Rupture and continuity of gender stereotypes in the Portuguese socialist short story (1893-1901)

Abstract

Ernesto da Silva (1868-1903), composer typographer of the Printing House and a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party, is the author of a literary work aimed at denouncing the socio-political and economic model of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism, and in parallel, to disclosing the socialist ideal. His stories are framed within the realistic-naturalist current but in the treatment of the themes, and in the description of environments and situations they are substantially differentiated from it by introducing a proposal for the solution of the problems of the workers based on a current of specific political thought. In the construction of his characters, especially the male ones, the author contributed an original point of view by also expressing the inner world of feelings, much different than the generic socially consecrated pattern of the sexes.