A Escrava Isaura 9.97 · 9.97

Isaura answers his boast that he has saved her life by redefining who will end it. She concedes she will not raise her own hand — 'não me matarei por minhas proprias mãos' — and then hands the guilt back to him: 'morrerei ás mãos de um carrasco', I will die at an executioner's hands. The word 'carrasco', executioner, is aimed straight at Leôncio: if she dies of this bondage, as her mother did, he is not her keeper but her hangman. She takes the very thing he called a rescue and names it a slow killing with himself as the killer. It is the last and sharpest turn of her defiance before her father's soft footsteps change the whole chapter.

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