A Novel of 1899 About Rio of 1857 and the Years After
Dom Casmurro was published by Garnier in 1899, but the story it tells takes place some forty years earlier. It is written by Bento Santiago, already old, in Engenho Novo, a remote neighborhood of Rio from which he goes back and forth to the city by train (chapter I). The narrator himself places the writing near the end of the century, when he says the century is about to expire (chapter XC), and recalls that in 1882 he met again, in a Navy office, a former seminary classmate (chapter LIV).
The action begins in November 1857, when the boy Bentinho overhears, from behind the door, the denunciation that he is "hanging around the corners" with the neighbor (chapter III), and runs up to the return of an adult Ezequiel, long after 1872, the year in which Capitu comments on his eyes (chapter CXXXI). In between come the marriage, in March 1865 (chapter CI), and the death of Escobar, in March 1871 (chapter CXXII). Everything takes place in the Second Reign: the empire of Pedro II lasted until 1889, and the Emperor appears in the book only in passing, in the carriage that crosses Bentinho's bus, and later as his dream (chapter XXIX).
The City and Slavery
The setting is Rio de Janeiro, capital of the Empire: Matacavalos Street, where the two neighboring families live (chapter III), the Passeio Público (chapter XXIII), Tijuca (chapter CI), Glória and Flamengo (chapter CIV, chapter CXVII). Vehicles mark ownership: the two-wheeled carriage of Bentinho's father (chapter LXXXVII), the bus (chapters XXIII and XXIX), and the suburban train (chapter I). Slavery is the order in which everyone lives, and the narrator seldom dwells on it: the carriage driver is a slave of the household (chapter LXXXVII), and the enslaved servants ask the blessing of the young man leaving for the seminary (chapter LIII). It would only end in 1888, eleven years before the book was published.
The Church, the Seminary and the Vow
The Catholic religion was the official religion of the Empire, under the Constitution of 1824, and the Church was present in every aspect of life in a house like Dona Glória's: it is in this world that a widow can promise God a priest son and be taken seriously by relatives and priests (chapter XI). The hierarchy appears on stage: the internuncio, the pope's representative in Rio, informs Father Cabral that the pope has named him apostolic protonotary, a title of honor only (chapter XXXV); the bishop is consulted about the vow (chapter XCVII); and José Dias proposes a trip to Rome, where only the pope could release Dona Glória from the commitment (chapter XCV).
Dependents, Bachelors and Lawyers
The dependent is the free and poor man who lives on favor in a landowner's house: José Dias arrives in Itaguaí selling himself as a doctor, accepts room and board, and stays (chapter V). For a young man from a modest family, the respectable career outside the clergy was law. The two law schools of the country, created in 1827, were in São Paulo and Pernambuco, and it is the first of these that Capitu chooses in the plan to save Bentinho from the seminary (chapter XVIII). He graduates as a bachelor at twenty-two (chapter XCVIII), is addressed as doctor (chapter XCIX), and begins to practice law, with Escobar's help in his first court cases (chapter CIV).
The Opera and Othello
Italian opera was the prestige entertainment in Rio during the Second Reign, and the book uses it as a way of thinking about life: the old tenor Marcolini sets out the theory that life is an opera, with libretto by God and score by Satan (chapter IX). Dramatic theater enters with Othello, the tragedy by Shakespeare from the early seventeenth century: Bentinho gives one chapter the title "A Touch of Iago" (chapter LXII), proposes that plays begin at the end (chapter LXXII), and when at last he watches the play, concludes that it was Capitu who had to die (chapter CXXXV).