the mulatto is a work by the naturalist writer Aluísio de Azevedo. It was published in 1881, inaugurating the naturalist movement in Brazil.
The book's name refers to its protagonist, a bastard mulatto who was born on a farm in the northeast of the country.
Characters of the work
- Raimundo: the mulatto, bastard son of Joseph
- Joseph: farmer and father of Raimundo
- Quiteria: Raimundo's wife
- Sundays: slave on the farm and mother of Raimundo
- Father Diogo: Quiteria lover
- Manuel Hake: Raimundo's uncle and tutor
- Anne Rose: Manuel's daughter
- Luís Dias: Manuel's employee and Ana Rosa's suitor
Work summary
The work begins to be narrated in the interior of Maranhão, where José Pedro da Silva was a Portuguese farmer and merchant.
With Domingas, one of his slaves, he had a bastard son: Raimundo. José married Quitéria Inocência de Freitas Santiago and, suspicious of the relationship he had with his slave, his wife asks him to flog the woman and also burn her genitals.
Desperate, José takes the child to his brother Manuel's house. When he returns to the farm, he finds his wife in bed with Padre Diogo.
In a moment of fury, he kills his wife and makes a pact with the priest so that no one knows what happened.
Heartbroken, José goes to live with his brother, who had a house in the city of São Luís. Shortly thereafter, he falls ill. When he decides to return to his farm, he is killed at the behest of Padre Diogo.
Faced with all this, Raimundo, still a child, goes to Lisbon, Portugal, moving away from his mother. There he spent years of his life and graduated in law.
Later, he decided to return to Brazil and move to Rio de Janeiro. Determined to find his uncle Manuel Pescado, Raimundo travels to Maranhão.
The initial idea was to know about his childhood and origin. In addition, his father left the inheritance to him that was in the care of his uncle.
So, when he meets Manuel, Raimundo says he wants to visit the farm where he used to live when he was a child. There, he unravels some unknown facts, for example, who was his mother and who was Joseph's bastard son. During his stay at his uncle's house, he falls in love with his daughter, Ana Rosa.
Meanwhile, Manuel thinks about marrying his daughter to one of his employees, Canon Dias. Therefore, his uncle does not grant him Ana's hand.
Therefore, Raimundo begins to suspect that this refusal is associated with his origin and skin color, since he was the son of a slave.
Ana Rosa also has feelings for Raimundo and the couple decides to run away. At the time of the escape, they are surprised by Padre Diogo and through the confusion, Raimundo is killed by Luís Dias, his rival.
Ana, who was pregnant with Raimundo, is in shock with the death of her lover and ends up aborting the child. Finally, she marries Raimundo's assassin and has three children with him.
Analysis of the work
the mulatto is a work with strong social criticism. Through its stereotyped characters, Aluísio de Azevedo addresses topics such as racial prejudice, slavery, the hypocrisy of the clergy and even provincialism.
With 19 untitled chapters, the mulatto it was a revelation for society at the time and received much criticism. In addition to the themes explored by the author, the end of the work distances itself from the classic and romantic molds where good always wins over evil.
Here, the evil and unhappiness of the people permeate the work. They are covered by a false happiness where interests, futility, immorality and discrimination are above all else.
This can be revealed at the end of the work. At the end of the book Ana Rosa and Raimundo's killer are supposedly happy living a bourgeois life and taking care of their three children.
Check the entire work by downloading the PDF here: the mulatto.
Excerpts from the work
To know the language used by the writer, check out some excerpts from the work below:
Chapter 1
It was a sultry and boring day. The poor city of São Luís do Maranhão seemed numb by the heat. It was almost impossible to go out into the street: the stones were scalding; the windowpanes and lanterns sparkled in the sun like huge diamonds, the walls gleamed with polished silver; the leaves on the trees didn't even move; the water wagons roared by all the time, shaking the buildings; and the water workers, in shirtsleeves and legs rolled up, unceremoniously invaded the houses to fill the bathtubs and pots. At certain points there was not a soul in the street; everything was concentrated, asleep; only the blacks did the shopping for dinner or walked on the gain.
Chapter 3
The trip to Europe had not only benefited her spirit, but her body. He was much stronger, well exercised and in enviable health. He boasted of having gained a great deal of experience in the world; he talked freely about any subject as well as he knew how to enter a first-rate room like giving a lecture among young men in a newspaper office or at a theater box. And in points of honor and loyalty, he would not rightly admit that there was anyone more scrupulous than he.
It was in this beautiful mood, happy and full of hope for the future that Raimundo took the "Cruise" and left for the capital of São Luís do Maranhão.
Chapter 12
What he wanted was to penetrate his past, go through it, study it, get to know it in depth; he had hitherto found all the doors closed and mute, like his father's grave; bucket hit them all; no one answered him. Now a trapdoor betrayed Manuel's refusal; he would open it and go in, no matter what, even if the trapdoor spilled over an abyss.
And, so dominated was he by his resolve that, when passing the crossing on the Estrada Real, not only did he not notice him, but also the guide who was soon on his way.
- My friend! shouted his uncle. This is not going like that either... Say goodbye to this place!
And he dismounted, to lay at the foot of the cross a branch of myrtle.
Raimundo turned back and, after a long silence, looked at Manuel and asked him, expressing a fragment of the thought that dominated him:
— She will perhaps be my sister...
- Who she?
- His daughter.
The dealer understood his nephew's concern.
- No.
Chapter 18
This was what Manuel's clerk thought, hiding in the darkness, behind a pile of stones and beams, beside the skewers of a ruined shack. But time was running out, and Raimundo was going to go home, disappear into an impregnable frontier, and only reappear the next day, in the sunlight. "It was necessary to deliver... A moment later it would be too late, and Ana Rosa would pass into the hands of the mulatto and the whole city would be master of the scandal, savoring it, laughing at the loser! And then it would all be over, forever! no remedy! And he, Dias, covered in ridicule and... poor!
At this, the lock creaked. That door was going to open like a tomb, where the miserable man felt his future and his happiness slip by; however, such a calamity depended on so little! The great obstacle in his life was there, two steps away, in magnificent position for a shot.
Dias closed his eyes and focused all his energy on the finger that was supposed to pull the trigger. The bullet left, and Raimundo, with a groan, prostrated himself against the wall.
Read too:
The Language of Naturalism
Naturalist Prose
Naturalism in Brazil
Entrance Exam Questions with Feedback
1. (UFLA) Regarding the work the mulatto and based on the analysis of the following excerpt, judge the propositions presented and then mark the CORRECT alternative.
(...) In São Luís, as an adult, his basic concern is to unveil his origins and, therefore, he insists with his uncle on visiting the farm where he was born. During the trip to São Brás, Raimundo begins to discover the first facts about his origins and insists with his uncle to grant him the hand of Ana Rosa. After several refusals, Raimundo learns that the reason for the ban was due to the color of his skin.
Back in São Luís, Raimundo moves out of his uncle's house, decides to return to Rio, confesses his love to Ana Rosa in a letter, but ends up not traveling.
Despite the prohibitions, Ana Rosa and he work out an escape plan. However, the main letter had been intercepted by an accomplice of Canon Diogo, the clerk Dias, an employee of Manuel Pescada and a strong suitor, always repelled, at the hand of Ana Rosa.
At the time of escape, the lovers are surprised. There is scandal, of which the canon is the great regent. Raimundo leaves, desolate, and when he opens the door of the house, a shot hits him in the back. With a weapon that Canon Diogo had lent him, the clerk Dias murders his rival.
Ana Rosa aborts.
However, six years later, we see her leaving an official reception, arm in arm with Mr. Dias and worried about the "three little children who stayed at home, sleeping."
(the mulatto - Aluísio Azevedo)
I. Some naturalist elements can be identified, such as anticlericalism, projected on the figure of Canon Diogo, who was a profligate, hypocrite and murderer.
II. There are strong romantic "residues", as the author takes sides with the mulatto, exaggerating idealizing him and describing him as naive and kind.
III. The plot of the narration is romantic and develops the old romantic cliché of the love story that traditions and prejudice prevent from being realized.
a) Only propositions I and II are correct.
b) Only propositions II and III are correct.
c) All propositions are correct.
d) No proposition is correct.
e) Only propositions I and III are correct.
Alternative e: Only propositions I and III are correct.
2. (Vunesp) Read carefully:
“Raimundo was twenty-six years old and would have been a finished Brazilian type, if not for the big blue eyes he'd taken from his father. Very black hair, glossy and frizzy; brown and amulatto complexion, but thin; pale teeth that gleamed under the blackness of his mustache; tall, elegant stature; broad neck, straight nose and spacious forehead. The most characteristic part of his physiognomy was his large, bushy eyes, full of blue shadows; ruffled black eyelashes, eyelids a moist, vaporous purple; the highly drawn eyebrows on the face, like India ink, brought out the freshness of the epidermis, which, in place of a shaved beard, resembled the soft, transparent tones of a watercolor on white paper. rice.”
The excerpt transcribed above presents the physical portrait of the main character of a novel, whose year of publication has been didactically taken as the end of a literary movement and the beginning of another.
Check the alternative that contains an incorrect statement about this novel:
a) Raimundo is the character of the novel O Mulato, responsible for the title of the work.
b) Ana Rosa is the name of the heroine of O Mulato, who, at the end of the work, marries Dias, her father's clerk and Raimundo's murderer.
c) O Mulato's villain is Canon Diogo, responsible both for the death of José Pero, Raimundo's father, and for Raimundo himself.
d) The three main subjects dealt with by Machado de Assis in the mulatto they are racism, adultery and corruption of the clergy.
e) Aluísio Azevedo wrote, in addition to the mulatto, published in 1881, the following works: O Cortiço, Casa de Pensão, O Coruja, Livro de uma mother-in-law.
Alternative d: The three main subjects dealt with by Machado de Assis in the mulatto they are racism, adultery and corruption of the clergy.
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