Dom Casmurro 21.13 · 21.13

The reason is loneliness, gently named. The widow Dona Glória wanted 'uma senhora intima ao pé de si' — a confidante within reach. The phrase 'ao pé de si' echoes the nearness that governs the whole neighbourhood; here it is comfort rather than threat, a companion at the elbow.

Machado quietly deepens Dona Glória's portrait: the devout, controlling mother of earlier chapters is also a widow who needs someone near. Justina fills that need, and the arrangement explains her standing. But an intimate lady always at one's side is also always watching and always informed, and the reader is invited to feel, under the domestic warmth, how much of this household's life is conducted within earshot of a dependent.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I