WOMEN WHO KILL, WOMEN WHO STEAL: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FEMALE CRIMINAL IN CRIME LITERATURE IN RIO DE JANEIRO (LATE XIX AND EARLY XX CENTURY)

Abstract

This paper discusses the representations of the female criminal present in popular literature of crime that circulated in the city of Rio de Janeiro between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. To do so, it brings analyses of five popular works of significant repercussion in the period, searching for possible dialogues between the representations of the female criminal protagonists, the medical-hygienist discourses about the woman's "nature" and the theories of Lombroso and Ferrero about female criminality. The analyses pointed to the existence of interface points between the fictions and the specialized discourses, such as the perception of the criminal as the one who presents deviant behaviors from the bourgeois ideal of female conduct, but also the presence of distinct approaches on female criminality. Thus, the research pointed to the multiplicity of meanings expressed in literary representations, sometimes moralizing, sometimes "sensational".