Dom Casmurro 7.14 · 7.14

The little turn on 'mas' is the whole point: she is still beautiful, but works at not showing it. 'Teimava' is stronger than mere habit — it means she stubbornly persisted, dug in against her own looks. The verb makes her concealment an act of will, a small daily discipline rather than an accident of dress.

This is the first of the novel's many women who manage appearances, and the mother's version is the innocent one: a widow effacing her youth out of piety and grief. Bento cannot yet know how much the theme of hidden looks and read faces will come to torment him. He simply notes his mother covering herself, admiringly, the way a son remembers a parent's modesty. Only later, watching another woman's eyes, will hiding and showing become the questions that ruin his peace.

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