Better to die on your feet then to live on your knees: the suicide of Bertoleza in o Cortiço by Aluizio Azevedo

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the suicide of Bertoleza in the novel O Cortiço (1890) by Aluisío Azevedo. It is intended to argue that the self-immolation of the aforementioned character, far from being an extravagant and purely fictional action within the traditional Brazilian literary narrative, conjugates with the ways of resistance and disobedience used by black men and black women in Brazilian society before the Abolition Act. Therefore, in order to better understand the literary configuration that such practice acquires in the novel O Cortiço concerning the death of Bertoleza, it is used historic research as methodology, thus regarding situations, motivations and beliefs which frequently drove male and female slaves in our land to put an end in their own lives. For this purpose, as theoretical background it is resorted to Ferreira (2009) and Mott’s (1991) historic studies, respectively, on slaves suicides, and on the woman in the fight against slavery, as well as to Fanon’s (2008) psychological analyses on racism, and Alvarez’s reflections in his classic O deus selvagem (1999) on the relations between literature and suicide; with Antonio Candido’s pertinent observations about João Romão and Bertoleza in his literary essay “De cortiço a cortiço”, that is in the book O discurso e a cidade (2015).