The Female Discursive Trajectory in Lúcio Cardoso’s Mãos vazias [Empty Hands]

Abstract

This article analyzes the first novel of Lúcio Cardoso, Mãos vazias, from 1938. Lacan’s and Freud’s psychoanalysis will assist the approach to literature in order to increase reading possibilities by means of the interpretive trajectory. The focus is on the main character, Ida, and her attempt to become the subject of her desire. Moved by her yearning to escape, she uses the few signifiers she has to bring up her story of dissatisfaction and transgressions: her name and the spatial path of a few blocks. Ida meets what her name portends (Ida means ‘gone’ in Portuguese), repeating the act of arriving and leaving, imprinting her desire on the entire city, producing the novella in the “movement of going.”