'You belong to me, body and soul'
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que necessidade tenho eu de pedir aquillo, que de direito me pertence? Lembra-te, escrava ingrata e rebelde, que em corpo e alma me pertences, a mim só e a mais ninguem.
What need have I to ask for what belongs to me by right? Remember, ungrateful, rebellious slave, that in body and soul you belong to me, to me alone and to no one else.
Here the law speaks through the lover, and the claim is total: 'em corpo e alma me pertences' — body and soul you belong to me. The phrase is the pivot of the whole novel's argument. Slavery could reach the body — Leôncio owns Isaura's labour, her movements, her very flesh under the law — but 'alma', the soul, is the ground the book fights over, and his claim to it is the lie the story exists to refute. The next passages will have Isaura calmly deny exactly this: the heart, she says, no one can enslave, not even its owner. Leôncio asserts a title the law never actually gave him, and the reader is meant to feel the overreach.
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