A MATERNIDADE EM A FILHA PRIMITIVA, DE VANESSA PASSOS

MOTHERHOOD IN A FILHA PRIMITIVA, DE VANESSA PASSOS

Abstract

The primitive daughter (2021) is the first novel by Vanessa Passos from Ceará and in it you can follow the life of a single mother who lives with her young daughter and her mother in a humble house in Ceará. The young woman, although she became pregnant during her graduation, was advised – and perhaps a little forced – to continue the Literature course because of her mother, who wanted a daughter with a doctorate. Thus, there is the protagonist who divides herself into some classes at the university where she is studying for her doctorate, the moments she travels to another city to teach and the periods she spends at home taking care of the daughter she has not yet been able to get fond of. Passos' narrative is beautiful and often raw, and shows how a woman who did not yearn for motherhood can deal with it, without the rose-colored lens that places motherhood as something essential and innate in women's lives. Thus, understanding the importance of this theme and the narrative power of the novel, this article proposes an interpretative analysis of this work of contemporary fiction, through theoretical concepts such as those of Badinter (2009, 2024), Donath (2024) and Iaconelli (2023), seeking to further disseminate the work and the author to the reader.