the tenement is the most famous work of Brazilian writer Aluísio Azevedo. This narrative presents a diversity of characters, all analyzed by an objective look according to the scientific theories of the time. Their stories take place in a tenement in Rio de Janeiro owned by the ambitious João Romão.
Aluísio Azevedo is the main name of Brazilian naturalism. Therefore, the novel in question presents a deterministic view and zoomorphization. In this work, the characters are commanded by instinct to the detriment of reason. Thus, the sexual instinct stands out, explicitly shown by the narrator.
Read too: The Athenaeum — another work of Brazilian naturalism
Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about O cortiço
- 2 - Video lesson about O cortiço
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3 - Analysis of the work O cortiço
- Characters from the work O cortiço
- Time of work O cortiço
- Work space The tenement
- Summary of the work The tenement
- Narrator of the work O cortiço
- 4 - Characteristics of the work O cortiço
- 5 - Historical context of the work O cortiço
- 6 - Aluísio Azevedo
Summary about the tenement
the tenement tells the stories of the characters in a tenement in Rio de Janeiro.
A narrative takes place in the Second Reign, before the abolition of slavery.
Naturalist novel, the work presents determinism and zoomorphization.
Its author, Aluísio Azevedo, was born in 1857 and died in 1913.
Video lesson about the tenement
Analysis of the work the tenement
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Characters of the work the tenement
- Augustine
- alexander
- Ana das Dores
- Augusta Carne Mole
- Bertoleza
- Botelho
- bruno
- Stele
- firm
- Florinda
- Henrique
- Isabel
- Isaura
- Jeronimo
- João da Costa
- João Romão
- Juju
- Leandra (or Machona)
- Leocadia
- Leonie
- Leonor
- Liborio
- Martian
- Miranda
- baby
- Pataca
- Paula (or Witch)
- piety
- Little Dove
- Porphyry
- Rita Bahia
- valentine
- Ze Carlos
- Zulmira
Work time the tenement
In the work, there is no specification of the exact year of the events, but, from the context, we conclude that they are events that took place in the second half of the 19th century, but before the Theabolition of It isslavery in 1888. The time of the narrative is chronological.
work space the tenement
The story takes place in the neighborhood of Botafogo, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Summary of the work the tenement
João Romão thrives after the boss left him, “in payment of overdue wages, not only the sale with what was inside, but also a conto and five hundred in cash”.|1|At his side is Bertoleza, a black and enslaved woman. She has a grocery store, where she sells angu, fried fish and liver baits.
From what he earns, he pays “his owner twenty milreis a month, and, despite that, he had almost what was necessary for manumission”. She ends up becoming friends with João Romão and trusts the man to keep his savings and send the monthly twenty milreis to her “lord”. With the help of Bertoleza, João Romão enriches and builds the tenement of San Romão.
Next to the tenement, a Portuguese businessman and his family live. Miranda is married to Estela, an adulteress. The couple's daughter is called Zulmira. And the residents of the tenement end up being a big nuisance for Miranda.
But that's not all he has to worry about, as he is aware of the woman's adulterous behavior. And when fifteen-year-old Henrique, “the son of a very important landowner who provided handsome profits for Miranda’s trading house,” stays at the merchant’s house, Estela decides to seduce the boy.
In Miranda's house, the maids Isaura, “still a young mulatto, soft and silly”, and Leonor, “a virgin black girl, [...], very light and lively, smooth and dry as a kid” also live; as well as Valentim, “the son of a slave who belonged to Dona Estela and whom she had freed”. The house also has another guest: the old Botelho, a “parasite” friend of Miranda.
In the tenement, lives Leandra (nicknamed Machona), a “fierce Portuguese woman, screaming, hairy and thick wrists, rump like a wild animal”. She is the mother of Ana das Dores, Nenen and Agostinho. Augusta Carne Mole is “Brazilian, white” and married to Alexandre, “a forty-year-old mulatto, police soldier, pernostic”. They are Jujú's parents.
Little Jujú lives “in the city with her godmother who took care of her”. The godmother is called Léonie, “a cocotte worth thirty thousand réis and upwards”, of French origin, who always visits the tenement, where Leocádia, a Portuguese woman who is married to Bruno, a blacksmith, also lives.
There is also Paula or Bruxa, “an old cabocla, a bit of an idiot, whom everyone respected for the virtues that only she had to bless erysipelas and cut fevers through prayers and sorcery”. Another resident is Marciana, “an old mulatto woman, very serious and extremely clean”, mother of Florinda.
Dona Isabel is the mother of Pombinha, a pretty young woman, “since she is sick and nervous to the last point; blonde, very pale, with the manners of a girl from a good family”. The young woman is engaged to João da Costa, “a tradesman, esteemed by his boss and colleagues, with a great future”.
Pombinha, approximately 18 years old, still does not menstruate, “despite the zeal of the old woman and the sacrifices she made to strictly comply with the doctor's prescriptions and not miss her daughter the less care”. Another resident of the tenement is Albino, “an effeminate, weak fellow, the color of boiled asparagus [...]. He was a washerman and always lived among women, with whom he was already so familiar that they treated him as a person of the same sex ”.
Old Liborio also lives in the tenement, who “was always scavenging other people's leftovers, queuing here, queuing there, asking one and the other, like a beggar, crying eternal miseries, picking up cigarette butts to smoke in his pipe, a pipe that the somitic had stolen from a poor blind man decrepit".
João Romão also owns a quarry and hires the Portuguese Jerônimo to work there. Jerônimo is a serious man and he brings his wife, named Piedade, to live with him in the tenement. But, after months of absence, Rita Baiana returns to live in the São Romão tenement.
She arrives with “her thick hair, curly and shiny, pulled over the nape of her neck, [...]. And all of her breathed the cleanliness of Brazilian women and a sensual scent of clover and aromatic plants. [...], wiggling her daring and tough Bahian hips, [...], showing a string of bright and shiny teeth that enriched her physiognomy with a fascinating enhancement ”.
She “now lived mixed up” with Firmo, a capoeirista master, friend of a certain Porfiro. However, the Portuguese Jeronimo falls in love with Rita Baiana. Meanwhile, Leocádia, “in a place planted with bamboo and banana trees, where there was the rest of a shed in ruins”, gives herself to Henrique, a guest on the Miranda, in exchange for a rabbit.
She also asks the boy to bear her “a son, whom I need to hire as a wet nurse”, because “the nurses are paying very well”. However, with the arrival of Bruno, the boy and the rabbit run away. Seeing the woman there, the blacksmith violently attacks her. Bruno and Leocádia become the subject of the moment, as their fight continues in the tenement, and Leocádia leaves.
When João Romão has the news that his neighbor Miranda has become a baron, the shopkeeper feels envy. The squalor of the place where he lives (since he doesn't spend the money he has) and his relationship with Bertoleza begin to bother the man. He comes to desire honors and recognition.
Firmo notices Jerônimo's interest in Rita Baiana. When, in the “middle of the pagoda, the Bahian woman fell into the imprudence of melting all over the Portuguese and whispering a secret to him, rolling her eyes”, Firmo reacts, and the two men start a fight; the punches of the Portuguese against the swing of the capoeirista.
After attacking the other with a stick, Jerônimo is seriously injured, as Firmo rips his belly with a razor, before running away. This ends up making Rita Baiana fall in love with Portuguese. Then, the narrator tells what happened that day, at Léonie's house, when Dona Isabel and Pombinha went to visit the cocote (prostitute).
While Dona Isabel slept after the meal, Léonie seduced Pombinha. The next day after having sex with the cocotte, Pombinha has her first menstruation: “she felt the cry of puberty finally come out of her guts, in a red and hot wave”. Days later, her marriage to João da Costa takes place.
João Romão becomes close friends with Miranda and becomes engaged to her daughter. Jerônimo, after leaving the hospital, pays Pataca and Zé Carlos to help him kill Firmo, in a rather violent murder. Now Rita Baiana only belongs to Jerônimo, to Piedade's unhappiness.
To avenge Firmo's death, members of the rival tenement go to the São Romão tenement, and a real battle takes place there. Taking advantage of the confusion, the Witch sets the tenement on fire. Thus, “she finally managed to fulfill her crazy dream: the tenement was going to burn”, but by “midnight it was already the fire was completely extinguished and four sentries were patrolling the ruins of the thirty or so little houses that burned”.
Abandoned by her husband, Piedade turns to alcohol. Pombinha, after two years of marriage, becomes a prostitute. AND Bertoleza becomes a major hindrance in João Romão's life, until the day the son of its “owner” appears. As João Romão pocketed the manumission money, so as not to go back to being a slave, Bertoleza commits suicide.
narrator of the work the tenement
The work has a omniscient narrator, who knows every detail of each character's life and thoughts.
Characteristics of the work the tenement
The romance the tenement It consists of 23 chapters. This work of brazilian naturalism It has the main characteristics of this style:
objective language;
scientism;
deterministic character;
zoomorphization;
characters driven by instinct;
prevalence of sexual instinct;
behavior analysis of marginalized individuals;
racist and homophobic view.
Know more: Naturalism — the most extreme current of realism
Historical context of the work the tenement
O romance the tenementagainst the backdrop of the Second Empire. Led by D. Pedro II (1825-1891), Brazil witnessed the growth of abolitionist movements, which contributed to the advent of the abolition of slavery, in 1888. However, he also saw the economy shaken by the costly participation in the Paraguayan War (1864-1870).
Thus, the work of Aluísio Azevedo also reveals elements associated with capitalism, a subject in vogue at the end of the 19th century. After all, the Brazil made the transition from the slave regime to the capitalist regime. João Romão, a character in the work, is a symbol of this new regime.
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Aluísio Azevedo
Aluísio Azevedo was born in São Luís, in the state of Maranhão, on April 14, 1857. He was the son of a Portuguese. As a teenager, the writer worked as a clerk and bookkeeper. In 1876, he decided to live in Rio de Janeiro, where he studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.
Two years later, the author returned to São Luís, where, In 1879, he published his first book: A woman's tear. The novelist returned to Rio de Janeiro, in 1881, after the success of his first naturalist novel: the mulatto. He entered diplomacy in 1895, a career he maintained until his death on January 21, 1913.
Note
|1| AZEVEDO, Aluísio. the tenement. 30. ed. Sao Paulo: Attica, 1997.
image credits
[1] Modern Publisher (reproduction)
By Warley Souza
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