Refuting the Myth of Motherhood in Portuguese Literature: A Study of Agustina Bessa Luís' Vale Abraão

Many critics, such as Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Adrienne Rich have argued that throughout the Western tradition patriarchal institutions have used the myth of motherhood as one of the principle mechanisms to preserve traditional gender robs and the distribution of power. The myth of motherhood claims that any woman who chooses not to mother is a failure as a woman and a traitor to her very own femininity. In the Portuguese speaking world, this sentiment has continually reappeared throughout popular culture as well as in political agendas, especially during the estado novo (The New State) dictatorship in which Salazar idealized the maternal figure as part of his plan for the reconstruction of the Portuguese nation. This article analyzes the idealization of motherhood within the historical and political framework of Portugal and then within the novel Vale Abraão (The Valley of Abraham,) by one of Portugal's greatest contemporary women writers, Agustina Bessa Luís, because of its unique approach of demystifying the idealization of motherhood by reinterpreting the nineteenth-century classic Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.