Their mystery tells against them
Read the full text in our reader
Esse afastamento da sociedade, esse mysterio, em que procurão tão cuidadosamente envolver a sua vida, não abonão muito em favor delles.
That withdrawal from society, that mystery in which they so carefully take pains to wrap their life, does not speak much in their favour.
Geraldo names the exact thing that keeps Isaura safe and turns it into evidence against her: their 'afastamento da sociedade', their withdrawal, and the 'mysterio' in which they wrap their life. What is prudence to the fugitive is suspicion to society; the very discipline that protects them 'não abonão em favor delles', tells against them. This is the trap of hiding laid bare: to conceal is to seem guilty, so the innocent fugitive can never win — visibility endangers her, invisibility incriminates her. Guimarães, an abolitionist, quietly indicts the social logic that reads a slave's necessary secrecy as proof of criminality. The mystery that shields Isaura from Leôncio's agents is the same mystery that makes decent people suspect her of being a swindler. She is condemned by the shape of her own safety.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open A Escrava Isaura 10.47 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — 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:
A Escrava Isaura 10.47 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/10.47/