Dom Casmurro 25.22 · 25.22

Here the concession reveals its edge. To say Pádua 'could pass for a servant' is not praise but placement: José Dias fixes the neighbor on the social ladder, well below the Santiagos, at the level of hired help. The whole quarrel of the chapter is a quarrel of class, and this is the first stake driven in.

There is irony Machado surely relished. José Dias is himself an agregado, a live-in dependent of ambiguous rank, forever anxious about his own standing in the house. The man most eager to grade Pádua as near-servant is the one whose own place is least secure. In diminishing the neighbor he shores up himself, drawing a line that puts Pádua beneath and, by implication, keeps José Dias above. The reader who remembers his 'dever amarissimo' recognizes the same self-interest wearing the costume of candor.

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