A Escrava Isaura 3.74 · 3.74

The second gear of the self-persuasion is vanity. Having demoted Isaura back to 'escrava', Henrique now feels not shame but embarrassment — the wrong kind: 'entendeo que fazia um ridiculo papel', he decided he was cutting a ridiculous figure, standing 'em muda e estatica contemplação', in mute, spellbound gazing. The awe that a moment ago did him credit now looks, to his own eyes, absurd — a young gallant struck dumb before a slave, when the code of his class says he should be master of the scene. So he acts, not to satisfy desire so much as to rescue his self-image. The tragedy of the reachable conscience is complete here: the very reverence that could have stopped him — his being 'estatico' before her nobility — is reframed as a humiliation to be shaken off. He will lay hands on her precisely to prove to himself he is not the kind of fool who wouldn't. Cruelty, in the young and vain, is often only the fear of looking soft.

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