A Escrava Isaura 9.73 · 9.73

Isaura closes the argument with a paradox that undoes the whole institution: 'o coração é livre; ninguem póde escravizal-o, nem o próprio dono' — the heart is free; no one can enslave it, not even its own owner. The last clause is the masterstroke. She does not merely say the master cannot command her heart; she says she cannot command it herself — that the affections are free by nature, ungovernable even by the person who holds them. If the heart cannot be enslaved even by its own possessor, then Leôncio's title, which reaches only what can be owned, can never touch it. In a single sentence the slave out-reasons the master on the very ground of ownership, and the word 'escravizar', to enslave, turns in her mouth from a legal fact into a moral impossibility.

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