A Escrava Isaura 10.73 · 10.73

'Que porte de rainha!' — what a queenly bearing — is the plainest instance of the chapter's deepest irony. The admirers reach instinctively for the language of royalty to describe a woman the law calls a slave. Her carriage, her natural dignity, the bearing that cultivation gave her, all say 'queen' to every eye; only a document, a brand of status invisible on her body, says 'property'. Guimarády keeps letting the ballroom, unknowing, testify to the truth his whole novel argues: that nobility is a matter of the person, not of birth or law, and that the gap between what Isaura is and what she is called is a violence done to the plain evidence of the eyes. The strangers see a queen because a queen is standing there.

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