A Escrava Isaura 10.9 · 10.9

The narrator plants us, as at a play, before a knot of 'elegantes mancebos' — the same word for young gallants used of Henrique and Leôncio in the early chapters, quietly linking these ballroom dandies to the type. 'Escutemol-os' — let us listen to them — hands the scene over to dialogue; the descriptive overture ends and the human comedy begins. From here the chapter becomes almost pure conversation, a technique of the realist novel that lets character emerge through voice. What the young men are animatedly discussing, we are about to learn, is a woman — and that woman is Isaura, hidden in plain sight under a new name, her story about to be told from the outside for the first time.

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