'So my mother wished it'
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Livre és tu, por que assim o queria minha mãe, e assim o quero eu.
Free are you, for so my mother wished it, and so I wish it.
Leôncio grounds Isaura's 'freedom' in two wills, his dead mother's and his own — 'assim o queria minha mãe, e assim o quero eu.' Neither is Isaura's. The sentence has the cadence of a manumission and the substance of a transfer: she passes from the old mistress's keeping to his, still an object of someone else's wishing. The mother, who taught and cherished her, is enlisted here as authority for a possession she never intended. It is the chapter's recurring move — every tenderness Isaura was ever shown is turned into a lien on her.
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A Escrava Isaura 9.52 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/9.52/