A feiticeira Maria de Freitas em A Estranha Nação de Rafael Mendes, de Moacyr Scliar

Abstract

Witches are stigmatized in the collective imagination as evil beings who are intimate with demons. Feared, they are practically erased from official history, leaving it to literature to bring to light these characters who reveal the daily life of colonial Brazil: women who were accused, arrested and convicted by the Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The sorceress, for hundreds of years, was one of the doctors known to the people, and represented the fear of the unknown and the perpetuation of paganism. Thousands of women considered to be practitioners of magic or even New Christians were burned in “holy” bonfires, in Portugal and Brazil, between the 16th and 18th centuries. In this context of witch hunts, the character Maria de Freitas, from the literary work The strange nation of Rafael Mendes (1983), by Moacyr Scliar, is analyzed. Around this character, jokingly nicknamed Maria-Arde-lhe-o-Rabo and considered a heretic, there is an entire imaginary about the woman as one of Satan’s agents, interconnecting with the practices of witchcraft so common in Colonial Brazil. Such practices also gave these women a prominent place within the society that was formed there, in addition to guaranteeing them the means for their material sustenance. The reflections of this Master’s dissertation are anchored in the studies of Anita Novinsky (2007), Laura de Mello e Souza (1986), Jules Michelet (1992), Ronaldo Vainfas (2010), Berta Waldman (2003), Kênia Pereira (2018), among others, demonstrating the relevance and richness of Sglia’s production.