Magdá's transformation: from mourning to hysteria in Aluísio Azevedo's O Homem (1887)

Abstract

O Homem, a work written by Aluísio Azevedo around 1887, portrays the life of a female character, Madalena or Magdá, who mourns for unlived loves, leading her psychic functioning to hysteria, themes that will be addressed in this article with the aim of analyzing mourning as a feeling and behavior capable of influencing or producing hysteria in the protagonist. For this purpose, qualitative documentary research was carried out on the author, the context of the work, the literary movement belonging to the work and the themes of mourning and hysteria. The work was also based on the help of computer tools, such as Portal Maranhão, a server that makes Maranhão's works available for research in a database of Maranhão's literary historiography; and Linguateca , a website that contains digital tools, such as the AC/DC resource (access to bodies, making bodies available, from the University of Oslo), helping with reading the work and collecting data, respectively. The ideas presented are based on the thoughts of Cancilier (1976), Freud (1915), Lima (2022), Mérian (1988), among others. Finally, it is concluded that the mourning experienced by the Councilor's daughter, due to the death of her brother
Fernando and the failure to marry Luís, causes and drives the hysterical crises.