“EU VOS DIGO, MANAS”: reflections about female subalternity in New Portuguese Letters

Abstract

this text aims to reflect on the stories of six women victims of subalternity narrated in New Portuguese Letters, a novel written by the three Marias – Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa. The starting point is Cartas Portuguesas of Mariana Alcoforado, a portuguese nun who lived in the 17th century in Beja. The three Marias construct an innovative novel that dialogues with that of the nun, but while Cartas Portuguesas was edited in Paris, anonymously; New Portuguese Letters was published in Lisbon, in 1972, and present a declared collective authorship, but there is no identification on what each of the three Marias wrote. Each new “different letter” shows that female subalternity presents itself in different ways, which have in common the power used to inferiorize women and take away their freedom and self-esteem. This study is based in theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu (1999,2001), Michelle Perrot (2005), Gayatri Spivak (2010) and Virginia Woolf (2014).