The Three Marias by Rachel de Queiroz

First published:As três Marias, 1939 (English translation, 1963)

Type of plot: Realism

Time of work: The 1930’s

Locale: Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Principal Characters:

• Maria Augusta (Guta), the narrator, as a student in a girls’ boarding school, and as a young woman following graduation
• Maria Jose (Jose), Guta’s closest friend and companion
• Maria da Gloria (Gloria), Guta’s other close friend and companion
• Aluisio, a young poet in love with Guta
• Raul, a painter with whom Guta fell in love
• Isaac, an immigrant Jew from Rio with whom Guta fell in love

The Novel

The novel consists of a retrospective view of the lives of the narrator, Maria Augusta (Guta), her two close friends, Maria Jose and Maria da Gloria, and other boarding school companions. After recounting with great sensitivity their first encounter at boarding school, Guta goes on to tell about their school adventures and about the choices they have to make about their lives. In the crucial years before and after graduation from high school, each of the schoolgirls searches for a direction to give her life. Each of the girls makes a very different choice. The three Marias epitomize this difference of choice. Maria da Gloria becomes “a happy wife and mother,” Maria Jose becomes a schoolteacher, and the narrator herself remains “a frustrated seeker of satisfying values.”

As the novel begins, Maria Augusta makes a fearful entry into the institution run by nuns. Frightened and insecure, she wants to hold on to the sister who escorted her in, especially when she discovers that all the commotion and excitement which she observes on arrival is not caused as much by the arrival of a “new” girl as by her silly-sounding name, Guta.

As the girls torment and tease her mercilessly, Guta bashfully responds to their barrage of questions, timidly explaining the facts of her life, such as her age, her hometown, her parents, and the origin of her nickname. “Guta” is simply a degeneration of “Augusta,” a name that Guta was unable to pronounce as a small child; the baby-talk substitute, “Guta,” stuck with her for life.

Gradually all the girls lose interest and stop questioning her. Only one, Maria Jose, remains at her side, obviously interested in Guta’s well-being. Advising Guta not to pay attention to such mistreatment, she persuades the reluctant newcomer that she is not like the other girls and that she can be trusted. As Guta aptly observes, her newly found friend has taken “charge.” As they walk through the schoolyard, Maria Jose points out her main enemies while singling out her “only” friend, Maria da Gloria, whom she introduces to Guta. Thus, the three girls begin their life together.

To the homogeneous milieu of the school each Maria brought with her the baggage of her past life, which in turn conditioned how each girl responded to circumstances in school and after school. Following graduation, each girl searched for and found a different life. Each choice was influenced by each girl’s own life and by the lives of the other girls. Thus the novel focuses on the growth and development of each of the three Marias through the critical years of her life.

The Characters

Among all of Rachel de Queiroz’s characters, Guta stands out as the one who is totally incapable of making a choice regarding her life. As she watches her two close friends and other school companions make decisions about their lives, she slowly realizes that none of them is for her.

Her companions’ choices of marriage, concubinage, prostitution, the theater, or nunhood as a way of life were not meant for her. Guta had hoped to find life’s meaning in something very special, but that something was very elusive. While Guta envies Gloria’s fairy-tale marriage and happiness, she feels sorry for the repressed, guilt-ridden Maria Jose, who will spend her life as a spinster schoolteacher.

In search of something special, Guta gets a job as a typist. Bored out of her mind by the monotony of the typing job, she continues her search. She thinks she has found her life’s purpose when she falls madly in love with a famous, distinguished-looking painter, many years her senior. To sacrifice her life in the service of this great man seems like a noble mission to her.

The great painter, however, is interested only in bedroom scenes, for which Guta is not ready. While pursuing the painter, however, she fails to see the great love that Maria Jose’s cousin Aluisio has for her. Aluisio’s suicide and his family’s consequent reprimands drive Guta to seek her fortune in Rio de Janeiro.

The author presents very skillfully the fears and loneliness experienced by a young small-town girl in the midst of the big impersonal metropolis. Contrary to Guta’s expectations, the big city only aggravates her problem. The something special does not materialize in Rio, and Isaac, the man with whom she falls in love, because of personal problems rooted in his immigrant status, is incapable of offering her the lasting love and support for which she has hoped. Following a painful miscarriage, which may have been a purposely induced abortion, Guta returns to the family home, disillusioned and disappointed, without any idea of what to do with her life.

To the very end Guta remains a character in crisis. All of the options available to other women have failed her. Because the conclusion is left open, the reader has two options: to decide either that Guta will work things out after all or that, because of the limited number of options available to her, she will never find a satisfactory way to live her life.

Because the novel focuses essentially on the life and choices of Guta, none of the other characters is fully developed. They simply have the narrow function of illustrating the options available to Guta and are portrayed only within the parameters relevant to that function. The portrayal of Gloria presents Guta with the blissfulness of marriage and motherhood. Holding on to Gloria’s child, Guta “felt calm and happy, full of hope and affection, oblivious of all my worries, as though I were being solaced before my time.” Maria Jose illustrates the option of religiousness based on repression. She explains to Guta her reasons for turning to religion. “People instinctively desire evil. And furthermore, everything around us is so filthy. I don’t know what would become of me if it weren’t for religion holding me in check. I think I’d be lost, that I’d start sinning like mad. I’m full of desire and terribly afraid.”

The male characters, beyond presenting love options available to Guta, also help illuminate the fact that Guta is really not ready for love. Aluisio, the young poet possessed by romantic and metaphysical rapture, is unable to inspire Guta with a great love emotion. Raul, the older and famous painter, frightens Guta completely with his carnal desire. She was not quite ready to face her own sexuality and hence was unable to accept the physical fulfillment Raul offered her. Finally, Isaac offered her both, the emotional romance of Aluisio and the physical relationship of Raul, but on a very subdued scale. Yet even with him she was unable to form a lasting relationship because she was unable to convert his interest in the present into plans for the future. “It was evident that Isaac was in love with me, but he had never spoken to me of love. He made no plans, sought no promises, took no mortgages on the future. . . . And I, who did my dreaming and planning all by myself, never dared to ask for a thing, imitating his neglect.”

Viewed in the context of the novel, each of the characters above allows the reader to perceive another aspect of Guta. Had Queiroz carried out an in-depth study of each of these characters, it would detract from the presentation of the novel’s main theme, the life and choices of Guta, to which theme all other characters and all other action are subordinate.

Critical Context

While until 1976 The Three Marias was Rachel de Queiroz’s best work, it never received the appropriate critical acclaim. The lack of a decisive ending left the critics confused with regard to its main purpose and hence they failed to include it among the great works of that period. Yet it was not until the 1950’s and 1960’s that the novels of Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, and Lygia Fagundes Telles depicted with equal depth the problematic condition of growing up female in traditional Brazilian society. Fred Ellison’s excellent translation of Queiroz’s novel and the 1985 paperback edition by the University of Texas Press constitute appropriate if somewhat tardy recognition of the author’s achievement.

Bibliography

Courteau, Joanna. “The Problematic Heroines in the Novels of Rachel de Queiroz.” Luso Brazilian Review 22 (Winter, 1985): 123-144. An excellent analysis of the women characters and the female problematic in Queiroz’s novels.

Ellison, Fred P. “Rachel de Queiroz.” In Brazil’s New Novel: Four Northeastern Masters. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1954. Offers a good starting point for a study of Queiroz’s early work, particularly in the context of the Brazilian social novel of the 1930’s.

Ellison, Fred P. “Rachel de Queiroz.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. Offers a comprehensive and critical discussion of Queiroz’s life and works. Provides a selected bibliography for further reading.