A objetificação das coisas e a vida urbana em ‘A cidade sitiada’, de Clarice Lispector

Abstract

This work seeks to analyze the modernization process portrayed in A Cidade Sitiada (1949), a novel by Clarice Lispector, as well as the contradictions that derive from it. In the dynamics of this process, we understand that modernization, in its strict sense, refers to the socioeconomic transformations mobilized by industrialization and urbanization, especially at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century. We consider that this new dynamic is marked by an intense commodification of life and by impersonal relationships that unfold in the city environment. To understand it in the novel, we started from two research paths: a) recovering the process of writing and critical reception of the work, through his letters (Lispector, 2023) and the considerations of Assis Brasil (1960; 1966), Holanda (1950), Milliet (1944; 1949) and Simões (1950); and b) develop our argument based on readings already carried out on the author's production, such as those of Nunes (1966; 1973; 1999), Sá (1979; 1993), Oliveira (1987; 1989), Pontieri (1994; 1999) and Martins (2010). In a complementary way, we are interested in bringing these considerations closer to the notion of everyday life, the understanding of urban life and the objectification of all things. In general, we conclude that A Cidade Sitiada presents a suburb, S. Geraldo, in which the characters – especially its protagonist, Lucrécia – are reduced to the performances required by a modern world, which is naturally paradoxical, as it calls into question an apparent idea of freedom, which, on the contrary, binds its subjects to structural and consolidated patterns of power.