A GRÁVIDA E A PARIDA

PRÉ-PARTO E PÓS-PARTO NOS ROMANCES ESTE É O MEU CORPO (MELO, 2004) E THE ANATOMY LESSON: A NOVEL (SIEGAL, 2014)

Abstract

In this academic essay, we analyze the narrative aspects that intersect with the discrimination suffered by the characters Flora (pregnant) and Eduarda (giving birth) in a period of transformation of the female body and emotional fragility. The prepartum is represented in The Anatomy Lesson: A novel, written by new yorker Nina Siegal (2014), which environmentalizes the narrative in the XVII century, specifically in the year 1632; the postpartum period is represented through the dead character, Eduarda, in This is My Body, by Portuguese writer Filipa Melo (2004). Despite being located in different times and regions in the narratives – a pregnant Dutch woman from the XVII century (Siegal, 2014) and a postpartum woman from the XX century (Melo, 2004) – relations of exclusion and disrespect are determining, since the pregnant woman (Flora) is deprived of the right to be an admirable pregnant woman for being the companion of a thief condemned  – unjustly –  to death; and the gives birth (Eduarda) is deprived of the right to illnesses (sick) for not accepting motherhood, even though she has a history of suffering due to her father’s insensitivity, her partner’s disregard for her pregnancy, and the inhumane murder in which she ends. Thus, from the comparative study between the literary works and the intertextuality of gynecological medicine, supported by Stelet (2021), Brazil (2001), Butler (2016), and Agamben (2002, 2005), we will be able to understand the encounters that desubjectify the characters Eduarda (Melo) and Flora (Siegal, 2014), who endorse the dehumanization in the gestational period of women that accompanies the history of medicine, given that childbirth was seen as an eminently feminine work  – always carried out in a domestic environment – occurring due to the absence of technical professionals, exempt from medical monitoring.