When existence is a crime: the female role in “Meia culpa, meia própria culpa”

Abstract

In patriarchal culture, woman has been bequeathed to a position of alterity. Unlike the central male hegemony, the female pattern keeps alongside. Their oppression turns out into a quest for freedom, a story that has been written full of pain, scarring and attempted silencing. The tale Meia culpa, meia própria culpa, an integrant part of the book O fio das missangas by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto, chronicles the path of a woman awaiting trial, arrested for allegedly murdering her husband. In a sort of monologue, in which references to the speaker are only inferred from the speech of the narrator / protagonist, the confessional tone of the text serves as a testimony of the female condition, marginal and discriminated, indicating the exclusion of this character in relation to her social group and denouncing situations of physical and psychological humiliation to which women in patriarchal societies are subject. When asking her to tell her own story, the speaker – whom at some point, we find out being a writer – ends up allowing to speak out someone who has always been silenced by society. Assuming that the speech of the protagonist is a complaint about the silencing and domination over the female pattern, this study examines the role of women in the mentioned tale as a sign of oppression of alterity, in terms of concepts of crime, confession, identity and dream that pervades the work.