A Escrava Isaura 8.183 · 8.183

The chapter ends on the single condition that damns the whole system: all this awaits her 'se teimasse em sua resistencia ás ordens de seo senhor' — if she persisted in resisting her master's orders. The word 'teimasse,' from teimar (to be stubborn), is the master's framing: Isaura's moral steadfastness reduced to mere obstinacy, a fault to be beaten out of her. What the reader knows to be heroic virtue, the law calls disobedience — and the punishment for a slave's disobedience is, by this ladder, death. On that threat the chapter closes, the whole machinery of persecution poised over the defenceless heroine.

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