Juliana, a victim of social and literary invisibility

Abstract

This essay comes up with a study about the initial scene of the chapter XII from O primo Basilio book, written by Eça de Queirós, in which Juliana shows up laid down in a chaise-longue, opposing herself to Luísa, her “employer”, who is ironing clothes and arguing with her husband. The current reading is based on the argument that Eça de Queirós, through this “secondary” character, establishes one of the main critics of the realistic proposal. In this article, there are two elected study sequences made under the narratological approach, which are: the metalinguistic description of corpus’ excerpts, without despising the context, and the analysis of the characters actions, considering the intrigue, the dialogues – mostly between Jorge and Luísa – and the narrative voice. In the search of the literary-poetic sense, in the expression level, when relevant, the semantics, stylistics and discursive aspects are also considered, since they set the queirosiano style.