A Scandalous Woman: situations that mark the construction of identity

Abstract

In this essay we analyze the identity of the narrator and the protagonist Eily from the short story “A Scandalos Woman”, by the Irish writer Edna O’Brien. For this, we start by problematizing the paths of how the construction of female identity occurs, from the perspective of the narrator's point of view. Then, we present how the narrative itself contributes to the construction of Eily's identity, highlighting three situations that best represent the protagonist's identity. Thus, this analysis is justified because the narrated story exchanges experiences about women who were silenced and affected in their individuality by a set of impersonal and timeless powers, for which it arouses astonishment and reflection. The theoretical conduct of literary analysis is composed by the references of Luís Alberto Brandão Santos and Silvana Pessôa de Oliveira, which point out how the construction of the narrative takes place, followed by the concepts about the type of narrator proposed by Norman Friedman and Yves Reuter. For the identity analysis I bring the approaches of Kathryn Woodward, Erich Fromm, Jean-Claude Deschamps and Pascal Moliner, as well as Michael Foucault, who explains the mechanisms of power over bodies, and finally, Judith Butler's perspective on the identity of genre.