When Horror Invades the Home Space: a Reading of the Short Stories ‘Até o fim’ and ‘Azul’ by Brazilian Writer Karen Alvares

Abstract

From the colonial period, Brazilian women authors such as Nísia Floresta, Julia Lopes de  Almeida, Maria Firmina dos Reis, Clarice Lispector, Conceição Evaristo have challenged the silence imposed on women, creating new narrative forms that question canons and expose gender violence. This article analyzes Brazilian women's writing as a political and aesthetic act of resistance against patriarchal structures in literature, especially in horror literature. Many Latin American writers today are reinterpreting the genre to discuss femicide, abuse, and structural oppression. The short stories “Até o Fim” and “Azul” by Brazilian writer Karen Alvares, which are part of the collection Horror em Gotas (2013), exemplify this trend. The objective is to analyze how women's literature subverts spaces traditionally associated with protection (such as the home) in horror scenarios. It is concluded that the literary production of women in Brazil and Latin America transcends the aesthetic aspect to become an act of resistance, using horror as a critical mirror of the real violence suffered by women in the region. The theoretical framework mentions readings from Hannah Arendt (2007), Brunella Vasconcellos Alves (2017), Simone de Beauvoir (1980), Fred Botting (2025), and others, as properly referenced throughout the article.