Meus romanos: relatos de viagem e diferenças culturais na obra de Ina von Binzer

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the work Meus Romanos: alegrias e tristezas de uma educadora no Brasil, by Ina von Binzer, an autobiographic epistolary novel, whose letters are sent to her imaginary friend Gretchen. The narrator tells her travels and experiences in Brazil in the period May, 1881 and January, 1883, how is noticed in her letters. In her work, her reports show the European point of view on the foreigner. Thus, I intend to analyze in this paper changes in the narrator’s view on Brazil during her trip, which are influenced mainly by the racial and determinist theories in the 20th century. The cultural differences make that Brazilian people, mainly the Negroes and Indians, be seen in a distorted way. However, as the time passes, the contact with the new culture changes such visions, correcting the narrator’s distortions before knowing the country, which remain in the body of the narrative as incongruence and discontinuities. It is also important to highlight that it is very common paradoxes and contractions in the novel by Ina von Binzer, what characterizes the fragile and determinist discourse in the late 19th century.