Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Lygia Fagundes

Telles’s As meninas

Rex P. Nielson

Hispania, Volume 100, Number 1, March 2017, pp. 125-136 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hpn.2017.0010

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/651518

[ Access provided at 10 Jul 2020 00:35 GMT from Harvard Library ]

Socially Rooted Authoritarianism
in Lygia Fagundes Telles’s
As meninas

Rex P. Nielson
Brigham Young University

Abstract: Lygia Fagundes Telles’s novel As meninas portrays the oppressive social atmosphere of Brazil’s
authoritarian military dictatorship in a way that few other novels accomplish. Though the novel eschews the
documentary romance-reportagem mode famously adopted by other writers from the period, As meninas
provides a poignant expression of the psychological and emotional burdens caused by living under an
authoritarian regime. While presenting the interior/psychological lives of three young women through a
unique tri-voiced, stream-of-consciousness narration, the novel unveils and examines the stereotypes and
gender roles assigned to women in Brazilian society at the time. In doing so, the novel resists patriarchal
authoritarianism where it most insidiously remains ingrained: the social structure of the family.

Keywords: authoritarianism/autoritarismo, Brazil/Brasil, gender/gênero, Lygia Fagundes Telles, As meninas

F
ew Brazilian novels express the feelings of alienation and oppression experienced during
Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–85) more intensely than Lygia Fagundes Telles’s origi-
nal work As meninas.1 Published in 1973 at the end of a particularly repressive two-year
period, As meninas offers a powerful critique of patriarchal authoritarianism as manifested in
political, social, and family contexts. Set in the 1960s, the novel depicts the lives of three young
women marked by the morality and constraints of a patriarchal world. Fathers do not appear
physically in As meninas—there are no father-tyrants, or even mother-tyrants, who strictly
control their daughters’ lives—yet patriarchal shadows loom large over the young protagonists. In
the context of a highly politicized moment when the dictatorship was tightening its control over
Brazilian society,2 Telles’s novel emerges as both a product of and a reaction to the sociopolitical
circumstances of its genesis.
In her foundational study of Telles’s work, Renata Wasserman notes that As meninas “reveals
the pressure of politics upon a fictional form that had generally been seen as immune to politics”
(“The Guerrilla in the Bathtub” 51). Wasserman forcefully argues for reading As meninas as an
exploration in the constraints of social mores and artistic form (genre) in response to “extra-
textual politics” (63). Still, the novel is more than a mere political piece reflecting the historical
conditions of the 1960s and 70s; in fact, it avoids explicit critiques of the government that might
have warranted the censorship imposed on other writers during the period.3 By examining
the violence and legacy of patriarchal authoritarianism in Brazilian society, the novel provides
pointed political commentary, yet the novel implicitly suggests that the military dictatorship was
by no means the origin of patriarchal oppression in Brazil. Rather, it was a symptom of deeper
social currents. In this sense, As meninas offers an indirect form of resistance by attacking the
underpinnings of the dictatorship. By offering a glimpse into the private lives of three young
women struggling to negotiate the limited roles assigned them by society, the novel addresses
universal concerns regarding women’s roles and agency, as well as their dreams, desires, and
happiness. The novel thus resists the patriarchal underpinnings of the dictatorship where they
most insidiously remain ingrained: the social structure of the family.

AATSP Copyright © 2017 Hispania 100.1 (2017): 125–36

126  Hispania 100 March 2017

As meninas stands as one of Telles’s most accomplished works of fiction because of the view
it offers into the complex historical moment of Brazil’s military dictatorship.4 Telles herself has
said in an interview: “Veja o caso de As meninas, por exemplo. Está lá, cravado nas minhas
personagens, um instante da maior importância para a História do Brasil. É o registro, é o meu
testemunho de uma época” (qtd. in Cadernos 32–33). The novel’s treatment of Brazil during the
late 1960s has led a fellow writer from the period, Ivan Ângelo, to identify As meninas as one of
the important texts challenging the military dictatorship: “Vivíamos constrangidos pelo regime
militar e Lygia ousara publicar um romance, As meninas, em que uma das heroínas é militante
política” (qtd. in Cadernos 18). Yet despite the political engagement of one of its characters,
the novel offers little documentary evidence of the dictatorship’s abuses—with one significant
exception that will be discussed later. The novel eschews the model of the romance-reportagem—a
journalistic narrative mode that prioritized objective and realistic descriptions—adopted by
many writers at the time in response to the government’s censorship of the news media (Pellegrini
125). Rather than providing a realistic catalogue of political abuse, the legacy of As meninas
remains its poignant expression of the psychological and emotional burdens caused by living
under the pressures of a patriarchal authoritarian regime. As the narrative reveals the intimate
lives of the three female protagonists, the focus rests not on the state and the dictatorship but
instead on the family and the deeply systematic cultural and social conditions that have oppressed
women and turned fathers into tyrants. While unveiling the psychological trauma caused by
patriarchal structures and discourse, the novel considers the choices and paths available to
three very different young women brought up within these structures as they seek to move
beyond their private and family traumas towards a post-authoritarian future. Thus, beyond
the particular historical circumstances of the military dictatorship, As meninas has retained
continued relevance as a moving coming-of-age story and exploration of the traumatic effects
of patriarchal authoritarianism.
The novel’s three protagonists, Lorena, Lia, and Ana Clara, meet and become friends while
living away from home in a boarding house managed by a convent in São Paulo. Their similari-
ties, however, end there, for they come from diverse backgrounds and manifest fundamentally
distinct temperaments and attitudes. Lorena comes from a formerly wealthy, land-owning family.
Her father has died and her mother manages the declining remnants of the estate. The family’s
money has not entirely run out, though, and Lorena lives comfortably and supports her friends
financially when needed. Though enrolled in law school, Lorena spends her days dreaming of
M. N., an older married man and gynecologist by profession. She fantasizes about having an
affair with him, yet the extent of their relationship remains limited to a few passionate embraces
and letters. Lia, also a student, is from a bourgeois family from Bahia, and notably her German
father appears to have a mysterious past and harbors Nazi sympathies. In São Paulo, Lia joins
a militant student activist group and she falls in love with another young revolutionary named
Miguel. Following Miguel’s arrest and exile, Lia’s commitment to the group intensifies as she
seeks to be reunited with Miguel. Ana Clara, for her part, emerges as the most volatile of the three
girls, and of the three, her background seems the most tragic: she has never known her father,
and her mother was forced into prostitution. As a child, she experienced hunger and physical
abuse, including rape. Because of Ana Clara’s near indigent circumstances, the nuns of the
convent have taken her in and helped her enroll in college, where she studies psychology. After
falling in love with a drug dealer named Max, Ana Clara herself becomes a drug addict, in part
to escape the suffering she has experienced. She dreams of living a bourgeois life, of becoming
a model, and she considers marrying a lecherous dentist—an idea that simultaneously repulses
her—in order to obtain economic and social stability.
The novel’s striking narrative seamlessly intertwines three distinct first-person narratives,
which allows the reader to see the inner workings of each young woman’s consciousness. Though
not separated by chapter or section breaks, pronounced differences in tone and expression allow
the reader to recognize the shift of narrator quite readily. This tri-voiced narrative thus endows
 Nielson / Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Fagundes Telles  127

each character with a sense of immediacy and presence in the text. Rather than moving from
one character to another, or from one event to another, in a purely linear fashion, the narrative
foregrounds the simultaneity of the protagonists’ experiences. The narration’s three interior voices
grant the reader access to each girl’s private thoughts, dreams, and emotions. Notably, we also
become aware of their distressing feelings of isolation and desire for human contact—which give
the novel a poignant and sadly ironic dimension because of the apparent closeness of the girls’
friendship and the way in which the novel itself has intertwined the girls’ running narrative.
They share proximity, and their lives (and voices) are intertwined, yet they remain emotionally
and psychologically isolated, a painful sign of the failings of patriarchal structures to provide
security and social bonds.
The composite narrative structure expresses the complicated nature of each girl’s identity
and social position. In fact, one of As meninas’s greatest strengths is its unwillingness to fall back
on stereotypes—whether stereotypes originating from within the framework of the traditional
family or those emerging in reaction to the family. The novel refuses to typecast its characters.
For example, Lia’s father, the Nazi-sympathizer who in another novel might represent the
totalitarian patriarchal figure par excellence, here actually appears as a good and caring father;
though still a distant one given that he lives in Bahia far from Lia’s life in São Paulo. In a similar
way, the main characters cannot be reduced to mere caricature (Lorena as pining romantic; Lia
as militant student activist; Ana Clara as unstable drug addict). Instead, the novel dismantles
these stereotypes by examining each girl’s conflicted feelings about the roles she has turned to in
reaction to the stifling and limited identities assigned to her by her family and society. The novel
questions each girl’s idealized, revolutionary, and progressive ideals and demonstrates how her
choices do not necessarily lead to escape, freedom, and happiness. Peggy Sharpe notes that this
characterizes much of Telles’s fiction: “Despite their strength and sheer courage, these characters
are usually unable to complete the process of metamorphosis that would free them from their
solitude, decadence, and the lack of identity” (79). One of As meninas’s haunting aftereffects
derives from the fact that despite the protagonists’ unusual courage in resisting societal pressure
and oppression, their resistance appears to fail in some crucial way.
This tragic failing finds expression in As meninas through a rhetorical strategy that Elaine
Showalter calls “a ‘double-voiced discourse’ that always embodies the social, literary, and cultural
heritages of both the muted and the dominant” (201). In this way, As meninas reproduces the
so-called traditional voice of Brazil’s patriarchal heritage while simultaneously showing how
this heritage has failed the main characters. A careful examination of each protagonist’s identity
and thoughts demonstrates the degree to which the text interrogates the dark side of Brazil’s
traditional morals; that is to say, the vestiges, ruins, and remnants of patriarchal social structure.

Lorena and the Emptiness of Marriage

Lorena, the character whose voice opens and closes the novel, most immediately seems
connected to Brazil’s conservative, patriarchal tradition. As noted above, Lorena Vaz Leme comes
from a land-owning, upper-class family. Refined and educated, Lorena loves and often quotes
Latin. Her manners and carefully constructed image, however, overlay an anxious preoccupation
about her family’s tragic decline. Over the course of the novel, she reveals that the accidental
shooting of one of her brothers by another brother has been a significant factor contributing to
her family’s downfall. This tragedy apparently drove her father to commit suicide. Traumatized
by his own guilt, the surviving brother withdraws from society. With no one to administer the
finances, the family finds itself forced to sell its rural estate and begins to break apart. Lorena
moves to São Paulo to study while her mother lives off the family’s dwindling assets.
Lorena’s attitudes about marriage and family expose the moral decline of the family as an
institution in mid-twentieth-century Brazil. Though Lorena’s own family hovers on the edge of
disintegration and hardly seems to offer the protection and support that society traditionally
128  Hispania 100 March 2017

ascribes to families, Lorena clings to the belief that the institution of marriage will bring stability
to her life. For example, Lorena pins her future happiness on a relationship with an older man
she refers to only as M. N., a gynecologist who is already married with five children. Lorena
fixates on the idea of marrying M. N. and even fantasizes about his wife dying of leukemia. She
idealizes marriage as the source of both peace and happiness and the solution to her emotional
instability. In contrast, Lorena’s militant and progressive friend Lia deplores the idea of marriage
as old-fashioned and oppressive: “Quem mais quer se casar, Lorena? Quem? Só os padres e as
prostitutas. E um ou outro homossexual, entende” (Telles, As meninas 70). Nonetheless, in spite
of Lia’s outspoken criticism, Lorena responds internally:

Quis dizer: eu, eu! Adoraria me casar com M. N., não existe uma idéia mais jóia, queria me
casar com ele, sou frágil, insegura. Preciso de um homem em tempo integral. Com toda a
papelada em ordem, acredito demais em papel, herdei isso da mamãezinha. Agora ela esnoba
a papelada antiga mas é tarde, os arquivos não estão nas gavetas, estão na cabeça. (70)

Lorena asserts she has inherited from her mother a belief in the institutional power of marriage.
Referring to the documents proving the family’s existence, Lorena states, “não estão nas gavetas,
estão na cabeça.” But although she comes from an elite family, and despite her privileged position
as a law student, which would seem both to provide her with social capital and to serve as the
basis for self-confidence, Lorena feels fragile and insecure. Rather than providing support and
comfort, the traditional family as an institution emerges in the novel in accordance with what
Nina Auerbach elsewhere generally describes as a “fragile repositor[y] of cruelty, illusion, and
death” (265). Lorena initially looks to marriage as the foundation for identity, believing that as
long as marriage eludes her, she will flounder in inactivity and self-doubt; hence her yearning
for not merely a relationship with M. N. but the marriage certificate in hand. Here, in a moment
of double-voiced clarity, Lorena fails to see what is clear to the reader: marriage as institution
and documentation alone will not fill the hollowness of her own emotional insecurity. Despite
Lorena’s belief to the contrary, the papelada (the marriage certificate) cannot compensate for
the affective failings of the institution of marriage.
As the novel progresses, the control marriage exercises over social behaviors and financial
stability becomes more oppressive and more pronounced. In response to this oppression, Lorena
develops a self-awareness that her own preoccupations lie not so much with marriage as with
sex and her own virginity. During the course of the narrative, Lorena—except in one singular
moment—never leaves her room and spends most of her time in the bathtub of her private
room, brooding over her love life and virginity, fantasizing about making love, and pining over
M. N. and his lack of attention towards her. At one point, she rehearses a previous conversation
in which Lia interrogates her about her love life:

Lia: Por acaso faz parte de algum desses movimentos de libertação da mulher?
Lorena: Também não. Só penso na minha condição.
Lia: Trata-se então de uma jovem alienada?
Lorena: Por favor, não me julgue, só me entreviste. Não sei mentir, estaria mentindo se dis-
sesse que me preocupo com as mulheres em geral, me preocupo só comigo, estou
apaixonada. Ele é casado, velho, milhares de filhos. Completamente apaixonada.
Lia: Uma pergunta indiscreta, posso? Você é virgem?
Lorena: Virgem. . . .
Lia: Quer dizer que não são amantes. Será ousadia minha perguntar o motivo?
Lorena: Ele não quer. Nem me procura mais, faz um montão de dias que nem me telefona.
Lia: Mas trata-se de um impotente? De um homossexual? Se não me falha a memória,
ouvi qualquer coisa sobre filhos, não ouvi?
Lorena: Ele é um gentleman. (Telles, As meninas 159)
 Nielson / Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Fagundes Telles  129

The interview highlights the distinct difference between Lia’s social and political engagement,
which will be discussed further below, and Lorena’s personal, self-centered concerns. Lorena
does not worry about the women’s liberation movements that Lia so rigorously believes in, nor
even women’s rights in general, but rather her own condition. Yet, far from the simple-minded
and prudish narcissist that Lia believes her to be, Lorena does not maintain her virginity for the
reasons Lia assumes. At a later point, she reflects on one of her mother’s oft-repeated warnings:
“O tesouro de uma moça é a virgindade,’ ouvi mãezinha dizer mais de uma vez às mocinhas que
trabalhavam na casa da fazenda. Como nunca mais fez essa advertência, calculo que o tesouro
só era válido para aquele tempo. E para aquele gênero de mocinhas, filhas de colonos ou órfãs”
(197). Virginity, according to Lorena’s mother, should be treasured as an economic value, and
Lorena appears to recognize the socio-economic forces that undergird it. Lorena explains this
so-called traditional perspective on virginity as a function both of historical moment—suggesting
this attitude was perhaps only justified during an earlier period of time—and class—indicating
that this attitude only applied to girls from lower-economic households. Lorena suggests with
this comment that as Brazilian society has progressively changed, the economic value placed on
women has likewise changed, given that the roles to which women have typically been limited
have changed. This is a change marked by a population shift from rural to urban zones and also by
increasing educational opportunities and even legal advances for women.5 Nevertheless, although
Lorena dismisses the traditional attitude about virginity that explicitly ties economic value to
women’s bodies, Lorena’s own affirmations reveal that by seeking to preserve her virginity, she
is participating and in effect legitimizing the patriarchal system that controls and marginalizes
women. Thus, while Lorena expresses a keen critical awareness of the values embedded in
traditional views of marriage and family, Lorena’s personal beliefs and actions remain deeply
conditioned by these patriarchal attitudes.

Lia and Revolutionary Contempt for Sexual Mores

Much like Lorena, Lia also has faced nearly identical pressures and anxieties from her family
regarding marriage and gender roles. Lia’s family wants her to receive a diploma, a document
valued by society as a tangible sign of upward mobility, much like the marriage certificate
Lorena’s mother worries about. And, like Lorena’s family, they expect Lia to follow traditional
patterns and step into traditional roles. It is interesting to note, too, the way in which Lia’s
family’s concerns are tied to certain places: the engagement party occurs in the parlor, the wed-
ding happens in the Church, the grandchildren multiply with the entire family living in the
same house. For Lia’s parents, the traditional morality of the family is not just concerned with
propriety but with property. In this sense, Lia’s father is irritated over the “apartment-building
curse” not only because it signifies the changing nature of families—large, extended families
cannot easily live together in the tight quarters of an apartment—but because it also indicates
urban degradation and lowering property values, an upsetting socioeconomic step backwards
in the minds of Lia’s parents.
This anxiety over both property and propriety, and in particular sexual morality, eventually
provokes Lia to leave home. And, in fact, her affiliation with an anti-government revolutionary
group originates in her contempt for the traditional socioeconomic values of her parents. Later in
the novel, Lia finds herself on a clandestine assignment in close quarters with a novice member
of the militant group. Lia uses the code name Rosa, while her inexperienced associate’s code
name is Pedro. As they pass the time, their conversation centers on the oppressive demands of
their families. Pedro, for example, confesses how his family reacted when they learned of his
involvement at an anti-government demonstration: “Acho que tenho mais medo da gente lá de
casa do que da polícia. Meu irmão mais velho faz parte daquela onda de tradição e família, você
130  Hispania 100 March 2017

precisa ver como ficou histérico” (Telles, As meninas 131). Hearing this, Lia responds by confess-
ing that she left her parents and moved to the city because of a scandalous relationship she had
with one of her girlfriends: “Foi um amor profundo e triste, a gente sabia que se desconfiassem
íamos sofrer mais. Então era preciso esconder nosso segredo como um roubo, um crime” (128).
After a time, however, Lia states that the relationship turned sour because of the constant secrecy
and the pressures they felt from their families: “Não éramos amantes mas cúmplices. Ficamos
cerimoniosas. Desconfiadas. O jogo perdeu a graça, ficou amargo” (128). Both of their families
panicked as they realized the nature of the relationship: “Meu pai percebeu tudo e ficou calado.
Minha mãe teve suas adivinhações e ficou em pânico, queria me casar urgente com o primo.
O vizinho também servia, um viúvo que tocava violoncello. Fez tudo pra me agarrar pelo pé
mas catei meu nécessaire e vim” (128). Fearful of the social repercussions that her homosexual
activities might produce, the family tries to marry off their daughter. They want to control and
limit her behavior, but Lia refuses and leaves.
Like Lorena’s, Lia’s reaction to the family’s moral values is to move out and distance herself
from her family. But once separated from their families, their behavior is quite different. In
contrast to her perceptions of Lorena’s conservative behavior, Lia believes in experimenting all
that life offers, and although she chooses a heterosexual lifestyle, she is angered by the fear that
her family, that society, expresses over sexuality. She relates, “Minha tia-avó ficou tão avariada
com o peso do sexo que se escondeu num convento, virou freira. Uma outra tia que gostava de
polêmica fez tantas que acabou puta. O mesmo medo, o mesmo medo. Se a gente não tivesse
mais medo” (133). Lia argues that this fear originates in the morality of the family and is what
has led to the problems of society. She believes that freedom, justice, and social equality will only
be achieved when individuals are able to conquer their fears and promote love in all its forms.

Ana Clara and the Yearning for Stability

Similar to her friends Lia and Lorena, Ana Clara experiences a heightened sense of sexuality,
which has been conditioned by the value of virginity within patriarchal morality and by her poor
socioeconomic origins. Unlike her friends, Ana Clara never knew her father and her mother
was forced into a life of prostitution to survive. Ana Clara was beaten as a child and raped as an
adolescent. She learns early in life that she is valued primarily for her physical appearance, and,
consequently, she is more keenly aware than Lia and Lorena of the power her sexuality affords.
Without financial resources or the support of her family, Ana Clara utilizes her good looks and
sexuality to survive and improve her financial and social stability. Though her boyfriend is a
drug dealer, and though she herself becomes an addict, Ana Clara places her hopes in a future
marriage to a wealthy physician who takes interest in her. Ana Clara believes this relationship
will provide her with the money and status she so enviously sees in Lorena’s and Lia’s lives. Yet,
the thought of this older doctor repulses her, and she refers to him as the “escamoso,” the scaly
one. The possibility of this relationship is contingent, however, on her being a virgin, and so Ana
Clara considers having an “operation” to restore her virginity:

Aí é que está. Fico virgem, pomba. Caso com o escamoso destranco a matrícula e faço meu
curso. Brilhante. Nas férias viajo pra comprar coisas ele já disse que adora viajar aquele. Ah
que coincidência porque eu também. Operação fácil. Loreninha me empresta. Vai comigo.
Generosa a Lena. Então. Sempre me tira das trancadas. (Telles, As meninas 45)

Here, similar to the way in which Lorena understands the economic value of sexuality, Ana
Clara likewise reveals acute awareness of the way society has objectified and defined women’s
sexuality. It is by no means incidental that Ana Clara’s other hopes for making money center
on a career in modeling. But Ana Clara’s response to these societal demands is both pragmatic
and progressive, albeit highly idealized. Knowing it is the only resource she has that is valued by
 Nielson / Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Fagundes Telles  131

society, Ana Clara determines to utilize her sexuality to her favor whenever possible. In fact, as
Renata Wasserman notes, she refers to the operation of repairing/reconstructing her virginity in
the terms of a public works project: “virginity-restoration, spoken of as if it were an urban renewal
project, ‘mending the South End’” (Central at the Margin 93). If she undergoes the operation, this
will allow her to marry, which will in turn enable her to return to school and finish her degree.
This marriage will furthermore give her social and financial mobility and purchasing power.
Though Ana Clara understands the way she is valued by society and how she can use her
sexuality to her own advantage, she hesitates to embrace marriage as an economic and social
system. This is due in part to the fact that she does love her boyfriend, Max, in spite of his own
pitiable social status. This is a love that to her seems ultimately irrational, since Max can offer her
no future mobility or social advancement. Furthermore, her situation is complicated when she
realizes that she has become pregnant. After making this discovery, she cries silently to herself,
“Max, estou grávida. Que é que eu faço que é que eu faço” (Telles, As meninas 84). The despera-
tion that leads to this lament also causes Ana Clara to contemplate seeking an abortion, which
she sees as the only way whereby she can attempt a return to a virgin-like condition so as to be
able to marry the “scaly one” and acquire the security and status she so desires. In a poignant
distortion of the way a woman’s right to choose is formulated today, Ana Clara feels pressured
to seek an abortion not as an expression of her own individuality and freedom but because of
the monolithic weight of a society in which her worth—as an unmarried young woman—is
determined solely by her virginity. Under the weight of this pressure, Ana Clara hesitates and
remains uncommitted to any course of action. Just as Lorena and Lia independently both eschew
the roles imposed on them by their families and society, Ana Clara also resists giving in to the
roles that society has determined for her.

Dismantling Gendered Stereotypes

Though Lorena, Lia, and Ana Clara exhibit strikingly different personalities and back-
grounds, they are alike in this respect: they cannot easily be defined according to the standard
roles of society and much less by family structures. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why As
meninas has so forcefully entered the canon of Brazilian literature: the novel refuses to reduce
its characters to mere clichés and instead explores the complex realities behind social stereo-
types. In fact, the text’s three-voiced narrative structure continuously undermines not only the
stereotyped images we as readers might have of the three girls, but it also undermines the images
they have of each other, revealing that the three protagonists are themselves not immune to our
human proclivity to typecast. For example, at the opening of the novel, Lorena views Lia as a
passionate militant, but one whose passions will eventually mellow with age: “Vejo Lião uma mãe
gordíssima e felicíssima, sorrindo meio irônica para as passadas guerrilhas, juvenilidades, meu
senhor, juvenilidades!” (Telles, As meninas 62). In a similar vein, Lorena later reduces herself and
her two friends to three ideas (love, money, and revolution): “Se eu não falasse tanto em fazer
amor, se Ana Clara não falasse tanto em enriquecer, se Lião não falasse noite e dia em revolução”
(113). Nonetheless, despite such typecasts, each girl’s running interior monologue challenges her
outward appearance, creating a disconnection between the way they are viewed by others (and
consequently the expectations that others have of them) and the way they identify themselves.
The novel’s three-voiced narration also allows the author to bring conflicting positions and
arguments to bear on one another. While the interior logic of each girl’s arguments and positions
seems sound, it is often called into question when they dialogue with others. For example, late in
the novel Lia visits Lorena’s mother to receive some money as a loan. Before entering the house,
Lia chats with the family’s chauffeur about his children. After the man mentions the joy his son
gives him, Lia asks about his daughter, and the conversation turns to education and women’s
rights. While the chauffeur represents precisely the structure and values of the traditional family
that so alienate and irritate Lia, he also challenges the practicality of her ideals, calling them
132  Hispania 100 March 2017

“luxuries” available only to girls from rich families. In fact, when viewed from the context of the
novel as a whole, the chauffeur’s fears are emphasized to the reader by Ana Clara’s existence as
a “poor girl” who, according to the chauffeur’s logic, teeters on the brink of tragedy because she
refuses to embrace the traditional roles dictated by society. Though spoken by a family patriarch
concerned about preserving the family order, the chauffeur’s comments nevertheless suggest
how Lia’s ideals might fail someone like Ana Clara.
Nor is Lia a static stereotype of militant opposition. During a particularly emotional
conversation with the Mother Superior in which Mother Alix asks Lia about her involvement
with her revolutionary group—and the group’s violent measures—Lia confesses that her ideals
are changing.

Não, Madre Alix. Confesso que estou mudando, a violência não funciona, o que funciona é
a união de todos nós para criar um diálogo. Mas já que a senhora falou em violência vou lhe
mostrar uma—digo e procuro o depoimento que levei pra mostrar o Pedro e esqueci.—Quero
que ouça o trecho do depoimento de um botânico perante a Justiça, ele ousou distribuir
panfletos numa fábrica. Foi preso e levado à caserna policial, ouça aqui o que ele diz, não
vou ler tudo: Ali interrogaram-me durante vinte e cinco horas enquanto gritavam, traidor da
pátria, traidor! (Telles, As meninas 146)

Lia proceeds to read Mother Alix the full deposition of the brutal torture of a young man who
had been arrested. This emotional scene is significant for several reasons. First, it is the only
documentary moment of the novel, the only moment when the narration turns away from
the intensely private inner lives of the three protagonists to denounce and expose openly the
state-sponsored torture then occurring in Brazil. In terms of the narrative strategy of the novel,
the stark presentation to the reader of this painful testimony not only serves to denounce the
activities of the military government but also heightens our understanding of the intense and
agonizing psychological conditions motivating Lia, and, by extension, Lorena and Ana Clara.
For Lia, this is also a decisive personal moment in which she challenges the authority of the
Church and the patriarchal system symbolized by the Mother Superior by rising and speaking
truth to power: “Não consigo mais ficar sentada, me levanto. Assumo o risco” (146). At the level
of metanarrative, this risk is emblematized in the novel’s very publication.
After reading the deposition, however, Lia finds herself speechless when Mother Alix
reveals that she knows the case well and has been meeting with the imprisoned man’s mother
and has in fact petitioned the Church’s hierarchy to intercede on his behalf. Just as Mother
Alix’s impressions of Lia remain uncertain, Lia discovers that she too has typecast Mother Alix.
Before they separate, the Mother Superior asks, “—Posso lhe dar uma epígrafe? É do Gênesis,
aceita?—Pergunta e sorri. Sai da tua terra e da tua parentela e da casa de teu pai e vem para a
terra que eu te mostrarei. É o que você está fazendo—acrescentou. Hesitou um pouco: —É o que
eu fiz” (148). Time and again the novel dismantles the stereotypes and surface identities upon
which so many social relationships are constructed to reveal the political, historical, economic,
and social complexities of individual lives. Just as the Mother Superior is more revolutionary and
socially engaged than Lia would have ever believed, Lia does not harbor the violent revolutionary
intent that others would ascribe to her. In a similar vein, Ana Clara is not a pastiche of an addict
motivated purely by money, and Lorena is far more thoughtful and intelligent than Lia gives
her credit for. In fact, at the conclusion of the novel it is surprisingly Lorena and not Lia who
ultimately finds the courage to take action toward the story’s resolution.

Patriarchal Oppression in the State and the Family

While the political overtones in As meninas are more explicit at times than others, the novel’s
critique of the decadence of patriarchal morality remains constant. Indeed, the first-person­
narratives of Lorena, Lia, and Ana Clara reveal the scope and extent to which patriarchal
 Nielson / Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Fagundes Telles  133

discourse has persistently shaped their identities and personal lives and, by extension, the
institutions and structure of the society in which they live. This is an argument frequently
made by Lia, as when she says to Mother Alix, “A senhora me desculpe, Madre Alix, mas Ana é
o produto desta nossa bela sociedade” (Telles, As meninas 144). But despite their apparent lack
of social engagement, both Lorena and Ana Clara also demonstrate the relationship between
family values and how those values are appropriated and narrated by society at large. In this
sense, As meninas painfully reveals how deeply patriarchal structures have been extended and
replicated into the social fabric itself.
While avoiding a didactic tone, the novel’s subtle representation of patriarchal discourse
suggests its insidious permanence and also the difficulty of contesting it, despite the at-times
militant resistance mounted by figures like Lia. To a degree, As meninas accomplishes this
through the very absence of the girls’ fathers. As mentioned above, when Lorena was young,
her father committed suicide following the tragic death of one of Lorena’s brothers. In Lia’s
case, because of her parents’ pressures for her to marry, Lia leaves the family and travels from
Bahia to São Paulo, and her only contact with them assumes the form of a few brief letters and
phone conversations. Ana Clara, for her part, has never even met her father and has no notion
of his identity.
Cristina Ferreira Pinto refers to these father figures as decentered fathers, stating, “A descen-
tralização do Pai como ponto determinante e valorizador da família reflete-se na apresentação . . .
de elementos que expressam uma orientação diferente (ou o fracasso) do padrão estabelecido
pelas Instituições sociais, isto é, pela Lei, pelo Pai: a promiscuidade sexual, o adultério, a homos-
sexualidade e a impotência sexual masculina” (119). Accordingly, despite the physical absence
of father figures, their far-reaching shadows have a profound impact on each girl’s sense of self.
More so than Lia and Lorena, Ana Clara suffers beneath the tyranny of families, that is, the
tyranny of family status. She is acutely aware of her lack of family because she has been taught
that her value and self-worth are in part determined by her genealogical roots. For Ana Clara,
not knowing the identity of her father is akin to having no identity herself. She is thus cast in a
role that she is powerless to change. It is the tyranny of the birth certificate—a document that
for those who have one (or the right one) affords access to the communal benefits society offers.
Eager to change her status and be included in this world, Ana Clara invents various different
stories to explain her missing family, yet these stories cannot change the fact that her birth
certificate still indicates “father unknown.”6
For Ana Clara, the question of her unknown father lies at the root of her struggle to feel
accepted socially, and she bristles at the fact that she is denied a legitimate place in society only
because she has been labeled illegitimate. In the absence of her father, a point of origin who
can legitimize her place in society, Ana Clara turns to the fact that she is white and to biology
to legitimize herself. In doing so, she raises the question of Lorena’s and Lia’s possible mixed-race
ancestry, suggesting that on the basis of skin color, she may have a more legitimate claim to high
social standing than they do. Nonetheless, despite making this observation, Ana Clara recognizes
that money and economic power hold far more weight than racial background and—both conse-
quently and pragmatically speaking—her only hopes for obtaining social capital and legitimacy
lie in the possibility of marrying the established doctor she inwardly loathes. This hope in the
end is in vain, however, for Ana Clara’s life ends tragically from a drug overdose. Despite her best
intentions, Ana Clara labored under the weight of a society that had marginalized her, a weight
that proved too great for her to bear. As Lorena reflects, “Lião vive pregando que a sociedade
expulsa o que não pode assimilar. Ana foi expulsa pela espada flamejante” (252).
Whereas Ana Clara suffers because of her lack of family connections and consequently
marginalized position in society, Lia’s problem is the inverse—her family’s bonds lay claim to
her so strongly that she feels trapped and suffocated. The strength of these bonds is symbolized
by her father, a German immigrant with Nazi sympathies. Lia’s father would seem to represent
the authoritarian patriarchal father par excellence, yet in spite of his past political connections,
134  Hispania 100 March 2017

he frustrates the patriarchal stereotypes as a loving and caring man who provides moral and
financial support for his daughter. But Lia resists the demands her family’s love makes on her.
For Lia, this type of love and loyalty hold clear political implications. For example, she highlights
a passage from one of her books:

A Pátria prende o homem com um vínculo sagrado. É preciso amá-la como se ama a religião,
obedecer-lhe como se obedece a Deus. É preciso darmo-nos inteiramente a ela, tudo lhe entregar,
votar-lhe tudo. É preciso amá-la gloriosa ou obscura, próspera ou desgraçada. (58, italics
in original)

Her interest here is not only the kind of love individuals owe to their country but also the way
in which individuals are bound to the state. While she does not explicitly connect this passage
with her feelings for her family, the passage does cause her to question the nature of familial love
and the limits of patriotism. She refuses the idea of love for the sake of love, or patriotism for
the sake of patriotism, and she ultimately rejects the sentiment of blind patriotic love expressed
in the quotation, though she might argue that her participation in anti-government activities is
motivated by a love for a more abstract or idealized conception of Brazil rather than the image
of Brazil represented by the current political regime.
On this point, both Lia and Lorena share common ground. They feel love for their families
but simultaneously recognize the dangers of yielding to or even indulging in the decadent values
their families represent. Instead, they both resist surrendering to the roles prescribed for them
by patriarchal tradition and seek their own uncertain paths. Accordingly, the novel proposes a
radical change for both family relationships and even society as a whole in which the family is
not structured by the patriarchal head. As Lia explains to Mother Alix:

Um novo modelo de família vai surgindo, uma cujo cabeça já não é o todo-poderoso senhor
da ‘aristocracia’ rural. Embora continue sendo o ‘chefe’ da família, o pai já não tem poder abso-
luto; a mulher, por outro lado, conquanto tenha visto novas oportunidades abrirem-se para
ela, enfrenta ainda desconfianças e preconceitos enraizados em si mesmo e nos outros. (118)

Conclusion
In a way, all three protagonists find themselves searching for a new foundation for identity
in the gaping fissures of a fractured patriarchal society. The novel shows the way in which society
has pigeonholed each of them into defined and marginalized roles: Lorena, the detached lovesick
university student; Lia, the revolutionary; and Ana Clara, the drug addict. Even the novel’s title
As meninas may suggest how society has infantilized these characters and circumscribed the
possibilities available to them. Yet Lorena, Lia, and Ana Clara are not mere pastiche, and this
novel does not celebrate a feminist alter-reality. Rather, As meninas reveals that although the
young women hover within and around the stereotypical identities to which they seem to have
been condemned by society, each of them resists these assigned roles.
Nevertheless, by revealing their inner struggles and yearnings, As meninas also subtly
questions of the so-called feminist alternatives offered to women. In doing so, the novel avoids
the model of other feminist novels, as Susan Quinlan and Peggy Sharpe note that “perpetuam
convenções sócio-culturais já firmemente estabelecidas ao invés de criar tradições literárias
novas” (16). As meninas criticizes the staid family structures of patriarchal morality but also
examines what freedoms are left when those structures break down and the father fades as the
authoritative origin of social morality. The alternative is not structureless. We still find each of
the girls looking for happiness through heterosexual relationships. Yet for Lorena, Lia, and Ana
Clara, the novel shows how the power dynamics of their relationships are not the same as those
in the so-called traditional patriarchal model. As the girls yearn for this reconstructed happiness,
society unfortunately appears unwilling to grant it, and thus the protagonists are forced to work
 Nielson / Socially Rooted Authoritarianism in Fagundes Telles  135

from out of marginalized social roles, and tragically Ana Clara is unable to escape this position.
Ana Clara’s death, which is prefigured in the novel’s opening pages, reflects the painful struggle
all three girls must face because of society’s domestic decadence: “E estamos morrendo. Dessa
ou de outra maneira não estamos morrendo? Nunca o povo esteve tão longe de nós, não quer
nem saber. E se souber ainda fica com raiva, o povo tem medo, ah! como o povo tem medo”
(Telles, As meninas 15). Yet, in the face of this fear and the tragedy of Ana Clara’s death, the
novel’s moving conclusion offers a potent expression of hope. Ana Clara’s death, the result of a
drug overdose, unexpectedly moves both Lia and Lorena to action in order to protect the nuns
from police enquiries and investigation. After making the decision to lay Ana Clara to rest in
their own way, both Lia and Lorena turn towards the future: Lia departs into self-imposed exile
and Lorena returns to her university studies. The novel does not provide an easy resolution
regarding future roles and paths that lie ahead for Lia and Lorena, yet both women ultimately
take courage in the joyful possibilities of their own futures.

NOTES
1
 The novel has been translated by Neves and is available in English under the title The Girl in the
Photograph. Unfortunately, the translated title omits (or ignores) the diversity of female voices expressed
through the novel’s triple narration.
2
 The military government that ruled Brazil during the 1960s and 70s instituted a variety of authoritar-
ian measures that have been well documented. In December 1968, for example, the government passed
AI-5 (Ato Institucional n. 5), which suspended the right of habeas corpus, thereby allowing law enforcement
operatives in effect to detain any person deemed hostile to the government for an indeterminate period of
time. AI-5 constituted an aggressive measure on the part of the military government to prevent demonstra-
tions of resistance in any form against its power. Pellegrini notes in her well-known study Gavetas Vazias:
Ficção e política nos anos 70 that AI-5 also had a tremendous impact on cultural production during the
period: “AI-5 foi o verdadeiro golpe para a cultura: com a censura prévia institucionalizada, o governo
passou a exercer um trabalho cerrado de prevenção, com cortes e vetos, instaurando também os terríveis
esquemas de repressão” (63). In 1969, one year after the passing of AI-5, the Lei de Segurança Nacional
was amended to include the death penalty for political dissidents who opposed the military government.
Government censorship of the media became widespread. In effect, the 1960s and 70s was a period of
pronounced political authoritarianism. For additional discussion of this period, see Skidmore (159–88).
3
 Notable examples of novels censured during the 1970s include Fonseca’s Feliz ano novo, de Loyola
Brandão’s Zero, Silva’s Dez estórias imorais, and Tapajós’s Em camera lenta. For an overview of censorship
during the dictatorship, see Reimão.
4
 A prolific writer, Telles is the author of twenty volumes of short stories and four novels. As meninas,
her third novel, received the prestigious Jabuti prize for literature the year following its publication in 1974.
5
 Camarano and Abramovay cite census statistics from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics (IBGE) and note that over the course of the twentieth century, the ratio of men to women in
rural areas increased markedly, a sign that far more women left their rural homes for the cities. Despite
the different challenges these women continued to face in the cities, this helps to explain the increasing
autonomy and opportunities for women that the novel chronicles. Also, for an excellent comparative study
on jurisprudence and women’s rights in Brazil and other Latin American countries, see Htun.
6
 It was not until the implementation of the new Civil Code in 2002 that the practice of including the
terms “legitimate” and “illegitimate” on birth certificates legally ended.

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