The body without stain

Abstract

The relationship between desire and morals is the trail to think the representation of feminine in the novel Quincas Borba by Machado de Assis. The term “without stain”, fi ndable at other novels such, for example, as Dom Casmurro, gives us the exact measure of how the body is symbolically hostage of a moral universe guided by patriarchal values. The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of the character Sofi a (Quincas Borba), and show how she would incarnate the dialectics of impetus and discipline. In this bias, the fi ctional construct would not be a simple refl ector of ideological conditioning of the second half of the nineteenth century, but by not labeling the character, the literary representation of feminine in Machado de Assis would reach a cognitive power beyond the mental and social framework of the period. Keywords: Feminine character. Brazilian Literature. Machado de Assis.