and repression. The critical reading thus proposes to rescue the relevance of Celeste as a literary work that challenged the limits of the acceptable in  its time, both in terms of form and content, repositioning Maria Benedita Bormann in the panorama of 19th-century Brazilian literature.