Abstract

SANTOS, Graça dos. Maria Lusitania (1975) by Charlotte Delbo (1913-1985): Female voices of the Carnation Revolution by a French resistance fighter. Faces de Eva. Estudos sobre a Mulher [online]. 2023, n.49, pp.46-72.  Epub July 31, 2023. ISSN 0874-6885.  https://doi.org/10.34619/amcq-0hdk.

In 1975, Charlotte Delbo wrote a play in which she portrays a heroine called Maria Lusitania, a sort of Portuguese “mother courage”. Through a female point of view, the author lucidly sets out the issues at stake as Portugal moved from dictatorship to democracy. She conveys the perceptible tension between the characters, who form a gallery of portraits emblematic of the situation in the country at the time, after 48 years of dictatorship. Charlotte Delbo’s experience in the concentration camps is an underlying theme, conditioning the characters’ relationship with their bodies. This text, which combines lyricism, comedy and light-hearted tirades, conveys the memories of the French Resistance fighter’s view of April. This article evokes a form of “crossed memory”, linking the historical and aesthetic fields.

Keywords : French Resistance; Carnation Revolution; women’s activism; dictatorship; theatre.

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