A Escrava Isaura 10.55 · 10.55

The gentleman's disclaimer is meant lightly — he will not become Álvaro's rival, for he distrusts 'moças mysteriosas', mysterious girls. But the throwaway line carries the chapter's undertow: society's reflexive suspicion of the woman it cannot place. To be a mystery, for a woman in this world, is already to be slightly disreputable, a thing to feel 'horror' of. Isaura's mystery, forced on her by the need to survive, marks her as faintly dangerous to the very people among whom she must pass unnoticed. Guimarády keeps sounding the note: the concealment that keeps her alive also makes her, in the eyes of the respectable, a woman with something to hide — which, of course, she is, though not the shameful something they imagine.

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