6 Lessons we learned from Maria Bruaca, who found self-love after a failed marriage

The character Maria Bruaca, played by actress Isabel Teixeira, in Pantanal (2022), is making people talk. Always submissive to Tenório, her husband, the character rebelled after discovering her partner’s bigamy and began to live life on her own terms, doing what she wanted, without feeling guilty or remorseful for her new choices.

Here in the awesome.club, we are big admirers of the surprising turns characters can inspire in real life. That’s why today we invite you to learn about the lessons we’ve learned so far from Maria. Check out!

Maria “Bruaca” and Tenório have been married for 30 years. However, before the birth of Guta, the couple’s only daughter, the husband already had a son with another woman, with whom he has maintained a stable relationship ever since. Tenório’s second family knows of the existence of the first, but Maria “Bruaca”, his wife, is not even aware of her husband’s parallel reality.

Maria is a woman who seeks to fulfill all of Tenório’s wishes, giving up her own desires. The character, masterfully played by Isabel Teixeira, spends most of her time alone at home, seeing the world “through the windows of her kitchen”, while her husband travels on business. In addition, Maria is concerned about her husband’s well-being, doing everything in her power to make him happy. Such behavior, however, is not reciprocal, since Tenório’s selfishness and lack of consideration are evident, showing that, in this relationship, there is no balance.

As if the lack of consideration was not enough, Tenório also humiliates his wife, even giving her the pejorative nickname “bruaca”, which he sometimes uses as the woman’s last name in the soap opera. It may seem like a harmless joke, but over time, Maria ends up incorporating the meaning of the word into her own personality, believing that she does not deserve respect and consideration from her husband or anyone else.

From the moment she becomes aware of Tenório’s bigamy, one of the first attitudes she has is to reject the nickname she has carried throughout her life. In an emotional scene, the character says: “If you want food on the table, if you want your clothes washed, ironed in your drawers, you hire a maid, you see. I won’t be your bitch anymore. Neither yours nor anyone else’s!”, marking the important transition.

Unlike Tenório, who spent 30 years sustaining a farce, Maria is unable to lead a double life. At first, she pretends she doesn’t know anything and cries, gradually releasing the pain, hurt and resentment. She doesn’t act hastily and respects her own process, while she discovers a new way of life.

Actress Isabel Teixeira, interpreter of the character, explains it better: “There is some trace of love there, yes… They know each other a lot, it’s very intimate, and I think that somehow she liked it, she was happy there. But then this vector came from outside and that moves the dramaturgy, it’s like an arrow entering that house and transforming everything. For me, the floor of what she built, the house, suffers a seismic shock. Maria is trying to stay on her feet the way she manages and that ground she built for 30 years with Tenório will never come back, it has already been shaken”.

Maria was used to suffering, whether carrying the marriage on her shoulders the entire time she was in it, or being overwhelmed, taking care of the house alone, while her husband always cultivated distance, both physical and emotional. By not getting anything and by being constantly offended, she believed that she had everything.

In the scene where she confirms the betrayal, Tenório tells Guta: “Your mother always depended on me my whole life, she was always my shadow”, when, in fact, he was the one who always depended on work, effort and love. of Mary to prosper. Even knowing everything, Maria does not choose confrontation as her first alternative. On the contrary, accustomed to the routine, she goes back to her chores, crying, remembering and understanding that she lived in a lie. Knowing how to decipher and understand one’s own history is essential to gear a consistent behavior change.

Despite being in a growing turn of the page, Maria’s life will not be resolved so quickly, after all, it is not easy to leave a relationship like hers from one hour to the next. Even though Maria has put an end to the marriage, Tenório will still get ready for his ex, as a way of getting revenge for her change in behavior.

“Audiences can expect back-to-back attempts to get back on their feet. Turnarounds are going to happen, people are going to think that she already solved the problem and she didn’t, we’re going to think that ‘now it’s gone’ and it’s scary. She’s going to be scared, people can’t forget that it’s 30 years of a life that’s going to change”, says Isabel Teixeira.

Throughout her life, Maria’s work was reduced to taking care of her husband, her daughter and the house. So, it’s not surprising that, at first, she transfers that attention to someone else. This time, however, she seems to have had better luck, as the farmhand Alcides reciprocates the care and admiration, exchanging experiences, taking his mistress out for a walk and teaching her how to ride, for example. But the relationship between the two does not stop there. In the first version of the telenovela, they stay together after facing Tenorio’s wrath.

In one of the most beautiful moments of the character’s turn, Maria vents to Alcides: “It seems that I only knew the world through my kitchen windows. I even thought I had already died inside. Sometimes things happen in our lives, which, look… it kills us inside. But I’m alive! I feel it! A desire to enter these waters, to wash my soul, my body. A will to live! I want to be free! Going forward, I’m just going to do whatever I want with my life,” she says.

We are rooting for the character to find happiness, but we also want to know: what do you think of Maria’s story in Pantanal? Are you rooting for a different outcome in this version of the soap opera or do you want to see the character happy alongside Alcides? Leave your answer in the comments.