The Nomadic Woman in the Fiction of Portuguese Author Lídia Jorge

Abstract

Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge's work is highly prolific. Her first novel was published in 1980, followed by twelve others to the present: two plays, short stories, chronicles, essays, and poetry. This article examines the situation of nomadic women in Jorge's narrative, with a special focus on her novels. Although her novels are set in different places—Portugal or Africa, city or rural—these spaces fail to contain her female characters; instead, they move in conflict. These are migrant women from different eras and social contexts, displaced internally or abroad, who formed and still form part of a Portugal that has yet to fully settle them. We believe that, since her first work, O día dos prodigios (The Day of Wonders), published in 1980, the author has felt a need to capture the space of the Portuguese home in her writing, as opposed to female nomadism. Based on critical texts by Margarita Calafate Ribeiro, Jorge Fernandes da Silveira, and Felipe Cammaert, among others, the author analyzes the representation of female characters in Jorge's narrative, seeking their own space. This work also attempts to connect the author's experiences in Africa during the Portuguese colonization of Mozambique.