Eufrásia Teixeira Leite: biographic character in a novel

Abstract

Eufrásia Teixeira Leite (1840-1930) was a descendant of the Brazilian aristocracy, whose family fortune was gained with mining, coffee and stock investments. With no male siblings, she received an unusual education for women at that time. Once orphan, she was responsible for managing hers and her sister’s inheritance. This social and economic privileged position had its personal cost. The involvement with a pro-slavery abolition politician named Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910) was limited to quick encounters and a long correspondence exchange. The impossibility of turning this passion into legal union is the subject of two recent novels, which compose this work’s corpus: Mundos de Eufrásia: a história de amor entre a incrível Eufrásia Teixeira Leite e o notável Joaquim Nabuco (2009), by Cláudia Lage, and Um mapa todo seu, by Ana Maria Machado (2015). The main goal of this approach is to apprehend the result of biographical data usage in the novel.