{"id":8716,"date":"2026-07-16T10:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pracaclovis.com\/?post_type=traducao&p=8716"},"modified":"2026-09-21T17:42:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:42:52","slug":"a-casa-das-sete-mulheres","status":"publish","type":"traducao","link":"https:\/\/pracaclovis.com\/?traducao=a-casa-das-sete-mulheres","title":{"rendered":"A casa das sete mulheres"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WIERZCHOWSKI, Leticia. A casa das sete mulheres<\/em>. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheila Jacob
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A casa das sete mulheres<\/em> (The House of the Seven Women) is a historical novel set in the South Region of Brazil during the Guerra dos Farrapos (Ragamuffin War), which took place between 1835 and 1845. Written by Rio Grande do Sul native Leticia Wierzchowski (Porto Alegre, RS, 1972), and published in 2002, the story was adapted into a miniseries by Rede Globo one year after its release. The series was broadcast in more than forty countries, making the book a major publishing success. The novel is part of a trilogy, which also includes Um farol no pampa<\/em> (A Lighthouse in the Pampas), from 2004, and Travessia<\/em> (Crossing), from 2017. In addition to these three titles, Wierzchowski has more than thirty published works, including children\u2019s and young adult books. In 2023, Maralto published a comic book version of the novel, adapted by the author and Ver\u00f4nica Berta. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the author, the idea for the book came after reading the 1985 novel Os var\u00f5es assinalados<\/em> (The Distinguished Men) by Tabajara Ruas, which portrays the Farroupilha uprising through an epic approach\u2014as announced by the title\u2014focusing on the battles and featuring the men and generals of that period, such as Bento Gon\u00e7alves da Silva and Ant\u00f4nio de Souza Netto. At one point in the work, the \u201chouse of the seven women\u201d is mentioned, a reference to the Est\u00e2ncia da Barra, on the banks of the Camaqu\u00e3 River, where Bento Gon\u00e7alves\u2019s sisters, wife, daughters, and nieces took shelter for a decade. It was from this mention that the author chose to narrate the war not from the traditional male point of view, but from a marginal, historically silenced perspective, and through a romanticized lens: that of the women confined, doomed to wait for news and pray for the return of their relatives. This perspective echoes the figure of Penelope awaiting the return of Ulysses, an analogy explicitly referenced in the novel: \u201cYes, men always leave, to their wars, to their labors, to conquer new lands, to open the tombs and bury the dead. It is the women who stay behind, the women who wait.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a sort of prologue, which contextualizes the plot and presents the main justifications for the outbreak of the so-called \u201cFarroupilha Revolution in the Continent of S\u00e3o Pedro do Rio Grande,\u201d the first voice that emerges is that of Manuela, a niece of Bento Gon\u00e7alves, whose first-person entries in her notebooks alternate with the voice of an omniscient narrator. In her diaries she presents her particular perspective on that collective experience, recounting her premonitions, narrating historical events, and evaluating the happenings that she witnesses, from a distance, thanks to the visits and letters that arrive at the place where she was secluded with her family. \u201cI remained, like a ghost, to tell a story of heroes, of death and of love, in a land that had always lived on heroes, death, and love. In a land of silences, where the glint of daggers shimmered on firelit nights. Where the women wove their cloths as if weaving their own lives,\u201d as recorded in \u201cManuela\u2019s Notebooks\u201d, Pelotas, June 4, 1900.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manuela begins her accounts with the arrival of the year 1835, quickly introducing the family members who will be followed throughout the upcoming pages: her mother, Maria Manuela; her aunts, Ant\u00f4nia, Ana Joaquina, and Caetana, the latter being Bento Gon\u00e7alves\u2019s Uruguayan wife; her sisters, Ros\u00e1rio and Mariana, the two fictional characters in the story who, along with Manuela, complete the group of \u201cseven women.\u201d There is also her brother Ant\u00f4nio; her cousins Pedro, Jos\u00e9, Joaquim, Bento Filho, and Caetano; as well as younger cousins, household employees, and enslaved Black people who serve the family, though these are not very prominent in the plot. According to the narrator, there was at that moment a tense atmosphere of dissatisfaction with the Empire, mainly due to the high taxes imposed by the government on domestic cured beef, which reduced the profits of the landowners in the country\u2019s South. The narrative begins, then, with an omen of blood and death, in contrast to the festive night on which the New Year was welcomed. \u201cHow can they not see it?,\u201d the young woman asks, foreseeing the season of suffering and losses in that dawning year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the opening scene, the family\u2019s arrival at Est\u00e2ncia da Barra portrays a slaveholding, patriarchal, and profoundly unequal Brazil by mentioning the family\u2019s opulence and their relationship with the Black people they exploited. It shows how the first men who mobilized against the central government belonged to the wealthy classes and initially had an interest in protecting their own privileges. \u201cThat same afternoon (September 19, 1835), the seven women of the family arrived for a long stay, laden with their extensive baggage, along with their trusted Black maids and wet nurses, for coming along with them, in happy confusion, were the four small children of Bento Gon\u00e7alves and Caetana, with Ana Joaquina, the youngest of them all, about to turn one year old around that time, and still nursing at the breast of the Black woman Xica.\u201d Later, over time, other demands were added to the cause, such as republican and abolitionist aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the text, there is a certain naturalization of the relationship between the masters and the enslaved characters, especially when it comes to the sexual violence and machismo historially present in the relationship with younger girls, blurring the idealized image of the Farroupilha hero that many narratives seek to uphold. In the opening pages, for example, one reads: \u201cHe found Bento Gon\u00e7alves sitting on the veranda, drinking mate. […] He had just seen a cabocla<\/em> (person of mixed indigenous Brazilian and European ancestry) who worked in the house walk by, a girl no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and he was thinking how appetizing that kind of young flesh was, of a virgin girl, smelling of something new.\u201d Further on, the observation: \u201cBento Gon\u00e7alves da Silva was not eternal, was not a god, nor did he possess any semblance of divinity\u2014he was, like us, mortal, suffering, deluded by life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work is structured around extensive documentary research, full of references to historical events that temporarily suspend the focus on what was happening in that \u201ccollective and feminine life,\u201d typical of elite members of the time, within the \u201chouse of the seven women.\u201d The many battles that historically make up the Guerra dos Farrapos are narrated, such as the siege of Porto Alegre; the proclamation of the Rio Grande Republic in 1836, also known as the Republic of Piratini; the imprisonment and escape of Bento Gon\u00e7alves; the capture of Laguna (SC) and the establishment of the Juliana Republic; the final battle of Porongos, \u201cthe last great tragedy of that war;\u201d and the death of the Lanceiros Negros (Black Spearmen), a group of enslaved Black soldiers who joined the rebels thanks to a promise of freedom that was never fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi is also narrated in the book, with a focus on Manuela\u2019s passion for him, a feeling always referenced in her intimate accounts and one that would accompany her until the end of her life. According to cr\u00f4nicas <\/em>of the time and historical records, she became known in Pelotas as the \u201cbride of Garibaldi,\u201d even after the Italian had married Anita, the Brazilian woman who actively took part in the battles alongside the rebels and about whom, in a letter from Jos\u00e9 to his mother Dona Ana, it is said that \u201cshe fought greatly, as bravely as a man. Her exceptional courage is already spoken of in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The victories and small gains of the republicans were followed by significant defeats and losses\u2014both of fighters and of the support of the populations inhabiting the places taken by the rebels\u2014as observed by Dona Ana: \u201cSometimes, however, it seemed to her that they were building castles on sand. With a breath of breeze, everything would fall apart beyond repair.\u201d Manuela goes so far as to ask: \u201cWhy did they fight and why did they die? I will never know. And no regime under the sky will ever justify this war to me.\u201d Six years after the revolt began, the young woman again questions: \u201cWhat had all those years been worth? The Continent was impoverished, so many of its people had died, others perished in destitution, and the war remained like a storm cloud over everyone\u2019s heads.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the battlefields, small events interrupt the monotony of the women\u2019s waiting: the arrival of messengers and the surprise visit of family members; music played on the piano and parties that temporarily suspend the atmosphere of war; the birth of Perp\u00e9tua\u2019s daughters; and various romantic relationships that begin and others that come to fruition, such as the relationship between Mariana and one of the farmhands, named Jo\u00e3o Gutierrez, by whom she becomes pregnant, earning her mother\u2019s contempt as a consequence. One of the most interesting subplots, which lends a tone of magical realism to the story, is the recurring spectral visits paid to Ros\u00e1rio by a young Uruguayan named Steban, in the farm\u2019s library. He is a kind of ghost, or hallucination, with whom the young woman falls in love. Wounded on the forehead, the figure always appears terrified and disappears whenever the name of Bento Gon\u00e7alves is mentioned, suggesting that he was one of Gon\u00e7alves\u2019s victims from years ago, during the Cisplatine War. These recurring apparitions, like the novel as a whole, blur the lines between reality and imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A casa das sete mulheres<\/em>, like its sequels, allows readers\u2014especially those who are not from the South Region of Brazil\u2014to learn about important chapters in the country\u2019s history through a fictional narrative that fills in the gaps left by documentary sources with aesthetic creation and literary language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LACERDA, Denise P\u00e9rez (2006). Do imagin\u00e1rio o real<\/em>: a hist\u00f3ria (re) contada em A casa das sete mulheres<\/em>. Disserta\u00e7\u00e3o (Mestrado em Hist\u00f3ria da Literatura) \u2013 Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul (FURG), Porto Alegre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAESTRI, M\u00e1rio (2004). As Sete Mulheres e as Negras sem Rosto: Fic\u00e7\u00e3o, Hist\u00f3ria e Trivialidade. Cadernos IHU Ideias<\/em>, S\u00e3o Leopoldo, ano 2, n. 17, p. 1-24. Dispon\u00edvel em: https:\/\/www.ihu.unisinos.br\/images\/stories\/cadernos\/ideias\/017cadernosihuideias.pdf<\/a>. Acesso em: 24 out. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUAS, Tabajara (1985). Os var\u00f5es assinalados<\/em>. Porto Alegre: L&PM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WIERZCHOWSKI, Leticia; BERTA, Ver\u00f4nica (2023). A casa das sete mulheres<\/em>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Maralto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ZATI, Jhonatan (2021). Literatura e hist\u00f3ria em A casa das sete mulheres<\/em>, de Leticia Wierzchowski. Revista F\u00f3rum Identidades<\/em>, Itabaiana, v. 33, n. 1, p. 101-112. Dispon\u00edvel em: https:\/\/periodicos.ufs.br\/forumidentidades\/article\/view\/15498<\/a>. Acesso em: 24 out. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iconography<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n