Dom Casmurro 18.151 · 18.151

The full ledger on Tio Cosme is drawn: even granting that he was privately against Bento's 'ordenação' — the plan to make him a priest — his disapproval would come to nothing. The word 'ordenação' names the concrete stake beneath all this scheming: the promise Dona Glória made to send her son into the Church.

The undercurrent is the uselessness of sympathy without will. Cosme might be on Bento's side in feeling and still be worthless to the cause, because feeling that does not act is no help at all. Capitú's calculus has no room for passive goodwill; an ally is only an ally who will move. This hard distinction between sentiment and effort runs through her whole appraisal of the household, and it quietly indicts the very warmth that makes the other characters likeable. In her ledger, to be kind and idle is to be, practically speaking, absent.

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