PROSTITUTION AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL ASCENSION:

A READING OF MADAME POMMERY (1919), BY HILÁRIO TÁCITO

Abstract

Published in 1919, Madame Pommery, by Hilário Tácito, presents the trajectory of Ida Pomerikowsky, a young European woman who, by rejecting her father's patriarchal plans, reinvents herself as a luxury courtesan and nightlife entrepreneur in São Paulo. This article offers a critical reading of the novel through the lens of theorists such as Michelle Perrot, Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, and bell hooks, understanding prostitution as an ambiguous practice, both a tool of domination and a form of female agency. The analysis examines how the protagonist mobilizes her body as symbolic and economic capital, using the performance of femininity and social cunning as strategies for upward mobility. The house Au Paradis Retrouvé, founded by Madame Pommery, becomes a space of negotiation between eroticism, prestige, and morality, reflecting the Europeanization of Brazil’s Belle Époque elite. The reading reveals that the character embodies the contradictions of modernity: although she gains visibility and power, she remains subject to patriarchal and class structures. Madame Pommery’s trajectory thus illustrates how the female body can serve as a site of conflict between subjugation and resistance within a social context marked by gender, class, and symbolic inequalities.