Deconstructing the conventional binaries of society: An in-depth exploration of Maria, the central character of Paolo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes, as the spokesman of Third Wave Feminism

Abstract

Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian novelist and lyricist is best known for his transnational novels. The novel Eleven Minutes takes on a new look on the prostitution. Through a mimetic-thematic dimension of narrative, we come to know about Maria’s self- actualization journey. The notion deemed by Feminist approach is that a female body is the key to self-liberation. Here, in this novel the feminist approach to the profession of prostitution and novel’s expressivism make us think unconventionally about the conventional binaries of life like sacred and profane love. The binary pairs are juxtaposed by Maria’s expressive subjectivism. The novel Eleven Minutes elevates prostitution to the realm of love and divinity. Maria explores an inner light through the journey of self-transcendence. Her inner light renders a new magnificence to the binary of sacred love and profane love, sensuality and spirituality, fate and will, prostitution and marriage, overall the binary of body and soul. Eleven minutes is the sexual act itself between Maria and Ralf that only takes about eleven minutes.Eleven minutes is firmly rooted in Western spirituality as it proclaims the myths about the story of a prostitute whose sins were forgiven by Jesus. Coelho takes a taboo subject sex as the main element of the novel.Here in this novel Maria is compared with Virgin Mary.This association between a prostitute and a religious female figure contaminates the symbol of virginity and purity. Consequently this association breaks the binary opposition of purity and impurity. Furthermore, this comparison implies the fact that Maria's faith is sprang from a religious female figure which enhances the sense of female solidarity. This paper deals on how Maria's feministic approach to prostitution re-explores her soul to demolish all the binaries of body and soul.