Presentation 

We intend to approach Inês Pedrosa’s novel Nas Tuas Mãos (in English: In Your Hands), especially its female characters in relation to, or rather, in opposition to the rhetoric construction of the feminine carried out during Estado Novo, in particular based on the Portuguese Prime Minister’s speeches and statements during that period.The main argument of this work is to emphasize the fact that Inês Pedrosa’s female characters, in the novel Nas Tuas Mãos, are marginal characters, although appearing to be integrated in their societies.We intend to show how this marginality results from the tension between Portuguese female myths, both literary and cultural, and their appropriation and reconstruction by the Estado Novo, in order to express a feminine identity within the structure of the regime’s nationalist rhetoric.In Nas Tuas Mãos, this tension goes beyond the character construction because it is infiltrated in the narrative flow, as well as in the plot development.

Biographic Note 

Deolinda Adão is Executive Director of the Portuguese Studies Program of University of California, in Berkeley, USA, where she also teaches the courses of Language, Literature and Culture at the Spanish and Portuguese Department. Her most recent research is focused on contemporary Portuguese literature, feminist studies and the problematic of identity(ies). 

Organization 

Project “New Poetics of Resistance: the Twenty-First Century in Portugal” 

NECC (Comparative Cultural Studies Research Group) 

FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) 

Program of Feminist Studies, Faculty of Humanities of University of Coimbra (FLUC)