The Theme in the Work
Bentinho's jealousy is born of a sentence, not of a fact. In chapter LXII, at the seminary, José Dias says that Capitu is going about cheerful and is a silly little thing, until some rascal from the neighborhood turns up and marries her. Nothing Capitu has done enters the scene: the boy concludes that her cheerfulness is proof, invents windows and exchanged flowers and calls what he feels pure jealousy, a cruel and unknown feeling. The old narrator gives the chapter the title A Touch of Iago, and it is this choice of his, not the scene, that casts José Dias in the role of the one who whispers the suspicion.
The second tooth comes in chapter LXXIII, from a horseman who looks back as he passes under the window while Capitu looks at him. Bentinho asks nothing: he flees to the parlor. In chapter LXXVI, Capitu answers that looking openly proves that there is nothing between the two of them, and makes trust a condition: at the first suspicion, everything will be dissolved. Bentinho swears that it was the first and the last.
After the marriage, jealousy loses its object and gains a method. In chapter CVII, Bentinho explains that guilt has infinite gradations, that a distraction of Capitu's may be half guilty, a third, a tenth, and that the memory of a pair of eyes is enough; in chapter CXIII, he confesses himself jealous of everything and everyone. In these chapters the scene shows Capitu doing no more than dancing, adding up money or staying home with a headache. In chapter CXVIII, the same man feels with Sancha a moment of vertigo and sin and reduces it, in twenty minutes and before his friend's portrait, to nothing. The ruler he grants himself is not the one he applies to her.
The proof he finally believes he has comes from a face, not from an act. Ezequiel's resemblance grows from chapter CXVI and chapter CXXXI, and in chapter CXXXV the theater gives him the name of what he feels: he sees Othello, notes that a handkerchief was enough and leaves convinced that Capitu ought to die. In chapter CXL, with the separation decided, he rereads the entire past as evidence. See also the symbol the coffee cup.
The text supports two readings of the jealousy: that of a boy and then a husband who loves and fears being forgotten, and that of a narrator who, writing in old age, reorders the story so that the jealousy seems always to have been right. In favor of the second, Bentinho himself says, in chapter LXXVII, that the pains of that season were diluted into pleasure in the telling, and that telling recalls other annoyances he does not wish to recall.
Where It Appears
- Chapter LXII: Bentinho feels jealousy for the first time on hearing from José Dias that Capitu is going about cheerful and that some rascal from the neighborhood might marry her, and concludes without any fact that she has forgotten him.
- Chapter LXXII: Bentinho proposes that plays should begin at the end and uses Othello as an example, with three acts given to jealousy, which he calls slow and decreasing action.
- Chapter LXXIII: A horseman passes under Capitu's window, turns his head to her and she to him, and Bentinho says nothing to Capitu and calls the episode the second tooth of jealousy.
- Chapter LXXVI: Capitu answers that looking openly at the horseman proves that there is nothing between the two, and promises that at Bentinho's first suspicion everything between them will be dissolved.
- Chapter CV: Bentinho is mortified to see men brushing their black sleeves against Capitu's bare arms at a ball and stops going to the third one, without forbidding her anything.
- Chapter CVII: Bentinho explains that guilt has infinite gradations and that a distraction of Capitu's may be half guilty, a third or a tenth, the memory of a pair of eyes being enough.
- Chapter CXIII: Bentinho confesses that he remained jealous of everything and everyone and, on an opera night that Capitu missed, sick, finds Escobar at the door with a business matter about appeals.
- Chapter CXVIII: The lingering squeeze of Sancha's hand gives Bentinho a moment of vertigo and sin, which he reduces to nothing in twenty minutes, before Escobar's portrait.
- Chapter CXXVI: On returning from the cemetery, Bentinho concludes that the old passion was dazzling him and that the desire he supposed in Sancha was his own vanity, but changes his mind on the way home.
- Chapter CXXXII: Ezequiel's resemblance grows until Bentinho sees Escobar sitting at the table, swears to kill mother and son and disarms himself on seeing the boy at the top of the stairs.
- Chapter CXXXV: At the theater, Bentinho is astonished that a handkerchief was enough for the Moor's jealousy and leaves the last act convinced that not he, but Capitu, ought to die.
- Chapter CXL: With the separation decided, Bentinho rereads the past and gathers as evidence every old episode, up to the day of the swallows, when Escobar and Capitu looked at each other and looked away.
Passages
Bentinho names the jealousy that bites him for the first time.
Outra ideia, não, - um sentimento cruel e desconhecido, o puro ciúme, leitor das minhas entranhas., No other idea, no, a cruel and unknown feeling, pure jealousy, reader of my entrails.
The horseman who looks at Capitu gives the second tooth.
Tal foi o segundo dente de ciúme que me mordeu., Such was the second tooth of jealousy that bit me.
Capitu makes trust the condition of the courtship.
à primeira suspeita da minha parte, tudo estaria dissolvido entre nós, at the first suspicion on my part, everything between us would be dissolved
At the ball, what Bentinho sees is the men, not what Capitu does.
quando vi que os homens não se fartavam de olhar para eles, de os buscar, quase de os pedir, e que roçavam por eles as mangas pretas, fiquei vexado e aborrecido, when I saw that the men could not get enough of looking at them, of seeking them out, almost of asking for them, and that they brushed their black sleeves against them, I was mortified and annoyed
The ruler of jealousy, in the narrator's own words.
A recordação de uns simples olhos basta para fixar outros que os recordem e se deleitem com a imaginação deles., The memory of a pair of simple eyes is enough to fix others that remember them and take delight in imagining them.
An anonymous stranger at the corner is enough.
Um anônimo ou anônima que passe na esquina da rua faz com que metamos Sírio dentro de Marte, An anonymous man or woman passing at the street corner makes us put Sirius inside Mars
Bentinho describes the state of someone who doubts without a stated cause.
Eu era então um poço delas; coaxavam dentro de mim, como verdadeiras rãs, a ponto de me tirarem o sono algumas vezes, I was then a well of them; they croaked inside me like real frogs, to the point of robbing me of sleep at times
The moment with Sancha, told against himself.
Foi um instante de vertigem e de pecado., It was a moment of vertigo and sin.
On the way back from the cemetery, Bentinho concludes that passion was dazzling him.
Concluí de mim para mim que era a antiga paixão que me ofuscava ainda e me fazia desvairar como sempre, I concluded to myself that it was the old passion that still dazzled me and made me rave as ever
Othello's handkerchief, as seen by Bentinho.
um lenço bastou a acender os ciúmes de Otelo e compor a mais sublime tragédia deste mundo, a handkerchief was enough to kindle Othello's jealousy and compose the most sublime tragedy in this world
Once the sentence is decided, the past becomes evidence.
Agora lembrava-me tudo o que então me pareceu nada., Now I remembered everything that then seemed to me nothing.
The old man says what time did to the pain.
as dores daquela quadra, a tal ponto se espiritualizaram com o tempo, que chegam a diluir-se no prazer, the pains of that season became so spiritualized with time that they come to dissolve into pleasure