Dom Casmurro 16.52 · 16.52

'Intimou-lhe que vivesse' is one of the chapter's finest strokes: 'intimar' is a legal, official word, the verb for a summons or a formal order. Dona Glória does not beg Pádua to live or soothe him into living; she commands it, as one might serve notice. Life becomes an order from a superior, and Machado's irony is exact — the remedy for despair here is authority, not affection.

The comedy and the truth of it are inseparable. That a man could be talked out of suicide by being ordered to live sounds absurd, yet within this neighbourhood's order of rank it is entirely plausible: Pádua obeys Glória because she is Glória. The whole social architecture of Dom Casmurro is compressed into one verb. And it works — the next passages show him submitting — which tells us as much about Pádua's deference as about Glória's force. He is a man who needs, above all, to be told what to do.

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