“It’s my happiness i’m going to purchase”

José de Alencar and the mariage de convenance

Abstract

In Brazilian prose novels, the thematization of what the French called mariage de convenance as an epithet of bourgeois hypocrisy is masterfully explored in Machado’s Realism. However, in José de Alencar, particularly in the urban novel Senhora, we see a critical bias that, to a certain extent, anticipates the realist sarcasm concerning matrimonial agreements signed for the sake of economic interests. In this perspective, this article examines the extent to which Alencar uses a legal basis in the construction of this novel, especially in his approach to the mariage de convenance. Through exploratory research, based on primary and secondary sources examined with attention to intratextual (intrinsic) and contextual (extrinsic) elements, we observed that Alencar takes part of a fictional strand that, in France, dealt with the mariage de convenance through humor, but, thanks to his legal knowledge as a lawyer, the Brazilian novelist gives more acuity to this kind of novel subgenre. Thus, based on the analysis, we realise Senhora approaches marriage in a liminar way between romantic idealism and realistic pragmatism.