UMA FESTA SPARKIANA: UMA OBSERVAÇÃO DE PERSONAGENS FEMININAS E MASCULINAS NO CONTO DAISY OVEREND, DE MURIEL SPARK

Abstract

Gender studies have currently a keen interest in seeing how masculinities and femininities are socially expressed. In literary terms, there is a perennial concern with the study of characters which presents new formulations of gender relations as a means of showing social and ideological changes occurring in contemporary society and also how they begin to reconfigure the relationship between individuals. Upon a contact with the fictional world and with the individuals who inhabit it, it is possible to have the opportunity to identify the individual’s peculiar vision that gave an enlightening materiality to fictional elements of a society marked by changes but also by the maintenance of some traditions. Thinking on that fact, the proposed reading of the short story Daisy Overend, by Muriel Spark, offers to readers interested in the feminine figure the opportunity to notice that the characters are depicted as social individuals who desire to have power and autonomy and, in a similar and complementary way, those characters give a privileged vision of conflicts between genders which can highlight in what extent the achievements and changes accomplished by the women’s movement had an effective positive effect for them. Through the conflict between the two feminine characters (the narrator and Daisy) an their relationship with the masculine ones, Muriel Spark shows us to what degree the changes gained ground, as well tradition have been kept represented in contemporary society.