A Escrava Isaura 8.36 · 8.36

The strategy against his wife is settled and cold: 'afrontar com cynica indifferença e brutal sobranceria,' to face her down with cynical indifference and brutal arrogance. He will not argue Malvina's 'justas exigencias' — her just demands — because he cannot; instead he will stonewall them with contempt. The word 'justas,' just, stands as the narrator's verdict: she is right, and he answers her rightness with a wall of insolence. So closes the portrait of the man about to be left alone with Isaura.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the A Escrava Isaura — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I
• Dom Casmurro — Brazilian Portuguese