Between restraint and transgression: An interpretation of women’s experiences in the novel A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão (2016)

Abstract

This article analyzes Martha Batalha’s novel A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão (2016), seeking to understand how the female experience is shaped by dynamics of regulation, containment, and invisibilization. Through a reading informed by the melodrama genre, this study investigates how conflicts experienced in the private sphere relate to broader social structures, particularly with regard to gender norms, sexuality, and expectations surrounding marriage and motherhood. The analysis of Eurídice and Guida’s trajectories highlights two distinct modes of female experience. While Eurídice undergoes a gradual process of adaptation and silencing, marked by the containment of desires and the internalization of social norms, Guida represents the transgression of these expectations and is, therefore, subjected to processes of exclusion and precariousness. Drawing on contributions from Gender Studies and Cultural Studies, the article discusses how the female body is configured as a space for the inscription of practices of control and discipline, highlighting that invisibility is not limited to a lack of recognition but results from different forms of social regulation.