Among masks, mirrors, stages and memories: The game of representation in Naked hours, by Lygia Fagundes Telles

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the role of representation in the novel Naked hours (1989), by Lygia Fagundes Telles, based on the construction of the protagonist Rosa Ambrósio. By recovering the past through the exercise of memory, the female roles once performed by Rosa as a theatre actress mingle with her own experience and unveil the enactment of a woman‟s story of submission, her attempts at emancipation and the difficult art of harmonizing her coexistence in the public and private spheres. These female roles portray the relationship of the aged protagonist with those around her and also uncover women‟s plural condition in Brazil in the 1980s.