1 Introduction
A Escrava Isaura is one of the best-known novels in Brazilian literature, it is taught in schools and is occasionally tested in the so-called examenes vestibulares, central exams for admission to a course of study at a Brazilian university. The novel became famous because the most successful telenovela of all time, The Slave Isaura, is based on the content of the book. This website is intended to teach the Portuguese language and the soundtrack and translation to improve pronunciation, train your ear, teach vocabulary and consolidate grammatical structures. This could theoretically be done with any type of audio material, as long as it is didactically suitable, i.e. in the case of Portuguese spoken very slowly and very clearly. An approximation to normal speed only occurs in the last few chapters. But you can also use material for this that is, so to speak, part of the collective consciousness of Brazilians or at least a large part of Brazilians. The novel deals with an epoch that shaped today's Brazil, as can be seen immediately from the different shades of skin color.
If you ask Brazilians about novels that are important for Brazilian literature, then A Escrava Isaura is also mentioned and this is how this novel found its way here.
The critical mind can have different views on the novel and, this is rare, one can find both correct even with contradicting views. For some, the novel A Iscrava Isaura is itself racist, even if the intention is to raise awareness of the fate of slaves or an attempt to strengthen the movement against slavery. The others compare the novel to Uncle Tom's Cabin and see the novel as a contribution to the abolition of slavery. Then there is another group that simply thinks that the novel is bad literature and fits into the scheme of beautiful-woman-in-captivity-being-freed-by-hero. You can find all positions correctly, even at the same time.
The fact is, however, that the novel is extremely psychologically demanding. We know that all kinds of aberrations occur in societies with enormous power imbalances. We have it during the National Socialist era in Germany, we have it in the Stalinist Soviet Union, we have it in Congo during the rule of Lepold II, we have it in all dictatorships, etc. etc. If the power imbalance is enormous, then we also have crimes and excesses of perversion well beyond normal imagination. In the novel A Escrava, the crimes that were part of everyday life in Brazil at the time of slavery are not described at all, or only hinted at. It was all much more brutal, perverse and inhuman than described in the novel. Nevertheless, the novel seems stronger than reports that describe far more gruesome crimes. The trick is simple. People react, at least in art, but in reality this is still questionable, because economic motives play a stronger role, sensitive when beings with whom they can build a closer emotional relationship are treated unfairly and Isaura is one of the characters to with whom you develop a closer emotional relationship. In reality, this is not as certain as the recent German past has taught us. The killing machine functioned abstractly and no longer knew any people. Incidentally, historians usually defend themselves tooth and nail against any generalization, a comparison between National Socialism and slavery in Brazil would be out of the question for historians, and in terms of dimensions, brutality, perfection, and systematic stringency, the crimes of National Socialism exceed slavery in imperial Brazil by far.
2.1 View number 1: A Escrava Isaura is a dime novel
Manuel Cavalcanti Proença writes, the rest of the essay is not much more positive either, the following.
The author has a simpler view on this. In fact, people want a happy ending, they want the good to be ennobled, the bad to go to hell. At least in the cinema. But even if it's only like that in the cinema, it's still a bit reassuring. It would be more fatal if people simply didn't care about the ending. Otherwise the author wouldn't know what could be said against a happy ending, the only thing that can be discussed is the level of the happy ending. If an unusual and original behavior of individuals leads to a happy ending, then the cinema or the theater is an interesting place. If in reality there is a lack of unusual and original behavior aimed at great success, then reality has a problem and not the cinema or the theatre. The author of these lines is also not at all sure whether a society that no longer believes in great success, Schiller's ode to joy and upwards, and mocks it, will end up in the morass of perversion.
In this perspective, the novel is more of a romantic love story than a critique of slavery.
2.2 View number 2: The book is racist
This accusation that the book is racist carries weight, especially when it is school material and the students are of all skin colors from white to jet black and are at an age when they do not yet have a stable personality and are doubting themselves and the world . The problem here isn't that Isaura is a white slave, a possible, if not the typical, configuration, but the fact that the novel repeatedly emphasizes that it's her looks, her talents, and the fact that she differs from of the white upper class, making their enslavement unacceptable. Although there are statements in the novel that condemn slavery in and of itself, the fate of the other slaves is not really of interest. The warning that students need to be prepared to read this novel is understandable.
| from: PRECONCEITO RACIAL: ESTUDO CRÍTICO-REFLEXIVO DA OBRA LITERÁRIA A ESCRAVA ISAURA DE BERNARDO GUIMARÃES |
Wie immer kann man versuchen, die Aussage, dass es in Brasilien eine Diskussion gibt über die Mitwirkung dunkelhäutiger Menschen in Telenovelas über das Internet zu verifizieren. Man wird in der Tat fündig. Race and Gender in Novels of the Last 20 Years.
2.3. Sichtweise Nr. 3: Das Buch ist eine Kritik an der Sklaverei
The only thing that is certain about this book is that it is mentally challenging. Isaura is a character that inspires sympathy. If you take the whole plot, then the action is of course completely unrealistic. If you take the individual elements that make up the plot, then the plot is extremely realistic and empirically reliable.
If the owner of a coffee or cotton plantation has absolute power of disposal over the slaves, then there will be attacks. There are concrete reports from the time about the nature of the sexual relationship between master and slave, which in turn were summarized by Gilberto Freyre in The Big House and the Slave Hut. Although he sees it positively overall, since this ultimately eliminated the genetic differences with regard to certain characteristics, the actors in these fusions probably saw it quite differently. Freyre writes about this.
Ein absoluter verlotterter Charakter wie Leôncio ist also nicht nur nicht unrealistisch, er ist sogar historisch verbürgt.
So an absolutely ratty character like Leôncio is not only not unrealistic, it is even historically authentic.
Under these auspices, a white slave is quite realistic. Isaura's mother was a "mulatto", hence she was the product of a marriage between a white, most likely, man and a black woman. So Isaura's grandmother was jet black and the granddaughter was white. The author knows such a case personally. Grandmother jet black, granddaughter all white. With the general promiscuity that lasted for several generations, white slave women should not have been that rare. Likewise, see below, in Brazil, at the time of the 1872 census, we already have a resolution regarding the characteristics relevant in this context. At that time, almost half of the population already had a skin color between white and black, i.e. it was the result of a marriage between a white man, who was usually black, and a woman with black skin.
As far as the author sees it, the legal provisions regarding slavery can hardly have covered social reality, because the resulting constellations are partly absurd. The status of the father plays no role in the position of a child, whether free or slave, which is actually contrary to the other patriarchal relationships of the time. We read in the law Lei do ventre livre of September 28, 1871.
Art. 1.º - Os filhos de mulher escrava que nascerem no Império desde a data desta lei serão considerados de condição livre.
Art.1: The children of a slave born in the Empire from the date of this law are free.
The text therefore not only reveals the conditions under which slaves are now becoming free, but also that the status of the mother alone was decisive for the status of the child.
The law then makes all sorts of restrictions afterwards so that those children weren't free after all, but that's not the point. The point is that the father's situation doesn't matter at all, which is also crucial for the novel A Escrava Isaura. Miguel's status simply doesn't matter. The constellation can become even more insane. Even if the slave's owner is the begetter of the slave's child, the child is a slave. If the slave owner's sons live in the same promiscuity as the slave owner himself, then quite often the situation may have arisen that the master himself begot the slaves. The question is how he behaved in such a case. Studies are available at least for Portugal, even if it remains unclear what these studies are based on.
| Arlindo Caldeira. ‘Havia senhores que engravidavam as escravas e vendiam os seus próprios filhos’ |
So the idea that the status of the father was irrelevant was not a Brazilian invention, the legal provisions were adopted by Portugal.
The position Isaura has, being both a slave and raised like a daughter from a good family, is not entirely unrealistic, for there is a most prominent example of this. The wife of the third American President, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), had a half-sister, Sally Hemings, who was a slave. This means that Martha Wayles' father obviously had fun with a slave girl, but did not release his own daughter. This passed into the possession of her own sister, with Jefferson having a relationship with Sally Hemings after his wife's death. So it can be assumed that Sally Hemings was also educated. Although this was dark, the constellation is similar to that of Isaura. One can assume that the Jefferson household was reasonably civilized, but the constellation is nevertheless abusive.
As far as the author can see, marriages are closed societies and infidelities are not accepted, much less promiscuity. We can therefore assume that the wives of the slave owners also had problems with the behavior of their husbands. The dispute between the governor and his wife described in the novel because he would not leave Isaura's mother alone is a typical scenario. Equally typical is the powerlessness of wives. Neither the governor's wife nor Malvina separate from their husbands, although they recognize their perverse character.
So we can assume that a character like Isaura, who resists all advances, will at least be sympathetic to female readers. Slavery corrupts society as a whole and eats into all areas of social life, even if the relationship is ambivalent, since the upper class, including women, ultimately lives from slavery or sees no alternative to slavery.
Moral appeals would have been of little use, as they would have called the economic basis into question. The statement below is correct, but it is more promising to start where slavery threatens the existence of the white upper class.
That's correct. However, slavery and the associated total control of the slave women massively calls the social model into question. If white dominance was to be secured permanently, liaisons between whites and people of other skin color should have been completely banned, as was the case in South Africa or the southern states. If this is not done, the genetically determined characteristics will spread largely haphazardly throughout society in all nuances and nuances. The census of 1872 shows that this actually happened.
In 1872, Brazil had a population of about 10 million, about 50 percent women and 50 percent men. Of these, 38 percent described themselves as "pardos", meaning something between white and black. These must therefore have people with black skin among their ancestors, directly or indirectly. 38 percent were white, which does not necessarily mean, see Isaura, that ancestors with black skin were not there. 20 percent were definitely black. The remaining percentage is accounted for by the indigenous people. 15 percent were slaves. This gives a rough estimate of what happened. Only the "pardos" and people with definitely black skin come into question as slaves. There must be someone with black skin among the ancestors, and they only exist in Africa, where the slaves came from. That makes almost 60 percent. Those would be the potential slaves. In fact, only 15 percent are slaves. In absolute numbers. Of the 6 million potential slaves, which would be the value if no slave had ever been set free, only 1.5 million were actually slaves. In the 6 million "pardos" an ancestor who was a slave was set free at some point. A part of the black people, whose number exceeds the number of slaves, was also released.
However, one can also see from the figures that slaves did not grow too old. Between 1801 and 1855, 1.8 million "Africans" were deported to Brazil. This number alone - these were actually slaves - exceeds the number of slaves actually existing in 1872. If we assume that slaves lived for about 30 years, the number is found every now and then, then only the slaves abducted after 1841 would be relevant, that would be 380,000, i.e. slaves in the first generation. (From 1855 there was no longer a slave trade because the English had stopped it.)
One can only speculate about the reasons, or the effort to find out would be enormous. It is conceivable that with the increasing insignificance of agriculture, there was simply no longer any need for slaves. Industrial workplaces cannot be set up with this model for many reasons. In industrialized societies, repression has to take place through other mechanisms, such as denying black people access to education, as happened in South Africa. In this case you have a proletariat that, at least in the early days of industrialization, remains on the subsistence level, which is then not much more than what a slave gets. We don't know how perverted the coffee plantation owners in Brazil were in the previous centuries. Partly quite perverse. However, some of these whites had moral scruples when the son, the daughter, the half-brother, the half-sister were slaves and, if they were also the "owners" at the same time, let them free. Another part may have bought itself free. This is especially a model when the yield of the slave's labor was low.
If we assume that the article in the English Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, which we assume for now because the source for the article is quite plentiful, then the aberrations were not only common in Brazil, but also in the USA.
The difference between Brazil and the US, at least as far as the author sees it, was that there was a growing tendency to ban this type of relationship.
Whether intended by Guimarães or not, he hits a point that had to concern the slave owners, or rather their wives. It seems unlikely that the governor's wife is still living with him, even though she knew that he had cruelly killed Isaura's mother because she would not give in to his urging. If you look at the historical facts, it is no longer so improbable. If men bend the law in such a way that they can satisfy all their aberrations without consequences, then it is to be assumed that they actually do so and women were probably in no position to put a stop to it. It is very likely that a woman like Isaura had the sympathy of the female part of the slavery upper class.
So what some Brazilian authors write about the work is pretty much nonsense.
The first mistake is that the work is clearly not romantic. Romanticism covers a wide spectrum of works, ranging from a demonic variant à la Edgar Allan Poe and E.T. Hoffmann, up to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in Spain, Novalis in Germany and in an ironic version in Heinrich Heine. What Romanticism has in common is that forces, longings and feelings are at work that psychologically overwhelm the characters, driving them out of active life and against which they cannot defend themselves. It is well known that this got on Goethe's nerves. ("Classic is healthy, romantic is sick.") Isaura, however, is the exact opposite. She is extremely strong-willed and full of character. The fact that Guimarães puts her in the sky, or describes her as sent down from heaven, so exaggerated in a similar way to Dante Beatrice, who actually ends up in the ninth heaven, may be because there is a woman who has posed for Guimarães and one made a similar impact as Beatrice made on Dante.
3. Comparison of A Escrava Isaura with O Cortiço
O Cortiço was published in 1890, A Escrava Isaura in 1875. There are 15 years between them. Furthermore, O Cortiço plays A Escrava Isaura on a coffee plantation in Rio de Janeiro, a more commercial/industrial city.
Bernardo Guimarães lived from 1825 to 1884, Aluísio Azevedo from 1857 to 1913, so the latter was much younger. The novel A Escrava Isaura appeared 13 years before the final abolition of slavery, the novel O Cortiço 2 years after. The fate that Bertolzea suffered, being sent back into slavery, was no longer possible when the novel was published, since slavery had been abolished by that time.
Comparing the two novels, one sees a change in the social fabric.
In the novel A Escrava Isaura, the upper class is still based on Portuguese culture. The piano is played, quadrilles are danced and Isaura is brought up in the way one imagines the education of a senior daughter in Europe in the 19th century. In the novel O Cortiço it is the other way around. Jerônimo is attracted to Brazilian culture, a culture formed from a mixture of different ethnic and social groups, although this effect has probably only been felt where different social groups have encountered each other. While the coffee plantation owners still clearly kept away from the "mixed races" and the skin color white is the ideal, the ethnic, social groups mix in the cities, since the living conditions are the same for everyone. This "mixed people" created their own culture, which ultimately shapes the image that one has of Brazil, at least from a tourist point of view, to this day.
The story has a certain point when Isaura succeeds at the ball of the "honorable society" with a song that describes the sadness and longing of a slave. The "pure feeling" can sometimes decide for the reasonable, but that does not mean that the same applies to reality.
In the novel O Cortiço, all non-whites are free, except for Bertoleza. The differences between white and colored are not made in the economically weaker social classes. Rosa, with whom Jerônimo falls in love so much that his entire life falls apart, is a mulatto.
The two novels describe historical facts. While the white upper class in the still agrarian country differentiated itself from other ethnic groups, from slaves anyway, these differences have disappeared in the more industrial, commercial cities.
High society is not criticized in A Escrava Isaura. The description of the ball in Recife describes the beautiful appearance, but not the foundation on which it is based and also not the conflicts. In O Cortiço the splendor of Rio de Janeiro is described, but also the basis on which it rests.
At the end of the 19th century there was another strong influx of immigrants, especially Italians. Although these diffuse throughout the country and also compete with the slaves as agricultural workers, they do not appear in A Esclava Isaura. But they appear in the microcosm of the tenement.
| Brasileiros brancos |
This immigration of poor whites, who lived under practically the same conditions as black people, may have put further pressure on the slave economy model. On the one hand, slaves were no longer cheaper, and on the other hand, the model is not compatible with an industrial society that depends on trained specialists. One would have had to invest in the training of the slaves and with the training the balance of power shifts. In addition, other countries also appear for cotton, e.g. India, and coffee, e.g. Peru. From 1825 onwards, Europe was no longer dependent on sugar from South America, as it was then able to obtain it from sugar beet. Not proven, but plausible, one can also assume that the rationale that justified slavery became increasingly questionable under these auspices. The author does not really believe in the theory of the ideological superstructure, i.e. in the theory that the ruling class has a need to justify or glorify social ills, because it is a characteristic of criminals that they do not show their behavior in front of themselves want to justify yourself. The ideological superstructure theory assumes something of a conscience that needs to be pacified. But criminals don't have that. It may be that Hermann Goering somehow justified his robberies, which the bank robber does not do, but the ideological superstructure serves only to manipulate the masses and is purely instrumental. Slavery is justified by the inferiority of people with a skin color other than white. This model is of course called into question when white people also live in conditions similar to those of dark skinned people.
Both worlds probably coexisted in Brazil for a while. The slave society on the coffee plantations with extreme aberrations and the world of O Cortiço, where the borders between the different ethnic groups are fluid and increasingly blurred. Although the bizarre laws of slavery still apply in both worlds, which will be Bertoleza's undoing, they have largely become meaningless in O Cortiço. All non-white people, though descended from slaves at some point, are now free for a variety of reasons.
In both novels, the state is seen as an instrument of power for a certain class of society. In A Escrava Isaura Leôncio uses his connections to enforce the injustice more quickly. In O Cortiço we have a different layer of society. For them, the state is merely the enemy. Even if the state appears to settle a dispute, the opponents immediately unite against the state and its representatives. So intuitively one can assume that this representation is largely correct. The upper class uses the state as an instrument of oppression, the lower class has lost all trust in the state organs and rejects them radically due to the experiences they have made.
4. The legal situation
Legal regulations are like garbage. If someone throws leftover food away from the bin where it belongs, but next to it, rats will be attracted. This means laws that invite abuse are abused.
(Although the author of these lines cannot shake the impression that lawyers are generally not the brightest. If there were a law that fined anyone of the Jewish faith 10,000 euros for not wearing the Star of David, then it would there are also judges who apply this law.In the years 1933 to 1945 we had a complete bankruptcy, the complete bankruptcy carried through to the Federal Republic of Germany, where the judges then continued seamlessly after 1945 where they left off and there are none now Evidence that a radical break would have taken place or that the problem would have been solved systemically.)
The context would be that copyright law and the legal system provide perverse incentives, with the result that the rats are coming. Such a connection cannot be completely dismissed and there is an expression for these rats in all languages, e.g. in Spanish it is the picapleitos, the dispute seeker, in German the Winkeladvokat.
Dr.r Gerardo in the novel is the typical, pragmatic lawyer, and pragmatism means behavior in which values no longer play a role. Pragmatism presents itself as a philosophical system, but if you break it down, what remains is simply unscrupulousness. If the legislation is democratically legitimized, under normal circumstances, unless a group can be isolated, there is a tendency to enforce moral norms or the individual is protected from attacks. Even the bank robber will not speak out in favor of legalizing bank robbery in a free election, because that would undermine the bank robbery business model. If everyone does it, there's nothing in the bank to rob.
If legislation is not democratically legitimized and if one follows the ideas of pragmatism, the legal regulations will serve the interests of a particular group. Legal provisions, which are only measured in terms of their practical use, then legitimize the aberrations of the class, such as the provisions on slavery or the Nuremberg Race Laws, which they enact to enforce their interests. Without values or democratic legitimacy, the law serves the most primitive instincts. Indeed, from the point of view of civil society in civil relations, the plot of A Escrava Isaura, as is often criticized, seems unrealistic, there the bad guy, here the saint. In civilized conditions like today, one can hardly imagine that a society would drift off in such a way. If you look at the recent German past, this constellation is extremely realistic. Only a professor of literature at a university can make the accusation that Isaura is idealized and that Leôncio is drawn like a woodcut. Absolute barbarism and the rule of the scum is possible and measuring the quality of a novel by the sophistication of the actors involved is unrealistic if the sophistication or complex psyche is not given. Guys like Leôncio are potentially there.
Equally critical - every historian would now go on the barricades - would be the comparison of the legal provisions regarding slavery and the Nuremberg racial laws. But whether that is historically correct or not is largely irrelevant, because it is, among other things, the well-known images from the recent German past that come to mind when reading and through which the reading then becomes psychologically demanding.
In his pragmatism, Gerardo is a pillar of the system. It is a strange quality of lawyers, which makes them extremely vulnerable to becoming servants of an unjust state, that they do not question legal provisions, as far as economic matters are concerned, they often do not even understand what the original intention of the law was. (See the author's explanations at www.economics-reloaded.de.) If something economically nonsensical, such as the Riester pension, is poured into a body of law, the result is economic nonsense with fatal consequences. dr Gerardo does not defend positive law regarding slavery, but considers it pointless to take action against it because it is not expedient. It is a small step from this attitude to actively participating in the enforcement of this right, especially if it is profitable. It may be that, unfortunately, we cannot put those involved on the couch, that many judges who convicted people of racial defilement based on the Nuremberg Racial Laws have recognized that these laws lack any moral foundation, but by applying these laws for reasons of career, they became perpetrators. Overall, there were 2,300 convictions due to a relationship with a person of Jewish faith, or with a person who was Jewish according to Nazi ideology, with the number of reports being far higher. (Some 15000 ads in 1935-1945.)
The difference between Nazi Germany and Imperial Brazil was that Nazi Germany attempted to reverse a historically long-established process of merging people whose ancestors were, or still were, of the Jewish faith with the rest of the population close. This could be attempted because the proportion of people of Jewish faith, or people whose ancestors were Jewish, was relatively small, about 1.5 percent of the total population. In Imperial Brazil, however, the proportion of people whose ancestors were slaves was almost 50 percent. This development could not be reversed, even if there were such efforts. In addition, the mixing of people with different genetic characteristics of certain characteristics was much more advanced than the numbers suggest, since the classification as black / white is based on self-assessment and many who describe themselves as "white" in Brazil , actually have ancestors with a different skin color.
Another difference between racism in Imperial Brazil and National Socialist Germany was that racism in National Socialist Germany had no genetic basis at all and therefore the assignment to Judaism had to be based on purely formal criteria, i.e. on the descent and religious affiliation of the ancestors . Certain genetically determined characteristics are ascribed to the Jews in propaganda, but basically Judaism is defined by religion, because they were not recognizable from the outside. Brazilian racism starts with genetically determined characteristics, which, as in the case of Isauras, are also meaningless.
But if it is true, as described in the novel, that the "fine society" would have distanced itself from a slave simply because of the status, which was only a result of the wrong legal situation, if the appearance and education of her from the white upper class, then here too we would have a situation in which status results solely from formal, arbitrary laws.
The application of this right was thoroughly pragmatic, albeit completely immoral. The school system should actually provide a compass that guides action. Most states, or the taxpayer, invest a lot of money in conveying a canon of values. As recent German history shows, this is not particularly successful. This may be similar for other professions, although the author has the impression that legal professionals are particularly susceptible to a pragmatic approach, but it is particularly noticeable in legal professionals. To put it politely, they may not be saying what is right, but what is wrong. What school has missed should at least be made up for in legal training at the university.
Discerning professors of literature also complain that Álvaro is portrayed as a knight without fear or blame, which they see as the hallmark of a light novel. The problem with this statement is that exactly the same criticism is being leveled by the pervert Leôncio and the freeloading flatterer Jorge. Jorge describes Álvaro as Don Quijote, who works to free foreign slaves, especially if they are pretty. Gerardo describes Álvaro's will as a philanthropic fantasy. So the subtle professors of literature are in bad company. The insistence on moral values can always be ridiculed with the Don Quixote argument, but in the end it doesn't answer the question of why some people insist on observing moral values and others don't. With Álvaro it's a mix. On the one hand he loves Isaura, on the other hand his pride is injured because he cannot assert himself, and on the other hand he has an aversion to Leôncio. In real operation it is probably more complicated and only morally strong personalities put up resistance. When insanity becomes the norm, the sane usually begin to doubt their sanity, especially as people tend to resolve the conflict between their own ideas and the ideas of society by trying to convince themselves that there is reason in madness.
As already mentioned, the plot of the novel is unrealistic, especially the happy ending is unrealistic, the normal case should have ended rather tragically. While there are sensible people here and there, unfortunately few of them have the economic resources, although the power that individuals have depends on society. Unless society as a whole is on the wrong track, publishing grievances has a tremendous impact and the cost of publishing is very close to zero on the internet. The judiciary is one of the areas that must be controlled by the public, as also demanded by the Federal Administrative Court.
The novel also realistically traces various discussions. Since the slaves had been denied access to education, they would have been dependent even after being freed. Álvaro does not simply set the slaves free, but shares them in the profits, giving the former slaves an incentive to maintain and increase productivity.
In details, however, it is very realistic and certain facts, such as the search for escaped slaves by means of a newspaper advertisement, were part of the immediate daily experience of the readership at the time. Examples of such advertisements can still be found in 1878, you can see them here Os repugnantes anúncios de escravos em jornais do Século 19 here. Facts are the methods by which slaves were broken, flogging, shackling to the stake, fact is the existence of the foreman, housing for slaves, legislation that regarded slaves simply as things to be bought and sold like any other thing, etc . Etc..
5. Isaura Brazilian literary critics predominantly regard the novel as racist, contrary to the supposed intention. The passages that can be used for this point of view are legion. Statements are already problematic, for example, that God created Isaura perfectly and that people made her a slave and that ultimately God's will is decisive. This means that less outstanding beings can certainly be enslaved. Presenting disabled people like Belchior as monsters could have criminal consequences nowadays, because such statements are incompatible with fundamental ideas about human dignity.
Isaura is an almost religious figure and is also often described with reference to images from Christian mythology. Terms such as pure soul, immaculate, humble, virtuous (means chaste in this context) etc. are often found in descriptions of saints or are expressed in images of saints. It is emphasized that her former mistress taught her to pray. Nor does she rebel aggressively, but accepts her fate to the point of not physically surrendering. She is infinitely merciful and free from any thirst for revenge, and even stands up for Leôncio in the final scene. She only flees when her innocence is threatened. So she doesn't just come across as a woman, but also because of the fact that assaults, at least in a religious society, can be perceived as something of a sacrilege. That such female figures can impress is possible. The residents of O Cortiço hold a similar reverence for Pombinha, even as she then uses eroticism as a disruptive element that transcends class barriers. To this day, Italians still throw their love letters in a glass case in the hope that Beatrice will one day read them. Most of the famous women in world literature have had a real woman as their model. In German, for example, Charlotte Buff, who mutated into Lotte in Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther". It is easy to imagine, because there are many examples of this, that there is a model of Isaura in which Bernardo Guimarães was so immortal that she towered over him so much that she could only go to heaven.
As school material, however, one can argue about it. On the one hand, a saint can only live among saints, in the real existing reality, woman will have to assert herself. On the other hand, even with Charlotte Buff every desire is silent in her presence, as it says in the novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther", it is only questionable whether schoolchildren can do anything with it and last but not least, in the novel Isaura has such an importance that that the aspects where slavery is much more severely criticized recede into the background.
Less clear is the objection that Isaura is an idealized female figure. The objection can only come from people who believe that literature should reflect reality as accurately as possible. If the author wants to depict reality as precisely as possible for whatever reason, then he can do that, but it would be better if he wrote a non-fiction book. But literature can also have something excessive that transcends reality, at least as long as this excess is inherent in the reader and as long as this female figure is inherent, because we encounter her not only in literature, Dante => Beatrice, Petrarch => Laura, Goethe => Charlotte Buff, Hölderin => Diotima etc.. Presumably, however, schoolchildren have little use for such a female figure. What is more striking is that it is their beauty and their cultural development that make their liberation from slavery necessary, whereby these assets are more suitable for shining at illustrious evening parties than for taking up a concrete profession and leading to an independent life to lead. So she corresponds to the ideal of a society in which work was frowned upon as a matter of principle and is in this and other respects the opposite of Rita Baiana in O Cortiço, who is already a much more modern woman.
The fact that Isaura is white and is the only one to be freed from slavery because she is equal, if not superior, to the women of "high society" is seen as a concession by Bernardo Guimarãe to his audience. The idea is that people of darker skin were considered inferior by this society and consequently equality would not have been accepted. So if Isaura had a darker complexion, the audience's sympathy would be less. If you can see like this, you can see differently. The novel also makes it clear that skin color is a fairly random trait, as the mother was darker-skinned and the grandmother was most likely black-skinned.
Any claim that the novel is racist and a concession to its audience is always about Isaura. What is forgotten is that the entire white upper class is portrayed in an extremely negative way. Perverted, characterless, greedy, lazy, sadistic, sleazy, incapable of empathy, uneducated, businessless, corrupt. None of the white people depicted, except for Álvaro, Miguel and the former mistress of Isaura, have any positive qualities. Not the governor, not his son Leôncio, Dr. Not Gerardo, not Jorge, not Martinho. Whatever else appears in the way of police officers, bailiffs, civil servants are willless bailiffs of the ruling class.
The author doesn't really believe that there is no real model of Isaura. Especially in the description of her singing on the night of the ball, a real image seems to have been the godfather, something like that, Maria Farantouri.
The author doesn't actually know of any novel in which the behavior of the characters can actually be empirically proven in reality. This is the case with A Escrava Isaura. The author of these lines does not now understand what is supposed to be romantic about the book.
6. What does the novel bring?
It is often read that the novel is the reason for the fame of Bernardo Guimarãe. That is most likely correct. The novels that are now part of humanity's collective memory, starting with Don Quixote, were already a great success at the time of publication. We do not know whether the novel made a contribution to the abolition of slavery. All we know about books is that the powerful have always viewed them as a danger and have tried to prevent the publication of unpopular books in a variety of ways. Exactly this did not happen in the reign of Pedro II (reign 1840 to 1889). Unlike most European countries, Brazil had almost no censorship. In addition, Pedro II opposed slavery and his daughter finally abolished it in 1888. Bernardo Guimarães had nothing to fear, in 1881 he even received an Order of Merit from Pedro II.
The author would say that the powerful here far overestimated the impact of books. The author of these lines cannot think of a single example where a book would have brought about a change in social conditions that could be empirically verified. It is different with the mass media. If you can control them, then all the instincts of the masses can be tickled.
Social changes result from a change in economic, technical structure. Ideas are at best decorative accessories. Slavery was not abolished because the plantation owners had discovered basic and human rights for themselves, but because slavery did not fit into the modern world. You can still see that in the Vente Livre law. The master could decide whether he would continue to use the slave's labor power until he was 21 or whether he would set him free and be compensated by the state. If the labor power no longer had any value because the production of sugar, cotton, coffee no longer brought any profit, he will probably have sold it. The system of slavery was totally unsuitable for jobs in industry.
Literary scholars would always like to know what goes on in people's minds when they read a book. Of course they never know. In times of Amazon and reader comments, that's different now. We can see from the Amazon comments of the readers that the message does not arrive.
This one's a little bit better.
Three people found the comment helpful.
Here we have a comment that complains that the torment of the slave is not described in enough detail. She's probably even younger.
You can't get Brazilian comments from Amazon, but what you read online is hardly better. The fundamental flaw of the Brazilian commentaries is, and this is surprising, that they judge the novel from today's perspective and are overwhelmingly focused on Isaura. The reader at the time of the novel's publication, in 1875, was well acquainted with the sexual assault, the sadism, the total disenfranchisement of the slaves. Ads about escaped slaves, ads where female slaves were offered for sale based on their attractiveness, familiar with court cases on the subject. Today's reader does not know a character like Leôncio because he would be prosecuted criminally and civilly and would end up in prison for several years. Criminal law is the full ballet: deprivation of liberty, assault, coercion. But even at that time, Leôncio's behavior, even if it was common practice, was hardly socially accepted. If that were not the case, if Leôncio had not been perceived as scum, the much-criticized happy ending would not have been, because Leôncio's fate would then be perceived as unfair. The slaveholders probably didn't read any books. Equally incomprehensible is the statement that it is a "romantic" work. Ultimately, Malvina agrees to the cruel punishment, to marrying Belchior, and here she also becomes sadistic. This moment can also be documented by contemporary witnesses.
Among other things, the domestic slaves suffered greatly from the jealousy of their owners because of their husbands. Although the slaves could not impose their will on their master, their owners believed that they were guilty of sexually "seducing" their master because it was their bad character. Marked by shame, jealousy, humiliation, and envy, white women took their emotions to the extreme. This rivalry is also clearly reflected in the horrific punishments that mistresses inflict on their slaves. Chirly dos Santos - Stubbe, African slavery and its impact on society and psychology in Brazil
As for the penalties, she then refers to a work by Sonia Maria Giacomini, Mulher Escrava. Slaves were blinded by their mistresses, children killed, disfigured. The statement that the children of slave women were left to fend for themselves and then died so that the slave woman could serve as milk nurse for white children is supported several times, not only by Sonia Maria Giacomini, by testimonies of the time. Today's reader is unaware that Malvina's behavior was typical. However, the mirror was held up to contemporary readers. The fact that the Brazilian woman in the 19th century was herself a victim of the circumstances, at the beginning Malvina is still portrayed positively, may be, but that doesn't change much in the cruel reality.
There is nothing romantic about the novel. It describes in the most real and concrete way that a certain proportion of the population is scum. Whether this can be changed through upbringing and the education system is an open question. The taxpayer spends considerable resources here. The brutalization of the language even in the present leaves doubts as to whether the goal has been achieved. Comparisons with National Socialism come to mind. 18 percent AFD does not exactly indicate that the education system is successful.
| contact privacy statement imprint |
