UM ESTUDO SOBRE AS FORMAS DE SILENCIAMENTO DA MULHER NA SOCIEDADE CORUMBAENSE: medo, loucura e violência.

Abstract

This study analyzes the subjugation of women through the stereotype of madness and investigates how fear, as an instrument of social and political control, has historically fueled the discourse of female hysteria, transforming dissident bodies and behaviors into objects of pathologization and exclusion. The research was conducted based on a literature review and content analysis of a 1911 Criminal Case from the municipality of Corumbá, then part of Matto Grosso, which reports a case of violence against a woman that ultimately results in the defendant’s acquittal. Through this case, we can understand discourses involving gender relations, such as victim-blaming and the demand for a sanity examination to validate the woman’s testimony. It also reveals elements of a patriarchal society aimed at maintaining male domination. This study emerges as a tool to illustrate that gender-based violence is a social construction supported by mechanisms of power that have been historically naturalized and consolidated. The theoretical framework draws on Silvia Federici (2017), Gerda Lerner (2019), Michel Foucault (2019), Ana Maria Colling (2019), among others.