A Secret Life (1964) tells the story of a young woman named Biela, who, after her father's death and already orphaned by her mother, is forced to leave her home, Fazenda do Fundão, to live in the city with relatives. Biela's story sprang from a dream, recounted by Autran Dourado in Poética do Romance. "The narrator highlights Biela's simplicity and detachment from material possessions, and through the stream of consciousness, a resource used by Autran Dourado, the character's maladjustment to the urban space is shown. The research will consist of, initially, an approach to Biela's behavioral and psychological state and her stance in relation to the space she is inserted into and to which she does not adapt. The method used was a brief critical analysis of the work, confronting passages from the narrative itself with considerations made by the author of the focused work. The research sources were readings of the corpus, bibliographical works, note-taking, synthesis, and reviews. In the results, I conducted a careful analysis of each chapter to better portray the character's psychological profile. The work will be divided into chapters for a better approach to the subject and better characterization of Biela and her interior drama in relation to an environment in which she, naive and primitive as she is, does not adapt. It can be concluded that the character's life was wasted due to her upbringing, but the true secret is something only she truly knows. (Neidelamar Lucena de Sá, THE MALADJUSTMENT OF THE CHARACTER BIELA, IN "UMA VIDA EM SEGREDO", BY AUTRAN DOURADO, TO THE URBAN SPACE").
The Novella is the narrative modality characterized by the succession of episodes, often of characters and settings. Time and space combine within this structure. Thus, the novella condenses the elements of the novel. The dialogues are faster, the narrations are direct and without circumlocution, all favoring the precipitation of the story towards its conclusion.
A Secret Life is a novella that provides the key for students to enter Autran Dourado's intricate universe, where each theme suggests a style.
In this novella, the writer discusses the simple people from the interior of Minas Gerais. Centered on the figure of cousin Biela, the plot elucidates the moral and psychological dramas of the unattractive girl who grew up in the countryside and moved to the city after her father's death. Repressed, she transforms her desires into voluntary seclusion. After her father's death, the young Biela, 17 years old, goes to live with Conrado, her cousin, who takes her to live with his family in a small town.
Constança, Conrado's wife, tries to adapt Biela to a social life according to the family's possessions and for this purpose orders rich dresses and teaches her how to behave like an educated and wealthy young lady. However, Biela only feels comfortable alongside the farm employees where she lives, with whom she begins to interact after a great romantic disappointment. Biela is consistent, true to herself, a dense and intimate character, who accepts the imposition of destiny, but in her own way.
