Paixão, história e gênero: representações da sedução, da norma e da impunidade nos processos criminais do Triângulo Mineiro (Uberlândia/MG - 1943-1980)

Abstract

Since Antiquity, the legal systems in the West have demonstrated the exercise of power and the establishment of justice, punishment and social norm. Between articles and penalties, codes conceive representations and identities recognized in social and historical setting, and determine acceptable limits of human behavior to defend those who are injured or aggrieved in their rights. Mainly targeting those deemed most vulnerable such as children, unable to undertake alone the acts of civil life, and the women also. Whereas the protection of virgin women under 18 by the State, Article 217 of the Brazilian Penal Code of 1940 defined the crime of seduction the action of men who take advantage of the inexperience of young women to have sex. The reading of the sources made it possible to realize how the legal and social discourse converges to the construction of a fixed, permanent and hierarchical nature of the binary opposition of identities forged in sexual difference that historical context, and also to the materialization of the female, tied to virginity, marriage and honour, while value social being preserved. In the collection of criminal cases from the Federal University of Uberlândia’s Center of Documentation and Research in History are about 477 police investigations in which defendants were accused of having committed such a crime against women. This work deals with the topics from some of these cases, attempting to analyze constructions of feminine and masculine, and identify where moral, cultural and historical representations of gender grounds, as well as honour, rule, crime and impunity were forged in the Brazilian society of the time.