Desatando os laços: tensões matrimoniais e separação conjugal na Comarca de Guarapuava (décadas de 1940 a 1960)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze, through the narratives of men and women contained in processes of desquite/separations of bodies of the District of Guarapuava, marital tensions between the 1940s and 1960s. For this, we select judicial sources arising from the civil sphere that correspond to twenty-one processes, of the 1st and 2nd Civil Courts, of a litigious nature. These are actions in which the parties have presented conflicts and that the judicial apparatus also intervened in the resolution of disagreements. For analysis, we classify lawsuits in accordance with the grounds provided by the legislation for the request for separation: adultery, voluntary abandonment of home, sevicia or serious injury and attempted death. This division allowed us to understand the performance of the subjects and the characteristics and aspects of the dissolution of the conjugal society. In addition, we identified how Family Law presented attributes and definitions of the social roles of man/husband/father and woman/wife/mother through the Civil Code of 1916. For decades this legislation functioned as a social and moral regulator of marriage, family, and marital crises. We found that, during these three decades, it was noticeable permanences and ruptures in relation to the roles of the spouses within the marriage. That said, the present research is based on the French Discourse Analysis, from the contributions of Michel Foucault, which provided the referral for the understanding of discursive practices and power relations in line with gender studies. In this way, we seek to demonstrate, through marital separations, the productions of truths that attributed identities and social functions for men and women within marriage and how these forms in which power manifested itself contributed for the dissemination of gender hierarchy within marriage.