Dom Casmurro 13.54 · 13.54

The face closes on a small dissonance. The mouth is 'fina,' delicate; the chin is 'largo,' broad. Machado is too precise a portraitist to make Capitú conventionally perfect — he gives her a strong jaw that pulls against the fineness of the mouth, and the slight irregularity is exactly what makes the face live rather than pose.

Readers have long been tempted to read character into that broad chin — firmness, will, the resolve that lets a poor girl steer her own fate and, some will decide, deceive. The temptation is Machado's trap: he offers a wholly physical detail and lets the reader supply the meaning, the same operation the whole novel runs on. Bentinho, watching, notices only that the chin is wide. Dom Casmurro, writing, may or may not want us to see determination there. The description stays honest to the surface and leaves the depths to whoever is bold enough, or suspicious enough, to guess at them.

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