Traditional family’s laceration through consummation of desire in O casamento, by Nelson Rodrigues

Abstract

In 1966, peak moment during Brazil's military dictatorship, Nelson Rodrigues had his novel O Casamento censored just one month after its publication. Through a decree signed by Carlos Medeiros Silva, Minister of Justice Marshal Castello Branco, on October 12th, came the order to remove the novel from all Brazilian libraries, under the allegation that the narrative was filled with "turpitude and scenes depicted with incredibly indecorous language." a truly "affront against family's organization" (RODRIGUES, 2016, p. 264). Fifty years past the publication of the novel, the only one to be signed by the most acclaimed modern Brazilian play-writer, we still can see how the issues addressed in O Casamento still continue to shake Brazilian moralism. By representing a traditional family during the preparations for one of its member's wedding ceremony, Nelson Rodrigues showcases, as pointed by Alexandre Pianelli Godoy (2012, p. 106), the paradox between "the feeling of discredit of the family as an institution, inside the own family" and the inversely proportional, ideological valorization of conservative and patriarchal dogmas by the family members. In this regard, we intend, in this paper, to analyze how the characters of the novel deal with the authoritarian, religious, misogynist and homophobic norms, that directly affront their conscious or unconscious desires of masochism, sadism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, homosexuality, incest, adultery and rape. Once the traditional bourgeoisie family drama is depicted, divided between normalization and secularization, we will comprehend the tensions derived from conflicting desires of "morality" and "immorality" based on Freudian Psychoanalysis, through works as Totem e tabu (2012), O mal-estar na civilização (2010) and Os três ensaios sobre a teoria da sexualidade (2016), which question the construction of social restrictions related to sex, the sacrifice of one's individual desires at the expense of collective harmony and the way sexuality as a whole is established, respectively. As pointed by Edmundo Gómez Mango & J-B Pontalis (2013), as well as by Jean Bellemin-Noël (1978, p. 19), we believe that the psychoanalytical theory is fundamental in the process of deciphering the code in which the literary text is transformed into. In addition to psychoanalytical references, other researches will contribute to our goals, such as the ones developed in the field of literature by Sábato Magaldi (1992), Jean-Marie Thomasseau (2012), Alexandre Godoy (2012), Victor Pereira (2012), Ângela Dias (2013), among others. During the development of this paper, we present findings that direct the characters' desires to punishable situations, guilt, hypocrisy, crime, death, tragedy and discredit of the family institution, as the title of novel appears to be the representation of an organizational structure that calls into question the most controversial parts of human life: eroticism and sexuality.