The uses of an education
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isto em uma escrava não deixa de ser curioso. Eis o proveito, que se tira de dar educação a taes creaturas!
This, in a slave, is not without its curiosity. See the profit one draws from giving education to such creatures!
Leôncio's mockery lands on the real wound of the novel's situation: Isaura was raised, at the old mistress's insistence, like a daughter — taught music, letters, feeling — and now that cultivation is thrown back at her as an absurdity. 'Dar educação a taes creaturas' — to educate such creatures — treats her refinement as a joke that has gotten out of hand, a dog taught to talk back. But the sarcasm cuts the other way. Her education is precisely what makes the reader unable to see her as property; Leôncio is complaining that she has become too obviously human. The word 'creaturas', creatures, tries to shove her back down into the animal, and fails against every sentence she has just spoken.
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