Clarice Lispector and the female authorship: literary tensions

Abstract

In this text, we intend to reflect on the challenges of female authorship based on the manifestations of the writer Clarice Lispector in letters to her sisters, Tania Kaufmann and Elisa Lispector, published in the book Minhas Queridas. In the book, she expresses the difficulties and limitations faced at the beginning of her literary trajectory, between the years 1940-1950, a period in which she accompanied her diplomat husband, residing in different countries in Europe and in the United States. In order to do this, the contributions of feminist literary criticism will be considered, giving priority to the theoretical-critical approaches of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Adrienne Rich. In such theoretical-critical approaches are taken into account the challenges of literary practice in a field still restricted to the participation of women writers, limited publishing spaces, the role of criticism, writing anxiety, social expectations about the role of women and the attempt to reconcile being a writer, wife and mother.