Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands

Although I first read Jorge Amado over a decade ago, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is very different from his early works of realism from the 1930s. Like Jubiabá, Dona Flor involves Candomble and Brazilian social commentary, yet the latter is clearly comedic and satirical with a more playful narration. The latter work of course also embraces the fantastic, with the spirit of Dona Flor's first husband returning after death and the African gods or orixas dueling with Exu, the patron saint  of said husband. Dona Flor is symbolized by Oshun, suggesting how one can read the various characters of the novel through the lens of the African deities. 

While much could be said about this seemingly light-hearted novel and what it means as a representation of Afro-Brazilian religion, spirituality, and Brazilian society in the middle of the 20th century, it strikes the reader as a story of polar opposites in need of resolution, of spirit versus matter. Class, status, emotional, social, and erotic desires and positions require Dona Flor to make up her mind about who she is and what she desires. Is she the abused wife of an amazing lover (and gambler) who satisfies her most deeply felt needs, or does she desire respectability, status, and comfort through a husband who adores her (Teodoro, the second husband). Is the trickster figure of a man (Vadinho) who cannot work a regular schedule or establish a conventional life, whose gambling lifestyle represents primal aspects of modern life, the path for Dona Flor? 

Ultimately, she chooses both Teodoro and Vadinho, bringing the novel to a resolution of the contrasting values of life and Brazilian society embodied in her two husbands (respectability, comfort and convention with Vadinho's erotic arts and rambunctious lifestyle). Intriguingly, the only religious tradition not mocked in the novel is Afro-Brazilian, and it is through the intercession of Exu, or Eleggua (Papa Legba) that the blond Vadinho returns after death. The spirit Exu, or Legba, the trickster at crossroads, pervades the novel as the many romps of Vadinho and the intersection of the orixas and the material world, even in the case of characters such as Dona Flor who do not serve the spirits. Yet the Exu/Legba character must be balanced in order for Dona Flor to thrive. This may be an attempt at depicting the liberated modern woman as in control of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses, and in charge of her own agency. After all, it is Dona Flor's love and assertion of her own will which saves Vadinho from the afterlife when the orixas combine forces against Exu.