A Escrava Isaura 10.93 · 10.93

Dona Laura sharpens the men's admired 'sinalsinho' into an insult: 'aquella pinta negra', that black spot, which makes 'Elvira' barely 'supportavel', bearable. The same mark the gentleman found bewitching is here a blemish, and the word 'negra', black, does more than describe its colour. In a slave society, the black spot on the fair woman's face is charged with everything the ladies cannot say and do not consciously mean — a small dark sign, on the very cheek, of the caste they would recoil from. Guimarády plants a terrible resonance under the catty remark: they are repelled, without knowing why, by the one visible thing that most nearly betrays what Isaura is. The mark that the wanted-notice will name, the men romanticized and the women revile; and the woman who reviles the 'pinta negra' would faint to learn she is looking at an escrava.

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